Material Matters, Seager Gray Gallery, 2016

material

MATTERS

M aterial M atters Lucrezia Bieler . Joe Brubaker . Kim Bruce . Squeak Carnwath . Lia Cook Stephen Paul Day . Ellen George . Andrew Hayes . Margaret Keelan . Lisa Kokin Ted Larsen . Sibylle Peretti . Alexander Rohrig . Jane Rosen . Tim Tate . Barbara Wildenboer

Material Matters Lucrezia Bieler . Joe Brubaker . Kim Bruce . Squeak Carnwath . Lia Cook Stephen Paul Day . Ellen George . Andrew Hayes . Margaret Keelan . Lisa Kokin Ted Larsen . Sibylle Peretti . Alexander Rohrig . Jane Rosen . Tim Tate . Barbara Wildenboer

Exhibition Dates: January 30 - February 28 Reception for the Artist: Saturday, February 6, 5:30 - 7:30 Front Cover: Lisa Kokin, Best Wishes, detail, mixed media sewn found photo collage, 72 x 96 x 1”

Back Cover: Sibylle Peretti, Making Birds, carved, engraved, silvered & painted acrylic, feathers, paper, 15 x 36 x 1” Photo Credits:

Lucrezia Bieler : Peter Beerli

Joe Brubaker: Tim Karjalainen

Squeak Carnwath: M. Lee Fatherree Stephen Paul Day: Mike Smith Andrew Hayes: Steve Mann

Margaret Keelan: Scott McCue

Alexander Rohrig: Scotty McDonald

Lisa Kokin: Lia Roozendaal, www.jagwiredesign.com Jane Rosen: Scotty McDonald

Curated by Donna Seager and Suzanne Gray Direct inquiries to:

Seager Gray Gallery

108 Throckmorton Avenue Mill Valley, CA 94941 415.384.8288

www.seagergray.com All Rights Reserved

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Lucrezia Bieler Swiss artist, Lucrezia Bieler creates work made from a single sheet of black paper. The process is called Scherenschnitte which means “scissor cuts” in German. It is like woodcutting or sculpting, in that you start with a blank resource and create the art by simply cutting parts of it away. In either case, precision is paramount and demands full concentration.

The Scherenschnitte tradition was founded in Switzerland and Germany in the 16th century, and was brought to Colonial America in the 18th century.

Bieler’s concerns are more about intricacy and patterned detail - in pushing the boundaries of what she can do with a simple piece of paper. She loves the fragility of the paper and is interested in themes of balance and harmony in nature. She is particularly enthused by this process when she succeeds in making cuttings with lines that are no thicker than thread-width. Her only tool is a small pair of scissors which she prefers to exacto knives because they allow for more curved organic shapes.

Bieler graduated in 1988 from the Art College in Zurich “Höhere Schule für Gestaltung” with honors as a scientific illustrator. her work in cut paper has been a frequent exhibitor in the yearly Smithsonian Craft (Bronze award 2012, Gold Artist’s award 2015) and the Philadelphia Museum Craft Show (L. K. Binswanger Price 2008). She also exhibits in international shows, for example at the Paper Biennial in Rijswijk in the Netherlands (2014) and the paper exhibit Global 2015 in Degendorf, Germany.

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Lucrezia Bieler

Lazy Sunday Afternoon, 2013

cut from a single piece of black paper 21 x 14 x 25”

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Lucrezia Bieler

Hummingbird Shadow, 2016

cut from a single piece of black paper 4.5 x 4.5 x 1”

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Joe Brubaker Joe Brubaker’s recent exhibition, Lost and Found, was a masterful display of years of creative work in wood.

Examples of his range of expression include the expressively carved, Stella and abstract composition Mojave II. Stella appears like a three-dimensional figure from an artist’s sketchbook, her torso rough-hewn and just at the edge of becoming real, her face articulated just enough to suggest an interior being coming through. Brubaker’s Mojave Series, is a shout out to Louise Nevelson, but with Brubaker’s light touch. The composition of textures and varied shades of white extend beyond the fixed rectangle allowing the work to interact with the outside environment.

