Monday, December 29, 2008
Western States: Press Release
Gallery Night: Friday, January 16th, 2009
Opening reception 5:00 – 10:00 pm
Show runs through February 14th
The Armoury Gallery is pleased to announce its 7th, and possibly most ambitious exhibition to date: Western States. Gathering up some of the most promising new artists the western half of the country has to offer, Western States gives Milwaukee a unique glimpse into art happening West of the Mississippi.
Aili Schmeltz, William Hundley, Gavin Brunner, Colleen Sanders, Adrianne Watson and Milwaukee’s own Colin Matthes will fill the gallery with a variety of 2-D, 3-D and installation work.
Living and working in Los Angeles, Aili Schmeltz earned her MFA in 2003 from the University of Arizona. She has since had 10 solo exhibitions to her credit, over 30 group shows and a host of publications including “Best of the West Coast” in New York Arts Magazine. Schmeltz has also had three separate prints appear in Jen Beckman’s 20x200 project based out of New York.
Hailing from Austin, Texas is photographer William Hundley. Earning his BFA in 1998, Hundley has since garnered international attention for his eerie-yet-playful images. With five solo exhibitions to date, and a bibliography that spans Poland, France, Germany, Chile, Spain, Italy, China and Argentina, we are pleased to be showing a series of his images this Gallery Night.
Also from Los Angeles, Gavin Bunner will be showing a selection of his 2-D works on paper. Appearing in New American Paintings in 2006, Artworld Digest and Studio Visit Magazine, along with three solo shows and a host of group exhibitions to his credit, Bunner is an artist to watch.
Both hailing from San Francisco, Colleen Sanders and Adrianne Watson round out the Western States line-up. Watson earned her MFA from the California College of the Arts in 2008, and her work appears in the current issue of New American Paintings. Sanders earned her Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2005 before continuing on to earn her MFA from the California College of the Arts in 2008. Both artists currently have work showing at the Sam Lee Gallery in Los Angeles.
Last but not least, Milwaukee’s own Colin Matthes will take over the installation space. Matthes’s artwork has been exhibited in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Denmark, Spain, and Austria. In 2009, Matthes will have a solo-exhibition at the University of Texas-Pan American and create a wall drawing for a group exhibition at the Haggerty Museum in Milwaukee. Matthes was also a 2008 Mary Nohl Fellowship recipient, and his work is currently on view in the Inova Gallery at UWM’s Kenilworth building.
(Links to all artists websites can be found on the right side toolbar)
Opening reception 5:00 – 10:00 pm
Show runs through February 14th
The Armoury Gallery is pleased to announce its 7th, and possibly most ambitious exhibition to date: Western States. Gathering up some of the most promising new artists the western half of the country has to offer, Western States gives Milwaukee a unique glimpse into art happening West of the Mississippi.
Aili Schmeltz, William Hundley, Gavin Brunner, Colleen Sanders, Adrianne Watson and Milwaukee’s own Colin Matthes will fill the gallery with a variety of 2-D, 3-D and installation work.
Living and working in Los Angeles, Aili Schmeltz earned her MFA in 2003 from the University of Arizona. She has since had 10 solo exhibitions to her credit, over 30 group shows and a host of publications including “Best of the West Coast” in New York Arts Magazine. Schmeltz has also had three separate prints appear in Jen Beckman’s 20x200 project based out of New York.
Hailing from Austin, Texas is photographer William Hundley. Earning his BFA in 1998, Hundley has since garnered international attention for his eerie-yet-playful images. With five solo exhibitions to date, and a bibliography that spans Poland, France, Germany, Chile, Spain, Italy, China and Argentina, we are pleased to be showing a series of his images this Gallery Night.
Also from Los Angeles, Gavin Bunner will be showing a selection of his 2-D works on paper. Appearing in New American Paintings in 2006, Artworld Digest and Studio Visit Magazine, along with three solo shows and a host of group exhibitions to his credit, Bunner is an artist to watch.
Both hailing from San Francisco, Colleen Sanders and Adrianne Watson round out the Western States line-up. Watson earned her MFA from the California College of the Arts in 2008, and her work appears in the current issue of New American Paintings. Sanders earned her Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2005 before continuing on to earn her MFA from the California College of the Arts in 2008. Both artists currently have work showing at the Sam Lee Gallery in Los Angeles.
Last but not least, Milwaukee’s own Colin Matthes will take over the installation space. Matthes’s artwork has been exhibited in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Denmark, Spain, and Austria. In 2009, Matthes will have a solo-exhibition at the University of Texas-Pan American and create a wall drawing for a group exhibition at the Haggerty Museum in Milwaukee. Matthes was also a 2008 Mary Nohl Fellowship recipient, and his work is currently on view in the Inova Gallery at UWM’s Kenilworth building.
(Links to all artists websites can be found on the right side toolbar)
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Milwaukee's Own: Shepherd Review
Todays Shepherd Express includes a review of our current show by the talented Angelina Krahn. You can read the review HERE or below.
Local Cross-Section
Art Review
By Angelina Krahn
In "Milwaukee's Own," the Armoury Gallery's last show of 2008, Cassandra Smith and Jessica Steeber bring together four emerging local artists, three of whom created site-specific installations. "Milwaukee's Own" is an academic cross-section of sorts: All four artists are or will be MIAD alumni, trained in Milwaukee in the past decade. Aesthetically, the show is tied together by a minimal palette of paper, polystyrene, graphite, and black and gold paint, and, with the exception of some of Mary DiBiasio's works on paper, by coolly detached formalism.
Harvey Opgenorth's Space Debris: Objects of Desire (Hi-Vis Test #1) is the only piece in the show that rigorously incorporates the gallery's architecture. With a deceptively simple conceit, Opgenorth uses a corner of the gallery to paint a black square across walls and water pipes. The best seat in the house for viewing it is settled into the right corner of the gallery's settee, the vantage point at which the blocks of black paint converge to form the illusion of a two dimensional, flat black square festooned with amorphous globs of gold suspended in space.
