INDIANA GREEN 2010
Indiana Green – a group exhibition featuring works by:
Melissa Dorn Richards
Sometimes it is an object that catches my eye; at other times, it is a pattern. I take that object or pattern out of context, removing the extraneous, and re-present it to you to again consider and examine. I am intent on capturing and focusing your attention on that “thing” that has caught my eye by using bold color and employing lines or shapes to control and add impact.
It is the exploration of color and shape that I am most interested in. Organic shapes are the most appealing to me because they are often slightly asymmetrical, which works within the context of how I use line. The line, or outline, in my work is never perfect, the thickness of the line varies as it follows the shape creating an even more asymmetrical form.
There is rarely angst in my work, more likely you’ll find a veiled sense of humor and a certain pleasure in their simplicity.
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Dale Knaak
My works are the product of inspiration. Through my sketches, drawings and paintings, I choose to share with others the way I see things. I enjoy exposing what is unique or beautiful from what is often perceived as ordinary or mundane. Working by direct observation, my works are executed either in the studio or on location.
Though I don’t focus on one genre or subject matter, I depict images from the times we live in with an honest and sincere approach. Yet I take pleasure in reinventing color and composition to suit my personal preference. Not adhering too closely to ‘the rules’ provides room for experiments, interpretation and new discoveries.
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Tiffany Knopow
I am interested in creating systems to capture fleeting phenomena. The content of each system revolves around a fascination with collecting the uncollectible; items that are too common, too gross, or intangible to exist in a proper collection. Each item has a separate system, some as simple as just collecting the object and others involve more traditional recordkeeping. Eventually, the objects and/or the record of the objects become part of an archive to preserve the item for examination in the future, elevating the uncollectible to the aesthetic. My hope in each collection is to create something so beautiful that the viewer is compelled to investigate the piece and then completely surprised by the material.
The series of Shout® Color Catchers® and dryer lint arose out of an attraction with the unexpected byproducts of washing and drying laundry. Shout® Color Catchers® used in the wash capture the dyes that escape fabrics and result in very pleasing color samples. Lint collected from the drying process creates a sturdy structure without any thing to bind it together creating another piece of fabric. Both lint and color catchers record the fabrics involved in each process limiting my need to embed an additional system or archiving. The materials inherently are visually pleasing and needed little arranging to accentuate the subtle color and textural differences.
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Dara Larson
I am most interested in space, intuitive geometry, fractals, tessellations and compartmentalization. Theses interests are connected to observing patterns in both natural and manmade forms. My work continues to develop connections to psycho geography and spatial identity. Much of the work depicts symbolic narratives and relies upon fusions of intuitive mathematical systems, natural phenomena and human interaction. The work examines the human impulse to control planning of natural and spiritual forces.
Larson’s works predominantly in printmaking and drawing. The use of additive and reductive drawing upon a scratchboard clay surface allows her to use very loose and painterly ink during the first stages of a work. Later she refines and tightens the image as it reveals itself through the drawing process.
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Leah Schreiber
My work, obsessive and organic in its forms, layers, and development is deeply invested in process. Using concepts of reaction, repetition, and reinterpretation through actions like wrapping, sewing, tracing, and creating multiples, I make work that is a reaction to the very act of making, exposing a creative process that generates multiple ways of approaching a question. Frequently, this question involves my interest in the ways our culture influences the relationship of the mind and body— the personal connection of body to self. In this recent collection of work, I am considering the ways we gain knowledge about our own physicality, as it is not through the experience of having a body alone that we are taught what is inside of us. More often, our knowledge is derived through culturally understood modes of biological instruction- technical language and diagrammatical tools.
By invoking formal diagrammatical tools, this body of work refers to educational experience. However the diagrammatical value is intentionally superficial, denying the specificity expected from these sources. By way of a process of abstraction and juxtaposition of cartographic imagery, biological diagrams, and their complex terminologies, the artworks in this collection bring to light the ways these methods of education participate in the divide between visceral and intellectual bodily experience.
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Dave Watkins
Hometown: Milwaukee, WI
Painting Since: 2002
Media: Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas
Turn Ons: Chicken Parmigiana
Turn Offs: Artist Statements
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Christine Style
‘Fare Realm’ is about the inner heart that desires the natural landscape and healthy foods, symbolized by the pear and tea bag, to keep the heart alive and thriving. Why a tea bag? In the book ‘Three Cups of Tea,’ the act of sitting down to share tea repeatedly opens the hearts of strangers and breaks down boundaries. ‘Intake Nation’ refers to what makes for a healthy or at-risk heart. The choices we make for what is taken into the body makes a difference for individuals and for the world. With these prints I take a break from the digital and encaustic prints and I’ve recently set up a ‘green’ printmaking studio at the ARTgarage in Green Bay.
