PAINTING 2015 “Most truly original new art is the result of group activity. It appears that the conjunction of several exceptional talents results in something that is greater than the parts.”
Cover, front- and back page photographs by Bob Salazar
— Alan Bowness
Publication of this catalog was made possible with the generous support of Kevin Kearney ’74
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from
Howie Lee Weiss Head of Senior Thesis GFA PTG DRW
When we gathered in Falvey Hall on the first Monday of our weekly Senior Thesis meetings in late August of 2014, graduation seemed really far away. Subsequently, after being assigned a studio in the newly named Fred Lazarus IV Graduate Studio Center and meeting your core peer group, you ventured on a creative journey that led up to your fantastic Commencement Exhibition. “Visiting Artists at Noon” – our Monday Lecture Series – included: Leonardo Benzant, Beverly Fishman, Barbara Friedman, Judy Glantzman, Sharon Horvath, Alex Kanevsky, Fabienne Lasserre, Eddie Martinez, Nick Pappas, René Treviño, Alexis Rockman and Beverly Semmes. Judy Glantzman was in residence for the year, serving as the Geneviève McMillan-Reba Stewart Endowed Chair (see opposite page). Your final Thesis Defense and first semester Review Board provided intense, focused discussions of your artwork by a three-person faculty jury. You created professional quality artist statements, resumes, narrative biographies, and business cards, and you attended numerous professional workshops. Some of you applied to graduate schools, internships, residencies, grants, galleries, and prepared for life beyond MICA. Many of you participated in exhibitions on campus and in the greater community. Mainly you spent many hours in your studio developing your art. This year’s Senior Thesis Core Faculty included Ellen Burchenal, David Cloutier, Marian Glebes, Fabienne Lasserre, Barry Nemett, Phyllis Plattner, Renée Rendine, Robert Salazar, Rex Stevens, and myself. Seon Park, a Mount Royal School of art graduate student, was our Program Teaching Assistant. Various artists also visited your core groups at the invitation of your faculty, enabling you to meet and discuss your artwork with professionals in the field. What a year! I wish all seniors the best of luck for a rich and fulfilling artistic life.
from
Judy Glantzman The 2015 Geneviève McMillan -Reba Stewart Endowed Chair
As this year’s Geneviève McMillan-Reba Stewart Endowed Chair, I would like to thank you all for the remarkable year I have spent in the Maryland Institute College of Art Painting Department. Entering each MICA student’s studio, a unique world reflects the quality, range, and variety that are MICA Painting. The work is always thoughtful and beautifully crafted, resonating with depth and complexity. The studios are charged and creative, guided with the loving and supportive artistic mentorship of the faculty. Now you transition from art student to artist. I have been inspired by the author Willliam Zinsser, who, when asked how to have a successful career, answered, “live an interesting life.” After my graduation in 1978, I painted, worked as a waitress, and attended a now defunct artist retreat for seven months. In 1983, I met David Wojnarowicz, Luis Frangella, and Greer Langton; I was invited to paint in an abandoned pier in lower Manhattan. Word of mouth brought hundreds of artists into this gritty, ghost-pier. The decaying roof exposed the sky. Abandoned old ledgers filled with cursive recordkeeping were scattered about. It was scary and exciting. David planted grass seed, baby grass was sprouting, artist-strangers became a community, and we felt powerful. In the early ’80’s East Village, we played and took risks. Look around – your community of artists is your classmates! They will continue to challenge, inspire, and support you. You are creative and innovative, and these skills will serve you in every part of your life ahead. The world is dynamic: the technology that my husband now uses in his animations was not invented when we were in college. You have inspired me with your artwork, passion, and dedication. Go live an interesting life.
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Matthew Adelberg
I am highly in tune with the historical process in which I create my paintings and artwork. I begin by painting the canvas black and slowly pulling out the light. This process is extremely important to the meaning of the work. Dark can represent many things, for me they are evil and moral bankruptcy. So by painting the surface totally dark, I am acknowledging this evil and immorality that surrounds me. However, as we all do, in each painting, and in each experience, I begin to find my own sense of light, my own sense of G-d as I push through the darkness of the painting. In these paintings light is representative of the good, G-d, love, and my mother. And so, in each painting, I have to re-discover and evaluate the light and all of its implications. Even in all of the darkness, the light always prevails. In my work, I tend to focus on faith, mortality, morality, and lineage. All of these things stem out of my experiences as a child and as an adult and so my work begins to higher understanding of myself and my relationship with G-d, as well as a sort of catharsis. Creating these works has, and continues to be, an act of meditation, reflection, and piety.
www.matthewadelberg.com
Sounding the Shofar, 2014, oil on canvas, 36 x 36-inches
The Execution, 2014, oil on canvas, 54 x 72-inches
Floral Vanitas, 2014, oil on nickel, 16 x 20-inches
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Max Anderson
This computer is a metaphor for my life. Because I hate my computer. I’m experiencing anger in a very mellow way.
I Heel Twist, digital
No title, digital
www.thefieldofwheat.com
Machine assisted drawing 002, dimensions variable
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Mick Barkanic Painting The basics of Albers color theory lays as an initial reference for my work that has evolved into a personal color aesthetic of my own. I categorize and log colors in color charts to dissect the hue, value, color intensity, color mixing make up of colors to discover and better understand what color combinations attribute to the creating an ideal color aesthetic. In conjunction with searching for color combinations, I search for ways to implement textures and zoning strategies to study how color can best occupy irregular and organic textures and spaces. In some instances I utilize pouring paint on surfaces to create a random set of conditions to spontaneously react to and work with and against to create an unanticipated aesthetic I would have not have discovered otherwise. The materials used to construct the work include: acrylic, oil, raw pigment, pumice, and sand on canvas and paper. Drawing In my pointillist work I use ambiguous forms to convey an incorporeal environment. I try to resemble a traditional Chinese landscape painting where the viewer is meant to ignore any formal or metaphorical references and simply experiences the piece. The materials used to construct the work include: micron pens (ranging from .005–.08), Artist Pigmented markers, and acrylic, on Arches hot press 150 and 147 lb paper. Bloom, 2014, oil and acrylic on canvas, 60 x 72-inches
cargocollective.com/mbarkanic mbarkanic@mica.edu
Alpha, 2014, ink on paper, 96 x 42-inches
Beta, 2014, ink on paper, 96 x 42-inches
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Madeline Becker
Hiding Reality, Seeking Illusion The line between reality and illusion is not fixed. The sun goes down and for a few brief moments the magic hour blurs the edges, turning landscape into dreamscape. Reality represented by sunlight and illusion by shadows is no longer true once the sun sets. The shadows stand as good a chance of being reality as the lights. In my work, I use any medium (video, collage, bricolage, painting, installation, light, etc.) to explore people and objects that contain a confusion of light and dark. Texture and layering, which go hand in hand, are ways of building light and dark. Whether it is texture from dust, debris, or pigment, the important outcome is building a surface that catches light in a variety of ways. Layering is a game of hide and seek.