Joe Brubaker was born in Lebanon, Missouri and raised in Southern California. He received his B.A. from Sacramento State University, then attended UCLA where he earned his MA and MFA. From 1980 to 1988 he lectured in Art and Design at UCLA, as well as at Long Beach State from 1982 to 1984.

In 1987 Joe moved with his wife and two children to the San Francisco Bay Area. He continued to teach as an Art and Design lecturer at both San Francisco State from 1989 to 1994 and Academy of Art College from 1989 to 1997. He retired from teaching in 1997 to begin full time work on his own sculpture.

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3. Joe Brubaker Stella, 2015

carved wood, found materials, acrylic 58 x 15 x 9”

4. Joe Brubaker

Mojave II, 2015

Port Orford cedar, milk paint, prismacolor 29 x 29 x 6”

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Kim Bruce Kim Bruce’s Totums, five scrolled texts, some wrapped loosely in black waxed linen twine hang on a wall. They are compelling in their tight dense construction and the presence of text. The title comes from “totum pro parte,” which is Latin for “the whole for a part.” It refers to a kind of synecdoche, which when used in a context of language means that something is named after something of which it is only a part. The objects are ambiguous, but might call to mind the five books of the Torah, or native American totems - objects, both large and small in scale, that were created as emblems of the history of a family or clan.

Bruce uses books and other found materials with encaustic to create objects that explore issues of identity and gender. While the works might be specific references to her own experience, her intention is to leave them open-ended enough to allow others to bring their own impressions to what they see. Often Bruce’s work explores the dichotomy of early life expectations to conform to a traditional woman’s role and to adhere to prescribed modes of behavior learned in her upbringing, sometimes in conflict with her need for honest creative expression and selfsufficiency.

Bruce studied fine art at The Alberta College of Art & Design and The University of Calgary from 1989 to 2002. She holds a degree in Interior Design where she received her diploma from Mount Royal University in 1977. A native Calgarian, she has been published in the New York Times in conjunction with a group show at the R & F Gallery in Kingston, N.Y. and the exhibition catalog from the Grassi Museum in Leipzig, Germany. She has also been reviewed in See Magazine, FFWD Magazine and The Gauntlet. Her work is in the collection of the Alberta Foundations for the Arts and is privately and publicly collected throughout Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands.

5. Kim Bruce

Totums, 2015

altered book with encaustic and found objects 10 x 12 x 1.75”

6. Kim Bruce

Totums, 2015, detail of Totum V

altered book with encaustic and found objects 10 x 2 x 1.75”

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Squeak Carnwath Squeak Carnwath’s distinctive style of painting and rich beautiful surfaces have been an inspiration to many artists in the San Francisco Bay Area. Soon after graduating with an MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts, Carnwath received a Visual Arts Fellowship grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a SECA Art Award in 1980 from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which included a solo exhibition at the museum. In 1994, she was awarded the Guggenheim fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Carnwath’s works on canvas combine text and images, often diaristic elements and thoughts on the role of the artist. Working with oil and alkyd, she is able to impart an irresistible physical presence onto canvas. Her recent New York exhibition garnered notice from both the New York Times and Art in America, in which writer Tatiana Istomina writes, “Carnwath’s principal talent is her ability to transform inert materials into something akin to living matter. In her work, every wobbly line has a character, each handwritten word has its own quirky temperament, and dabs of color have different shapes and moods. . .”

We selected two large paintings for the exhibition, allowing viewers to experience the physicality of the deep rich surfaces while taking in the varied content and opportunity for free association so present in Carnwath’s work.

7. Squeak Carnwath Mars, 2012

oil and alkyd on canvas over panel 75 x 65”

8. Squeak Carnwath Star Chart, 2012

oil and alkyd on canvas over panel 75 x 65”

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Lia Cook Connectome 2 by Lia Cook is a recent woven work showing the artist’s face peering through what appears to be waving colored threads.

