newt gordon-reinartist portfolio  index
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eat dirt    


Dirt is in between my teeth. I twist it onto my tongue. I spit it out and this is what becomes. I come from stick-breaking and worm-learning. I like to make things with my hands that other people can take into their hands and learn. My immune system is strong. I believe in letting things in. If you too have room, then please, dig in.















artist statement


March 2024


I sculpt objects of interactive play. I practice obscurity.  I copy a photo iteratively by hand until it becomes the work I have done to it; until the conscious and unconscious decisions of reproduction are made apparent.  As a human artist, I am hooked on the idea that less explanation can lead to more empathy.  I think that creative writing is effective because it leaves gaps for readers to fill in.  The things I create are an extension of this notion, each one a celebration of reference and difference.

My practice seeks to emphasize viewer autonomy. I bring in elements of scent, texture, and warmth, sensations that speak not to a precise visual language, but directly into the culture and context of memory. I borrow Donna Haraway’s posthuman theory and encourage unexpected movement. I dangle drawings and fold up paintings and ask people to move them around. 

These are the associative tools of the natural world. Growing up on boats in Alaska, I learned early how small I was to the moutnains and the sea. I am concious of the hypocrisy of using toxic, permanent materials to create work that uses the language of nature. I try to participate in a community of resource exchange. I engage with re-use and the opportunism of everyday objects. I am searching always for kinder ways to tell my stories.











contact me

 ncgordonrein@gmail.com

(907) 639-1966

find me also

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ncgordonrein

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myself





I was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. My father is an engineer, and my mother is inimitable. Both of them are sailors. In 2011, they moved myself, my brother, and our cat onto a 50-foot ketch, and for a year, we sailed the Pacific coast from Seldovia, AK to the last port before Mexico turns into Guatemala. On the boat, art and writing became an integral part not just of my life, but of my formal education. I kept a moon log and sketched it every night to learn about astronomy. I copied the pictures in bird books and played botanist whenever we went ashore. 

After returning to Alaska, I continued to write and eventually won the statewide UAA/ADN Creative Writing Competition in non-fiction and then in poetry. I have been published in *82 Review, the Daylight Zine, and Future Histories, a magazine which I now steward as cochair. My photos and drawings have been published in Future Histories. In 2021, I skittered my way across the continent to attend Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I am working toward a BFA and a BS in Physics. I am learning how to put my words and thoughts into images and objects.

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 ncgordonrein@gmail.com
(907) 639-1966