LOLWUT an intermedia and performance exhibition curator Ellen Mueller
09/03/2013 09/15/2013 SLEETH GALLERY West Virginia Wesleyan
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Noelle Mason Caroline Peters Neal Peterson Sarah Kelly Sara Holwerda Morgan Cahn Lisa Corine von Koch Maria Raquel Cochez Toni Billick Anya Liftig
Catalog: ______ / 100
This catalog is part of a limited edition of 100 printed for the LOLWUT exhibition, and was constructed live during the reception on 09/05/2013 from 16:30–18:00.
West Virginia Wesleyan College 1st Floor McCuskey Hall E Main St & College Ave Buckhannon, WV 26201 Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday 12:00pm – 5:00pm or by appointment sleethgallery@wvwc.edu http://sleethgallery.wvwc.edu
Morgan Cahn is currently the Shadow Curator Intern at Deveron Arts, in a town called Huntly. She is part of the curatorial collective Yuck ‘n Yum, which puts on art events across Scotland and publishes a quarterly zine. She is from Seattle, lived nearly a decade in Pittsburgh, and now calls Scotland home.
>> Morgan CAHN Scotland www.morgancahn.com
>>  Cahn is an interdisciplinary artist that has a penchant for scavenging. She creates work that asks people to question their daily routines and interpersonal relationships in this age of disposability. She loves science and technology, while being a recovering luddite, and these tensions and dualities often come up in her work. She encourages interaction within her site responsive installations and her performances involve a participatory element. She has worked in many media including film, textiles, printmaking, sculpture, and text, choosing the best form for each project.
Sara Holwerda grew up in an unincorporated small town in central Michigan named after the plant that killed Socrates. She went on to receive a BFA from University of Michigan and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She lives and works in Chicago.
scale performance at the Sculpture Center in Cleveland in March of 2014.
Informed by her ten-year career as a competitive figure skater, as well as experiences working as a waitress, Holwerda’s practice focuses on the rehearsed nature of behaviors associated with idealized gender Holwerda’s has exhibited roles. The almost constant and performed nationally, most recently as part of the performance required of all women in society is Rapid Pulse International a cultural condition that Performance Festival at Holwerda investigates and Chicago’s Defibrillator responds to in her perforPerformance Gallery. Her upcoming projects include mance and video work. a solo exhibition and large-
>> Sara HOLWERDA Michigan www.saramholwerda.com
photo: Arjuna Capulong
Chair Dance (Ardagio), performance at DEFIBRILATOR, Chicago, 2013
>>  As a conventional element of cabaret, burlesque and striptease performances, the chair signifies the body of the male spectator. A classic chair dance places the female performer in a sexualized relationship with the chair, and through her movements, she models a set of cultural expectations about the female body and how it should function in heterosexual relationships. My performance work, Chair Dance (Adagio), challenges these expectations by complicating the relationship between the female performer, her prop, and her accompanist. Using movement, I expand the performative, narrative and symbolic capacity of the female body. The choreography and viola accompaniment is motivated by my personal history with violence and spectacle and includes references to stage combat, self-defense, YouTube instructional videos, cabaret musical themes, and turn-of-the-century Parisian apache (a dramatized street fight between her and two or more men).
photo: Arjuna Capulong
Chair Dance (Ardagio), performance at DEFIBRILATOR, Chicago, 2013
Toni Billick was born and raised in the Rubber City Capital of Akron, Ohio. Miss Billick’s extended media practice was encouraged early in child hood in Good Year Heights. Her mother and father created marionettes and country crafts. The Billick children assisted with marionette hair and additive objects from gumball machines. They also frequented the craft shows and bars where the crafty items sold. The labored children were rewarded in Mickey Mouse’s and/ or Donald Duck’s, which was code for a pop with or with out cherries.
>> Toni BILLICK
Ohio www.tonibillick.com
>> Toni’s work involves various female personas who are shaped by the impact of raunch culture and sinister humor which manifest themselves via costume construction, object making, documented performance, photographs and video installations. Toni’s work has been featured in the See.Me Gallery in NYC, “Exposure Awards 2013”, at the Mindy Solomon Gallery in St. Petersburg FL, “Undressing The Feminine”, and at The Front in New Orleans, “Standing Heat”. Toni is published in several newspaper articles and is in the book titled, “Wild Art” by Phaidon Press. She received her BFA from the University of Akron Myers School of Art with focuses in ceramics and sculpture. Toni accomplished her MFA at the University of South Florida in 2010.