http://madelinemariebecker.com
Unconditional Love, 2015, mixed media, 63.6 x 68.4-inches
Unconditional Love (detail)
Untitled, 2015, mixed media, 72 x 192-inches
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Sarah Brousseau As an individual driven by organization and precision, my most recent body of work has allowed me to find complete freedom and inadvertent expression. Through acts of painting and printmaking I strive to create moments full of investigation and experimentation, allowing fear of imperfection to simply fall away. Using abstract forms, both organic and geometric, I create singular layers of shapes or patterns. Each form, whether it’s a trapezoidal shape or a polka dot pattern, is hand drawn and carefully painted in with sensitively sweet colors. Often embodying a graphic nature, these elements are juxtaposed one on top of the other, creating energetic and illusionistic environments that trick the eye, yet please the mind. Through this comparison of trickery and pleasure, I am lead to contemplate my constant inner battle between thought and freedom. With this body of work I am continuing to explore those contemplations and resisting the need for perfection.
www.sarahbrousseau.weebly.com
Pink Lines, acrylic paint and collaged papers on wood panel, 16.5 x 22 x 1-inches
Purple Circles, acrylic paint and collaged papers on wood panel, 16.5 x 22 x 1-inches
The Journey, acrylic paint and collaged papers on 100% rag painting board, approximately 25.5 x 25.5 x 5-inches
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Logan Bruce
My paintings reveal the expressive qualities of skin and flesh, with the concept of skin being intimately related to the sensuality of touch. Flesh is luminous and transparent, its outer layer giving clues to the mass beneath. The perception of flesh has a tremendous influence on us; the concept of it is integral to understanding the physical substance of our body. This work arose from the idea of the flesh of fruit as metaphor for human flesh. The many vesicles of the fruits’ pulp reflect the nature of relations between our own flesh and organs. I take on this association with a morbid sense of humor; dense torn flesh is terrifying and sweet, repulsive and seductive. Their fields of flesh are dramatic, teeming with movement, while the sweet reality of the subject matter allows, in the end, for emotional safety and solace.
Blood Orange, 2014, oil on canvas, 48 x 32-inches
www.loganbruceart.com
Pomegranate, 2014, oil on canvas, 48 x 32-inches
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Elissa Buchalter A person has two dwellings, the conscious and the unconscious state. The conscious world in which we conduct our daily lives is created of realistic illusion as compared to the blank void of the unconscious. Where these two worlds seemingly meet exists a third, intermediary space that is entered through meditation and meditative acts. My paintings are explorations of this meditative landscape, an examination of the gap. Contained within each of us exists an expansive intermediary world containing dynamic energy in constant flux. Our bodies are comprised of this energy, tightly coiled in the conscious world. Through meditation these bundles of energy begin to slowly unfurl, where they are able to diffuse outward in a realm between our worlds. My paintings focus on what these bundles do once they begin to unfold; how they interact and behave in this kinetic environment. The space within us is subject to constant change; each moment-to-moment sequence grows out of that which precedes it. In the studio actions from previous days inform present decisions. Yesterday’s marks and colors determine today’s, and the process continues.
www.elissabuchalterpaint.com
Untitled, 2014, oil on canvas, 36 x 36-inches
Untitled, 2014, oil on canvas, 36 x 36-inches
Work installed in Fred Lazarus IV Center Leidy Gallery
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Maura Callahan
When there isn’t really a difference between seeing and feeling, when objects are presented without (or used against) their own history, when dreams are less interesting than real life, when all I can do is hesitate I isolate or re-contextualize subjects to find out how they behave differently when removed from their usual space. I use color to activate tactility (the pressure bubbling beneath, or bursting forward from a surface). I wait a while.
mauracallahanstudio.com
Discard After Use, oil on canvas, 48 x 60-inches
Look Don’t Touch, 2014, oil on panel, 18 x 12-inches
Strange Dog, 2014, oil on canvas, 64 x 52-inches
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Ryan Doyle
I visually explore concepts of memory, time, and place, creating abstract paintings and drawings that evoke recollection through mark, surface, and color. Each piece is a marker, a condensed biographical detail of my home, its walls, and the neighborhood outside of them. I translate the palpable psychological charge of these intimate spaces into smooth laborious surfaces that conjure corporeal sensations of touch and matter. The nuanced surface of the paintings are greatly influenced by their environment, taking on conditions, they begin to participate, slowly releasing their secrets.
