Drew Conrad, Dwelling No. 4. Fitzroy Gallery, 2012. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Drew Conrad

During his Clocktower residency at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn-based contemporary artist Drew Conrad creates a free standing, large scale, sculptural ruin incorporating elements of highway billboards, tourist traps, directional markers, and roadside attractions. The artist's work will be presented at the August 10th Second Sunday event at Pioneer Works.

Drew Conrad's studio is located on the third floor of Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, just a few steps from the Clocktower Radio studios. His project expands beyond his typical focus on derelict, domestic spaces, and into an exploration of exteriors. Using signage familiar to any traveller who has wandered down seemingly endless highways, as well as new materials that undergo a process of aging and deterioration by hand, Conrad touches on themes of memory, history, time and place. The sculpture is part of a new investigative body of work, leading into his upcoming solo show at Fitzroy Gallery in New York.

Born in 1979 in Rock Hill, South Carolina, Conrad received his BFA from the University of Georgia and his MFA from Parsons School of Design in 2005. In 2012, he was awarded the MacDowell Fellowship and the Vermont Studio Center Fellowship in 2014. He has had solo exhibitions at Fitzroy Gallery, New York (2012) and Get This! Gallery, Atlanta (2013), and group exhibitions in The House of the Seven Gables at the University Galleries of Illinois State University and in Second Life at The Kentucky Museum of Arts and Crafts. His work has been featured in such publications as Burnaway, Art in America, Bad At Sports, and TimeOutNY.

Drew Conrad, Roadside Attraction

Drew Conrad is Clocktower's artist-in-residence for the month of August 2014 at Pioneer Works. Midway through his residency, he took a break from his ever-changing fabrication to chat with host Jeannie Hopper about his printmaking degree, craft elements, and his do-or-die transition to large-scale free standing sculptures. Jeannie and Drew talk about how nostalgia and Southern Americana pervades these works, begging viewers to construct their own narrative. The artist gives his take on dreams and memories as well as insight into the works' deterioration.