They are actually the artist’s own “fiber tracts”, an unexpected result involved in the experimental use of Diffusion Spectrum Imaging (DSI) in which the fibers of the brain connections that run through the white matter of the brain can be imaged using MRI technology. ..a kind of double self-portrait Cook became involved in this technology in 2010 when she had a residency at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Dept. of Psychiatry to explore the nature of the emotional response to woven faces in collaboration with neuroscientists.

The other work in the exhibition is an early small weaving called Portrait of Kalle (the artist’s son), an uncharacteristically small work of a sleeping newborn. The contours of the baby’s features and blanket are so organic , it replicates the rolling shapes of natural landscape captured exquisitely in the woven medium.

Lia Cook combines digital technology and traditional influences in her work using the Jacquard loom and other innovative processes.

Her cutting edge work blurs the distinctions between the traditionally disparate media of computer technology, weaving, painting, and photography. Using personal portraiture as a visual base, Cook’s work lingers on the edge of intimate and monumental.

Cook is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including several NEA grants, the California Arts Council Fellowship, and the Flintridge Foundation Fellowship. Her work is in the permanent collections of major international museums including the Museum of Modern Art, NYC; the American Museum of Art and Design, NYC; the Metropolitan Museum, NYC; and the French National Collection of Art, Paris.

9. Lia Cook

Connectome 2, 2015 cotton, rayon, woven 67 x 51”

10. Lia Cook

Portrait of Kalle, 2001 cotton, rayon, woven 9.5 x 11.5”

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Stephen Paul Day Stephen Paul Day is, in his own words, an “avid seeker of the curious and wonderful.”

His work often mines popular culture, history and fairy tales for the contradictions inherent in contemporary culture. Living in New Orleans, Day did not have to go far to find inspiration for his cast crystal and bronze sculpture, Claudia, the neveraging five year old vampire from the Vampire Chronicles written by New Orleans native, Anne Rice. Claudia is forever stuck in the young girl’s body, perfect as a china doll but never becoming a woman.

Stephen Paul Day lives in New Orleans and works part-time in Berlin Germany.

His main studies began at the Ecole Des Beaux Arts in Paris from 1979 to 1983.

He had his first solo show in New Orleans at the alternative Bienville gallery in 1985. In 1986 he received the first of many artist residencies at the Experimental Glass Workshop in New York City. He stayed for six years. During this time, he was awarded a grant to study with Laurie Anderson at the Banff Art Center, worked with Dennis Oppenheim and Jenny Holzer. He began to teach at the BildWerk Art Akademy in Frauenau Germany where he currently teaches. In 1993, he and his partner, Sibylle Peretti founded the collaborative group, Club S&S. Their exhibitions include, 1822 at the CAC in New Orleans,Diluvial Hood at the Freies Museum, Berlin, and an unofficial Souvenir Wagon for Prospect-1. Their awards include two Joan Mitchell grants, a Pollack Krasner grant, and a Warhol foundation award.

11. Stephen Paul Day Claudia, 2015

cast lead crystal and bronze 9.5 x 7.5 x 5”

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Ellen George 12. Ellen George

Pacific Blue, 2015

polymer, ink, and aluminum 12 x .625 x .5”

13. Ellen George

Green Brush, 2015

polymer, ink, and aluminum 12 x 1.5 x .25”

14. Ellen George

Stillpoint, 2015

polymer, ink, and aluminum 12 x .375 x .25”

15. Ellen George

Untitled (Elemental 10), 2015 polymer, ink, and aluminum 12 x .687 x .43”

16. Ellen George

Untitled (Elemental 12), 2015 polymer, ink, and aluminum 12 x .875 x .25”

17. Ellen George

Untitled (Elemental 13), 2015 polymer, ink, and aluminum 12 x 1.25 x .25”

18. Ellen George

Untitled (Elemental 14), 2015 polymer, ink, and aluminum 12 x 1.125 x .25”

Ellen George creates abstract work made of richly colored polymer clay, a low temperature curing plastic clay. She works exclusively with translucent clay, mixing her own colors, taking care that even the most saturated colors remain translucent.

