Whatchamacallit Thingamajig

Whatchamacallit Thingamajig Ramsay Barnes John Bohl Seth Crawford Joseph Faura Sam Gibbons Jordan Kasey Nicole Shiflet Ailsa Staub

The Silber ART Gallery Goucher College Athenaeum

Whatchamacallit Thingamajig Ramsay Barnes John Bohl Seth Crawford Joseph Faura Sam Gibbons Jordan Kasey Nicole Shiflet Ailsa Staub

“ If ignorance is bliss, then I must be the happiest thingamajig in the whatchamacallit!”

— Unknown

In Whatchamacallit Thingamajig, Ramsay Barnes, John Bohl, Seth Crawford, Joseph Faura, Sam Gibbons, Jordan Kasey, Nicole Shiflet, and Ailsa Staub creatively transform otherwise-mundane objects into works of art. Through drawing, collage, paint, mixed media, video, sculpture, and interactive installation, these eight artists embody fragments of elements that seem familiar but are not easily identified.

— Curator Laura Amussen

Ramsay Barnes

Ramsay Barnes is deeply interested in both natural and manmade objects. He wants to understand their purposes. His gasket series demonstrates a desire to translate something of personal interest into a new visual experience that reflects on natural beauty, contradiction, and construction. Barnes’ subjects are sometimes dangerous, yet he desires to make them beautiful. In capturing these oftentimes obscure components, the end result is ambiguous.

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Float Bowl, 2012 graphite on paper 22” x 30”

John Bohl

Untitled, 2013 acrylic and gouache on paper 19� x 15�

John Bohl uses painting as a platform to examine ideas of utopia, kitsch, and romanticism. His work pulls together a wide array of materials: modernist painting, Internet imagery, and vintage cartoons. In his compositions, seemingly straightforward objects quickly become tangled in a net of countless references and allusions. His paintings are intended to keep viewers in flux and force them to examine their environment more carefully.

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Seth Crawford

In his work, Seth Crawford lays out just a sample from what he sees as the “Universe of Stuff.” For his Whatchamacallit Thingamajig piece, he makes his statement using a cat, colors, a cone, and a large water cooler reminiscent of the ones used at construction sites and youth soccer games.

Lady Tiger Vuvuzela #3 (Calico), 2013 mixed media on water cooler 56” x 12” x 12”

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Two Moons, or Why the Full Moon Hates Me, 2011 Installation: overhead projectors, light table, digital prints on polymer film variable sizes

Joseph Faura

Joseph Faura’s digital prints, drawings, mixed-media collages, animations, and interactive installations playfully highlight the irrationality of celebrity worship and beauty icons, and they poke fun at a hidden polytheistic mythos behind the low art of fashion magazines. His participatory work invites viewers to create collages on glowing orbs, arranging transparent cutouts of animal heads, human body parts, and random objects on overhead projectors.

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Sam Gibbons

Sam Gibbons’ paintings are driven by an infatuation with cartoons, comics, and animation. Borrowing from recognizable images, he redraws familiar characters, skewing and contorting their original form.

In this way viewers are struck with vague recollection—a shape that suggests a cartoon they may remember but might not be able to pin down. Gibbons’ characters are often placed into violent or sexual scenes, further obscuring the intent of the original source.

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Helter Skelter, 2011 acrylic on panel 48” x 32”

Jordan Kasey

Whale’s Rib Cage with Rocks, 2012 oil on canvas 48” x 96”

Jordan Kasey is interested in the power of a simple composition on a large scale to evoke a sense of monumentality or confrontation.

Using imagery that is ambiguous yet familiar, she combines life with lifeless elements— rocks, light, ocean, sky—all entities that are enduring and universal.

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Nicole Shiflet Nicole Shiflet is drawn to reinterpretation of found imagery, such as old science textbooks. She forms creatures and situations that tell a story that often can be lost when trying too hard to put into words.

So much of what is seen and experienced every day gets tangled in translation from one person’s interpretation to the next.

Shiflet’s work shows that’s where humor, beauty, and unique variety lie.

Fox’s Misunderstanding: 102, 2012 archival inkjet print on watercolor paper 11” x 14”

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July Island, 2013 mixed media 97” x 32” x 20”

Ailsa Staub

Working primarily in mixed-media construction and assemblage, Ailsa Staub explores the idea and implications of narrative abstract landscape through sculpture. This landscape or environment becomes a hybrid place in which the boundaries between interior and exterior, domestic and outdoors, are blurred. Recognizable materials connote familiar experiences while also calling to question place and purpose.

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Whatchamacallit Thingamajig Ramsay Barnes John Bohl Seth Crawford Joseph Faura

Sam Gibbons Jordan Kasey Nicole Shiflet Ailsa Staub

September 3 – October 6, 2013 artists’ Reception

Friday, September 20, 2013, 6-9 p.m.

The Silber Gallery

Goucher College Athenaeum Directions

Gallery Hours

Baltimore Beltway, I-695, to exit 27A. Make first left onto campus.

11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Tuesday – Sunday 410-337-6477

The Silber Gallery program is funded with the assistance of grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the state of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Baltimore County Commission on the Arts and Sciences.

www.goucher.edu/silber

14060-J2328 09/13

The exhibit is free and open to the public.