AUDREY STONE  | Shelved | SHELF

September 21 - October 24, 2025

VIEW EXHIBITION

I started making the tape balls about seven years ago after a conversation in which Ellen Hackl Fagan suggested I take a more intentional approach to the castoff tape accumulating in my studio.

Just as I often start my paintings in the center, the balls start at the center with a single used piece of tape that gets repeatedly wrapped by subsequent pieces, very much like a rubber-band ball. If you sliced one open, it would likely resemble the rings of a tree. 

The balls are markers of time. Each is the product of a year's worth of painting – or taping for painting. I start a new ball each September, the start of the school year, which even to my adult self feels like a new beginning. The balls also begin (and end) close to the date of Rosh Hashanah, which literally means the 'head of the year,’ and when held in hands, the balls have the weight of a child’s head. And in some way they are the contents of my own head: a record of everything I’ve thought in the studio over the course of a year. 

Audrey Stone is an abstract painter whose work is informed by light and color. Her work has been exhibited widely in the US, as well as in Europe and Asia. She received her MFA from Hunter College and her BFA from Pratt Institute, both in painting. A native New Yorker, Stone lives and works in Brooklyn.