When cured, polymer clay has the permanence and durability of acrylic paint.

George works palm-size, manipulating the polymer clay over and over with her hands and fingertips, immersed in the tactile connection. Modulating between saturated and muted color, the translucent forms of her work relate to simple elements in nature, like twigs, petals or stones, but ultimately, they become their own sensual species. For George, working in a diminutive scale offers a feeling of timelessness and a sense of infinity.

Ellen George was born on Galveston Island to two doctors, a native Texan, and a first generation Chinese mother. Among her earliest memories are visions of tiny aquatic life, teeming in drops of Gulf water, collected and seen under the microscope in her parent’s lab. She received a BA in art from Austin College, and has studied at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland.

George’s work is widely exhibited and featured in many private and public collections including the Oregon Health and Science University, the Museum of East Texas, the 4Culture, King County (Seattle WA) Public Art Collection, and the Tacoma Art Museum. She has received residencies at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology on the Oregon coast and the c3:initiative in Portland. She has a large-scale permanent glass installation in the Nines Hotel atrium, in Portland, Oregon.

Ellen has lived in the Pacific Northwest over twenty years. Her work appears courtesy of PDX Contemporary Art in Portland, Oregon.

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Andrew Hayes Andrew Hayes works with torches, grinders and raw steel to create works characterized by their sensitivity and grace. In using book pages, Hayes increases the vocabulary of sculpture by adding ephemeral elements of fluidity (pages) that suggest content without using the content as a literal part of the work. The desert landscape where Hayes grew up inspired much of his early work and in his recent one person exhibiton at the gallery, there is a return to those influences incorporating the book pages in new and interesting ways.

In Swage, for example, the sand-colored steel base curves downward in a way that simulates rolling hills or a coastline. The paper, like water, takes the shape of it’s container. In Rest, the extended length of the rough-edged and browned paper and the rough surface of the steel could be inspired by southwestern mesas. Hayes never glues the book pages. They are held in place by the pressure of the steel and a rod that goes through, holding them in place.

Andrew Hayes grew up in Tucson, Arizona and studied sculpture at Northern Arizona University. The desert landscape inspired much of his early sculptural work and allowed him to cultivate his style in fabricated steel. After leaving school, Andrew worked in the industrial welding trade. While living in Portland, Oregon, bouncing between welding jobs and creating his own work he was invited to the EMMA collaboration. This one-week experience was liberating for Andrew and he was encouraged by his fellow collaborators to apply to the Core Fellowship at Penland School of Crafts. During his time as a Core Fellow, Andrew was able to explore a variety of materials and techniques. Surprisingly, the book became a big part of this exploration. In this work he faces the challenge of marrying the rigid qualities of metal with the delicacy of the book page.

His work has been embraced by collectors and he has been included in exhibitions and collections at Yale University, Hartford University, the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey and the Mesa Contemporary Art Museum in Mesa, Arizona to name a few.

His September exhibition in the gallery was a resounding success garnering critical review and many new collectors.

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19. Andrew Hayes Swage, 2015

altered book, steel, paint 12 x 9 x 3”

20. Andrew Hayes Rest, 2015

altered book, steel, paint 13.5 x 11 x 7”

21. Margaret Keelan Sing, 2016

clay 32 x 10.5 x 6”

22. Margaret Keelan

Small Creatures, 2016 clay 19.5 x 9 x 11”

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Margaret Keelan Margaret Keelan’s figurative sculptures incorporate the look of nineteenth century dolls with surfaces that have been glazed, stained, fired, then glazed, stained and fired again, giving the feeling of disintegrating paint over weathered wood. This softening and reduction of form is a metaphor to the artist for life being lived - “my exploration of the process of growing up and growing older.” In her clay sculpture, Sing, an impressive 32 inch tall clay figure of a child stands on a stool holding a bird aloft. With her weathered surface and smiling expression she is emblematic of endurance and spirit. Like the bird, she is both vulnerable and strong but determinedly good-natured. The one word title functions on many levels. It speaks to the bird, the child and the viewer. In Small Creatures the child sits on the ground, her legs tucked under looking straight ahead with a mouse on her head. Her expression is direct, guileless, as is the mouse’s. The image has a strange dichotomy – innocent and menacing at the same time.

