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It  would have been a great night to start a fire and cuddle with my hubby, but instead we braved the slush and visited several galleries along IDADA’ s First Friday Gallery walk.   Before I go into detail about what I saw, I want to reflect on the similarities of the three shows that I saw this evening.  They all had layers of ideas and used a type of collage method.  They were all bodies of work that were abstract with identifiable realistic elements.  Two of the shows were more serious in nature.  One was in fun.  At least one had self-portrait elements.

We started out by visiting the Harrison Center for the Arts and seeing Elizabeth Guipe Hall’s exhibition entitled A Beautiful Mind.  Her show was based on the theme of the the brain and the mind.  She creates encaustic paintings with layers of wax, some translucent while others are opaque, and collage elements.  Examples of some of the layers in her paintings include the following: an underlying drawing, geometric spirals, ribbons of color, and more clean cut shapes that have a ’stenciled’ or ’stamped’ look.  Her paintings are designs that sometimes contrast exact geometric shapes and free imperfect forms with uneven edges.  Colors, such as red, orange, blue, and purple, are used purposefully, while an overall off-white layer gives the pieces an atmospheric translucent dimension.

The theme of the brain is expressed with images of the nervous system and branching patterns.  Titles, such as Long-term Memory, or Connecting, initiate thoughts inside the viewer of the functions of the brain and mind.

Right and Left Reacquainted by Hall

The opaque surfase of the encaustic reminded Stephen of Frosting.

Long Term Memory by Hall

Then we went down to Fountain Square to visit the AV Framing Gallery and view Strumpets and Squares, mixed media works by Jenny Elkins.   Her materials ranged from clippings, to photos, to buttons, to fabric and beyond.  It is a juxtaposition of design and humor. A strumpet is an archaic term for a loose woman, and a square is a slang term for a nerd.

After narrowly escaping being stuck in a parking lot in Fountain Square, we made our way to the Circle City Industrial Complex.  I saw the third collage exhibition of the night in Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage.  Undertow by Kate Oberreich was a series of collage paintings reminiscent of landscapes of the west Michigan shoreline.  Symbols of pebbles and homes were repeated in a few of the paintings.  She used a limited palate in many of the paintings and the shapes became important in her design.

Congratulations to the opening of Flame Art Studios! I stopped by and saw the new space that is occupied by the female flame artists: Nancy Lee, Jari Sheese, and Bonnie Ramirez. Along with displaying their beautiful works of art (that you can often wear!), they also offer classes and workshops in a variety of mediums such as metalsmithing, beading, jewelry, clay, enameling, lampworking, sculpture, and welding.

Sight/ Insight will be at the Stutz Art Space from November 6-25, 2009.  The show incorporates a variety of styles ranging from abstract slashes of paint, abstract quilted fabric, exaggerated recognizable forms, jewelry, and paintings and photographs that display clearly recognizable subjects.  The artwork is juxtaposed leading the viewer to flow back and forth between the styles creating a dialogue amongst this diverse set of visual ideas.  It is a conversation between eleven different artists, with different modes of visually communication, and different perspectives on the same subject.

The curator, Carol L Myers, chose artists whose work fit the theme of ‘inspired places’.  Carol herself has lately focused on drawings. She states that her “vocabulary is natural form, but inspired place happens between pencil and paper.”  She finds that drawing is a form of praying.  I was attracted to one of her quilted painting pieces entitled, Boardwalk.  The painting in the work gives the piece a sense of space and light.  On top of the painting, sewn rectangular shapes overlap and break up the space, while the process of sewing the material draws the fabric and adds slight texture.

Below I’ve chosen a few of the types of work represented at the show:

Photography: Ginny Taylor Rosner speaks through her abandoned building photos in South Stairwell.  The stairway leads upward from the bottom right side of the page.  Light is entering from the landing at the top of the stairs in the upper left corner.  The image beckons the viewer to enter, walk up the stairs and into the light.

Abstract: Kate Oberreich’s collage, Map of New York, (on right above) is about repetition.  There is a small section of a city map in the piece.  The map contains repeated rectangular city blocks.  There are repeated circles in the upper left part of the work.  Simple vines with repeated leaves flow around the map.  Even a few drips in the piece seem to repeat themselves in color and shape.

Surreal: Home, by Lydia Burris, is a collage that juxtaposes a home and a tree in a forest with the light shining through the trees paralleling the warm light shining out of the windows of the home.

Landscape: The gallery also holds a collection of landscapes that are produced with varying levels of abstraction.  These invite the viewer to walk into nature in a place of trees, water, and immense skies.  At least one of the landscapes is a piece of jewelry by artist Leigh Dunnington-Jones entitled Sunrise on Central Avenue.  Look at both the front and the back of this piece.

Other artists who are not previously mentioned:
Susan Brewer
Karen Land
Colleen Lauter
Susan Mauck
Jerry Points
Martha Vaught
Julia Zollman Wickes

Join the conversation about inspired places starting this coming First Friday November 6, 2009.