In the gallery's small back room, kathryn e. martin's White Army is amassed, at ease, its tiny Styrofoam soldiers assembled from the bottoms of cups and plastic spears. Outside in the main gallery, her Untitled (Case Study) cascades down the wall in two clusters of ribbon-like Styrofoam, the tendrils extended and repeated by shadows cast from the overhead lights.
Colin Dickson's Reconnections takes advantage of the Armoury's high ceilings. Tightly-wound rolls of muslin printed with metallic gold are strung, clustered, and mounted to the ceiling. Similar in scale and shape, and placed sparsely throughout the gallery's aft, they hang like eight stalactites in a bright and commodious cave. Dickson's jointed strands, like the phalanges of plush fingers, rhyme visually with Mary DiBiasio's works on paper of traced and silhouetted hands.
Where Opgenorth engages the brain through the eyes and Dickson and martin hint at organic forms, in "Milwaukee's Own" the artist's hand, as it were, is nearly invisible. DiBiasio, however, repeats hers, infusing the show with literal representations of the body. Traced heads in profile, hands and fingerprints are used liberally throughout DiBiasio's work. In Great Expectations, a vertical diptych, graphite is gently dragged up from the bottom of the page, where fingers of cactus-like outgrowths jut from the mouths of limned heads in the desert landscape of empty space. There is a sense of longing in the gesture, as if grasping for the hands above beyond reach.
The artists of "Milwaukee's Own," are superficially linked by educational background and by geography, but each artist's voice is distinct. And while for now they belong to Milwaukee, their work is poised to alight and transcend it.
Local Cross-Section
Art Review
By Angelina Krahn
In "Milwaukee's Own," the Armoury Gallery's last show of 2008, Cassandra Smith and Jessica Steeber bring together four emerging local artists, three of whom created site-specific installations. "Milwaukee's Own" is an academic cross-section of sorts: All four artists are or will be MIAD alumni, trained in Milwaukee in the past decade. Aesthetically, the show is tied together by a minimal palette of paper, polystyrene, graphite, and black and gold paint, and, with the exception of some of Mary DiBiasio's works on paper, by coolly detached formalism.
Harvey Opgenorth's Space Debris: Objects of Desire (Hi-Vis Test #1) is the only piece in the show that rigorously incorporates the gallery's architecture. With a deceptively simple conceit, Opgenorth uses a corner of the gallery to paint a black square across walls and water pipes. The best seat in the house for viewing it is settled into the right corner of the gallery's settee, the vantage point at which the blocks of black paint converge to form the illusion of a two dimensional, flat black square festooned with amorphous globs of gold suspended in space.
In the gallery's small back room, kathryn e. martin's White Army is amassed, at ease, its tiny Styrofoam soldiers assembled from the bottoms of cups and plastic spears. Outside in the main gallery, her Untitled (Case Study) cascades down the wall in two clusters of ribbon-like Styrofoam, the tendrils extended and repeated by shadows cast from the overhead lights.
Colin Dickson's Reconnections takes advantage of the Armoury's high ceilings. Tightly-wound rolls of muslin printed with metallic gold are strung, clustered, and mounted to the ceiling. Similar in scale and shape, and placed sparsely throughout the gallery's aft, they hang like eight stalactites in a bright and commodious cave. Dickson's jointed strands, like the phalanges of plush fingers, rhyme visually with Mary DiBiasio's works on paper of traced and silhouetted hands.
Where Opgenorth engages the brain through the eyes and Dickson and martin hint at organic forms, in "Milwaukee's Own" the artist's hand, as it were, is nearly invisible. DiBiasio, however, repeats hers, infusing the show with literal representations of the body. Traced heads in profile, hands and fingerprints are used liberally throughout DiBiasio's work. In Great Expectations, a vertical diptych, graphite is gently dragged up from the bottom of the page, where fingers of cactus-like outgrowths jut from the mouths of limned heads in the desert landscape of empty space. There is a sense of longing in the gesture, as if grasping for the hands above beyond reach.
The artists of "Milwaukee's Own," are superficially linked by educational background and by geography, but each artist's voice is distinct. And while for now they belong to Milwaukee, their work is poised to alight and transcend it.
Milwaukee's Own: Decider article
The Onion has a new(ish) off-shoot website called The Decider. Each city has their own Decider website, and Mike Brenner is writing for the Decider Milwaukee. This month, in his column "Now Hanging", he mentioned our current show, as well as the shows at Dean Jensen and Paper Boat. You can read the article HERE or below.
Now Hanging
Decider visits local galleries looking for stimulation
by Mike Brenner
Mayuko Kono buys cheap plastic dog figurines from her local 100 yen shop, which is Tokyo’s equivalent of a dollar store. She then spends hours sanding them down until all the layers of fur (and sometimes the flesh and eyes) are removed to reveal exquisite little sculptures resembling chiseled marble, each with a distinct personality. Kono and the 40 other artists in Big, Big Bangs/Small, Small Bucks (Dean Jensen Gallery, through Jan. 24) comprise this who’s-who exhibition of artists with ties to Milwaukee. From silly, anti-art pieces like Scott Reeder’s Snake on Phone to more substantive works from Jensen’s stable of Milwaukee art professors—Sonja Thomsen, Lynn Tomaszewski, and Jason S. Yi—Big, Big Bangs/Small, Small Bucks showcases 100 works of art, all of which are priced at or under $750 and are well worth the investment.
A minuscule number (by comparison) of circular remnants from the 50,000 Styrofoam cups used to create Kathryn E. Martin’s largest-to-date solo exhibition, Flotant (John Michael Kohler Arts Center, through Jan. 11), were saved by the artist and stuck together with cocktail picks to create the 250 robot-like soldiers in Martin’s even more recent work, White Army, Version 6.
