SPECTRA: GOUCHER ART FACULTY AN EXHIBITION OF WORK BY
THE SILBER GALLERY
Goucher College Athenaeum
STUART ABARBANEL
The works Stuart Abarbanel created during the last few years are based on trademark characters from the 1930s and 40s that advertisers used to create a safe, happy, but unreal world in consumers’ minds—offering a shiny future if only we buy and associate with their brands. In order to illuminate this surreal practice, Abarbanel made the otherwise flat characters three-dimensional and attached them to a strange, unfamiliar visual environment that has nothing to do with the characters’ function of selling products. They seem, on one hand, out of place, but, on the other, are still strongly connected by the visual echoes of form and color. It is satisfying to see these omniscient, overconfident characters a bit lost, and this juxtaposition also sheds light on the absurd, humorous, and ironic role they play in our culture.
Zippy happy, 2008 paint on wood 40” x 52”
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Laura Burns’s videos are part of an ongoing exploration that utilizes landscape to consider the in-between, the overlooked, and the ordinary. The imagery in the videos is spatially fixed but moves through time, letting Burns grapple with distinctions between the still and stillness and question the idea of the photographic decisive moment.
LAURA BURNS
Swirl , 2009 single-channel video dimensions variable
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RICK DELANEY Rick Delaney’s art involves video, sound, installation, performance, collaboration, and writing. His work explores autobiography through layering of factual and fictional memories and utilizes multiple documentary methods. He positions himself as spectator and/or participant, according to how a particular event is recalled. D’ailleurs, c’est toujours les autres qui meurent, (Anyway, it’s always other people that die) is an installation originally created in 1998, reconstructed for this exhibition. At a glance the work is an homage to Marcel Duchamp, but actually functions as an interactive sculpture. The work represents reflection and hindsight, a “looking back” on an event, a history, and reflection on oneself. For the audience to fully participate in the work, they are required to look at themselves. The back of the viewer’s head is seen in the monitor resulting in their becoming an unknown participant. The videotape loop continuously records over the previous loop making past recordings impossible to be viewed a second time. The monitor becomes a mediator of the future and the past. D’ailleurs, c’est toujours les autres qui meurent (Anyway, it’s always other people that die), 1998 mixed media dimensions variable
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Laurie Fader’s work is rooted in the experiences of seeing and being in an earthy natural world—one suited to narrative and metaphor. Unruly gardens, somersaulting clouds, sculptural and unpredictable birdhouses—Fader maneuvers these to create visual spaces that keep the viewer engaged and reverent, and, by working with the delicate transitions of light, she creates a world of tremendous sensation.
LAURIE FADER
Foraging, 2009 oil on canvas 48” x 58”
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BREON GILLERAN According to sculptor Breon Gilleran, a gradeschool visit to a steel manufacturing plant may have influenced her interest in metals. It was an experience that elicited contradictory emotions of fear and awe-inspired exhilaration, as molten metal transformed into endless ribbons of plate steel. This distant memory fuels and energizes her work in forged steel and cast metals and informs her playful experimentation with process while imbuing her work with nostalgia for the bygone era of manufacturing in the 19th and early 20th century. Gilleran reconfigures detritus and discarded wood patterns used in old sand molds, manipulating forms and found objects into sculpture. She assembles her work with hand-forged hardware, and her sculptural projects evolve into configurations that suggest natural and human forms and the processes of growth and decay.
Hippocrates Promise (legs), 2009 wood, cast iron, bronze, cast aluminum, forged steel 36” x 48”x 40” Point d’ Appui (arm), 2009 wood, cast aluminum, forged steel, bronze 30”x 6”x 12” Missing Appendage, 2008 forged steel, sand 96”x 48”x 36” xiii
ALLYN MASSEY
Whether working with large-scale installation or constructing objects, Allyn Massey uses space, interval, sound, and scale as material. She asks the viewer to place their preconceptions alongside the work, to pull away or push back, and leverage the work into a familiar place. Massey explores narratives of complex appearances—approach/avoidance through formal constructions that seem severe, yet provide a place for underlying sadness and vulnerability. Beauty in the beast. Her content is in dialogue with a vocabulary of materials that Massey uses to suggest alchemical transformation: lead, glass, rubber, water, pumped air, steel, or clay. Throughout her work, materials are chosen for their emotional weight and for their formal properties, each sometimes paired with its metaphorical or physical opposite. Glass is clear and cold— containing, it lends a melody to water. It suggests the clinical, but also allows the transparent beauty of water to be seen. Lead is heavy, poisonous, yet softly supple. Round forms can speak of innocence and childhood play, or can reference landmines. The work offers multiple meanings, leaving the gestalt open for the viewer to find resonance in its grammar.