Butterfly Clover

Three Daisy Jazz

During the month of November, stop by Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage to see, Nerve, a collection of some of the gallery owner’s personal work.  His drawings and paintings are worth an extra trip downtown when his gallery is not crowded with people and conversations, but if one only has time to view them during a First Friday, stop by the opening on November 6th.

The drawings and paintings deserve more than a cursory glance.  Do not pass them by as minimalist renderings of form, but envision the works as simplified mirrors reflecting both physical and metaphysical thoughts. Open and honest communication is at their core. Parallel to his work, his artist statement is a simple poem that opens Laku up to the viewer and leaves room for abstract ideas to breathe.

In the gallery’s main area, he has work from 1993, inspired by a county road north of Zionsville, IN (and a Burger King cup).  Within this group, he juxtaposes negative/positive space, layered paint, planes of solid color, and value transitions.  One can see a simplification of nature–very direct, concrete but beautiful in Butterfly Clover.  This piece has three sections.  1) The background is a completely smooth green color. 2) The butterfly is a simple triangle that contains a slight amount of brush strokes.  3) The purple clover is the focal point.  Here alone, the color changes in value and the strokes are free and visible.  This group is connected to his later work (mostly from 2001) that is found in the red room through the conscious simplifying of nature.

The later work refines the simplification. The work’s referent is less obvious, but not less important. The color palette and texture of the images are limited, yet they are not minimal–only simplified. Three Daisy Jazz (located in the red room) represents the continuity, journey, and conversational quality of the entire show.  This medium-sized painting shows process with its un-erased graphite lines, leftover tape, straight and jagged edges, and additive pieces.

Based on my visits to Laku’s gallery over the past year, he appears to enjoy displaying multiple stages of an artist’s work. This both contrasts and unites one body of work to another to showcase the development that defines an artist’s style. Laku continues this practice with two prior bodies of his own work.

While you are viewing Nerve, be sure to check out Nancy Lee’s beautifully designed metal jewelry.

A small disclaimer: Laku has represented my work at his gallery, so I am not a complete stranger to him.

I have three of my butterfly paintings in the 2009 IndyFringe Festival. Thistles, Fluttering Cosmopolitan, and Cynthesis were mentioned in my prior post, Trio of Painted Lady Butterflies. You can see thumbnails in that post. These works can be seen at Henry’s on East, 627 East Street, Friday, August 7, 5 – 9 pm.  Cafes, theaters and spaces along Mass Ave. have been transformed into art galleries for the IndyFringe Festival. Add it to your usual IDADA First Friday Art Walk on August 7th. I hope to see you there, but if you can’t make that Friday, then the work will be on display until August 30th.

You can vote

Make sure to stop by the temporary galleries to vote for your favorite piece of art to become one of those “Be Indypendent” stickers you have seen on your neighbors’ cars. Complimentary Barefoot Bubbly champagne cocktails will be served at each Fringe gallery, too.

The 2009 VisualFringe galleries are: Mass Ave Wine Shoppe, Theatre on the Square, Franklin Barry Gallery, Henry’s on East, Hoaglin To Go Café, Herron School of Art and Design at The Earth House, and the Fringe Gallery. Visit IndyFringe for more info and full gallery addresses.

Opening Quick Facts

August 7, 5 – 9 pm
Henry’s on East
627 East Street

Dean Johnson Gallery is hosting a black and white photography show during the month of July called. . . Black & White.  The opening is this upcoming Friday, July 3, 5 – 9 p.m. It will be part of the July IDADA First Friday Gallery Tour. If you are not able to make to the opening, you can stop by during gallery hours, Monday-Friday 11am-5pm.

I have three works in the show, Cyclist in Maastricht, Connemara Cottage, and Black Forest Foliage. All were taken during travel to Europe. I hope you are able to make it to the opening.

The Dean Johnson Gallery is located at 646 Massachusetts Avenue Indianapolis, IN 46204 on the first floor of the Dean Johnson Design building.

First Friday for May is quickly approaching and there are several places around town that my art work can be found.  I have one piece each in three group shows.

Wug Laku is hosting his retrospective show Eye Music in his gallery, Wug Laku’s Studio and Garage.  This show will include artists that have been featured in the gallery during the last two years.  You can see one of my first butterfly paintings in my upcoming series at this show.  I have included Wug’s poster promoting the event.

The official hours for this event are 6 – 9 p.m. on May 1 during the IDADA First Friday Gallery Tour. The following artists’ works will be on display: Bernadette Ostrozovich – Patrick Flaherty – Eric Jones – Rachel Steely -Mark Pack – Jim Gerard – Pam Fraizer – Nancy Lee – William Ray Denton – James Ratliff – Wug Laku. This gallery is located just above Massachusetts Avenue at 1125 Brookside Avenue C7.

Also, I will be showing one of my studies of Asian Lilie’s, Three Stages, in the Athenaeum ArtSpace’s “Spring” exhibit.  The Athenaeum ArtSpace is located in downtown Indianapolis on 401 East Michigan St, 2nd floor.

The Yarn Burners are “bombing” the Harrison Center for the Arts with knit graffiti on May 1,2009.  I look at my piece as a type of art instillation that I made out of yarn for one of the stairwell railings.