Milwaukee’s Own (The Armoury Gallery, through Jan. 2) features the work of three other Milwaukee Institute Of Art & Design grads: Mary DiBiasio, Colin Dickson, and Harvey Opgenorth. As the viewer moves about the gallery, Opgenorth’s Space Debris: Objects Of Desire (Hi-Vis Test #1) just doesn't seem right, almost incomplete or lacking, but when you’re on the very right side of the vintage yellow couch next to the gallery director’s desk, everything falls into place. What seemed like random geometric shapes becomes one solid, grounded square dotted with giant, golden meteors.
Self-taught San Francisco artist and gallery director Lisa Congdon created a completely new body of work for her Milwaukee debut, Life In WonderMountain (Paper Boat Boutique & Gallery, through Jan. 11). Congdon’s first-ever three-dimensional installation juxtaposes pieces of thrift store crochet with found sepia-toned portraits that the artist embellished with multi-colored neon swatches of paint. The old and new are blended into an eerily satisfying altar to WonderMountain’s fictional inbred populous.
Now Hanging
Decider visits local galleries looking for stimulation
by Mike Brenner
Mayuko Kono buys cheap plastic dog figurines from her local 100 yen shop, which is Tokyo’s equivalent of a dollar store. She then spends hours sanding them down until all the layers of fur (and sometimes the flesh and eyes) are removed to reveal exquisite little sculptures resembling chiseled marble, each with a distinct personality. Kono and the 40 other artists in Big, Big Bangs/Small, Small Bucks (Dean Jensen Gallery, through Jan. 24) comprise this who’s-who exhibition of artists with ties to Milwaukee. From silly, anti-art pieces like Scott Reeder’s Snake on Phone to more substantive works from Jensen’s stable of Milwaukee art professors—Sonja Thomsen, Lynn Tomaszewski, and Jason S. Yi—Big, Big Bangs/Small, Small Bucks showcases 100 works of art, all of which are priced at or under $750 and are well worth the investment.
A minuscule number (by comparison) of circular remnants from the 50,000 Styrofoam cups used to create Kathryn E. Martin’s largest-to-date solo exhibition, Flotant (John Michael Kohler Arts Center, through Jan. 11), were saved by the artist and stuck together with cocktail picks to create the 250 robot-like soldiers in Martin’s even more recent work, White Army, Version 6.
Milwaukee’s Own (The Armoury Gallery, through Jan. 2) features the work of three other Milwaukee Institute Of Art & Design grads: Mary DiBiasio, Colin Dickson, and Harvey Opgenorth. As the viewer moves about the gallery, Opgenorth’s Space Debris: Objects Of Desire (Hi-Vis Test #1) just doesn't seem right, almost incomplete or lacking, but when you’re on the very right side of the vintage yellow couch next to the gallery director’s desk, everything falls into place. What seemed like random geometric shapes becomes one solid, grounded square dotted with giant, golden meteors.
Self-taught San Francisco artist and gallery director Lisa Congdon created a completely new body of work for her Milwaukee debut, Life In WonderMountain (Paper Boat Boutique & Gallery, through Jan. 11). Congdon’s first-ever three-dimensional installation juxtaposes pieces of thrift store crochet with found sepia-toned portraits that the artist embellished with multi-colored neon swatches of paint. The old and new are blended into an eerily satisfying altar to WonderMountain’s fictional inbred populous.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Milwaukee's Own: Gallery Online
For each opening we create an interactive gallery online where you can view the entire show by clicking around on photographs of the gallery. HERE is the link to our Gallery Online for our current show, Milwaukee's Own. Below are some examples of the work from the show. On view until January 3rd with gallery hours on Saturdays from 12:00 - 5:00 pm.
kathryn e martin
Harvey Opgenorth
Mary DiBiasio
Colin T Dickson
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Milwaukee's Own: Shepherd Preview
This week's Shepherd Express has a preview of our show opening this Friday. You can see the original article HERE, or read an excerpt from the article below.
Site-Specific Art
By Peggy Sue Dunigan
Also opening this week is the Armoury Gallery's new exhibit, "Milwaukee's Own." It features four recent Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design graduates, with work constructed specifically for the gallery.
Nationally recognized artist Harvey Opgenorth paints optical illusions directly onto the walls, provoking dual visions of reality, while Colin Dickson fashions a muslin cave. In Dickson's first professional show since graduating in June, screen prints are combined with clusters of cotton to construct a large piece of art. kathryn e. martin, whose work is also on display at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center's "Flotant" exhibit, revisits her circles of Styrofoam cups to create spiral forms envisioning clouds. 2006 graduate Mary DiBiasio portrays hands and human figures through tracings and cutouts rendered in graphite wall hangings.
These eclectic installations "create final products having more potential to shift," says gallery owner Cassandra Smith. The opening reception takes place on Friday, Dec. 5, from 6 to 10 p.m.
Site-Specific Art
By Peggy Sue Dunigan
Also opening this week is the Armoury Gallery's new exhibit, "Milwaukee's Own." It features four recent Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design graduates, with work constructed specifically for the gallery.
Nationally recognized artist Harvey Opgenorth paints optical illusions directly onto the walls, provoking dual visions of reality, while Colin Dickson fashions a muslin cave. In Dickson's first professional show since graduating in June, screen prints are combined with clusters of cotton to construct a large piece of art. kathryn e. martin, whose work is also on display at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center's "Flotant" exhibit, revisits her circles of Styrofoam cups to create spiral forms envisioning clouds. 2006 graduate Mary DiBiasio portrays hands and human figures through tracings and cutouts rendered in graphite wall hangings.
These eclectic installations "create final products having more potential to shift," says gallery owner Cassandra Smith. The opening reception takes place on Friday, Dec. 5, from 6 to 10 p.m.
kathryn e martin
Harvey Opgenorth
Mary DiBiasio
Colin Dickson
Harvey Opgenorth
Mary DiBiasio
Colin Dickson
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Milwaukee's Own: Press Release
Friday, December 5th 6:00 – 10:00 pm
The Armoury’s next exhibition looks homeward, featuring four local artists – kathryn e. martin, Harvey Opgenorth, Mary DiBiasio and Colin T Dickson.
