Artists respond to technology’s ubiquity by combining traditional crafting methods with electronic media. The New Materiality, a traveling show curated by Fo Wilson of The Fuller Craft Museum, assesses the boundaries between the handmade and the automated, the traditional and the contemporary. Among the work presented: Videos of oak trees embedded into a classically crafted wooden table, jewelry constructed from pixelated low resolution images of gems, woven tapestries depicting the sound waves of hand-operated and mechanized looms, and hand-blown glass vessels ornamented with cast glass encasing mini videos that pay homage to books.
Donald Fortescue and Lawrence LaBianca; Sounding
There are a few glitches in the presentation: some batteries need recharging, and not everything is operating at its fullest capacity, though from a certain perspective this points to a larger issue regarding electronic technology’s fragility and current dependence upon finite resources. Still, considering the multifaceted creative legacy of Western North Carolina, this exhibit is very relevant to the local dialogue of contemporary art and craft, and is worth seeing. Kudos to the museum for exhibiting new media.
One of Constance Humphries paintings is hanging in the Asheville Art Museum's show, Color Study, and she recently had work in the 2nd Annual UNCA Invitational. A formalist at heart, Humphries says “I’m more interested in visual problems than I am visual solutions.”
“I find mess really interesting,” says Humphries. "Whether it’s in nature, or whether it’s crowds, or in the thrift store where everything is just in piles. I’m simultaneously interested and really freaked out by disorganization.”
To make her gestural paintings, Humphries, an Asheville native, begins by creating an “under-painting” using relatively random marks and colors. Then, she paints the dominating marks, which takes hours. “I have to do it slowly and carefully or else I’ll create mud,” she says.
Paper kudzu by Lisa Nance (photo by Ayana Dusenberry)
Site-specific installation, paintings, drawings and sculpture by six Asheville artists using mixed media and non-traditional approaches to art making.
The artists of SHUCKED utilize methods and materials not only to achieve a final product or object, but as expressive devices that influence the work as it progresses. Here, the artists react to their own procedures of mark-making, cutting, gluing, binding, sewing and sketching.
Also significant are materials like graphite, cardboard, paper, wood and fabric — gleaned from trash piles, free boxes, thrift stores and friends. The result is a collection of work that responds to current social issues, construed of low-cost materials and cast out from the artists' psyches.
For local artist, writer and now curator Ursula Gullow, oysters, clams and corn are not the only things that can be shucked. Add artists to the list of things that can shed their protective coverings. In Shucked, a group show opening at Push Skate Shop and Gallery this Friday, she brings together six local artists whose paintings, drawings and site-specific installations reveal the process of artistic creation itself.
The array of work in the show includes a painting by Anna Jensen, paintings by Lisa Nance, drawings by Michael Ohgren and pagan ceremonial garb created and worn by textile artist Tara Jensen (no relation to Anna) for a Beltane festival. Installations by Lauren Whitley, Nance and Courtney Chappell are staged in the gallery.
To explore the notions of process and self, Gullow pushed the artists outside of their comfort zones. "The artists are working more intuitively, more directly, rather than only focussing on the final object,” Gullow says, “A precious, commodified object."
SHUCKED will hang until October 22nd at PUSH Skateshop and Gallery on Patton Avenue in Asheville, NC. http://pushtoyproject.com. 225-5509)
Photograph by Matt Rose, courtesy of Verve Magazine
Since she was a little girl, Heather Lewis has been drawn to the light. Growing up in Trinidad next to an oil refinery, Lewis, now 49, recalls the long shadows cast upon her bedroom walls by the factory. It’s not the sort of thing most kids grow up with, but for Lewis, the glowing orange light and elongated shadows were staples of her childhood.
They’ve become staples in her artwork as well—installations and projections that Lewis categorizes as “nontraditional drawings.” A shadow, she explains, is much like a stencil that uses light as a medium—flat, the way a traditional drawing is, and totally accurate. But shadows can also be toyed with, and she’s made a career out of doing so. “I can take it outside and blow it up big on a building,” she says of a projected shadow. “It can be destroyed and created in an instant.”
