Coulter Fussell: The Proving Ground

The first ever major monograph dedicated to Coulter Fussell, the artist creating "quilt-works" sourced from networks of exchange and reuse in the American Southeast Published with Mississippi Museum of Art. This catalog accompanies the first museum survey of work by emerging Mississippi-based artist Coulter Fussell (born 1977). Fussell's "quilt-works" are multidimensional landscapes of the American South. Often referencing specific regional geographies, her assemblages are materially grounded in rural networks of exchange and reuse: they are constructed entirely from textiles, printed matter and other items donated by neighbors in Fussell's hometown of Columbus, Georgia, and Mississippi's Yalobusha County, where the artist now lives. Across artwork images and a series of essays, The Proving Ground traces how the "ground" mutates across Fussell's works. Often using the compositional elements of landscape to create parallels between environmental and interpersonal terrains, Fussell's art questions the perceptual, psychological and cultural "grounds" that frame our experience, determine our sense of place and shape what we believe.