The Armoury Gallery is pleased to announce its 6th and most experimental exhibition to date: Milwaukee’s Own. Featuring four of Milwaukee’s most exciting young artists, this not-to-be-missed exhibition will fill the gallery space almost entirely with installation work, including a stalactite cave of muslin, Styrofoam remnants in cloud-like formations, and an optical game involving two walls, a ceiling and giant gold nuggets.
Milwaukee artists kathryn e. martin, Harvey Opgenorth, and Colin T Dickson will utilize the three week break between exhibitions to work in the gallery space, each creating site-specific pieces encompassing a majority of the exhibition space. Mary DiBiasio will present a new series of mixed media works to round out the exhibition. Each artist uses repetition of shape, form, and line in limited color palettes to examine our understanding, perception and relationship to objects and places, simultaneously redefining the interior spaces of the gallery.
kathryn e. martin, having just unveiled her most recent solo exhibition at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, shifts focus to a more deliberately confined space for this exhibition, forcing her work to adapt and rebel against the limitations imposed by the walls. martin will engulf a portion of the gallery in masses of Styrofoam ringlets, cut from their previous life as cups and given new meaning as delicate objects of desire. martin is part-time faculty at both UWM and MIAD. In 2001, she earned her BFA from MIAD in Sculpture with an Art History minor, following that up with both her MA and MFA from UWM in InterMedia Studies.
Harvey Opgenorth will also have a site specific installation, involving an optical wall painting and oversized gold nuggets, simultaneously challenging our relationship with and understanding of our environment. Best known for his “Museum Camoufluge” series that earned him national recognition, Opgenorth is inspired by everyday places and our perceptions of them, often using visual games and nostalgic objects to focus our attention on the often overlooked aspects of daily life. In 1999, Opgenorth received his BFA in Painting from MIAD with a minor in Sculpture.
Presenting a new series of graphite drawings is Mary DiBiasio. DiBiasio’s work presents the figure in contour. The ghost-like images exist as mere remnants of the human form, repeating, falling, running across the page, reminding us of our interconnectedness through the fragile nature of human life. Since graduating from MIAD in 2006 with her BFA in Printmaking, DiBiasio has shown consistently in the Milwaukee area, most recently with the Cedar Gallery on Fall Gallery Night, and at the Walker’s Point Center for the Arts.
Finally, recent MIAD graduate Colin Dickson will create muslin stalactites to fill a portion of the gallery space with a cave-like creation. He will be using the installation to contrast the formality of the space, while establishing a dialogue with human movement, interaction and reaction. Graduating from MIAD in the spring of this year with a degree in Sculpture, Dickson’s work takes on a grand scale, the artist undaunted by cost, time nor space instead forging ahead in pursuit of his vision. Dickson received the 2008 Fine Art Excellence Award for “3 1/2 miles to the center of somewhere else”, his interactive senior thesis installation that, according to the MIAD website, “invites viewers to get lost in the geometrics of mass and illuminated space”.
Show runs December 5th - January 3rd
The Armoury’s next exhibition looks homeward, featuring four local artists – kathryn e. martin, Harvey Opgenorth, Mary DiBiasio and Colin T Dickson.
The Armoury Gallery is pleased to announce its 6th and most experimental exhibition to date: Milwaukee’s Own. Featuring four of Milwaukee’s most exciting young artists, this not-to-be-missed exhibition will fill the gallery space almost entirely with installation work, including a stalactite cave of muslin, Styrofoam remnants in cloud-like formations, and an optical game involving two walls, a ceiling and giant gold nuggets.
Milwaukee artists kathryn e. martin, Harvey Opgenorth, and Colin T Dickson will utilize the three week break between exhibitions to work in the gallery space, each creating site-specific pieces encompassing a majority of the exhibition space. Mary DiBiasio will present a new series of mixed media works to round out the exhibition. Each artist uses repetition of shape, form, and line in limited color palettes to examine our understanding, perception and relationship to objects and places, simultaneously redefining the interior spaces of the gallery.
kathryn e. martin, having just unveiled her most recent solo exhibition at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, shifts focus to a more deliberately confined space for this exhibition, forcing her work to adapt and rebel against the limitations imposed by the walls. martin will engulf a portion of the gallery in masses of Styrofoam ringlets, cut from their previous life as cups and given new meaning as delicate objects of desire. martin is part-time faculty at both UWM and MIAD. In 2001, she earned her BFA from MIAD in Sculpture with an Art History minor, following that up with both her MA and MFA from UWM in InterMedia Studies.
Harvey Opgenorth will also have a site specific installation, involving an optical wall painting and oversized gold nuggets, simultaneously challenging our relationship with and understanding of our environment. Best known for his “Museum Camoufluge” series that earned him national recognition, Opgenorth is inspired by everyday places and our perceptions of them, often using visual games and nostalgic objects to focus our attention on the often overlooked aspects of daily life. In 1999, Opgenorth received his BFA in Painting from MIAD with a minor in Sculpture.
Presenting a new series of graphite drawings is Mary DiBiasio. DiBiasio’s work presents the figure in contour. The ghost-like images exist as mere remnants of the human form, repeating, falling, running across the page, reminding us of our interconnectedness through the fragile nature of human life. Since graduating from MIAD in 2006 with her BFA in Printmaking, DiBiasio has shown consistently in the Milwaukee area, most recently with the Cedar Gallery on Fall Gallery Night, and at the Walker’s Point Center for the Arts.
