deviance teaches; charm will make you sick - exhibition catalogue

deviance teaches; charm will make you sick Angela Drakeford Carolyn Falkner Sara Sumnick Wamsat Millee Tibbs curated by Alex Priest

devia teac cha wi ma yo sic

ance ches; arm ill ake ou ck

Contents curatorial essay Alex Priest

artist pages Angela Drakeford Carolyn Falkner Sara Sumnick Wamsat Millee Tibbs

notes acknowledgements

Trojan Horse Corral

“Horror suggests a desire to understand and value deviance; to be suspicious of fundamentals and appearances; and to let the norm be weirded by exception...horror reorients one to the notion that what exists is not necessarily all that might be.”

Horror in Architecture (2013) Joshua Comaroff + Ong Ker Shing “...that the world is full of terror, full of beauty and yet we are not afraid to find solace here.”

Becoming Bread (2003) Gunilla Norris

deviance teaches; charm will make you sick recognizes a potential in the general panic felt throughout our over/under stimulated existence. Caught between the sensational and banal, instability frames realities where horror is normative and fear is paralyzing – creating façades where internal thoughts are disjointed from outward poise. Like the Trojan Horse, these situations are rich for investigation.

The deviant hide treacherous interiors where forms are reinvented and psychological shadows provide illumination to crippling truths. What are these masked figures digesting the mania of shifting circumstances? These perverse and often peripheral subjects speak toward the condition of our de-familiarized anxiety ridden world. Deviance is a vortex for new worlds to emerge; worlds divorced from judgements of presented exteriors, that challenge the facsimiles of normalcy.

Looks can certainly be deceiving.

Angela Drakeford

White Girls (2014) synthetic hair, ribbon

Angela Drakeford uses non-traditional materials to create highly process and detail oriented work that focuses on language used in personal and intimate relationships. She focuses on the lingering nature of language and what cannot be unheard, often blurring the line between what is public and private to engage the emotional baggage that viewers carry with them. The artist currently works as an artist mentor and leads many art workshops for Omaha youth.

Carolyn Falkner

Sire (2014) needlepoint

Carolyn Falkner is a self taught maker based in North Omaha. She creates personal objects as means of expressing her imagination.

Her thought provoking trompe l’oeil practice is wide reaching including murals, paper art and pet portraits. Falkner finds comfort in the uncanny and limitless potential in the materials right in front of her and ideas within her mind.

Sara Sumnick Wamsat

Crop Circle - Ode to a Cereal Killer (2014) cardboard, acrylic on masonite

Sara Sumnick Wamsat creates conversation pieces in the guise of functional object art through thought provoking detail and vivid layers of color and emotion. Working within the parameters of surreal, fantasy and trompe realism, the work takes on a theatrical presentation. Sumnick Wamsat has worked as a studio artist in Omaha for over thirty years.

Millee Tibbs

Masked (Freddy) (2012) photograph

Millee Tibbs is interested in surfaces and their relationship to what lies beneath – the discrepancy between what we see and what we know. Drawn to photography because of its ubiquitous presence in our culture, its duplicitous existence is both an indexical representation of reality and a subjective construction of it; photography is a slippery medium that easily shifts from scientific documentation of a moment in time to a subjective construction of reality. Tibbs is interested in the space where these qualities contradict each other and coexist simultaneously.

Notes Frontispiece Music Video. Michael Jackson. Thriller. Dir. John Landis. 1983.

Robbins, Royal. Trojans Deceived. 1830. Print. N.p.

Trojan Horse Corral Comaroff, Joshua, and Ker-Shing Ong. Horror in Architecture.

Novato, CA: ORO Editions, 2013. Print.

Norris, Gunilla. Becoming Bread: Embracing the Spiritual in the Everyday. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2003. Print.

Acknowledgements I am incredibly grateful to Sweatshop Gallery for this opportunity to explore, provoke and propagate deviance. The time and space to further research and incubate this idea is truly appreciated.

My role as a deviant curator is to push standard notions of who and what is shown in Omaha. To this end, I am indebted to Kim Reid Kuhn for the invitation to curate an exhibition that challenges the current status quo.

Sarah Rowe’s endless efforts to help organize and promote this exhibition is exceptionally valued. Thank you for replying to the constant emails and texts.

Also, thank you to the Sweatshop Gallery’s intern Nicole for enduring the install process.

Most importantly, thank you to Angela Drakeford, Carolyn Falkner, Sara Sumnick Wamsat and Millee Tibbs for including work in deviance teaches; charm will make you sick. The studio visits and work pushed this exhibition in an unanticipated way.

-Alex Priest

deviance teaches; charm will make you sick curated by Alex Priest March 06 - April 27, 2015 Opening Reception: Friday, March 06 | 6 - 9pm Catalogue Design: Alex Priest | PRIESTSCAPE Essay: Alex Priest First printed 2015 | Omaha Typeset in Big Caslon, Helvetica Neue Sweatshop Gallery 2727 N 62nd Street Omaha, NE 68104 sweatshopgallery.com