Armoury @ The Cedar Gallery - Opening reception

Here are a few images from the opening reception on January 15th. You can view the rest of the images HERE.

Katie Kraft

Karin Haas & James LaLonde
Sophia Flood

Kevin Giese

Ginger Lukas

Armoury @ The Cedar Gallery

The Armoury returns for an exhibition in the Cedar Gallery for winter Gallery Night - Friday, January 15th 5-10pm

Jessica Steeber and Cassandra Smith of the Armoury Gallery return for their first exhibition since closing the doors on their gallery this past spring. Gathering six of Wisconsin’s finest up and coming artists, the exhibition will be held at the Cedar Gallery in the 3rd ward through Saturday, March 13th. Gallery hours will be Wednesday through Saturday from 1:00 - 5:00pm.

Works by Ginger Lukas, Sophia Flood, Kevin Giese, Katie Kraft and a collaboration between Karin Haas and James LaLonde will fill the two floors of gallery space, opening to the public Winter Gallery Night.

Currently studying for her MFA at UW-Madison, Ginger Lukas’s colorful installations will take over the first floor of the gallery space. Simultaneously referencing our obsession with material, consumption and wealth, while rooted in a simpler time of chandeliers and grand balls, they draw comparison between the old and the new, the frivolous and the grand. Lukas earned her BFA at the Maryland Institute – College of Art, and has a host of scholarships, fellowships and grants to her credit.

Also studying for her MFA at UW-Madison, Sophia Flood’s mixed media assemblages reflect a sensitivity to color, shape and space, while drawing out unexpected relationships between her chosen materials. Flood earned her BFA in Sculpture from the University of Massachusetts, Ameherst, and has exhibited nationally.

UW-Milwaukee fine art instructor Kevin Giese will be exhibiting new and old works, including new installation work. Heavily rooted in the natural world, Giese's works often include material elements taken directly from nature, reworked and displayed in ways questioning our relationship to landscape.

Milwaukee native Katie Kraft will have a new series of paintings on display. Graduating in 2008 from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Kraft’s work is playful and intelligent, challenging our perceptions of the ordinary. Aerial views of pool tables make up this series, a simple yet aesthetically purposeful look at a common pastime.

Finally, a collaboration between MIAD graduate Karin Haas and James LaLonde completes the exhibition. Straying from her delicate yet unnerving prints, Haas and LaLonde will install a herd of miniature zebras in the gallery space, an innocent take on relationships and the childlike qualities we so easily forget.

Thanks!

Thanks for all the support and well wishes!  We're going to miss you guys too.  Here are some great, thoughtful articles written about our closing.

From Julie Lawrence at OnMilwaukee.com.

From Mary Louise Shumacher at Art City (with great comments by Rex Winsome).

From Mollie Bouttel-Butler at Milwaukee Decider.

From  Mary Dally-Muenzmaier at Cricket Toes.

Closing Letter

Dear friends of the Armoury,

As reluctant as we are to join the list of closing galleries and businesses around Milwaukee, it has unfortunately come time to announce that the Armoury officially closed with the end of our last show on May 2^nd.  Due to a variety of reasons, not least of them being financial, we will no longer be continuing to run our space in the Fortress Building.

While we will be closing the doors on the physical gallery space, we are looking forward to new projects and new ways to connect with artists both locally and nationally. It has been a wonderfully enriching experience both of us, and we have worked hard over the last 18 months, garnering numerous benefits personally and professionally. We hope to continue working, collaborating and connecting with people, expanding our horizons and channeling our energy into new projects in the near future.

Of course we want to thank all of the artists who showed with us this past year, along with anyone in the press who took the time to write about and promote our venture.  We would also like to thank everyone who has visited the Armoury for an opening or during gallery hours, shared kind words of encouragement and thanks, or recommended us to others. A special thank you to our ardent supporters and advisors: Jason Yi, Sonja Thomsen, Mike Brenner, Jill Sebastian, Josie Osborne, Pegi Taylor, Mary Louise Schumacher, and finally our parents, without whom we would not have enjoyed the fantastic food and drink at every opening.

We will continue to maintain the Armoury Gallery online as an archive of our past shows and you can still contact us at this email address if you have questions about the gallery or any past artists.  

Thanks again and take care!

Cassandra and Jessica

Night Work: Gallery Online

Our Gallery Online is now complete for Night Work!  Below are a few photos from the show, but please visit our website to see the entire exhibition.  You can click around on each piece in the gallery and view it close-up.  Enjoy!

Also, we'll be open this Friday, April 17th for Gallery Night from 5:00 - 9:00 pm.  It's a great time to come by and see the show if you haven't already.

Night Work runs until May 2nd with gallery hours on Saturday from noon - 5:00 pm.

Night Work: Reception photos

Here are some photos from the opening reception on March 27th. You can view the rest of the photos HERE on our Flickr page.

Susceptible to Image review

We got a short review of our current show on the Susceptible to Images blog by Kat Murrell. The original text is below, but it's part of a much larger post you should go check out HERE.

Night Work opening at the Armoury Gallery

Openings at the Armoury Gallery are always interesting; they tend to have a good mix of people, the gallery itself is a unique space, but more than anything else, gallery proprietors Jessica Steeber and Cassandra Smith consistently put together intriguing shows. This time around, the exhibition is “Night Work,” pieces created by working art instructors. It may be night work, done after the obligations of the day (or so one could imagine), but these pieces are definitely not an afterthoughts or the remnants of creative energy.

Six artists are featured in the show, and it’s impossible to get a really good look at everything during an opening. But, I have to say I’m impressed by Nathaniel Stern and Jessica Meuninch-Ganger, whose multimedia works blend elegant forms of drawing, collage, and art history tradition integrated with digital surprises. It’s a fascinating blend of old and new art technologies.

In the Armoury Gallery, there is an additional room, a small and humble space but becoming one of my favorite gallery spots. Because it’s a closed area and set off from the general hubbub outside, it has an immediate feeling of separation, as though you’ve entered into a place where, even more so than in the main gallery area, anything can happen. This time, the room holds two works by Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg, both simple but captivating. Unravel links the three-dimensional reality with the two-dimensional possibilities of drawing, and the charming and surreal Draft simply opens up all sorts of imaginative wonderment. Elegant, simple, and inventive.