Spook, 2014, oil on linen over panel, 12 x 15-inches
Dig, 2014, oil on linen over panel, 11 x 14-inches
ryan-doyle.com
Stance, 2014, oil on linen over panel, 11 x 17-inches
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Kaan R Ediz
I have begun painting medium to large abstract expressionist paintings. My initial idea for my thesis project was planned around neo-baroque and realism, a project that was a product of my obsession with what I believed to be perfection. My new paintings are a process of directly wrestling with this fear of falling short of perfection. Rather than depicting or representing objects, my paintings result in a record of my aggressive, linear brushstrokes. This approach enables me to perform seamlessly and without hesitation, making it much more conducive to paint instinctively. This directly relates to my non-linear way of thinking. What remains persistent since my prior work is my fascination for the colour black. My use of black as an agent of primordial abyss prompts a dialogue with the bright, visceral colour fields that make up the rest of these paintings. This is my re-approach as a painter to rekindle an intuitive understanding of what it is to express and create.
kaanedizart@tumblr.com
Untitled 1, 2014, acrylic and oil on canvas, 154 x 132-cm
Untitled 3, 2015, oil and acrylic on canvas, 121 x 122-cm
Untitled 2, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 121 x 102-cm
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Tiffany Els
For my senior thesis, I wanted to incorporate my knowledge of many different facets of art into one grand project. Going off of the theme of a bar, I integrated my passion for woodworking, carving, painting, mosaics, and glass blowing. As I work in my studio, I switch back and forth between mediums, allowing them to integrate, and build on my initial plans. My goal is to create a functional piece of art that is interactive and embodies all of my interests in one cohesive body of work.
Bar Front, 2015, wood and corks, 68 x 36-inches
Bar, 2015, mixed media, 84 x 44 x 30-inches
www.tiffanyels.tumblr.com
Table, 2014, wood and bottle caps, 36 x 84-inches
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Sarah Favreau
Ottoman, 2014, stained linen, 15.5 x 16-inches
www.sarahfavreau.com
Untitled, 2015, oil on linen, 11.5 x 15.5-inches
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Louis Fratino
sometimes I feel like a falling man or the camera above a dancer translating what’s good from below into something twisty from above or maybe just the top half – arms moving without legs like flags on a boat
Feeding Gulls, 2014, oil on canvas, 72 x 63-inches
cargocollective.com/louisfratino
For Everything, 2014, oil on canvas, 58 x 58-inches
Judith, 2014, oil on canvas, 36 x 32-inches
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Rowan Fulton My current body of work is concerned with a documentation of psychological sensations, utilizing the forms of monsters to exteriorize these sensations. These extensions and distortions of the human form will stir up conflicting appeals to empathy and apathy; monsters are threatening and meant to be fought, yet their humanness can connect us to them. The formal decisions I make are tied to my desire to convey interior psychological space.Within the monster forms, I like to cut away small pockets or orifices, offering a glimpse into the mind of the object. Layering soft- and hard-edged marks, I work with highly saturated analogous color as a way of clarifying the separation of these forms from physical reality.
On the Rocks, oil on canvas, 36 x 30-inches
Eye Guy, oil on canvas, 36 x 30-inches
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Audrey Gair A painting can propose an idea that is irrational and absurd. With my paintings, I aim to create parallel worlds. More importantly, I am creating the languages within those worlds. Though what is going on may seem obscure or nonsensical, each painting operates within a specific and unique set of rationalities. I want the logic to be perceived, but not necessarily comprehended. They are single thoughts, self-contained investigations of things and their qualities. These paintings stem from reality – landscape, household objects and surfaces, lowbrow materiality – but are not based in reality.
Yellow Eye, 2015, oil on canvas, 84 x 120-inches
Driving, Crying, 2014, oil on canvas, 30 x 36-inches
www.audreygair.com
Window Vision, Version 1, 2015, oil on canvas, metal, produce bags, snowballs, 84 x 60-inches
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Jake Gordon
My work combines wood and paint in a symbiotic relationship where ultimately real and perceived forms contradict each other. These paintings live as objects and illusionistic pictorial spaces at the same time. They succeed where illusion is simultaneously present and broken. Shapes from sketches are individually cut, painted, and assembled into layered compositions. My working process aims to discover the nature of each shape first as an individual and then as a piece of a larger relational system.
Beachfoot, 2015, acrylic on wood, 48 x 84-inches
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Samantha Hauser Paint allows me to create my own landscapes, characters, and objects that exist in imaginary spaces of brilliant color. I also get to invite the world into my own hand-created realms. All of my life, I have been drawn to the beautiful and the colorful. I am most captivated by the natural world: the way sunlight fractures, the way things grow and change, the way flesh shields bone and muscle. Through my work I am able to explore imaginative worlds of color and light, filled with my own interpretations of botanicals and the human form, rendered through layering, dripping, glazing, and the fragmentation of stroke and color rhythms. Minerva In Between, oil on canvas, 24 x 30-inches
samhauser.com
Somewhere In Between, oil on wood, 12 x 12-inches
The Wholly Grail, oil on canvas, 48 x 60-inches
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Nathaniel Holland
Nature – and my travels within it – inspire me as an artist. Through my work I endeavor to bring that heightened sensation of awe that only nature can evoke; that awareness of belonging to it and no longer being a mere observer of it. Using surreal and exaggerated environments that call up familiar landscapes, I channel my experience into something that is tangible for the viewer. Through painting, photography, and sculpture I recreate specific elements that have captivated me, and create a personal language to establish a communication of my state of being in and out of our natural world.
Rock II, digital photo, 3300 x 2201-pixels
Rock I, digital photo, 3013 x 3013-pixels
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Mindi Ingals I believe painting is a sacred practice, something to live. I want to create for the viewer, the miracle of unraveling time through a lived and mastered rhythm of repetitive brushstrokes where one brushstroke is, at once, one and many. I seek to capture the breath in a single mark. Using lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, I recreate Cennino Cennini’s and Dr. Kremer’s processes of making ultramarine. I then mix the ultramarine pigment into a binder and make paint. Painting does not begin with the initial brushstroke. Instead, it begins the moment the lapis lazuli stones are taken from the Badakhshan mines in Afghanistan. 9b Graphite, 2014, graphite on archival paper, 30 x 44-inches
www.mindimindimindi.com
9b Graphite (detail)
Natural Ultramarine, Titanium Dioxide, and Zinc Oxide, 2014, natural ultramarine, titanium dioxide, and zinc oxide on archival paper, 30 x 44-inches
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Daniel Iturralde
There is no plan, just doing. My inspiration revolves around the notions that make up my day-to-day inconsistencies, my curiosity. There are biological interests in the figure and the nature of my surroundings. The capitalist swamp is one filled with treasures of all veins and eras, particularly in a realm of technological advances, which endow users the ability to practically forge their own destiny. Once married to a situation, a color, a moment in time, like a writer, or a scientist, I gather samples.