Maria Raquel Cochez was born in Panama in 1978. In 2002 she received a BFA from Savannah College of Art and Design. She works in various media. Cochez has had several solo exhibitions internationally, among them; “Maria Raquel Cochez: Photography” (2011) in El Salvador, “I Want Something Else” (2010) at Red Creative in Atlanta and “Little Fat Girl” (2012) at Los del Patio, Panama. Her work has been included in numerous group shows and art fairs throughout the continent
including “Perspective Strokes”; Women Artists of Panama” (2013) at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington DC and the 2010 and 2013 Biennials of Visual Art of the Central American Isthmus (BAVIC VII and BAVIC VIII) in Nicaragua and Panama. Her work is included in permanent collections including the Centro de Arte Ortiz Gurdián and has been reviewed in significant publications across Latin America and and the United States
>> Maria Raquel Cochez Panama www.mariaraquelcochez.com
>>  The art of Maria Raquel Cochez is an exploration of the human experience existing within all the norms established around food, concepts of beauty, self esteem, and our own personal, sometimes skewed and often limiting deďŹ nitions of these. Through a variety of media Cochez examines the actions and perceptions of herself and others reminiscent of her own behaviors and thoughts dictated by an
Excess Skin, digital video looped, 00:00:46, 2006
eating disorder and body image dysmorphia. It investigates the self harm involved in distorted conceptions of the body and the impact that distorted relationships with food can have on a person or society. Her art is an elaborate story of the battle of self acceptance executed through autoreferential, autobiographical and biographical accounts parallel to this universal struggle.
Belly, two looped digital videos, aprox. 00:05, 2013
Lisa Corine von Koch received her B.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from the University of Utah in 2005, and her M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from Arizona State University in 2009. She most recently served as an interim professor of drawing at Bloomsburg University, during the 2012‐13 academic year. Her personal practice has expanded to include sculpture, performance and installation in the interest of incorporating ecological practices into
art making. Koch’s work is focused on the reverence of the natural world and the re‐purposing of the man‐made materials. Lisa has received many grants and awards, including the artist grant from the Contemporary Forum at the Phoenix Art Museum, and fellowships to attend artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Santa Fe Art Institute. She is currently a full-time artist, or unemployed, depending on your point of view.
>> Lisa Corine VON KOCH Arizona www.lisacvonkoch.com
photo: Joshua White
>>  My artwork is a testimony to my search for a point of reconciliation; it is an attempt to navigate the paradox of believing in an environmentalist agenda while remaining an object maker and a user of materials. My work embodies the tension that I feel in being both a critic of and a participant in the interaction of nature and culture. The poetic action of my performance work allows for direct engagement with the audience. By creating unforgettable scenes in outlandish costumes, I am able
The Polinatrix, performance, 2012
to communicate the urgency of my work, while infusing it with humor and elements of the absurd. As The Pollinatrix, I personified the Worker Bee, and manually pollinated a field of gourds, transferring the pollen using my six “legs�. I offered myself as both a superhero, and an absurdist victim, repeating the performance by publicly pollinating flowering plants and trees in various venues.
photo: Joshua White
The Polinatrix, performance, 2012
It with Paul Crik”. The series began with a brief video about fear and is now an ever-expanding video library and social Like “Gallery Tick”, many of media forum with reflections on modern life that Goatsilk’s pieces use animal consciousness/physiol- includes topics such as ogy as a subject. “iClaw” is social networking, modern a wearable, interactive toy slang, single parenting, as well as a sculpture. The arguments, faith, diet, hygiene, children, and object, illustrated in the much more. Since 2008, LOLWUT catalog, shoots compressed air through the “Killin’ It with Paul Crik” has been featured in numertip of a crab claw. ous festivals, live shows, exhibitions, publications, In 2008, Peters, Bloch cable television and radio and their friend Paul Crik launched the series “Killin’ programs. Caroline Peters is a multimedia artist and member of the collaborative “Goatsilk” with Ben Bloch.
>> Caroline PETERS
Colorado www.goatsilk.com
>> I’m the Sleeth Gallery’s embedded tick. As a label, “parasite” or “tick” often refers to someone receiving unearned benefits—maybe a criminal, lazy person, or even a sick, disadvantaged or imprisoned individual. The gallery tick, however, isn’t around only to feed itself. Just like other “societal parasites,” the presence of the gallery tick creates tension necessary to invent new roles and uses for the people and structures in our midst. By becoming a fantastical tick that feeds off a cultural/architectural host, I hope to evoke an alternate, magical reality.
Anya Liftig’s work has been featured at TATE Modern, Exit Art, MOMA, and the Center for Performance Research. In “The Anxiety of Influence” she dressed exactly like Marina Abramovic and sat across from her all day during “The Artist is Present” exhibition. Her work has been published and written about in The New York Times Magazine, BOMB, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue Italia, Next Magazine, Now and Then,
Stay Thirsty, New York Magazine, Gothamist, Jezebel, Hyperallergic, Bad at Sports, The Other Journal, Flavorpill and many others. She is a graduate of Yale University and Georgia State University and has received grant and residency support from The MacDowell Colony The Field, Flux Projects, Vermont Studio Center, University of Antioquia, Casa Tres Patios Medellin, Colombia.