April 3, 2009 – Part III:  Harrison Center for the Arts

Time was running short and I went to the Harrison Center for the Arts as my last stop in the First Friday Hop.  Here I met up with fellow Yarn Burners to play Bingo and create a square for our group project.  Then I hurried up to see the show in the gallery.

Susan Hodgin has her new work entitled “Cairns”  in the Harrison Center Gallery.  I began and completed the night with artwork that progressed through careful exploration of ideas.  Susan Hodgin’s paintings are created with oil paint and charcoal.  Sometimes the charcoal showed through layers of paint, and at other times, the charcoal was applied on top of the paint.  There are many layers in the paintings, and one can see a swirl pattern of uplifted surface that lies underneath the paint and charcoal.  The oil paint is unmixed and yet this variant of color and tone is not used to increase a three dimensional look of the painting, but rather emphasizes the graphic quality and two-dimensional nature of the painting.  Susan uses geometric shapes, but instead of the shapes appearing mechanical, they appear organic.  Most of the backgrounds, although they have color and light fading softly in and out, are somewhat flat, which counterparts nicely with the foreground.  Helium, on the other hand, is a painting that jumped out to me because the background seems more alive with light.  The background of Helium interacts more completely with the foreground “circles” of color.  It is a pleasing body of work.

April 3, 2009 -Part II:  Mass Ave

I continued the First Friday art hop by traveling down Mass Ave to the McFee Gallery and Studio.  The main artist shown this month is Kelly Gentry.  Her work falls easy on the eye.  There seems to be three related series of works.  One has a silhouette of a single person, usually walking away from the viewer, holding a colorful umbrella.  The backgrounds of these paintings are mostly blotches of bright colored paint creating the look of a mist.  The paintings would  seem lonely, perhaps, if not for the brightness of the background.  Something draws me whimsically toward these.  The second series has a similar misty background with calligraphic lines of thick acrylic paint on top.  The third is a series of tree silhouettes on colorful skies.  The trees are simple with enough branches to be used as design elements.
Art Bank.  My first venture into the Art Bank brought me in contact with a melding of different styles and types of art.  Gina Soo Golden’s realistic figurative work (paintings that also seem to have feeling and purpose) shares a room with Dale Kercheud’s post-impressionist type paintings.  Rosanna Hall’s realistic landscapes are around the bend from a simplified abstract landscape by Steve Woerner.

April 3, 2009 – Part I:  Circle Center Industrial Complex

This month had a pleasing array of good art shows in the downtown gallery scene of Indianapolis, Indiana.  I started off my evening by visiting wUG LAKU’s STUDIO & gARAGE.  The current show is a representation from Wug’s earlier work, and is entitled “Raw.”  The developments of his ideas concerning his investigation into nature and language are shown through several unfinished sketches and early paintings. The early paintings are different from the digitally manipulated photographs of his more recent work, and yet somehow they seemed the same.  Unfortunately (or fortunately) a First Friday is also a time of socialization, and I did not delve into the art show as much as it deserved.  There are deep questions, thoughts, and art making going on in the garage.

From there I ran into a show by another artist I know, Dave Voelpel.  Dave does abstract landscape paintings and had his show in the Five Seasons Studio Gallery.  Lately he has incorporated the palate knife into his work giving long soft strokes in his thick paint.  I have seen paintings of his where he has used a variety of things to thicken the paint…even coffee grinds!  Dave Voelpel also had a few collages on display.  It was interesting to see the designs he made with his patchwork of recognizable images.

The final stop in the circle city complex was at Matthew Davey’s new studio.  The studio was sparse, but had a few nice figurative works in it.  There were two drawings of female nudes on one wall, a huge (10 feet? by 6 feet?) painting against one wall, another drawing on a third wall and a medium sized sculpture set up in an adjoining room.  This little adjoining room was set up reminiscent to me, as a shrine.  The sculpture (Lily, Lily, Rose) was sharply lit from the front (which was disappointing to someone who wanted to study it from all angles, but provided excellent, sharp lighting for the front of the sculpture), and there was soft music playing in the background.  It was a wonderful, detailed bronze sculpture of a nude woman with her arms above her head and her face cast upward.  It was set upon a pedestal that is reminiscent of a nail.  Around the foot of the pedestal was a pile of smooth rocks.  It was beautiful.

The Harrison Center for the Arts is having its annual color-themed holiday show, this Friday, 6 to 10pm. This year’s show is brown, so you know that I would want to participate. Gone to Pieces, (titled Eggshell in the Portfolio) has been selected for inclusion in Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String . The Harrison Gallery boasts monthly show focusing primarily on Indianapolis artists. The gallery provides an entertaining atmosphere that is welcoming to the seasoned gallery hopper and the novice alike.

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String opens this Friday, December 5 and runs through December 27. The show opening corresponds with the Harrison Center’s First Friday artist reception and open studio night and with IDADA’s First Friday Gallery Tour.

The Harrison Art Gallery
1505 North Delaware
Indianapolis, IN 46202
317.238-0998
December 5, 6 to 10pm

If you are unable to view the gallery on the opening night, the gallery is open Monday-Friday 9-5pm and Saturday 12-4pm.