May 8, to June 18, 2015
Art Exchange + 350 E 3RD Studio Present:
THE NEW FAMILIAR Marisa Williamson Megan Mueller Stephanie Lie Sarah Hotchkiss Samuel Hertz curated by Steven Frost
Sarah Hotchkiss 4th State of Matter, 2014 Wood, luan, gouache, acrylic and brass-plated hardware 48” x 42” x 32”
THE NEW FAMILIAR
Megan Mueller, Untitled, 2015, Cement and flexible vent, Dimensions variable $400
Welcome to The New Familiar an exhibition of work by five artists who take everyday objects and experiences and add their signature, giving us new perspectives on something familiar. New York-based artist Marisa Williamson inserts herself in daily life as Thomas Jefferson's slave and mistress, Sally Hemings. Her paintings and performances document this experience and confront histories of racial inequality and feminine empowerment. Northern California-based artists Stephanie Lie and Sarah Hotchkiss both bring the act of play into their work. Prints by Lie reimagine landscape from the point of view of a weather balloon and Hotchkiss designs surreal game pieces for future children. Santa Barbara-based artist Megan Mueller explores the merging of spatial relationships via the built and natural environments in her duck hunt inspired sculptures. Bay Area artist Samuel Hertz looks at the landscape through the field of sound. This collection of artists was selected from the stable of residents who attended the ACRE Artist Residency in 2014. 2012 ACRE Alumni and ArtX Studio artist Steven Frost curated the exhibition. ACRE (Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions) is a volunteer-run non-profit based in Chicago devoted to employing various systems of support for emerging artists and to creating a generative community of cultural producers. ACRE investigates and institutes models designed to help artists develop, present, and discuss their practices by providing forums for idea exchange, interdisciplinary collaboration, and experimental projects. They hold their annual residency every summer in Steuben, Wisconsin.
Marisa Williamson Thank You, 2015 Mixed media,16” x 20” $700
Marisa Williamson
Hemings in Paris, 2015 Video, 18m 39s
Thank You, 2015 Mixed media, 16” x 20” $700
Money Talks, 2015 Mixed media,16” x 20” $700
BIO MARISA WILLIAMSON is a New York-based visual artist. She received her B.A. in visual art from Harvard University and earned her MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2013. Her project as an artist is to explore and describe through performance, video, and the occasional 2- and 3-dimensional objects, the ways that soft technologies: ‘problem solving tools’ like narrative, language, and myth, along with hard technologies like the camera, the digital moving image, and the web—facilitate the rendering and surrendering of the physical and psychological body. Williamson’s ongoing body of work is related to the patchwork narrative of Sally Hemings: Thomas Jefferson’s biracial slave and mistress of thirty years, with whom he fathered six children. The work is rooted in an interest in museological and art industrial space and methodology, memory and its opposite, race, gender, sex, labor, and love through a historical lens. The work addresses the aforementioned interests as they pertain to Williamson’s life: a modern life existing as it does as a consequence of her known and unknown literal and figurative ancestors. Marisa Williamson has shown nationally in Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, and Chicago. She is currently participating in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program. She was a participant in the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in the summer of 2012, and attended ACRE Summer Residency in 2014. She will be participating in the Shandaken Project at Storm King this fall.
Megan Mueller
Untitled, 2015 Mixed media installation Dimensions variable
Untitled, 2015 Hydrodipped wooden frame and bungee cord Dimensions variable
BIO MEGAN MUELER explores the merging of spatial relationships via the built and natural environment. Mueller is currently based in Goleta, CA while completing an MFA in Studio Art from the University of California at Santa Barbara. In 2008 Megan graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a BFA in Sculpture and in 2004 from George Washington University with a BA in Political Science. Mueller’s work has been selected for exhibition at various national and international venues including High Desert Test Tests, GLAMFA, Flashpoint Gallery, Transformer, TSV Berlin, Arlington Arts Center, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art. My work is 16 on center and pushed to the sky. Using the language of landscape and architecture, I make work that speaks to gravity, the peripheral, and absurdity. I am invigorated by rhizomatic landscapes. I tend to think spatially, in cast shadows but underestimate weigh and wind.