Capitรกn Pollero y Tesoro, oil on canvas, 40 x 28-inches
www.danieliturralde.com
Sacked, charcoal, 48 x 60-inches
Implosi贸n, oil on canvas, 47 x 49-inches
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Zoe Jarvis Growing up, flowers bloomed wild and untamed in the pastures at my family’s farm and in my mother’s garden. Eighteen years later, at my father’s funeral, flowers became a symbol of love and memorial. Flowers represent nature’s beauty, memory, and love. Nature is a source of solace and a reminder of individual strength. My drawings present nature in the form of abundant flower blooms, rendered exclusively in Prismacolor colored pencils and spread across large sheets of paper. The flowers are repeated in varying sizes and from differing vantage points until the myriad flowers begin to exist together. The drawings are built-up and discovered over time, somewhat unpredictably. Small crosshatched areas begin in a localized region on the paper and are replicated, expanding in all directions from the point of origin. These drawings motivate the creation of themselves. My drawings embody how family and nature have impacted my life.
Hibiscus Syriacus I, 2014 colored pencil, 72 x 72-inches
www.zjarvis.portfoliobox.me www.zoelinnjarvis.com
Hibiscus Syriacus II, 2015, colored pencil, 72 x 72-inches
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Emma Kennedy
My work examines in religion, antiquity, and myth through a blend of historical and contemporary figurative painting approaches. The work presents a contemporary feminine reimagining of many of the most popular depicted subjects in art history. Subjects range from biblical stories such as the Annunciation and Samson and Delilah, to the ancient Roman Vestal Virgins, to more recent explorations of the myth of the American cowboy. The paintings question the role of art, beauty, and humor in the perception and perpetuation of stories of history and myth.
www.emmarosekennedy.com
Samson and Delilah, 2015, oil on canvas, 56 x 48-inches
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Staver Klitgard When I first started to paint, a professor said to me, “paint is paint, first and foremost – do not forget that. It can become anything, but it is, first, paint.” Combining imagery and mythologies from different cultures that have worshiped the vulture, as well as the dramatization of the baroque period, I’ve created a world where the vulture is a tangible god, where myth and fiction merge into reality. I use these stories as a way to celebrate paint. My paintings are figurative, but there are moments where paint is just paint, where a drip becomes part of the image and not a mistake. With color, light and mark making, the vulture god lives!
Summoning the Vulture God, 2014, oil on canvas, 60 x 84-inches
cargocollective.com/staverk
The Vulture God Devouring a Soul, 2014, oil on canvas, 65 x 84-inches
The Birth of the Sea, 2014, oil on canvas, 70 x 60-inches
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Brooks Kossover
In my portraits of Internet celebrities, underground musicians, alternative artists, characters of notable acclaim, and everyday individuals, I create a conversation between the subject, artist, and viewer. This dialogue addresses human identity and also questions what it means to paint portraits in oil in the 21st century. Working within the lineage of historical portraiture, my work personifies the individual subject, while attempting to represent human essence on a two dimensional referent. My work draws from the direct compositions, distorted perspectives, and stark flatness of itinerant American portraits as well as the intense chromatic spaces and hard edges of Japanese woodblock prints. Each image expresses an urgency of self, while at the same time representing the subject through invented environments and background imagery. My process begins from a meticulously arranged digital collage, followed by an intense focus on surface quality, pattern, and imagined moments that enhance the identity of the subject. Ultimately, I approach my subjects as both a journalist and as a wild-eyed proprietor of the ethereal, creating an opportunity for the viewer to intimately relate to and even see themselves and in the eyes of my subjects.
brookskossover.com/ www.terraultcontemporary.com/
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Joanne Lee Why I make art: • To better understand myself as a specific individual in society • To better articulate myself in a society that disregard or devalues honest and sensitive people • To convince the world of a monism – everything is interconnected • To reenergize the value of honest enthusiasm for learning and academic enrichment Means of achieving my artistic goals: • Through the return to nature (of environment, humans, etc.) as the ultimate truth • Through the transcendence of labor, amassing and accumulating and the resulting power and rewards these processes reap • Through engaging my body in disciplined and ritualistic actions • Through engaging my mind in observing valuable relationships between multiple disciplines and areas of study
www.joannelee.org
Harvest, 2015, polymer clay
Emblem (sunset), 2014, oil on paper, 22 x 30-inches
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Alex Leggin
The Primary focus of my artwork is the motion of vision. When engaging with a piece of artwork, one’s first experience is with the visual linguistics used to portray form and content. The eye is guided through the composition by visual cues just as one is let through a story by strings of sentences that intertwine to form a whole. The act of reading this visual story is what I consider the most important aspect of painting. It is a replication of the ways in which we interact with the visual worlds – of thought, memory, and the natural world; and is the mirror through which we engage with the artist’s inner conscious. I strive to create a relationship with the viewer to allow them to question and examine the reality that is most personal and meaningful to themselves.
Carnivale, 2014, mixed media on wood panel, 43 x 56-inches
Thought, 2015, mixed media on canvas, 30 x 30-inches
www.alexleggin.portfoliobox.me
Ego, 2014, mixed media on canvas, 36 x 30-inches
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Erin Lehrmann
Everything I have seen, breeds stories in me, yet when it comes time to gather them up and spit them back out, all I’m left with are the words of others, ground up fine. So fine that they become pigment and the best I can do is make poems without words.