Breathing Room, 2000 water, pumps, pinkballs, raw cotton, video loop on monitors, wallpaper 12’ x 25’ x20’ xiv
Matthew McConville’s painting is part of a series titled “Earthworks.” The series is inspired by the Land Art Movement of the mid-20th century and is painted in a similar manner to the Hudson River School. Two elements of the American identity are the land itself and the perception that the land was unpopulated, free from history, and, therefore, a blank canvas on which a person could express their ideas. McConville finds a connection between the earthworks of Robert Smithson, James Turrell, and Michael Heizer, and the grand 19th-century landscapes of Frederic Church and other Hudson River School painters—both literally covered the same ground and both possessed an interest in the sublime. While philosophically quite distinct—the Hudson River School tends toward reading the landscape as a way to understand the divine, while the modern group looks for transcendence through a meditative process that is primarily about the present—both invoke a vast scale and attempt to provide a context to understand nature by giving it a frame.
MATTHEW McCONVILLE
New Mexico Zip, 2010 oil on canvas 36” x 60”
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CORNEL RUBINO Pythagoras understood. Devising his numerology, that mystic mathematician knew the power of 3—completion, creation, the satisfying sigh at the end of things. 3 is the outcome, the reward. Father and Son send the Holy Spirit; mother and father deliver the child. 3 is intrepid (3 Musketeers; March, the third month sacred to Mars). 3 is wise (Brahman, Vishnu, Shiva; the Magi; the three pillars of Zen— the Buddha-mind, Dharma-body, Sangha-community). 3 explores (Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria). 3 gets a laugh (Groucho, Chico, Harpo). 3 rules the psyche (Id, Ego, Superego). And—the Andrews Sisters, The Jimi Hendrix Experience—3 swings, dances, rocks and rolls. At 3 o’clock, kids—3 cheers!—shake free of school. At 33, Jesus died of love. In Russia, 3 kisses mean greetings. And, 3, too, can terrify: 3-headed Cerberus barks at hell’s gates; 3 strikes and you’re out! But mainly, 3 is the sum of it all. 3 graces—Aglaia lending brilliance, Euphroysyne showering us with joy, Thalia coaxing every sweet thing to blossom. Life itself, that 3-ring circus, comes in triple-time—past, present, future—beginning, middle (and alas) THE END. -Cornel Rubino
3 The Sum Of It All (3 on a Match, 3 Blind Mice, 3 Coins in a Fountain, and 3 Men in a Tub), 2004 six hand-printed stone lithographs, hand-colored by the artist 11” x 15” each
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PAMELA THOMPSON
The idea for Pamela Thompson’s piece, Mochi Moiré came from a chance intersection of experience and memory. She recently discovered an Asian confection called mochi that comes in beautiful shapes, colors, and flavors, and, when she was experimenting with the optical effects of screen mesh in her studio, the two elements came together. “No grand epiphany,” Thompson says. “Just the memory of an epicurean experience while looking at a piece of screen draped on the corner of my work table.”
mochi, n. In Japan: a cake made from glutinous rice, steamed and pounded, sometimes with the addition of other ingredients. Also (more fully mochi rice): the rice used to make this. moiré, adj. Designating a wavy or geometrical pattern of light and dark fringes (stripes) observed when one pattern of lines, dots, etc., is visually superimposed on another similar pattern, or on an identical one that is slightly out of alignment with the first. Chiefly in moiré fringe, moiré pattern. (from the Oxford English Dictionary)
Mochi mockup, 2010 nylon screen, plastic sheeting 24” x 18”
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ED WORTECK Ed Worteck’s photographs represent the major projects he has worked on during the last five years. The greenhouse photograph is from the series “The Unmaking of America,” photographs exploring the decline of production and manufacturing in the nation. The photograph of the former Armstrong industries factory is part of a continuing project covering the shutdown, demolition, and redevelopment of the Armstrong factory in Lancaster, PA, an industrial complex that was not only an icon of American industrial architecture, but also a subject for many important 20th-century American artists, including Charles Demuth and Ralston Crawford. The photograph from Ashland, PA, is from a new body of work exploring the environment and architecture in the anthracite coalfields of northeastern Pennsylvania. Finally, the image from Chadds Ford comes from a decade-long series investigating Worteck’s current hometown and its role in American landscape art and land conservation.
from The Unmaking of America series, Kennet Square, PA, 2009 silver gelatin print 18” x 18”
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SPECTRA—BIOS
STUART ABARBANEL teaches painting, drawing, and design at Goucher College. He has a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA in painting from Queens College. His work is currently on exhibit in a collaborative traveling exhibition with artist Barry Nemett. Abarbanel also exhibited his work at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art and in a traveling show called “Conversations,” which opened at the Evergreen House in Baltimore. He is the past recipient of two Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artists’ Awards, and his work is in the collections of the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts and the University of Maryland, University College. LAURA BURNS has a BA in French Literature from the University of Maryland and a MFA in photography from the Yale School of Art. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 2006–07 for teaching and photographic research in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. She has exhibited throughout the United States and Mexico, and her work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and in numerous private collections.
