Martha Tuttle

Martha Tuttle was born in Sante Fé, New Mexico, in 1989 and lives and works in Brooklyn.

Martha Tuttle explores the boundaries between painting, textiles, and sculpture, focusing on our relationship to the elemental and the environment. Her colorful compositions emphasize materiality through processes such as dyeing, weaving, and sewing. She uses plant-based dyes, iron, and mineral pigments on taut, translucent silk, creating marks that evoke the fissures of geological formations. The visible frames become part of the compositions, while found minerals connect the works to broader questions about our relationship with the geological world. Her practice resonates with artists such as Janine Antoni, Andrea Zittel, Cecilia Vicuña, and Matthew Barney.

Rural environments are closely connected to Tuttle’s practice, making Atelier Calder an ideal site for her to work in. She designed and sewed garments that she wore during endurance runs in nature, allowing sweat and minerals from her body to leave traces on the fabric. She later transformed these textiles into wall pieces and sculptures, incorporating stones and plants collected along her routes, as well as aluminum casts made from these materials. Through this process, Tuttle explored the porous relationship between the body and the artwork, as well as the materiality and endurance of the female body.