It’s Just a Construct, oil on canvas, 36 x 48-inches
Poking Around, oil on canvas, 30 x 40-inches
www.erinlehrmann.com
Cactus Snare, oil on canvas, 62 x 54-inches
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Hannah Leighton In my current work, I paint to paint. What would a painting look like if I simply began to work? I approach my work with the mindset of serious investigation and play. How do I get in touch with my inner kindergarten-self who would fill up dozens of notebooks just by drawing compulsively? Expressing myself visually is my gratifying – and perhaps selfish – obsession. I seek the purity of simply picking up a brush and applying paint. It is up to the viewer to interpret my paintings using his or her own unique and individual subjectivity. In this series of work the act of painting takes over. I embrace my past experiences and surroundings, allowing them to resurface in paint. In the act of painting I am able to embrace the uncertainty and joy of being alive in our fragile world.
www.hannahknightleighton.com
Echo, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 48-inches
Untitled, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 48-inches
Kidnapped, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24-inches
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Kaitlyn Malloy When I was young, adults would tell me to cover my eyes at death and sex, but I would peek through my fingers in curiosity. I have always been drawn to narrative, especially the violent type. I explore themes of vulnerability, brutality and anxiety. My paintings are centered around surreal narratives that create an active environment. The environment vibrates with color in a grotesque and aggressive manner. Giant and fleshy figures are essential to the habitat. They are vulnerable and deformed. They are a resource to the hostile creatures. The negative-like entities consume, destroy, and fight each other. Mark-making is an important part of my process. The psychological atmosphere is created through scratchy textures formed with the palette knife. I mostly use oil on paper because I am fond of the fluidity of paint on the surface.
kmalloy.carbonmade.com
Embrace, oil on paper, 30 x 24.5-inches
I’m not home anymore, oil on paper, 18 x 19-inches
He was at the meadow, I was at the meadow, oil on paper, 42 x 45-inches
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Kara Mask
OFF/GRID began a year ago in Hawaii. On a whim, a friend and I traveled to the big island with a few bags and even fewer plans. We hitchhiked everywhere we went, lost our shoes, and traveled the entire length of the island equipped with a broken tent. This was the first time I was able to experience being truly lost. Afterwards, I wondered about the opportunities to be naive, and the value in loss. From there, I began to tear apart the discourse of structure, grids, and plans. OFF/GRID details moments in which processes are broken, or handled with error. The work within is systematic, but clumsily formed. Do grids limit more than they foster? Or do they aid? More importantly, OFF/GRID seeks to find a way to be lost in a world of inherent structure and pressure.
Goblins & Ghosts, 2014, acrylic, 24 x 24-inches, 2014
blueisthecolorofdistance, 2014, oil, 48 x 48-inches, 2014
karamask.com
whereweshouldbewhereweare, 2014, acrylic, 24 x 24-inches, 2014
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Christopher McCarthy
I’m looking at the way vessels, as well as any pictographic information on them, relate to the body. A major theme might be different modes of de-territorialization of “glyph” or “vessel.” Also physical modes of behavior, the play of light and gravity, carry a special importance. All works are on canvas stretched over irregular heptagons or nonagons. These shapes are far enough removed from the rectangle, and the shape itself is easy to vary Some of the smaller works incorporate a hanging system consisting of ropes run through the frame and cast ceramic hardware. The falseness of certain painted textures – e.g., water droplets, cracks, masonry, &c. – pull works into a dimension of humor or strangeness which the color and glyphs similarly inform. The language of discernible, nameable forms runs parallel to that of the drawn glyphs.
www.cargocollective.com/christophermccarthy
Leather Jacket, 2014, oil on canvas, 62 x 42-inches
Searchlights, 2014, acrylic and enamel on canvas, 55 x 52-inches
Moon Pool Urn, 2014, oil and acrylic on canvas 61 x 51-inches
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Alex Merritt
Alex Merritt is a painter, whose aim is to create a broken sense of reality, built out of multiple fragmented layers of paint.
Gods of Our Demolishing, oil on linen, 60 x 64-inches
Beneath the Imperial Sun, oil on linen, 72 x 84-inches
Study for The Rage of Caliban, oil on panel, 12 x 16-inches
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Lauren Meyer
Lauren is an artist and educator who aims to explore the nuances between those two disciplines. How can art interact with the viewer? How are we able to educate through such a medium? By homing in on different processes and techniques such as natural dyes and interactive touch materials, she aims to create a body of work that results in a learning process between the art and the viewer. The natural indigo dying process acts as a sustainable substitute for paint. The dyed fabric is formed into shapes reminiscent of a quilt. Like the pieces of a quilt sewn together, each shape is stretched onto a handcrafted framework, and then the individual shapes are assembled together.
Studio view of indigo dyed objects, 48 x 36-inches
Sustainable Sound Mat, screen print on fabric with Arduino, 8 x 12-inches
cargocollective.com/LaurenMeyer
Lonestar, indigo dyed fabric and wood, 36 x 36-inches
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Sarah Miller
Modern society exists inside. “Inside” meaning a literal location as well as a metaphor for the current state of mind. Ever since the concept was invented, humans have embarked on a long, unending effort to divorce themselves from nature. As a result, the natural world is most often experienced through diluted reproductions and screens – the feel, taste, and smell hacked away. While my works are impersonations themselves, I am stripping down the romanticism that clouds existing simulacra. I intend my paintings to provoke an awareness of the growing chasm between nature and man in an effort to redefine society’s relationship with nature.
After Mignot’s Autumn Lake George, 2014, oil on paper, 34.5 x 54-inches
Neature Painting 3, 2014, oil on paper, 42 x 53-inches
http://sarahmillerart.tumblr.com
Neature Painting 7, 2014, oil on paper, 42 x 54-inches
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Marines Montalvo I got like 3 shades darker waiting for junior to get out for tagging “LAZR” even though someone took it but he got busted for all of them and it’s like I don’t even exist now ever since he got an upgrade for the new iphone and now always con el clicky clicky del text being all sketch making me think its steff calling again even though i already send her a message the other day saying “bak da **** off” but she swears i won’t do anything but whatever he didn’t even like the last pic i posted on insta and it was the freaking tat that he drew me but whatever like i didnt even get to 11 likes so im not getting it anymore but the “Papi te quiero” shout out on Jamz that i requested was like nothing too cos i know he was getting a fade at blades at 5 and they’re always blasting it there and like still nothing its always an excuse either el gym or trying to sell that fake chanel shit but now im stuck in hialeah seeing la sucia esa everywhere and I can’t even get a ride to valsan but whatever im done crying i dont care im just gonna go to church with tia so i can go to my cousins pool later.