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RICK DELANEY has been a practicing visual artist for over 20 years and for a majority of those years has incorporated computer-based technology in his artwork. Delaney earned a BFA from Florida State University in Tallahassee and an MFA from The University of Texas at Austin, specializing in printmaking. He has exhibited in solo and group shows and worked collaboratively with artists, choreographers, and musicians throughout the United States. Delaney was also a founding member of guerrilla-based performance and video group Army of Clowns. He has taught traditional and computer animation, digital imaging, video, and web design at various universities, including UT Austin and the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. LAURIE FADER has been the recipient of many honors and awards, including two Pollock-Krasner Awards, an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Emergency Assistance Grant, an artist residency in Rochefort en Terre, France, a painting fellowship in Haiti, and the Helen W. Winternitz Award for excellence in painting from Yale University. She lived in New York City for 26 years and taught at Pratt Institute
and now resides in Baltimore and teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Goucher, and Stevenson University. She has shown at widely, including one-person shows at 55 Mercer and The Painting Center in New York. BREON GILLERAN earned a BFA in painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA in sculpture at the University of Maryland. She was awarded the International Sculpture Center’s (ISC) Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture award, and her work was included in an exhibition at the ISC. She recently participated in the annual Critics’ Residency Program at Maryland Art Place, which was curated by Irving Sandler and Eleanor Heartney. In 2005, Gilleran presented two solo exhibitions, at Messiah College, PA, and at the Montpelier Center for the Arts in Bowie, MD. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, and her work has been featured in Sculpture Magazine, The Anvils Ring, Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Magazine, and Baltimore City Paper. Gilleran is a 2010 Sondheim Award semifinalist. ALLYN MASSEY received her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Rinehart School of Sculpture. She has received the Walter’s Traveling Fellowship, the Amalie Rothschild Award, four grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, and she has been in residence at the Jen-Tel Foundation in Wyoming, Goya Girls Press in Baltimore, and at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in
Omaha, Nebraska. In addition to showing locally at the International Sculpture Center, Washington Project for the Arts, Maryland Art Place, and the Contemporary Museum, Massey has been invited to show at the Feldman Gallery in Portland, Oregon, the Jaffe-Freide Gallery at Dartmouth College, the Danforth Museum in Virginia, the Sawtooth Art Center in North Carolina, and the University of Hawaii in Hilo. She’s currently on deadline for a solo exhibition at George Mason University in Virginia scheduled for fall 2010. MATTHEW McCONVILLE earned a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MA and an MFA from the University of Iowa. He received Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Awards in 2002, 2004, and 2006 and was artist in residence at Akasha in Minneapolis from 1997 to 1999. McConville has exhibited throughout the United States, including at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Richard Levy Gallery in Albuquerque, Des Moines Art Center, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, and Florida Atlantic University, and he has been represented by galleries in Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. He is featured in New American Paintings, volume 4, 1995, and volume 75, 2008.
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CORNEL RUBINO has won awards from the Society of Publication Designers and Communication Arts, the Abby Award for Artist of the Year in Atlanta, and has been awarded Maryland State Arts Council and Baltimore City grants. His editorial clients include The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, and Penthouse, among others. Rubino has created numerous posters for clients such as the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, International Habitat for Humanity, the Lincoln Center season of New York’s Eos Orchestra, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, the American Institute of Graphic Artists, the High Museum of Art, and the Atlanta Symphony. In April 2010, he will be a panelist and lecturer for “Beauty and the Brain: A Neural Approach to Aesthetics” at the Walters Art Museum. PAMELA THOMPSON received her BFA from the Corcoran School of Art, Washington, DC, and her MFA at University of Maryland, College Park. She has a diverse professional background in art disciplines such as architectural surface design, technical illustration, and publication design. Thompson’s sculptural installations and drawings have been shown in Washington DC, Maryland, North Carolina, and Massachusetts. One of her installations was included in the Fuller Craft Museum’s (Brockton, MA) exhibition “The Perfect Fit: Shoes Tell Stories.”
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ED WORTECK is a Baltimore native currently residing in Chadds Ford, PA. He has taught at Goucher College since 1980 and is currently professor of art and art history and communications and media studies. Worteck was a teaching fellow at Yale University’s School of Art: Norfolk from 1996 to 1998. His work includes the books Foundations in Fertile Soil and In the Valley of the Shadow, and his photographs are in included numerous public and private art collections.
C10413C-04/10
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SPECTRA:
AN EXHIBITION OF WORK BY
GOUCHER ART FACULTY
Stuart Abarbanel, Laura Burns, Rick Delaney Laurie Fader, Breon Gilleran, Allyn Massey Matthew McConville, Cornel Rubino Pamela Thompson, Ed Worteck
April 12 – May 16, 2010 OPENING RECEPTION
Thursday, April 15, 6-8 p.m.
THE SILBER GALLERY
Goucher College Athenaeum DIRECTIONS
Baltimore Beltway, I-695, to exit 27A. Make first left onto campus. GALLERY HOURS
11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday – Sunday 410.337.6477 The Silber Gallery is free and open to the public. The Silber Gallery program is funded with the assistance of grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the state of Maryland and the NEA, and the Baltimore County Commission on the Arts and Sciences. www.goucher.edu/silbergallery