Heather Lewis is part of the Green Shadow exhibit at The McColl Center in Charlotte through August 20. Her work will appear in a group exhibition, Waking up with Van Gogh, at the Hickory Museum of Art next year. For more, check out www.heatherlewis.net.
There's something so benign about knitting, eg., tea cozies and winter scarves. But plenty of artists have done some pretty badass things with yarn. (check out this Facebook group for some neat examples.)
Now there's this thing called yarnstorming, (or yarn bombing): the act of wrapping public fixtures with sheathes of knitted or crocheted yarn -- kind of like a decoration that can be removed at any time. According to this wikipage on yarnbombing, "the practice is still technically illegal, though it is not often prosecuted vigorously."
On Friday June 10th the Asheville Parks, Recreation and Cultural Department will be conducting a FREE yarnstorming workshop 4-7pm at Amboy Park.
According to the event's flyer, no knitting experience is necessary. Instructors will be on hand to teach people how to knit, and install their knitted creations. There will be snacks and music too! It's almost too good to be true, (though I admit that I'm a little bummed to read that all installations will be removed by the city within a week.)
For more information, contact Diane Ruggiero, Superintendent of Cultural Arts, at 828-259-5815
Photo by Anthony Bellemare, courtesy of Verve Magazine
The River Arts District Studio Stroll weekend is upon us! While there are a host of new artists and studios to check out, be sure to pay a visit to Cleaster Cotton at the Pink Dog Creatives building on Depot Street, where she'll be showing her "contemporary primitive" mixed media work.
Though she relatively new to the area, Cotton's been involved in some mighty community work -- like teaching art to economically-disadvantaged kids. She makes her work using found materials saying, "The materials present themselves. they tell me how they want to be treated."
Read more about Cotton in this article written for Verve Magazine: 100 Percent Cotton
I'm also looking forward to seeing Margaret Couch Cogswell's newest project, Tiny Mailbox, a collection of mail art displayed in a mobile gallery at The Cottonmill Studios on Riverside Drive. Cogswell, a mixed media/book artist, put out a call for mail art several months ago in an effort to revive the waning custom of snail mail. I'm anticipating the results, of which, it appears, there were many. Read more about the project on Cogswell's blog.
I'd like to call attention to this recent stop motion book trailer created by Luca Dipierro for the novel Us by Michael Kimball (NY Tyrant Books, 2011.) Dipierro currently lives in Asheville, NC. Learn more about his projects, including his new book, by visiting blackbiscotti.blogspot.com
On the evening of March 12th, one block of Walnut Street in downtown Asheville was closed to traffic in order to accommodate {Pre}Happening a multi media event sponsored by the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and Asheville's Media Arts Project.
Here Mark Koven and Gene Felice project video onto the BB&T building. The bus they are sitting on is called Easel RiderMobile Arts Lab. Says Koven, "It is a project that was the vision of Diane Ruggerio, city superintendent. I have been helping her and her team put it together and we were really excited about its debut. It will be showcased again on April 9th during the Re Happening and again during the Hatch festival."
Video projections by Scott Furr
Performance by Claire Elizabeth Barratt
LED throwies bulletin created by participating audience members. (Wing structure built by Mark Koven.)
Sound by Elisa Faires and Chandra Shukla
The event was part of a series to promote April 9th's {RE}Happening which is set to take place at the historic grounds of the main campus of Black Mountain College. As stated on the website: "{Re}Happening balances the history, tradition and experience of BMCM+AC with the forward thinking and media-based collective of artists that define the MAP."
Nava Lubelski, an internationally known artist who lives in Asheville, is currently involved with a project I find interesting due to it's alternative economic-based format. Lubelski's ReMade Project is part of The Present Group Art Subscription Service which creates limited editions of original artwork by reputable artists. Subscribers to the service receive artwork while funding contemporary art projects. A yearly subscription of $150, for example, gives a patron three limited edition art pieces.
For the project, Lubelski has used a scan of one of her original stained and stitched "paintings" and converted it into computer code so that it could be reproduced en masse by an industrial sewing machine. As she explains in a video she made, the glitches and odd ways the machine interpreted her code contributes to the interest of the manufactured pieces (pictured above.)