www.marinesmontalvo.com
Bandana, 2015, oil paint, spray paint, and bandana on canvas, 22 x 22-inches
Cuentale, 2015, oil and spray paint on canvas, 48 x 48-inches
Blades, 2015, oil and spray paint on canvas, 30 x 24-inches
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Ian Murphy
Hard work, craft, labor, ritual, death, lust, blood and sweat (no tears), humor, loose morals, angst, and punk DIY aesthetics are central to my studio practice, probably stemming from my working-class background. Together these virtues align to create work that combines an adolescent fantasy of building cool shit with the brooding introspection of abstract painting. Using common industrial materials such as plywood and steel, my work utilizes labor, in skilled craft and time spent, to elevate these plebian materials and objects to a level where they become lustfully desirable. This tension between the binary high and low is crucial, and is often informed by – although not always inherent to – the work; binaries such as: life/death, master/slave, shiny/dull, refined/shoddy, authority/subordination, good/evil, and black/white to name a few. The need to create work comes from dissatisfaction with these dualities, as Kurt Cobain put it, “The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.”
American Rad-ass, 2014, acrylic, plywood, screws, 22 x 26-inches
Klondike Gold Dust, 2014, acrylic, plywood, screws, 36 x40-inches
ianmurphystudio.com
Broken Hearts Want Broken Necks, 2015, acrylic, plywood, screws, 15 x12-inches
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Jasper Waters/Novosel
Using animal imagery, I set out to create a narrative and conversation of action and reaction beyond the surface I draw on. Using carefully picked and developed animals, they become personable. Very much like an identifiable animal, but very much their own entity; personified objects of the 2D that demand their own surface, space, and existence as 3D. They are meant to spur a connection between themselves and the viewer; whether it is a question of narrative, a connection of empathy, a participation in the situation, or a focus on development and creation of information by the viewer. The interest is in how these and other experiences shape our continuation of interactions with the world around us.
Untitled (cow1), 2014, pencil, gesso, pastel on paper, 51 x 64-inches
Untitled (cow2), 2014, pencil, gesso, pastel on paper, 51 x 64-inches
jasper-novosel.com
Work installed in Fred Lazarus IV Center Leidy Gallery
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Ellen Phillips
Temporal and Tender With sensitivity in observing close encounters between people, my recent work has become a survey of human interactions and subtleties within intimate moments. I’m interested in depicting the unspoken exchanges between beings, and prolonging such invisible instances. Without giving the viewer much introduction into the monolithic sculptures and paintings I make, I intent to build up a sense of simultaneity – allowing the pieces to hang in an air of duality where they become both the object and the artifact, tentatively determinate of an emergence. While painting, my goal is to translate my materials into a language of quietness without being silent. Defining my pieces by tone rather than dense information, I’m interested in bringing my paintings and sculptures to a plateau where they hum in a tension, caught between moments of complete abstraction and jarring clarity – producing work that is at once tender and unexpectedly abrasive.
www.cargocollective.com/ellendrewphillips
Flat Footfalls, concrete, 8 x 12-inches
Tepid, concrete, acrylic, silkscreen, 22 x 15-inches
Temporal and Tender, concrete, acrylic, plaster, wood, silkscreen, dimensions variable
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Danny Poltrictzky
bodies undiscovered These works are reflections of myself and my experiences as a gay male. They have multiple voices, but combine to create a larger, more cohesive whole. Most of my creative process is executed through im-pulse. I deconstruct the Physique Pictorial ideal through the act of weaving, recontextualizing the subjective character analysis codes utilized by the beefcake magazine mogul, Bob Mizer. Further exploration lead to the creation of large scale sensory prints through unorthodox means, the marks created are reimagining a sensual stimulation. My thesis references popular culture within the gay male community, and reflects a metamorphosis regarding my ideas, character and inspirations. Sexuality, community, the body, identity, slurs, and language are attributes interwoven into my art practice. My thesis showcases my distinctive personal voice and is a cohesive portrait of my complex identity.
http://dannypoltrictzky.tumblr.com/
For Him, 2015, sumi ink on muslin, 66 x 50-inches
It’s not your body, it’s your body hair, 2015, acrylic ink, 41 x 29-inches
Affected Bodies, 2014, screenprint, paint, marker on rag paper, 22 x 22-inches
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Mary Reisenwitz
God may not have made the world with straight lines. She may not have made us automata.
Untitled, 2015, pen and ink, 20 inches square
www.maryreisenwitz.com
Untitled, 2015, pen and ink, 20 inches square
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Alexander Reynolds
Alexander’s most recent works investigate the narratives and ranges of emotions that can potentially be experienced during the confines of a romantic affair. These issues are expressed through (but not limited to) large oil paintings and drawings. These medium allows him to have complete control of how the image is constructed and how the content is perceived, which leaves a lot of room for ambiguity and androgyny. The landscape is used a metaphor to set the stage for these emotionally charged situations while the figures are enveloped within it.These paintings are created so personal nostalgic events can be re-experienced in a more beautiful way regardless of how untruthful or exaggerated the image ultimately is.