Finally, recent MIAD graduate Colin Dickson will create muslin stalactites to fill a portion of the gallery space with a cave-like creation. He will be using the installation to contrast the formality of the space, while establishing a dialogue with human movement, interaction and reaction. Graduating from MIAD in the spring of this year with a degree in Sculpture, Dickson’s work takes on a grand scale, the artist undaunted by cost, time nor space instead forging ahead in pursuit of his vision. Dickson received the 2008 Fine Art Excellence Award for “3 1/2 miles to the center of somewhere else”, his interactive senior thesis installation that, according to the MIAD website, “invites viewers to get lost in the geometrics of mass and illuminated space”.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Milwaukee's Own: Postcard
This is the postcard for our upcoming show, Milwaukee's Own. Featuring installation work by four Milwaukee artists: kathryn e. martin, Harvey Opgenorth, Mary DiBiasio and Colin T Dickson. The opening reception is Friday, December 5th from 6:00 - 10:00 pm.
Monday, October 27, 2008
In Contour: Show Images
This is some of the work from our current exhibition, In Contour. You can view the entire show HERE by clicking through the images of the gallery.
Sonja Peterson (minneapolis)
Paul Kjelland (milwaukee)
Julia Schilling (milwaukee)
Monday, October 20, 2008
In Contour: Reception Photos
Here are some photos form our fifth exhibition, In Contour. It was held on Friday October 17th which was Milwaukee's Fall Gallery Night.
Artists Julia Schilling (left) & Sonja Peterson (right)
Work by Paul Kjelland
Work by Sonja Peterson
Work by Sonja Peterson
Friday, September 26, 2008
Garden Variety: Journal Sentinel Review
The review mentioned in the previous post, that Mary Louise Schumacher wrote on her Art City blog, was also featured in the September 25th print edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It was along side a review of the Green Gallery's current show, Cool White Cube, featuring the photography of Paul Druecke. 
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Garden Variety: Art City Review
Mary Louise Schumacher recently posted a review of Garden Variety on her Art City blog. You can read the review below, or in its original form HERE.
Over at the Armoury Gallery, 1718 N. 1st St., Minneapolis-based artists Erika Olson and Joseph Sinness have art on view through Oct. 4.
Plump seeds and pods erupt across the page in an ecstatic surge, a cannonade of strange, organic matter gushing and commingling, in Olson's gouache and graphite works. That this rapturous bursting, an illusion to reproduction, both plant and human, is restrained into submission by Olson's almost computer-like fine lines, flat areas of color and subdued pastel colors creates an intriguing tension. The stop motion-like, precise manmade-ness of the scene demands careful inspection and begs the question: what is more beautiful, naturalism or idealism?
What hurtles and collides in Sinness' visual garden, as opposed to Olson's stuff of earth, is more of the good-and-evil, metaphysical sort. Nature is on a punishing rampage, doing unprecedented things in many of Sinness' color pencil drawings. Giant sea barnacles appear to seize a red AMC Pacer in its tracks in one piece, while a monster, an amalgam of worms, weeds, bugs and fangs, prepares to pounce on a rabbit, unaware and innocently chomping on flowers in another.
"Clouder" is a violent, upward outbreak of cat heads, all writhing, each one emerging from another like bizarre appendages. Imagine an epic cat melee concentrated into a single, explosive heap. There is a lush, fullness to this odd cornucopia of kitties, too. With ears perked, their blue and orange Bette Davis eyes dart this way and that, as if they've got prey in sight. The battle of evil and light is rarely this much fun.
Garden Variety show at Armoury
By Mary Louise Schumacher
Thursday, Sep 25 2008, 01:40 PM
By Mary Louise Schumacher
Thursday, Sep 25 2008, 01:40 PM
Over at the Armoury Gallery, 1718 N. 1st St., Minneapolis-based artists Erika Olson and Joseph Sinness have art on view through Oct. 4.
Plump seeds and pods erupt across the page in an ecstatic surge, a cannonade of strange, organic matter gushing and commingling, in Olson's gouache and graphite works. That this rapturous bursting, an illusion to reproduction, both plant and human, is restrained into submission by Olson's almost computer-like fine lines, flat areas of color and subdued pastel colors creates an intriguing tension. The stop motion-like, precise manmade-ness of the scene demands careful inspection and begs the question: what is more beautiful, naturalism or idealism?What hurtles and collides in Sinness' visual garden, as opposed to Olson's stuff of earth, is more of the good-and-evil, metaphysical sort. Nature is on a punishing rampage, doing unprecedented things in many of Sinness' color pencil drawings. Giant sea barnacles appear to seize a red AMC Pacer in its tracks in one piece, while a monster, an amalgam of worms, weeds, bugs and fangs, prepares to pounce on a rabbit, unaware and innocently chomping on flowers in another."Clouder" is a violent, upward outbreak of cat heads, all writhing, each one emerging from another like bizarre appendages. Imagine an epic cat melee concentrated into a single, explosive heap. There is a lush, fullness to this odd cornucopia of kitties, too. With ears perked, their blue and orange Bette Davis eyes dart this way and that, as if they've got prey in sight. The battle of evil and light is rarely this much fun.
Monday, September 22, 2008
In Contour: Show Postcards
These are the postcards for our fifth opening, to be held on Fall Gallery Night. The cover images is by Paul Kjelland.
In Contour: Press Release
In Contour @ The Armoury Gallery
October 17 – November 15
Opening Reception: Gallery Night, October 17th, 5 – 10pm
The Armoury Gallery is please to announce its fifth exhibition, In Contour, with an opening reception to be held Fall Gallery Night, October 17th from 5-10 pm.
In Contour features the work of Minneapolis based artist Sonja Peterson and local artists Paul Kjelland and Julia Schilling. All three artists use line, contour and silhouette to deconstruct and analyze the world around us, breaking environments and relationships down to their respective parts.
Minneapolis based artist Sonja Peterson will present a series of new and old works for the exhibition. She is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota, having earned her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She is featured in book 77 of New American Paintings, a juried exhibition-in-print selected from over 1000 applicants.
Peterson works with large scale paper cutouts and drawings, then suspends them and sets the work against painted imagery on the wall behind. The use of silhouette implies a level of simplicity and reduction, but the complex nature of the shapes and repeating patterns, combined with the tedious process, imply a complexity that begs for consideration
Local artist Paul Kjelland will have a new series of his mixed media, photography-based works on hand. Graduating from MIAD in 2005 with a BFA in photography, Kjelland has since worked consistently, showing with Hotcakes at Aqua Art in Miami and Art Chicago, at Milwaukee International, Walker’s Point Center for the Arts, Luckystar and others.