Stephanie Lie
A Second-order Study II, 2015, cyanotype print, 22” x 30” $500
A Second-order Study I, II, III, IV, 2015, cyanotype print, 22� x 30� each $500 each
BIO STEPHANIE LIE is an artist, educator and technologist. She received her MFA in Visual Arts at UC San Diego in 2012 and degrees in Computer Science and Art Practice from UC Berkeley. Her artistic practice lies at the intersection between art and technology, engaging modes of scientific research to reveal new ways of seeing. Her work has been featured at the San Diego Museum of Art, the New Children's Museum and the Nevada Museum of Art. She has taught drawing, electronics, new media art and design at Stanford, UC Berkeley, and UC San Diego. These prints by Lie reimagine landscape from the point of view of a weather balloon. This program is sponsored by a grant from the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts
Sarah Hotchkiss
Narrative Chain, 2015 Acrylic and gouache on masonite, brassplated hardware 100� x 24�
BIO SARAH HOTCHKISS is a San Francisco-based artist, arts writer and one half of the itinerant curatorial project Stairwell's. She holds an MFA from California College of the Arts and a BA from Brown University. In 2015 her solo show All Ears exhibited at Goodnight Projects (SF). Her work has been included in group shows at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts (NY), Pro Arts (Oakland) and Adobe Books Backroom Gallery (SF). She has attended residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Vermont Studio Center and, most recently, ACRE. In the summer of 2015 she will be in residence with Carey Lin at Wave Pool (Cincinnati) for Stairwell's. I make sculptures and installations inspired by science fiction. Sci-fi (in film and literature) is filled with strange objects, their source and function unknown, their power indisputable. At a certain point in nearly every sci-fi narrative, logic turns and what was once familiar becomes unexpected and strange. Everyday objects change shape, gain mass, or flatten. Playing with color, pattern, illusion, 2D and 3D elements, I make objects that encourage examination and inspire consideration of potential futures. The more I make, the more the future I wish to inhabit manifests around me: one filled with invigorating patterns, lighthearted forms and stimulating graphic elements.
Sniffles, 2014 Wood, luan, gouache, acrylic, brass-plated hardware 74.5” x 10” x 13”
Samuel Hertz
Other Options, 2015 Performance and installation 8m00s environment Collaboration between composer Samuel Hertz, choreographer Maryanna Lachman, and videographer Chani Bockwinkel
BIO SAMUEL HERTZ, composer and performer, received his MFA at Mills College where he studied composition and electronic music with Pauline Oliveros, Fred Frith, Zeena Parkis, and Maggi Payne, among others. His studies in experimental literature, linguistics, and psychoacoustics steer his compositions and performances to include a wide variety of acoustic and electronic media as well influencing numerous collaborations with dance, performance and video artists. As a performer, he is a member of the Chicago-based performance collective ATOM-r (directed by former Goat Island members Mark Jeffery & Judd Morrissey), with whom he tours internationally. Recently, his fixed-media works have appeared at Harvestworks (NYC), Jack Straw New Media Gallery (Seattle, WA), Nebulullaby (London, UK.), and ACRE-TV (Chicago, IL). Other Options is an extensible performance and installation environment created through research and collaboration between composer Samuel Hertz, choreographer Maryanna Lachman, and videographer Chani Bockwinkel. Activated by live performers, surround sound audio, and multiple video processors, it represents a chaotic state in which every discrete object or instance has a vector on which it is transposed — this creates simulated ‘bursts’ of energy in which meaningful combinations of audio and video can potentially be assembled, or not. The aural, visual and performance elements are sequenced through generative procedures that create an on-going display of infinite sets of movement phrases and recombinatorial sonic environments/polyphony.
Steven Frost
Monument for Workers, Lesbians, and Muscle Marys, 2014 Sequins, leather, Hulk action figure, Muscle Milk jar, wood, + sand 60”x12”x12” $950
BIO STEVEN FROST (b.1981, Woodsville, NH) relocated from Chicago to Long Beach in 2012. Frost received his BFA from Alfred University in 2004 and an MFA in Fiber & Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. Steven Frost’s video, sculpture, and fiber-based works use: upholstery, macramé, beadwork, and other traditional craft materials to create garish tools and evocative moments. His work builds on the clashes and mash-ups of parallel social movements. Frost relishes in the kind of amateur mastery found in “low” craft culture and the performance of secular sacred rituals like parades and sports.
THE NEW FAMILIAR Opening: Saturday, May 9, 2015 6 -10 PM Video Screening Thursday, May 21, 2015 7-8 PM June 18, free community hotdog + art party 6-9 PM