Courtney Chappell is currently finishing up the MFA program at Western University. As her thesis project she created I can see your house from up here, a mixed media installation based on her personal response to images of war, and the dehumanization of the "other." See more of her work at courtneychappell.com
How has being in a 3 year graduate program affected the way you look at art?
School provided the basis of an understanding of various art epochs. I think of the art world --and the recent history of art as we know it -- as a game that you observe from a distance. It’s like the game of the art establishment. It’s a construct that I didn’t really see myself connected to, but school gave me an understanding of the institution of art. It helps certain old or archaic texts seem relevant.
Example?
When I was an undergrad I remember learning about how this painting by Picasso (Les Demoiselles d'Avignon) was the gateway to Modern Art Modern Art. He flattened the perspective, which in turn became self-referential because it drew attention to the artist’s decision to do that – the simplification of form and so on.
In grad school I learned to think more like an art historian or critic. I also gained a global self-consciousness about my work, I had a strong self-awareness that I was very separated from this world of art making as a trajectory, and I never found a place for it in a historical context.
My knowledge of the history of art making became more fine-tuned. I learned about German Expressionism and the various problems that arose, such as the conflation of the victim and the victimizer during the Holocaust. The critics say Josef Buey’s for example romanticized the sufferings of the holocaust. I formed my own analysis of his work but I never felt like I was saying anything new. There’s a feeling with art history that everything’s been said.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that ultimately the difference between undergrad and grad is that the focus is narrowed. There’s a feeling in grad school that your focus is so narrow and that by the time you get out you’ve only touched the tip of an iceberg.
I have to say that there’s nothing in grad school that you can’t learn outside of it it. You just need to get your friends to tell you what their favorite artists are, look at curriculums on the internet for reading lists if you care. It is nice to have someone to talk about these things with though.
Lets talk about your work.
I felt very self-conscious. It’s the only time where you really have an exclusive relationship with your viewers that that is formalized. I always felt invested in the opinions of the people who inhabited this temporary community that I was a part of.
I was very susceptible to changing my ideas to connect to people. When I was finally in a situation where people were offering their suggestions it felt like such a gift, to have people around me who would tell me what they wanted from a piece that would help give voice to your vision. It felt very collaborative.
But I know that a part of grad school is learning to defend yourself against other people’s critiques. So I would constantly find myself wanting to make alterations according to their suggestions but sometimes they would critique without offering a suggestion of what to do better. It would be a blanket suggestion like, “this isn’t working,” or “you need to dig deeper.” I was always asking for specific instructions, “should I paint portraits, should I do more house.” It would feel good to me to relinquish control.
But this is also my own personal issue with relating to the viewer and some people don’t have that instinct to internalize or conform to what people think they should.
Of course, many times I disagreed with the critique.
How did you get to your final thesis project?
I had always been really controlled in my work and it was somewhat masochistic. I wanted to learn how to paint the right way. In a way I felt unworthy of art and if I could paint well I could do anything. This perfectionist instinct became exasperated during the first part of my schooling. Because of that pressure I sort of cracked and started cutting up pieces of my junk mail in an attempt to do the worst possible thing and reject anything I thought I was supposed to be doing. That lead me to create these small cities and little houses, and it was a different way to connect to the people I had been painting in my paintings.
Who were these people?
Individuals. Strangers, humans that I’ve only seen on the Internet basically, or in the news.
Specific to the Gulf War?
I kept it specific to the Iraq Invasion because that was the first war I was conscious of. I feel like it’s useful when approaching a war or an invasion as a topic to keep my focus narrow.
How did the installation come about?
I think that the imaginary pressure of working in a tight knit community that was also an institution led me to work in a frantic and rushed manner which I had always tried to fight when I was painting and which I allowed to be a part of this work. When I was working on the installation I jumped from one thing to the next – one object to the next. I would draw as quickly as possible. Leave things in an embarrassingly unfinished state. Sometimes over decorate or overwork things and then get lazy with the line work. I allowed myself to be easily distracted. I decided that that way of working would tell some sort of story about my role as an American --my experience as American woman.
In what way?
In that I think America is easily distracted.