Kjelland’s work takes a compartmentalized look at the constructed world that surrounds us. Using paper cutouts, screen printing and digital media, Kjelland takes apart our surroundings and reassembles them as a course of reflection and examination of the world around us.
Finally, Julia Schilling of the White Whale Collective will create a sight-specific installation for this opening. Julia graduated from MIAD in 2008, earning her BFA in Sculpture and minor in Writing, and has been involved in curating and exhibiting with the White Whale since it was formed this past January. She has also participated in various public art projects, including the collaboration 'Points of View' for the Riverwalk Association.
Schilling's work combines sculpture and drawing to explore landforms and methods of mapping. For this opening, her installation will employ piles, mounds, and words to address landscapes, elevation and way finding
October 17 – November 15
Opening Reception: Gallery Night, October 17th, 5 – 10pm
The Armoury Gallery is please to announce its fifth exhibition, In Contour, with an opening reception to be held Fall Gallery Night, October 17th from 5-10 pm.
In Contour features the work of Minneapolis based artist Sonja Peterson and local artists Paul Kjelland and Julia Schilling. All three artists use line, contour and silhouette to deconstruct and analyze the world around us, breaking environments and relationships down to their respective parts.
Minneapolis based artist Sonja Peterson will present a series of new and old works for the exhibition. She is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota, having earned her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She is featured in book 77 of New American Paintings, a juried exhibition-in-print selected from over 1000 applicants.
Peterson works with large scale paper cutouts and drawings, then suspends them and sets the work against painted imagery on the wall behind. The use of silhouette implies a level of simplicity and reduction, but the complex nature of the shapes and repeating patterns, combined with the tedious process, imply a complexity that begs for consideration
Local artist Paul Kjelland will have a new series of his mixed media, photography-based works on hand. Graduating from MIAD in 2005 with a BFA in photography, Kjelland has since worked consistently, showing with Hotcakes at Aqua Art in Miami and Art Chicago, at Milwaukee International, Walker’s Point Center for the Arts, Luckystar and others.
Kjelland’s work takes a compartmentalized look at the constructed world that surrounds us. Using paper cutouts, screen printing and digital media, Kjelland takes apart our surroundings and reassembles them as a course of reflection and examination of the world around us.
Finally, Julia Schilling of the White Whale Collective will create a sight-specific installation for this opening. Julia graduated from MIAD in 2008, earning her BFA in Sculpture and minor in Writing, and has been involved in curating and exhibiting with the White Whale since it was formed this past January. She has also participated in various public art projects, including the collaboration 'Points of View' for the Riverwalk Association.
Schilling's work combines sculpture and drawing to explore landforms and methods of mapping. For this opening, her installation will employ piles, mounds, and words to address landscapes, elevation and way finding
Friday, September 19, 2008
Garden Variety: Review by Jeff Filipiak
This is the second review we recieved for our opening Garden Variety. It was written by Jeff Filipiak for the art review website, Susceptible to Images. You can read the whole review below, or HERE.
Garden Variety: Works by Joseph Sinness, Erika Olson, River Bullock
By Jeff Filipiak
The origins of the current show at the young Armoury Gallery have more to do with domesticity than dirt. These artists wanted to explore issues at home, and during the summer happened to step outside and find inspiration in their yards. Their work ended up amidst plants and animals, exploring gardens from a variety of angles. They use visuals as a means of contemplating aesthetics, identity, and the place of 'natural' elements within human lives, especially sexuality. Joseph Sinness finds both innocence and kitsch in the garden; his favorite subjects, rabbits, might reflect both. Erika Olson's works explore reproduction, dominated by seed flows; while River Bullock focuses on our perceptions of plantscapes. Other than the Swiss chard growing in her soil-based installation, there is little evidence of food in these gardens – they are primarily visual, theoretical, and/or decorative.
In the gardens of Joseph Sinness (both the colored-pencil ones in the gallery, and the ones in his yard), grown for pleasure instead of food, he coexists with rabbits; in fact, he identifies with them against cats. His most frightening image is that of a monstrous cat (inspired, he says, by hearing baby rabbits scream in agony in the middle of the night). Rabbits are his symbol of innocence; equally prominent are symbols of kitsch, drawn from discos, Dolly Parton and Kylie Minogue. His works often feature some kind of conflict between two subjects; between something innocent and something dynamic, or between a couple and onlookers judging them. The viewer might draw their own conclusions from these conflicts – is a 'fall' occurring? Are we observing something natural, or something sinister? Sinness draws attention to some of the stakes, influenced by centuries-old Christian imagery as he provides imagery from Hieronymus Bosch to go along with the gardens and images of judgment.Erika Olson works primarily in watercolor, gouache and graphite; but her pieces are really about flows. She covers about half of each work (except for one sculpture) with a pattern that usually consists of three different varieties of images. Those varieties are drawn as if borne upon a current; they seem to float, stick together. Her works suggest motion, but are calm. She depicts flows of seeds, drawing our attention to plant reproduction; but her images extend beyond typical garden plants to what appear to be pinecones, diamonds and clam shells. These are flows orchestrated by a human hand, but resemble natural flows (they do not resemble typical garden or machine patterns). Her objects are sketched more geometrically than particularly, more suggestively than thoroughly.
