SOFT SHAPES
A small group exhibition featuring Hannah Demma, Matel Rokke and April White
The Burkholder Project, Outback Gallery Lincoln, Nebraska
February 3, 2023 – February 28, 2023
CURATOR’S NOTES
Soft Shapes is a small group exhibition of Lincoln based artists, Hannah Demma, Matel Rokke and April White whose work showcases the element of shape. The element of shape can utilize pattern, balance and unity to evoke illusions that propel narrative and mood. Whether abstracted, symbol focused or recognizable imagery, shape has the potential for both dynamic compositional play and subtle visual interaction through its use of positivenegative relationships and its various configurations that allow for the juxtaposition of simplicity and complexity.
Shape is part of the foundational art core that everyone understands at a very young age. Those labeled creative or non creative have been cultivated to recognize the basic geometric and organic 2D element that is present in everything.
With vibrancy and a visible tension that promises motion, Hannah Demma’s Prismatic Cell paintings are reminiscent of looking through a kaleidoscope and her drawings in the Shape Shift Series showcases tiny organic specimens on display against a soft checkboard surface. Matel Rokke’s photograms are eerie object studies that beckon the viewer to look beyond the surface’s shape and into the object’s anatomy. With layers seen and hidden, April White’s compositions incorporate the action of play into the observational process.
It is interesting to consider that each artist has created an opportunity for the viewer to consider shape as a type of scientific specimen through the assumption of what we think shapes can create in the real world through the power of our perceptive musings. Soft Shapes is more than just an educationally extension of our understanding of the element of shape. It is a response to the world around us, a catalog of experience, observation and dreamy possibilities.
Erin Malia Cross, Assistant Professor of Art, Doane University Guest Curator, The Burkholder Project. Lincoln, NE
HANNAH
DEMMA: ARTIST STATEMENT AND BIO
Hannah Demma is an avid outdoorswoman, outdoor educator, and lifelong Nebraskan. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of NebraskaLincoln in 2017, and her Master of Fine Arts in the Spring of 2022 with an emphasis on Printmaking and Papermaking.
In 2018 Hannah received the Kimmel Foundation Emerging Artist Award, and a Mayor’s Art Award. She completed an artist residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center in Nebraska City, and served as a visiting artist at Maxey Elementary School. Hannah’s passion for art education has taken her to Lincoln, Montana where she lead the education programing for an outdoor sculpture park, Blackfoot Pathways Sculpture in the Wild. Hannah has served as coordinator for the Cedar Point Biological Station Art Program since 2017. In 2021 Hannah received the Dan and Barbara Howard Creative Achievement Award, and in 2022 she was awarded the Francis William Vreeland Award in Art. After receiving an Emerging Artist Scholarship for the 2022 Lincoln Arts Festival, she was awarded Best in Show.
In my studio I lead a rich fantasy life. I am excited and enchanted by the interplay of color, pattern, and texture in a variety of mediums but always involving paper, most often, paper I’ve handmade. I look to the natural world for inspiration in my work. Approaching the work as a scientist or naturalist might, I observe, hypothesize, and run experiments. Then I interpret and process my findings. I consider creative play and intuitive investigation into materials hallmarks of my practice.
No material or medium is off limits in my studio. I cut up and collage old paintings/prints/drawings onto my sheets of handmade paper, and then work additively and reductively in turn using materials like acrylic or gouache paint, ink, and colored pencils to transform several seemingly disparate elements into complex, cohesive, multilayered works of art.
I think a lot about deep time specifically. The way things in nature are formed over the many millennia the additions and reductions in the landscape fascinate me. The area in Eastern Nebraska where I live was once an inland sea. We have saline wetlands as remnants of the salty sea that once engulfed the land. I ask a lot of questions about nature that I don’t have the scientific background to really know without further study, and sometimes I hold off on that research and let my imagination try and reconcile what I find first. The excitement of not knowing, and my curiosity to find out drive my work.
LIST OF WORK
Untitled (Prism Cell Series) 22 X 30” Gouache and acrylic 2022
Untitled (Prism Cell Series) 22 X 30” Gouache and acrylic 2022
Untitled (Prism Cell Series) 22 X 30” Gouache and acrylic 2022
Untitled (Shape Shifts Series) 5 x 7" Acrylic, color pencil 2023
Untitled (Shape Shifts Series) 5 x 7" Acrylic, color pencil 2023
Untitled (Shape Shifts Series) 5 x 7" Acrylic, color pencil 2023
Untitled (Shape Shifts Series) 5 x 7" Acrylic, color pencil 2023
Untitled (Shape Shifts Series) 5 x 7" Acrylic, color pencil 2023
Untitled (Shape Shifts Series) 5 x 7" Acrylic, color pencil 2023
MATEL ROKKE:
ARTIST STATEMENT AND BIO
Matel Rokke is a photographer living in Lincoln Nebraska. She studied Fine Art at the University of Nebraska Lincoln with an emphasis in photography and graduated with a BFA in 2001. She continued her studies, earning her MFA, at Hartford Art School in 2004. Rokke’s work utilizes different types of photographic practices which range from historical processes to digital with family, memory, and collections as a common concept throughout. Her work has been shown nationally including New York, Connecticut and Minnesota. She is currently on faculty at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha and is co-owner of Tsuru Boutique in Lincoln
The collection of images or objects have been recurring in all of my work as I persist in photographic exploration. Combining multimedia techniques as well as historical and current photographic practices creates an opportunity to integrate multiple voices from the past, present and future into one visual and contextual conversation to while investigating the idea of self.
LIST OF WORK
Cosmos, color photogram, 2 8x10 prints, 2023
Occupied Looking, color photogram, 2 8x10 prints, 2023
Her Flowers, color photogram, 2 8x10 prints, 2023
Dots Drinks, color photogram, 2 8x10 prints, 2023
Two Snaps, color photogram, 2 8x10 prints, 2023
8 top, color photogram, 2 8x10 prints, 2023
APRIL WHITE: ARTIST STATEMENT AND BIO
My work explores the impact that color has on human behavior and emotion during life’s transitional periods. Heavily relying on a sense of comfort, I construct warm, vivid tapestries of patterns through loose forms to encapsulate fluid, yet unstable moments in time and memory.
April White is an artist born in Frankfort, Kentucky who currently resides in Lincoln, Nebraska. Her work emphasizes color through themes of behavior, western esotericism, and the macabre. She creates both traditionally and digitally, with a primary focus on painting and needlework. Her work has been installed at global tech facilities as well as exhibited at Tugboat Gallery.
LIST OF WORK
Saturday Morning Cartoons, Mixed Media on Canvas, 15” x 30” 2019
Wedged Between Planes, Mixed Media on Canvas, 36” x 36” 2022
Digging Tunnels, Mixed Media on Canvas, 24 x 48, 2022
Full of Grubs, Mixed Media on Canvas, 24” x 48” 2022
Nucleus, Mixed Media on Canvas,12” x 36” 2021
Terra, Mixed Media On Canvas, 15” x 30” 2019
Thank you to The Burkholder Project in Lincoln, NE for agreeing to host this exhibition and entrusting me with the Outback Gallery’s space.