Untitled 01
http://alexanderreynolds.tumblr.com
Us but Not Really
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Ian Reynolds I am concerned with the shiftless overflowing vessel of memory. A thin, emotively designated top layer of our recollections remains distinct, while incidental details are soon forgotten and inferred if called upon. Even at our best we stumble inattentively along, memories consigning themselves to the ethereal as we grow, our priorities changing. We cobble together our sense of self from these ramshackle memories, unaware, largely, of the extent of their fickleness; moored to furtively shifting sands.
ian-reynolds.com
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Julia Ribeiro My work draws from my environment, often urban or suburban lived-in places. I am attracted to that which is not pristine: the grungy and dilapidated, the weathered and the worn, often overlooked and impermanent moments within my everyday surroundings such as the build up of rust on a dumpster, chipping paint on the side of a house, covered up marks of graffiti on a wall, layers of dirt and dust accumulating on a surface washed off and built up again and again in a cycle of destruction and creation that is not unlike my process of making a painting. These kinds of phenomena happen over time alluding to a certain history: the life of an object or place. My work uses this kind of imagery to create a vocabulary of marks; abstractions using colors, textures and forms derived from natural processes and my observations of the marks they leave behind. The paintings are not an imitation of, but a reaction to, my personal experience of coming upon accidental compositions with no purpose and no conscious creator allowing them permanence outside of nature’s constant flux.
http://juliaribeiroart.tumblr.com
Degausser, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 65-inches
Sanddollars, 2013, acrylic and collage on paper, 36 x 40-inches
Untitled, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 14 x 18-inches
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Kevin Michael Runyon
Pattern has become considerably implemented in my current work. I have found that the use of pattern in painting creates a visual language that allows the material to operate beyond the flat surface. Through the use of repetition as a compositional element I can enhance the optical illusion of space in painting. I use paint as a material device to create illusory spaces that visually engage viewers and activate levels of false depth. I utilize color relationships to create optical glitch and allow the vibrations of color to activate a space beyond what material can achieve. I use this product as illusion to defy the plane of paint application and how these relationships can direct a viewer to explore the physical surface of a painting. I am interested in the topical application of paint and the history that can be created through layering material and exposing underlying color.
http://www.kevinmichaelrunyon.com
Straight A’s, 2014, acrylic, enamel, and spray paint on canvas, 52 x 46-inches
Best Day Ever but Not (Queasy Ken Kesey), 2014, acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 52 x 46-inches
SPF-U, 2014, acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 30 x 40-inches
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Dean Scott
I am interested in bringing together a set of images and colors to elicit personal remembered spaces. I frequently use subjects such as hand tools, leaves, table tennis equipment, and flower planters. Using these subjects, I am attempting to reclaim language by changing what the images signify either individually or collectively. The context I give them, through color, arrangement, and distortion, contributes to the experience of the place and redefinition of these objects that I am referencing.
Assembly, 2014, oil on canvas, 30 x 45-inches
Christmas, 2015, oil on canvas, 40 x 54-inches
www.deanswscott.com
Slow Roller, 2014, oil on canvas, 32 x 40-inches
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Luis Seda My paintings are the results of new discoveries with materials and require expanded ideas of religion, as found in our theologies of celebrity body parts, (e)utopian landscapes, and fetish objects. These topics carry with them a flavor of nostalgia and in all instances ring with the possibility of triumphant attainment, a logic stemming from consumerism as a way of life. The works are testimonies, persuasions, celebrations, and warnings. I cycle through the genres of figure, object, and ground without concern for Western partitions. As a result, individual pieces are not always easily categorized, often existing in the territory of more than one genre. In addition, I am intent on experimenting with edges and borders to contextualize the surface of a painting, while simultaneously undermining the painting’s authority as an invention. I find greater value in material investigation than in stylistic development. Recent explorations have involved: holograms, sand, and garland.
Painting II
www.luisseda.com
Painting
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Win Shanokprasith
My visual impulse exists on the brink between the fetishization of two very personal national spaces: Thailand and the United States. My youth in Bangkok has been characterized by the city’s affection for American mainstream culture and a longing for what the city believes to be an American lifestyle. But by falling short of imitation, modernity in Bangkok formed into a strange simulation of American-ness. The Thai-American division and the failure to imitate either of these worlds has brought me to a third subject where divisions between national and locational impulses begin to blur. It is within this blur that I look for myself.
www.kawinshanokprasith.com
Move, 2015, oil on canvas, 24 x 20-inches
Still, 2015, oil on canvas, 24 x 20-inches
Secret, 2015, oil on canvas, 30 x 26-inches
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Taylor Shuck My interest in the sports court stems from an affinity for found composition as a formula for abstraction. In appropriating photo documentation of real spaces, I am manipulating perspective and form to give specific depth to the paintings. The sport-court functioning as instructive lines that convey rules and guidelines in which people perform is comparable to the rules we set for ourselves as makers. I want to utilize the existing formula filled with intention and by taking it out of context add my own set of rules and new sense of function. The focus then shifts to our brains natural inclination to read line and form to make sense of it. In this work I am also drawing comparisons between the painter and the athlete in terms of competitiveness in the field and the elitism of success.
Multicourt, acrylic, 60 x 60-inches
Tennis, acrylic, 48 x 72-inches
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Athina Skevi
It excites me to take an image that is meant to illustrate an idea, to teach, or to sell something, and to strip down the information. I’m not just simplifying what used to be there, I’m reacting to it, playing with it, veiling it with successive layers of paint, until ultimately, its message dissipates and the experience becomes purely visual.
LemonBod, 2014, acrylic on print, 8 x 11-inches
athinaskevi.com
TwoDots, 2014, acrylic on print, 8 x 11-inches
Θ-IV, 2014, acrylic on print, 11 x 14-inches
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Eli Sobel I create in order to connect. With the intention of preserving the interactions of people and place in time, I develop sculpture and installations of appropriated materials. Assembled from paper, fabric and wood, they often resemble stone or metal or a barrier. In actuality, they demonstrate that barriers are mutable and change frequently. Open and closed, private and public, they are a convergence of personal spaces.
Blackout, 2015, wood, brackets, fabric, 55-feet
elisobel.com
Blackout, 2015, wood, brackets, fabric, 55-feet
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Abby Song Art is Life I believe that art should reflect one’s life. Thus, art is life, and life is art. Art could be a very precious object that is created to appreciate only, but on the other hand, it could be a functional object that can be disposed. I am interested in art that could live with people and affect their lives. To achieve this, I have painted on silk and cotton so the paintings could be sewn together to make the work wearable or useable. Hopefully, these wearable paintings could make someone’s life into a form of art just by wearing and living in it.