While Olson and Sinness direct the reader's attentions to a few key elements, highlighting them by leaving as much as half of their surfaces blank, River Bullock does less to 'clean up' nature. She photographs, and her scenes are full. Not only that, but she lets her scenes overlap the photos, suggesting a lack of isolation, that these plants are part of a larger mass. Photos are not cropped to include distinctive elements on the edges, nor did she highlight key elements like one plant or one branch. Instead, these felt full, as if she was taking group photos rather than highlighting individuals. Four of her photos feature two plant layers (each apparently a different species) and a third layer, of darkness. She limits her organization of the materials in other ways as well – all her pieces are untitled, without labels (admittedly, I was curious to see a list of 'materials' for her soil plot). The viewer is left to draw connections between the disparate elements of her installation – photographs, a small actual garden plot (including dirt, plants, and worms), and a reading list. The soil adds a vital element to a garden show, literally grounding the works of the other artists. Bullock hopes to encourage viewers to do their own looking – and reading, since she provides a reading list on nature and plants, led off by Wendell Berry.
After viewing the show, we are left to wonder: what is the human place in the garden, where humans seek to organize nature in a domestic space? Sinness identifies with some animals against others; should we be taking sides? Gardeners take sides for the sake of food, of course, but is it also justified for other reasons? Homosexuality has been criticized as unnatural, yet Sinness explores it using natural images, complicating issues. Bullock tries to minimize the human role in some ways, leaving more to the viewer to determine, allowing 'weed' species more of a role in her gardens. Olson raises these issues most explicitly in her artist statement, asking "when nature is cleaned up, arranged and controlled by humans what value does that interaction hold for us?" Excessive oversimplification through monoculture, of the mind or on the ground, does not leave a role for natural creative impulses, whether of humans or nonhumans. So we must strike a balance between the selection and narrowing of focus found in gardening and in art – and the collection, identification, and nurturing which nourishes humans and nonhumans alike.
Jeff Filipiak is an instructor at several local colleges, and frequent contributor to Susceptible to Images. He is currently teaching a course on "Food and Power: Why Am I Eating This?"
Garden Variety: Works by Joseph Sinness, Erika Olson, River BullockBy Jeff Filipiak
The origins of the current show at the young Armoury Gallery have more to do with domesticity than dirt. These artists wanted to explore issues at home, and during the summer happened to step outside and find inspiration in their yards. Their work ended up amidst plants and animals, exploring gardens from a variety of angles. They use visuals as a means of contemplating aesthetics, identity, and the place of 'natural' elements within human lives, especially sexuality. Joseph Sinness finds both innocence and kitsch in the garden; his favorite subjects, rabbits, might reflect both. Erika Olson's works explore reproduction, dominated by seed flows; while River Bullock focuses on our perceptions of plantscapes. Other than the Swiss chard growing in her soil-based installation, there is little evidence of food in these gardens – they are primarily visual, theoretical, and/or decorative.
In the gardens of Joseph Sinness (both the colored-pencil ones in the gallery, and the ones in his yard), grown for pleasure instead of food, he coexists with rabbits; in fact, he identifies with them against cats. His most frightening image is that of a monstrous cat (inspired, he says, by hearing baby rabbits scream in agony in the middle of the night). Rabbits are his symbol of innocence; equally prominent are symbols of kitsch, drawn from discos, Dolly Parton and Kylie Minogue. His works often feature some kind of conflict between two subjects; between something innocent and something dynamic, or between a couple and onlookers judging them. The viewer might draw their own conclusions from these conflicts – is a 'fall' occurring? Are we observing something natural, or something sinister? Sinness draws attention to some of the stakes, influenced by centuries-old Christian imagery as he provides imagery from Hieronymus Bosch to go along with the gardens and images of judgment.Erika Olson works primarily in watercolor, gouache and graphite; but her pieces are really about flows. She covers about half of each work (except for one sculpture) with a pattern that usually consists of three different varieties of images. Those varieties are drawn as if borne upon a current; they seem to float, stick together. Her works suggest motion, but are calm. She depicts flows of seeds, drawing our attention to plant reproduction; but her images extend beyond typical garden plants to what appear to be pinecones, diamonds and clam shells. These are flows orchestrated by a human hand, but resemble natural flows (they do not resemble typical garden or machine patterns). Her objects are sketched more geometrically than particularly, more suggestively than thoroughly.
While Olson and Sinness direct the reader's attentions to a few key elements, highlighting them by leaving as much as half of their surfaces blank, River Bullock does less to 'clean up' nature. She photographs, and her scenes are full. Not only that, but she lets her scenes overlap the photos, suggesting a lack of isolation, that these plants are part of a larger mass. Photos are not cropped to include distinctive elements on the edges, nor did she highlight key elements like one plant or one branch. Instead, these felt full, as if she was taking group photos rather than highlighting individuals. Four of her photos feature two plant layers (each apparently a different species) and a third layer, of darkness. She limits her organization of the materials in other ways as well – all her pieces are untitled, without labels (admittedly, I was curious to see a list of 'materials' for her soil plot). The viewer is left to draw connections between the disparate elements of her installation – photographs, a small actual garden plot (including dirt, plants, and worms), and a reading list. The soil adds a vital element to a garden show, literally grounding the works of the other artists. Bullock hopes to encourage viewers to do their own looking – and reading, since she provides a reading list on nature and plants, led off by Wendell Berry.
After viewing the show, we are left to wonder: what is the human place in the garden, where humans seek to organize nature in a domestic space? Sinness identifies with some animals against others; should we be taking sides? Gardeners take sides for the sake of food, of course, but is it also justified for other reasons? Homosexuality has been criticized as unnatural, yet Sinness explores it using natural images, complicating issues. Bullock tries to minimize the human role in some ways, leaving more to the viewer to determine, allowing 'weed' species more of a role in her gardens. Olson raises these issues most explicitly in her artist statement, asking "when nature is cleaned up, arranged and controlled by humans what value does that interaction hold for us?" Excessive oversimplification through monoculture, of the mind or on the ground, does not leave a role for natural creative impulses, whether of humans or nonhumans. So we must strike a balance between the selection and narrowing of focus found in gardening and in art – and the collection, identification, and nurturing which nourishes humans and nonhumans alike.
Jeff Filipiak is an instructor at several local colleges, and frequent contributor to Susceptible to Images. He is currently teaching a course on "Food and Power: Why Am I Eating This?"