So in this way the process of making the work became a part of it?
Yes. Very much so.
How do you think the experience of being in grad school will affect your work from this point on?
The main thing that’s been great are my friends. Maybe I got lucky. Two of the people I ended up being in school with were old friends. Everyone in the program was great and that was really wonderful to go through. Beneath all the trappings of academia, the actual connections you make are very real. We have a joke that we actually came to grad school to meet each other.
I recently wrote an article for the Mountain Xpress about the latest installment of work at Blue Spiral 1 Gallery in downtown Asheville. In researching the gallery and it's artists I became deeply smitten by the work of Lauren Gallaspy.
Gallaspy puts the gore in gorgeous. (It's ridiculous to write that but I can't help myself.)
The intricacy of her illustrations add visual depth to her wonderfully visceral structures.
“A lot of who I am is where I came from,” says Jessica Stoddart, 32, who grew up in rural Tennessee, the daughter of artists. “I was raised in a ‘Little House on the Prairie’ kind of way,” she says, recalling a childhood spent chopping wood and riding horses. “I love tools, but I’m also a girly girl.”
Yellow Dress
Stoddart began incorporating paper dress patterns into her paintings about five years ago as a way to distinguish her work. “I’m constantly drawn to the masculine and the feminine in everything,” she says. “For me, the patterns seem feminine but have a masculine, architectural feel.”
Earlier paintings depict arrangements of old-style dress forms — an artifact Stoddart was compelled to draw because, she muses, “it’s not human and it’s not mechanical.” Two such vintage mannequins from the 1920s hang out in Stoddart’s studio these days; she still uses them in her work.
Patience, a new installation by Bridget Conn is now on display in the Pack Place Gallery in the Pack Square Building. The exhibit is open during business hours. Get there between 3:30 - 4:30 and find Conn seated in a cave of vellum scrolls, at work writing the word "patience" over and over.
"I enjoy repetition as a means of art-making, in the ways it relates to prayer, and in the ways it references methods of learning that I embraced as a child," she writes on her website, www.countingbirds.net.
Also exhibited are Conn's two-dimensional works that incorporate systematically arranged organic materials and textures -- grains of rice laid out painstakingly into rows, for example. It is clear that every creative choice has been made with intention and care. The effect is soothing- something like memories that happen in slow motion.
A closing reception for the installation is planned for Saturday November 13th, 2-4pm.
Spices, rice, tea, seeds and honey, are just some of the ingredients that go into Conn's mixed media works. "Food growing on trees is my inspiration. Reconnecting with such basics makes sense. It transforms my artwork into my own personal alchemy of creating order, understanding, and magic in the mundane."
"Ritual is a means of elevating the importance of simple gestures and observations. Every decision in ritual is imbued with an intent."
"I may not know the stories of my ancestors, but I know historically what the women of my family did in their daily lives. I question why the nature of their work became associated with inferiority."
"Exploring the dark side of female relationships" is the theme of Ladylike, a group art show currently on display at Satellite Gallery in downtown Asheville. Guest curator Alli Good came up with the idea when she found a box full of letters passed between her friends in high school, and realized that women's relationships with each other aren't as sugar and spice as they appear to be.
What I find most interesting about the Ladylike exhibit are the thoughtful collaborations that ensued between artists. Gallery owner, Bill Thompson really did a great job hanging the work by allowing each art piece to speak for itself and compliment neighboring pieces.
As a participant, I am honored to exhibit my paintings in conjunction with the amazing work of 10 other female Asheville artists. It was a pleasure -- and admittedly awkward at times -- to get together with this group for planning sessions. I would go to to the meetings with the theme of the show front and center in my mind -- amused and self conscious of my own behavior with these women. In this case life was imitating art that imitates life.
Ladylike will be on display until November 21st at Satellite Gallery located at 55 Broadway.
Read more about the show: Frenemies Like These, written by Alli Marshall for The Mountain Xpress.
Fostering a creative community of arts awareness; in support of independent and social media, public art, art collectives, funny people and DIY ethics.
Donald Fortescue and Lawrence LaBianca; Sounding
Donald Fortescue and Lawrence LaBianca; Sounding
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