Herb Garden, colors on cotton fabric, 40 x 60-inches
abigalesong.weebly.com
Lotus Pond, colors on silk, 60 x 50 inches
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Song Jiwon
Relationships Through the use of my interpretive vocabulary of shapes and gestures, my work explores the mental and actual spaces between individuals. Reflective drawings become my initial inspiration. The colors are primarily based on my memory of the person’s belongings and other elements are coming from my imagination. Using these shapes and colors, I create systems such as layering, arranging, and ordering. It is important for me to have a defined system that contains unexpected interruptions. Although I use different mediums, I consider each work to describe the relationships, in-between spaces. The layered shapes represent a different stage of the ongoing relationship and repetitions. Each work has the potential to be changed as the relationship evolves. Through these works, I am not only interested in understanding the person, but also visualizing the invisible space between the person and me.
www.jiwon-song.com
E.WHANG, colors, oil on canvas, 36 x 24-inches
Drawings, graphite on tracing paper, 4 x6-inches
E.WHANG, oil on canvas, 16 x 16-inches
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C. Mai Stoebe My work is born from an innate love of that which is intimately found. My abstractions are composed of a formal language of color, composition, and texture; but also one of empathy, emotion, and perception. I am exploring the connections between the external and internal, the seen and unseen; between the physical nature of the object and the raw, intangible matter that makes us human. My process is shaped by inquisitive action, reaction, manipulation, and selection. It is at once impulsive and mindful. I push and pull, both obscuring and exposing the layers within the image. This additive and subtractive process allows me to unearth subtleties, patterns, and luminous moments in the surface of my work. I am making and being made simultaneously.
cargocollective.com/courtneymaistoebe
Sun-Drenched, Exhausted, Exhilarated, 2014, acrylic and collage on canvas, 32 x 42-inches
They Fell Inward, 2014, woven cotton thread, Mx Reactive Dye, 63 x 57-inches
Somewhere I too can Rest, 2014, acrylic and collage on canvas, 48 x 52-inches
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Elizabeth Sullivan
Humans are walking vessels for memory: the good, the bad and the ugly. We have grown to become who we are based on our experiences and the memories with which our experiences are attached. My work is a continuous exploration of memory and its affects concerning trauma and the therapeutic process of healing.
Electric Chair, 2014, collage, 4.5 x 6-inches
Deserted, 2014, collage, 5 x 3.5-inches
www.elizabethsullivan.net
Roses are Red, 2014, collage, 3 x 4.75-inches
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Joel Turner My paintings present the condition of a threshold. A threshold can either be defined as a strip of wood, metal, or stone forming the bottom of a doorway and crossed in entering a house or room, or defined as the magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be manifested. Both definitions describe these abstractions as being in a transitory existence. Moving from one state to another, and sometimes being stuck in between states. The texture and color of the work is reminiscent of the wood, metal, and stone that form thresholds; a worn down material characterized by peeling or smudged paint and the passage of time. The work reflects my experience of changing the condition of my own existence as time passes, and how extraordinary the experience of something ordinary such as walking through a door can be.
www.joelturnerart.com
Felt, acrylic on panel, 6 x 8-inches
Another, acrylic on panel, 6 x 8-inches
Threshold, acrylic on panel, 6 x 8-inches
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Michael Uckotter
Work produces work
Portrait Interrupted (detail), 2015, paint-marker, collaged paper, and oil paint on canvas, 48 x 58-inches
cargocollective.com/uckotter
Hourglass, 2014, oil paint on canvas; 48 x 58-inches
Sketchbook Page, 2014, pen, crayon, and marker on paper, 16 x 11-inches
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Jorge Vascano The pursuit of my work constantly aims to find compromising grounds where abstract and figurative elements meet in order to explore the complexities of our human experience and its perpetual existential predicament. I’m deeply interested in the perception of situations that appear to be one way on the surface, but another in essence. This observation, together with the fluidity of life the work strives to capture, serve as a catalyst, which contributes to the conversation of these multifaceted ideas. Likewise, I feel the exploration of merging abstract and figurative elements offers a significant means of expression because the content, just as life itself, speaks of a scenario that is not limited to just one system of interpretation, but to different layers of meaning through their combination. Consequently, the dialogue constructed through this mixed imagery aims to transcend their aesthetic forms into evocations of experiences and emotions we once felt.
1915, oil on canvas, 40 x 50-inches
Mask Collection, oil on canvas, 28 x 44-inches
jorgevascano.com
Defying Gravity, oil on canvas, 24 x 18-inches
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McKinley Wallace III We can never truly define ourselves, but we try to make peace with that knowledge by using our face to project a temporary character. It is in our nature to identify others for self-assessment. While looking at each nameless individual, I ask myself, “Do I relate to what I am seeing, or do I feel excluded?� Unfortunately, our primal need to identify has been corrupted by prejudices. Is there value beyond the signifiers? Has being judged by others made us violent and vulnerable creatures? Inheritance led us to obscurity, pessimistic recesses of the Earth with deafening winds, putrid soil, and blistering fire. My mission, as an archeologist, is to uncover the damaged pieces of us that remain and address humanity’s aggression and our most forgotten virtue, innocence.
www.mckinleywallaceiii.com
Blind Stare, mixed media, 24 x 20-inches
Neanderthal Portrait #1, mixed media, 20 x 16-inches
Hominin Portrait #3, mixed media, 18 x 14-inches
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Joel Webb These felt-tip pen drawings are a quest into the honing of precision in the hand, to the end of creating geometrically perfect forms. The grueling pursuit of this goal and the infinitely distanced mirage of its possibility create the tension in the drawings, which defy their human origins both in content and material. The stretched paper is prepared with an equal degree of care as the drawings themselves, presenting the familiar form of a Painting with the crisp, seamless exterior of paper. Subjectivity and system are married in the process by which the drawings are designed. A simple series of decisions create infinite variations on the theme of a few simple forms. Built from skeleton up, the compositions have only the most limited capacity for alteration after drawing has begun, and the work of actually completing the drawings is conducted in a trance of systematic repetition.
Form 2 No. 2, 2015, ink on stretched paper, 46 x 32-inches
cargocollective.com/joelwebb
Form 1 Open No. 2, 2014, ink on stretched paper, 56 x 46-inches
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