One of the strengths of Ardstrum — and a major contributor to its longevity — has been the comaraderie among our contributing artists and their willingness to collaborate with each other to maximize the strengths and talents of each participant to create several riveting series, all of which we believe became greater than the sum of their parts.

A recent example was a project piloted by Seth Marsden, a sculptor and installation specialist whose work with stage and film production put him on an inevitable course to explore large-scale artworks.

With a specific vision embraced, Marsden called upon fellow artists Madelaine (Maddy) Prince and Jeffery (JP) Paul to help flesh out an overarching theme that would compliment the materials and treatments envisioned together with storylines that might resonate in the zeitgeist where the ambiguity of the depictions and the complex imagery would inevitably foster diverse conversations that would result in varied interpretations. The trio of accomplished artists and story tellers relished the opportunity to challenge viewers to develop their personal connections to fully complete the works.

Maddy Prince has worked with abstract-figurative motifs based on mannequin forms for several years. Her most recent works involved similarly abstracted, thought-provoking works laden with tangential meanings related to several social themes, including women’s rights, war orphans, victims of imperialism, as well as the struggles of minorities and the LGBTQ+ community in nations that have recently adopted right-wing narratives in the forms of anti-immigration and religious nationalism . Marsden felt his vision would dovetail perfectly with Prince’s social conscience.

Likewise, several years ago JP Paul created a similar series, albeit on a smaller scale. Only Indigo (2007-2011) explored topics related to mental illness, special-needs children and their coming-of-age difficulties in societies and educational institutions where they’re far too often marginalized rather than given the support they need. Seth himself has been on the autism spectrum his entire life. Although the artists hail from three different continents, Seth’s immediate connection with the works of both JP and Maddy were central to the success of this collaboration.

The original larger-than-life, three-dimensional works incorporated acrylic sheets to form towering transparent boxes, often as high as 10 to 12 feet. Inside, scenes involving repurposed mannequins, stuffed objects, projected images, transparencies, light reflectors and diffusers combined with materials such as polyfilm sheeting, medical gauze, thin fabrics, aqueous & acrylic pigments, plus soap-like washes used to cloak and shroud portions of the figures and containers to develop either dream-like or nightmarishly surreal compositions that immediately generated as many questions as they answered.

Entrapment, disillusionment, personal friction, and social injustices were central themes, as were mixed emotions ranging from euphoria and elation to anxiety, indecision, loss, desperation, and disparate conclusions after loss.

In 2021, Ardstrum was granted licensing rights to produce, in conjunction with the artists, a limited-edition series of seven of the twenty original works that were deemed most appropriate for presentation as two-dimensional originals from this major collection.