Margaret Keelan received her BFA at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and her MFA at the University of Utah. Recent exhibitions have included solo shows at the Duane Reed Gallery in St. Louis, MO, and the Gail Severn Gallery, Sun Valley, ID. Other venues have been in Chicago, New York, Santa Fe, and Seattle.

Her work has also been showcased in the following publications: 500 Figures in Clay: Ceramic Artists Celebrate the Human Form, Ceramics: Art and Perception, Confrontational Ceramics, and Ceramics and the Human Figure.

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23 23. Lisa Kokin

Best Wishes, 2001

mixed media sewn found photo collage 72 x 96 x 1”

24. Lisa Kokin

Vernacular, 2015

mixed media, thread, canvas

25.75 x 22.5”

25. Lisa Kokin

Errata, 2015

thread, industrial felt

18.5 x 23.5 x 1.5”

Lisa Kokin Lisa Kokin is a visual artist and her work in mixed media installation, altered books, fiber, thread, found photos and sculpture has been exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad. Her magnum opus, Best Wishes is a dramatic presence in the exhibiton, a mixed media collage with found photos. Kokin would find troves of discarded photographs at flea markets and second hand stores. The photographs, being of real people with real lives, are eerily generic and highly personal at the same time. Painstakingly backing each one with cotton batting and drawing paper, Kokin gives these hundreds of anonymous individuals a new life, joining them together with thread – a community of strangers.

In her new works, Vernacular and Errata, (2015), Kokin explores her current interest in asemic writing – ways of replicating text.

The series began with Facsimile, Kokin’s one person exhibiton using zipper teeth and thread to duplicate actual pages from dictionaries, historic texts and literature - some from her collection of the books of her grandfather. In Vernacular, the intricate shapes and materials of various small fasteners and sewing notions suggest a multifarious and indecipherable language, like runes. Errata has the text lines filled with bunched threads coming from the neat lines of the text block. The title, humorously, is the plural of erratum which means “an error in printing or writing.” At first the piece might look like a botched sewing job where the threads became entangled, but Kokin took that effect and controlled it, ingeniously discovering yet another method of replicating text in remarkable abstraction.

Lisa Kokin received her BFA and MFA from the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA. The recipient of numerous awards and grants, Kokin was most recently given the Dorothy Saxe Award from the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. In addition to her one person exhibition, How the West Was Sewn at the Boise Art Museum, she has been included in group exhibitions at numerious museums across the country, most recently and currently at the Brooklyn Public Library, the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham WA and the Everhart Museum in Scranton, PA.

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Ted Larsen

Ted Larsen salvages his painted scrap metal from cars, buildings, industrial equipment, appliances - wherever he can find it. He cuts the metal into large sections at the site and then into smaller sections in the studio. The colors and aging of the metal add a patina of time to the finely made finished works. He particularly likes to find cars old enough to have been painted with lead-based paints, those blues, oranges, beiges, yellows and reds in his work that are chalky and subdued rather than metallic and shiny. The formal simplicity and elegance of these works make an engaging contrast with the foraging process of dismantling old artifacts of the past.