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Ariana Huggett
I am a painter, and I believe that form is a powerful language. Visual stimulus like music can evoke a visceral response, and painting for me is a suitable channel for communicating what I cannot describe with words.
The first thing to know about these interior paintings is that they are made on-site over time. Initially, I begin with sketches to figure out what will give me the best composition; I take into account perspective, nuances of color, time of day and how light moves through the space. Being present becomes key to knowing, and through the act of painting, I am connected to the objects and the space. Because the spaces are often altered over the time in which the paintings are made, I have to remain flexible and give up a certain amount of control.
The paintings are done primarily in the residences of people that I know; yet, sometimes they feature places to which I am not directly connected. I am drawn to areas that are lived in and cluttered. When I paint, the people whose spaces I inhabit are absent, yet they are metaphorically present through their belongings. The paintings become portraits of how humans accumulate and live, and they become a snapshot of the times by showing what people have and use in this moment. I tend to focus on the utilitarian and day-today, because I enjoy the challenge of seeking beauty and order among our clutter.
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Renee Staeck
Art-making is a means of release, control, and problem-solving. In drawing and painting, there are simple triggers used to begin: a stain or mark on the paper, a line that becomes pattern or figure, a chaotic wash of color on canvas. The process of beginning a painting or drawing is akin to a meditative trance-like state, where energies flow without intellectual interruption. This state is grounded by the transition to problem-solving, when I begin incorporating a structure to the painterly washes or marks on the paper. This mimics the underlying architecture in all things. The structure takes shape as pattern or large solid shapes, giving support to the breaths of color or line. When the canvas becomes a fully realized organism or ecosystem that can almost paint itself, my work is done. The resulting images of mystical landscapes, portraits or line drawings are influenced by ancient eastern artworks and textiles, flora and fauna, fashion, pattern, the unknown, and visceral visions that saturate my dreams and daily life.
The portrait series “ Guru” pays homage to important and influential figures. These people possess a deep wisdom and understanding of the world, and have touched many lives, including my own. In the brain-drained and youth-obsessed culture of America today, our intellectuals, truly original thinkers, and wise elders are often disregarded or alienated. The people I have chosen to paint are those whose ways of living, philosophies, or creative output have guided my own sensibilities.
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Chris Niver
When travel was more time consuming and cameras not so ubiquitous, it was common for travels to be documented with embroidery, whether it was stitched during a long voyage or purchased as a keepsake from a gift shop. Sailors crafted items, including embroidery, and sold them at port for extra money. Especially for the maker, embroidery could mediate experiences, insights and memories.
My embroidery documents imagined places and people. The works record secluded and verdant grottos, stagnant pools and drainage ditches. Skeletons sometimes peak through tall grass. Other works depict vast expanses of impassable, rocky terrain. The people are large, musclebound and hairy: men who are hiding something behind their excesses.
I can imagine a sailor from the 19th century stitching this linen. The sailor is preoccupied, not surprisingly, with water and death. He is all too aware of the messiness and fragility of life because he is vulnerable to the enormous power of the sea, disease, and the malevolence of others. He deals with his anxieties by slowly and painstakingly rendering them, the repetition of stitches like a chant that quiets the voices of doubt.
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Shayna Illingworth
I aim to combine metalworking and beading to create jewelry that draws inspiration from historical forms and explores juxtaposing materials and their perceived associations and value. By intricately beading materials such as plastic along with metal and found objects I hope to both embed value for all and at the same time question what gives an object its value. Is it the intrinsic value of a material such as sterling silver, the virtuosity with which the artist constructed it, or simply its shape such as a variegated pearl neckpiece that society reads as precious?
My challenge in creating neckpiece and rings is to achieve a smooth transition between traditionally treated metal, and wire, plastic and glass woven in fiber techniques. Thus far, my exploration has largely been trial and error. I begin with a form in mind, but it takes careful planning and a lot of ripping and redoing to achieve it.
The root of my investigation lies in ornamentation of the human body. Like Arline Fisch, Deganit Sternan Schocken, and Valerie Hector, I look to the past for inspiration in making contemporarily relevant jewelry while keeping a focus on the handcrafted object.
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Kendall Polster
I weld junk.
