PROJECT 4: ...sweet Home

PROJECT

4

August 29 – October 25, 2014

...sweet Home

Brian Harper Scaffolding Series (with JCPenny Home™ Collection 11” Dinner Plates), 2014, earthenware, epoxy, imported chip-resistant and microwave safe porcelain, 12” x 12” x 9”

Artist Biographies Brian Harper (b. 1975, Grand Rapids, MI) is an artist and Associate Professor of Fine Art at Indiana University Southeast. He is also the Executive Director of Artaxis.org, an evolving independent network of artists that works to promote the professional pursuits of over 300 artists in the field. His artwork investigates our inherent human wonderment of the unknown - and the methods, mythological or otherwise, for how we give structure to elements of our observed, unobserved, and unobservable world. His work has been exhibited in over 70 national and international exhibitions, including 7 solo exhibitions. He lives in New Albany, Indiana, with his wife Tiffany and their two dogs, Oliver and Oslo.

Colleen Merrill (b.1986, Chicago, IL) is from Cincinnati, Ohio where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Lexington, Kentucky where she obtained her Masters of Fine Art in Fibers at the University of Kentucky. Through fabricating and re-configuring domestic textiles, her artwork examines how societies’ means of communication has evolved from past to present while impacting social diversions and ideologies. Merrill has exhibited her artwork both regionally and nationally and is published in a variety of cultural and academic journals. She is currently an art instructor for Midway College in Midway, Kentucky.

Aurora Parrish (b. 1988, Gainesville, FL) looks at labor, tools, and how our lives, though sometimes monotonous, create moments of tremendous beauty. Parrish uses repetition and blasé materials to produce moments of beauty with chore based tools like the clothes iron and sewing machine. Through time-intense process and effort, the artist allows moments to happen that are analogous to a “holiday” from labor. These isolated moments occur as pigmented wax castings from cake molds, paintings produced with clothes irons, and drawings produced by sewing on paper.

Lee Ann Paynter (b. 1964, Danville, KY) is an artist and an educator. With an MFA from California Institute of the Arts – a degree in Photography and Media – her oeuvre consists of traditional methods and digital media, sound design, video and installation. Based on the ideas of representing a different way of being and creating a collective consciousness, Lee Ann’s work takes on social and political issues, investigating the ideas and agency around intolerance and acceptance, inequality and gender identity, as well as the media’s role in those representations.

Zoé Strecker (b. 1966, Cincinnati, OH) is an artist, writer and professor who lives and works in central Kentucky. She has completed numerous public art works around the United States and is currently engaged in a long-term endeavor to produce and curate an array of creative projects on and about Pine Mountain in southeastern Kentucky.

Willard Tucker (b. 1983, Rural Central Kentucky) is an installation artist who resides in Rockcastle County.

Tucker received his BFA in sculpture from the University of Kentucky, graduating Summa Cum Laude, and his MFA from Ohio State in 2009. Through the use of found materials and elaborately handmade contraptions, his work investigates manual and industrial labor and their effects on the natural landscape of the rural south.

Tucker has exhibited works in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Nashville with reviews in Sculpture Magazine and Art Papers.

James Wade (b. 1971, Columbus, IN) was influenced at an early age by agrarian landscape and contemporary design. Wade studied art at the University of Kentucky and the University of Georgia, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1996. Wade’s sculpture and drawings have been exhibited in over 80 exhibitions across the United States as well as in Italy, Bolivia, and England. In 2011, the Bournville Village Trust commissioned Wade to create a public artwork. His cast iron sculpture ‘Measures’ was modeled and cast at the Museum of Steel Sculpture in Coalbrookdale, England. It was completed in 2012 and is sited in the square of Lightmoor Village, Shropshire. In addition to maintaining a studio in Lexington, he currently lectures and researches in the School of Art and Visual Studies at the University of Kentucky.

PROJECT 4:

...sweet Home Positioning of “fine art” and “craft” practices in the global contemporary art market context often falls within the realm of simplified binary opposition. Even when an artist’s practice is very much based in a dialogue with a specific material, it is most often prudently presented as an existential path that opposes the constraints of the traditional object production. Reality of artists’ lived experience, which often involves labor practices such as “side jobs” (if not “day jobs”) is thrown into the background. But our labor informs us. An artist’s production skill-set doesn’t always compliment production of an artistic persona but when one engages an activity for a considerable percentage of one’s waking hours it tends to leave a mark.

Seemingly oblivious of this fact, contemporary artists participate in the art market without leaving considerable signifiers of their daily labors for others to see. Educator/artist often omit places they teach at from their artistic resumes, installer/artist don’t advertise the fact that they install other peoples artworks by day and god forbid if an artist has a recognizable craft practice that functions as her primary income generator! She has to keep the two worlds separate or risk a branding crisis.

The great equalizer in this conversation, of course, is the moment when the works of “fine art” and “craft” enter their owner’s house. At this point the dialog is with the interior design of the space rather then the contexts of the particular worlds of cultural and market exchange that previously defined their logic. The intentional “recasting” of the gallery in …sweet Home into domestic space alludes to the original function of the building and gives us a chance to examine different labor modes in a setting that erases the trite oppositional dynamics.