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Garden Variety: Review by Angelina Krahn
This is a review by Angelina Krahn that was printed in the Shepherd Express newspaper today. The full text is below, but you can also view the original article online HERE.
Microcosmic Drama
By Angelina Krahn
Joseph Sinness' cross-hatched pileups of vegetation, bouquets of felines and swaths of lace converge with Erika Olson's cascades of organic material to reinterpret the pastoral and the prosaic in "Garden Variety," the Armoury Gallery's fourth exhibition.
Olson's gouache and graphite works on paper conflate the palette and restraint of Suzuki Harunobu's feminine woodcuts with the sensitive, stylized surfaces characteristic of Ert's fashion illustrations. Olson arranges and repeats small objects, choreographing gusts of jewel-like, faceted pinecones, seed pods or larvae across the page. The dramatic tension resides in the implied motion of these sweeping gestures across the tundra of empty space. Symbolically, the elements that comprise Olson's work are the fruits of successful reproduction among plants, by way of spontaneous intimacies with wind or the promiscuity of bees on stamens, but the intended sexual tension is countered by Olson's process. Executed by a precise and controlled hand, natural elements are synthesized into pure geometric forms.
In addition to the two-dimensional work, Olson has included Feigned Growth, a hibiscus-hued soft sculpture. While the flatness and sterility of the marks subdue any sexual undertones in Olson's works on paper, the sensual and tactile qualities are unmistakable in commingled stacks of fuchsia and orange felt cutouts beneath the fertile, overstuffed pods of Feigned Growth.
Sinness' Apocalyptical Dolly is a postmodern deity, though Parton's celebrity status, tacky theme park empire and silicone-enhanced proportions will likely outlive the butterflies and swallows roosting in her halo of curls in Sinness' homage. Another Parton-inspired piece, Why'd You Come in Here Lookin' Like That? mimics the two shot composition of Apocalyptical Dolly, replacing the benevolent country diva with a fanged, grotesque gorgon chasing a rabbit off the page.
Sinness repeats rabbits and piles kittens; these feral breeders scamper throughout much of his work represented in "Garden Variety." The absence of these totem creatures in his figural drawings allows the viewer to set aside decoding what Sinness' describes as "new queer kitsch iconography." In the disturbing vignette I'm Doing This for Your Sake, an older woman watches intently as a young woman with protruding front teeth reluctantly drops a pill on her tongue. Sinness renders the pair with a realism he reserves for mortals. Every surface crawls with texture: lips curl, curls tumble, cloth buckles and creases.
Tucked in the back of the gallery, a series of local photographer River Bullock's untitled medium-format images more literally interpret the show's theme, with a portion of her garden plot transplanted among them. Bullock's photographs faithfully document nature, preserving patterns of leaves under the natural blue cast of daylight.
Microcosmic Drama
By Angelina Krahn
Joseph Sinness' cross-hatched pileups of vegetation, bouquets of felines and swaths of lace converge with Erika Olson's cascades of organic material to reinterpret the pastoral and the prosaic in "Garden Variety," the Armoury Gallery's fourth exhibition.
Olson's gouache and graphite works on paper conflate the palette and restraint of Suzuki Harunobu's feminine woodcuts with the sensitive, stylized surfaces characteristic of Ert's fashion illustrations. Olson arranges and repeats small objects, choreographing gusts of jewel-like, faceted pinecones, seed pods or larvae across the page. The dramatic tension resides in the implied motion of these sweeping gestures across the tundra of empty space. Symbolically, the elements that comprise Olson's work are the fruits of successful reproduction among plants, by way of spontaneous intimacies with wind or the promiscuity of bees on stamens, but the intended sexual tension is countered by Olson's process. Executed by a precise and controlled hand, natural elements are synthesized into pure geometric forms.
In addition to the two-dimensional work, Olson has included Feigned Growth, a hibiscus-hued soft sculpture. While the flatness and sterility of the marks subdue any sexual undertones in Olson's works on paper, the sensual and tactile qualities are unmistakable in commingled stacks of fuchsia and orange felt cutouts beneath the fertile, overstuffed pods of Feigned Growth.
Sinness' Apocalyptical Dolly is a postmodern deity, though Parton's celebrity status, tacky theme park empire and silicone-enhanced proportions will likely outlive the butterflies and swallows roosting in her halo of curls in Sinness' homage. Another Parton-inspired piece, Why'd You Come in Here Lookin' Like That? mimics the two shot composition of Apocalyptical Dolly, replacing the benevolent country diva with a fanged, grotesque gorgon chasing a rabbit off the page.
Sinness repeats rabbits and piles kittens; these feral breeders scamper throughout much of his work represented in "Garden Variety." The absence of these totem creatures in his figural drawings allows the viewer to set aside decoding what Sinness' describes as "new queer kitsch iconography." In the disturbing vignette I'm Doing This for Your Sake, an older woman watches intently as a young woman with protruding front teeth reluctantly drops a pill on her tongue. Sinness renders the pair with a realism he reserves for mortals. Every surface crawls with texture: lips curl, curls tumble, cloth buckles and creases.
Tucked in the back of the gallery, a series of local photographer River Bullock's untitled medium-format images more literally interpret the show's theme, with a portion of her garden plot transplanted among them. Bullock's photographs faithfully document nature, preserving patterns of leaves under the natural blue cast of daylight.
Garden Variety: Show Images
These are some images from our fourth exhibition Garden Variety. You can view the entire show by visiting our Gallery Online. This is an interactive feature that allows you to see the entire gallery and click on each piece of art to view it in detail. We have created the Gallery Online to give those who aren't able to make it into the gallery the oppurtunity to still view the whole show.
Joseph Sinness
Erika Olson
River Bullock
Garden Variety: Reception Photos
Here are some photos from our opening reception of Garden Variety. The show opened Friday, September 5th and will run through Saturday, October 4th with galleries hours on Saturdays from 12:00 - 5:00 pm. Or daily by appointment.
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