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Eriks Johnson
Currently my interests have been to restrict some of the variables in my paintings. Primarily I have been reducing the amount of color that I use, this emphasizes other aspects of the painting and I think makes more apparent the decisions in the mark making procedures and therefore the thought process of the painting. Patterns: organic, inorganic, clumsy, sometimes graceful are the main motif of the work. It is important that it is obvious that they are painted by hand. I want the viewer to know that a human being is unavoidably behind the work.
I have also been more conscientious about the use of materials. Instead of making them more lavish I have been paring them down, using more recycled, found or inherited materials in the paintings. I like to think that I have become a hunter/gatherer when it comes to getting my paints and surfaces. Primarily I aim to avoid materials that we take for granted as making art, what I mean by that is materials that, as soon as they are used we know art is being made. For the time being I am also avoiding stretching the paintings. Larger stretched canvases are cumbersome, I cannot take them camping, the edges are hard, and they take up more space. I like to sit in my paintings while I work on them.
Objects from non-western, non-industrialized societies have become a primary source of inspiration. Specifically, living in America, has made me interested in cultures that are indigenous to this area and whom the land influenced all aspects of culture, from lifestyle, to the language, to what we would call art and spirituality as well. I envy the sense of connection I feel that exists in those works and that I feel for those works. Art and life are not separated. To me, traditional representational painting, being a representation, in a framed square with the use of perspective, in a museum seems at times to just create a longer and longer tube through which one observes the world.
The first goal of my work is to feel a connection from making them. The concentration and relative freedom of the decision-making process are very appealing to me. Primarily I work intuitively with a few parameters in mind before I start. I try to balance the constant and repetition of a pattern against the variations and incidental aspects that allow it to grow turn into various forms. When I am painting I remember the rivers I have kayaked, the birds I have seen and the trees I have hid behind when hunting deer. The more beautiful the pieces turn out the happier I am with them. When someone else finds them beautiful I am happy as well.
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Rory Burke
Mortality is the great equalizer. Through her work, Rory explores themes of identity, time, memory and legacy.
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Erica Becker
I create work informed by man’s interest in building and expanding the industrial landscape surround him. I am inspired by nature’s playful interactions altering, changing, and sculpting the surface of these structures. My vocabulary of form and surface derive from abstract manifestations of corrosion, rusting, and fading of these industrial materials. These modeled surfaces express the inevitable passage of time and exposure to the elements.
On a daily basis, I am aware of the strength and power of the natural world around me. These buildings, originally painted with a bright surface, eventually tarnish and fade back into their surroundings. The geometry of industrial factories and bridges become organically adorned with rust spots and pits. Paint stresses, becomes brittle, and cracks leaving a complex pattern across its surface. Each of these destructive actions leaves behind a composition of beauty and harmony.
Within my work I try to capture the spirit of these surfaces. The building process I use produces certain formal characteristics while referencing the industrial shaped topography of the Green Bay area. I try to juxtapose these heavy geometries against the organic mark making of plaster and painted surfaces to resemble the fluid movement of nature. Each panel represents a different location within the Green Bay area. The colors, textures, and forms interact with each other creating a patchwork of the urban landscape.
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About “Indian Green”
Indiana Green is a regional group exhibition featuring 2D and 3D works by artists living and working in Green Bay, Sheboygan, and Milwaukee. Participating artists are: Melissa Dorn Richards (Milwaukee), Dale Knaak (Sheboygan), Tiffany Knopow (Milwaukee), Dara Larson (Milwaukee), Leah Schreiber (Milwaukee), Dave Watkins (Milwaukee), Christine Style (Green Bay), Ariana Huggett (Milwaukee), Renee Staeck (Milwaukee), Chris Niver (Milwaukee), Shayna Illingworth (Sheboygan), Kendall Polster (Milwaukee), Eriks Johnson (Milwaukee), Rory Burke (Milwaukee), and Erica Becker (Green Bay).
Now is the time to be creative, proactive, and to take initiative to create a platform for networking, support and collaboration among artists, says Frank Juarez. Through the collaborative efforts of Juarez; Co-owners, Steve Bossler and Zack Pattison, this exhibition will not only introduce a diverse body of work by 15 artists ranging from paintings to needlework, jewelry to mixed media, and sculpture to printmaking, but also represent personal exploration of materials, media and ideas in a contemporary practice.
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Frank Juarez
(920) 559-7181
juarezpaintings@gmail.com
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Location:
Greenseed Studios
1011 Indiana Avenue
Sheboygan, WI 53081
www.greenseedstudios.com
(920) 287-7640
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Dates of Exhibition:
April 3 – 24, 2010
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Opening Reception:
Saturday, April 10 from 5 to 8 PM
Join us at the Green Room following the reception.
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