In the context of Kentucky and surrounding areas, this presents an even more interesting twist. Within both the outside collective imagination of the global cultural space and internal discourse, the image of idyllic rural setting (with its rustic “craft” implications) is quite prevalent.

A number of activities that move the overall perception of production methodologies back in time, such as raising horses and mining coal, to say nothing of quilting, carving wood and throwing pots are assigned to this space.

The artists in the show choose to produce the works that allude to the above-mentioned nuances of cultural perception; they take on geography (and often gender) of labor practices, testing in the process “craft” traditions and definitions. As they undertake their tasks within a constructed laboratory of a “domestic setting”, we become more aware of the interplay of the collective imaginations around their material and technical choices which feed their individual practices.

DIMA STRAKOVSKY 2014

Exhibition Checklist Brian Harper Scaffolding Series (with JCPenny Home™ Collection 11” Dinner Plates) 2014 earthenware, epoxy, imported chip-resistant and microwave safe porcelain 12” x 12” x 9” Scaffolding Series (with JCPenny Home™ Collection 12 oz. Mugs) 2014 earthenware, epoxy, imported chip-resistant and microwave safe porcelain 14” x 14” x 8” Scaffolding Series (with JCPenny Home™ Collection 6” Cereal Bowls) 2014 earthenware, epoxy, imported chip-resistant and microwave safe porcelain 8” x 8” x 8” Colleen Merrill Emblematic Quilt 2014 deconstructed and woven found quilt 40” x 38” If Carl Andre had a Sewing Circle 2013 manipulated found quilts 30” x 30” x 9” Aunt Jane’s Functionality of a Quilt (quilt rope) 2012 to present manipulated found quilts *This is an evolving piece that Parish continuosly adds length to the rope.

Aurora Parrish Memorial 2014 Ceramic 10” x 8” x 8” Pink Bunny TV 2014 Ceramic 16” x 7”x 6” James Wade Lemondrop Nurf 2014 Cast Polyurethane Foam 13.25” x 3.5” x 9.5” BooBerry Nurf 2014 Cast Polyurethane Foam 5” x 2.5” x 10” Strawberry Quick 2014 Cast Polyurethane Foam 6” x 3.5” x 9.5” Subdivided Marshmellow Nerf 2014 Cast Polyurethane Foam 11.5” x 3” x 13.5”

Lee Ann Paynter Special Relativity 2014 sound installation dimensions variable Brief description: sounds of research and manual labor related to coal production.

Willard Tucker voluntary onsite disruption of the curatorial process 2014 dimensions variable Zoe Strecker Embroidery Kit, Hemlock Mixed Forest view #1 2014 Digitally printed cotton fabric, Egyptian cotton, embroidery floss, needles, wood, paper, instructions approximaely 3” x 21” x 21” plus 11”x 14” envelope Embroidery Kit, Mixed Mesophytic Forest #2 2014 Digitally printed cotton fabric, Egyptian cotton embroidery floss, needles, wood, paper, instructions approximately 3” x 21” x 21”plus 11” x 14” envelope Down, Up, Down 2014 Video on DVD, player, monitor, ornamental frame 5” x 21” x 16” (dimensions variable with equipment on floor and cables) Offsite Events Pine Mountain Walks - Participatory Art Walks 2014 Mountain Walk #1: Bad Branch State Nature Preserve October 18, 2014, 11 a.m.

Mountain Walk #2: Blanton Forest State Nature Preserve October 19, 2014, 11 a.m.

Route, instructions, sketchbooks, guidance and on-site lecture.

Walking is a way of transforming the abstraction of a map into an embodied experience of place that is subjective and physical.

For this project, Zoe Strecker has created specific walking protocols that participants will follow during half-day walks through old growth forests on Pine Mountain in southeastern Kentucky in Bad Branch and Blanton Forest State Nature Preserve.

Zephyr Gallery Artist Board Patrick Donley Peggy Sue Howard Robert Mitchell Chris Radtke Brenda Wirth

Artist Partners Ken Hayden Matt Meers Joel Pinkerton Letitia Quesenberry Michael Ratterman Reba Rye

PROJECT 4 ...sweet Home Dima Strakovsky Hannah Morgan Robert Mitchell Chris Radtke Peggy Sue Howard Patrick Donley

Curator Project Manager Graphic Design Exhibition Co-Coordinator Exhibition Co-Coordinator Art Preparator

Custom furniture in ...sweet Home is provided curtesy of Daniel Chaffin Furniture Makers. All design by Daniel Chaffin and Matt Frederick.

The mission of Zephyr Gallery is to serve as a platform to incubate, advocate, and facilatate innovative ideas in art and artistic practices in the region. In 2014, Zephyr launched an ongoing Project series with curated proposal-based exhibitions as well as collaborations with universities, colleges, and cultural institutions. Project 4: ...sweet Home is the fourth exhibition in this series.

610 East Market Street | Louisville, KY 40202 www.zephyrgallery.org | Thursday–Saturday, 11–6