>> Anya LIFTIG New York www.anyaliftig.com
>>  I try, with increasing difficulty, to insert myself into the natural and manmade world. I want to break though the boundaries of solitude and subjectivity with my body. Each project begins with an attempt to do something fearful, something that terrifies me. Often I repeat actions in order to try to push harder and harder past the point of my own comfort. I want the viewer to also challenge their assumptions about what is comfortable, what is right, and what is supposed to make sense. I use repetition of simple actions to highlight the poetry of the unfolding of time and the absurdity of the action itself. These actions mostly originate from de-
The Human Factor, performance
sires I had as a child, but could not be expressed until now. My artistic process has involved a constant peeling back or formality, a reversion to some more primitive version of the self. These pieces are about the ongoing struggle to connect with people, places and things, and the correlating difficulty of making sense of the world. My work is preoccupied with the need to communicate with other living beings and the frequent failure of that endeavor.
photo: Ken Yee and Noel Hartman
Sarah Kelly was raised in the city that is home to the original Hooters in sunny, tropical Florida. She received her BA in Film and Media Arts from the University of Tampa and her MFA in Studio Art from the University of South Florida. Her work has been exhibited at the HERE Arts Center in New York, NY, Creative Alliance in Baltimore, MD and the Tampa Museum of Art. She currently lives and works in Austin, TX.
>> Sarah KELLY
Texas www.sarahlynnkelly.com
>>  The greatest gift my parents ever gave me was cable television. Whereas some parents shield their children from the perceived revulsions of television, my parents let me fully embrace it. I desperately wanted to have 90210 as my zip code and go to high school with the affluent kids at West Beverly, I wanted to slay vampires with Buffy Summers and I wanted Zack Morris to take me to prom. These characters, along with countless others, absorbed me into a world that I never wanted to leave. Through performance and video, I aim to investigate the role of popular culture and contemporary media within the construction of female identity. My carefully crafted personae embody the archetypal confines of online and social media, music, television and film. Within my work, I aim to challenge the viewers’ typical associations with the concept of identity: I examine both the intrapersonal self-identity and the wholly constructed identities of larger institutions.
Say You Wanna Dance, Uh Huh Ya, digital video, 00:07:48, 2012
Like, Y R U Sooo Obsessed W/Me???, digital video, 00:04:47, 2012
Neal Calvin Peterson is an artist based in Minneapolis, USA. Peterson holds two masters’ degrees related to art and design. His awardwinning work has been exhibited in the United States and China, while his music has garnered nationwide radio play and licensing agreements with major television networks.
>> Neal PETERSON
Minnesota www.nealcalvinpeterson.com
>>  ALVB, Ars Longa, Vita Brevis (2013) is a collection of 1000 pencils that are being dropped in locations all over the planet. The Latin phrase reminds us that “Life is short, the art long� and is meant to inspire others to create. As the pencil gets used and becomes shorter, a persons time to create is reduced. Pencils have been dropped, at the time of printing, in the following countries: Usa, Australia, south korea, taiwan, china, malaysia, singapore, indonesia, austria, germany, czech republic, denmark, netherlands, england.
Noelle Mason is a transmedia artist who manipulates appropriated images, objects, and contexts to investigate and expose the subtle seductiveness of power facilitated by systems of visual control. Noelle has shown nationally and internationally in a variety of nontraditional spaces, galleries, and institutions including the National Museum of Mexican Art and the Smithsonian Institute. She is the recipient of a Jerome fellowship
and the Illinois Art Council International Artist Grant. In 2004 Noelle was a resident at the Skowhegan school of Painting and Sculpture. She holds a BA in both theatre and fine arts from the University of California, Irvine and received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Noelle currently holds the position of Assistant Professor of Sculpture and Extended Media at the University of South Florida.
>> Noelle MASON Florida www.noellemason.com
>>  In this work I was interested in directly confronting the social contract in which we all are bound, a contract that rarely pits two opponents of equal ability against one another, and then condemns the outcome. I embrace the complexities of the game, layering gender performance on top of race, sexuality and violence. The implied set of rules and singular viewpoint apply almost clinical formal regulation. In “Bob and Weave� there is an inability to distinguish between perpetrator and victim, negative and positive space, pain and pleasure; a physical attempt to negotiate terrains of race and sexuality in which the complexity is conceptually overwhelming but sensually palpable. This is a high stakes game with very bad odds, many of the rules are unspoken or unknown and similar to the contract we enter into with a government or a casino the outcome is predetermined; the house always wins.
Bob and Weave, Performance for Video, Color/Audio, 00:10 looped, 2004