MIMI YOUNG: CREATIVE COLLABORATION WITH NATURE AND TIME

OUT IN AN OPEN FIELD, THE ARTIST DEPOSITED HER CREATION; THEN THE ELEMENTS DID THE REST

by Edward M. Gómez

Sometimes artists enlist the passing of time and nature itself as the raw materials of their work and as their collaborators; both of these components appear again and again as both central thematic concerns and intangible materials in the work of many conceptual artists.

Mimi Young, “Half-Baked” (also known as “A Boney Pile”), 2013, bisque-fired clay and metal wire, variable dimensions. Photos by Bill Westmoreland

Mimi Young is best known in the New York world of fashion and photography as a well-informed, well-connected, imaginative fashion stylist who has collaborated with a wide range of image-makers for magazines, advertising, and other media projects.

Born and brought up in northern New Jersey and in the New York borough of Queens, where her Irish-American mother had grown up, she recalls a childhood in which, as she recently told brutjournal, “There was always an exciting buzz, no matter if it had to do with trouble or glee. My mother was a very lively person who refused to let anything bring down her spirit.”