Larsen is a nationally exhibiting artist and Pollock-Krasner Foundation recipient with a BA from Northern Arizona University. His work has been exhibited widely in museums in the US, including the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, The Albuquerque Museum, The Amarillo Museum of Art, The Spiva Center for the Arts in Joplin, Missouri, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

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26. Ted Larsen

Hard Curve, 2015

salvage steel, plywood, silicone, vulcanized rubber, hardware 12 x 10 x 4.5”

27. Ted Larsen

Whole Half, 2015

salvage steel, plywood, silicone, vulcanized rubber, hardware 12 x 12 x 4.5”

28. Ted Larsen

Absence of Presence, 2015

salvage steel, plywood, silicone, vulcanized rubber, hardware 5 x 7 x 5”

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29. Sibylle Peretti

Girl with Deer, 2010

engraved, painted plexiglass, paper 15 x 36 x 1�

30. Sibylle Peretti

Making Birds, 2014

carved, engraved, silvered & painted plexiglass, feathers, paper 12 x 12 x 4.5�

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Sibylle Peretti Sibylle Peretti grew up in an environment surrounded by traditional glassmaking. The nature of this craft was focused on skills designed towards the production of high-end decorative and functional glass objects. Trained as a glass designer at the State School for Glass Making in Zwiesel Germany, Peretti learned the techniques of enameling, engraving, cutting and designing glass. She was given the skills necessary to embellish a functional object with a sense of wondrous beauty. Wanting to push the material further, she studied sculpture and painting at the Fine Arts academy of Cologne. There she discovered the freedom to translate her artistic visions in glass, which were supported and enforced by using the craftsmanship she acquired from the school of design.

The fragility and translucency of the material afforded her an added dimension, an extra layer to enhance her ideas of humanity’s temporal existence. Beneath the surface, she could produce a mysterious world, a dreamlike atmosphere where connections are tenuous and brittle.

Recently, Peretti has found that she can utilize these skills using layered acrylic. In Making Birds and Girl with Deer, the artist uses her signature and poignant images of children. “Children,” she states, “who represent vulnerability are placed in a diaphanous universe of potential solutions and revived through a new and intimate, perhaps mystical reconnection to nature.”

Peretti has been the recipient of many awards and grants, including the United States Artists, Friends Fellowship Grant, the Joan Mitchell Professional Career Grant and the Pollock- Krasner Grant. She has had numerous residency grants and has been a visiting instructor in various institutions. Her work is in numerous collections. Among them are the Montreal Art Museum, Montreal, Canada, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, the Museum fuer Angewandte Kunst, MAK Frankfurt, Germany, the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA and the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY.

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Alexander Rohrig Alexander Rohrig lives and works in magnificent surroundings in the mountains in San Gregorio. After completing his education at the University of California in Santa Cruz, Rohrig took a position as studio assistant to artist and sculptor Jane Rosen in 2009 on her ranch, a beautiful natural preserve high in the California mountains. Under Rosen’s tutelage and with his daily practice of drawing from these extraordinary surroundings, Rohrig developed a drawing style and vision all his own. He was featured in three exhibitions in 2015 and was the subject of an article in Works and Conversation, an insightful chronicle of California art and artists published and written by Richard Whittaker.

Rohrig works minimally, getting the “bones” down before moving on.

He has a studied restraint, careful not to cloud the original essence of the thing he is aiming at. In his extraordinary sculpture, Black Horse, the animal stands on one hoof, his powerful body poised in the air in a gravity-defying almost yogic pose. Made of resin, wire, plaster and stone, it is a startling use of materials, reminiscent of Picasso sculptures in its combination of playfulness and mastery. It is accompanied by a painting that mirrors the shape of the sculpture exactly – demonstrating the raw power of the image of this inverted beast.

31. Alexander Rohrig

Black Horse (painting), 2015 oil on canvas

48 x 35”

32. Alexander Rohrig

Black Horse (sculpture), 2015 resin, wire, plaster and stone

19 x 8 x 6”

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33. Jane Rosen

Cloven Hoof (lower left), 2016 bronze with unique patina

32 x 6 x 9”

Jane Rosen

Bronze Hoof (lower right), 2015 bronze with unique patina

57 x 8 x 10”

34. Jane Rosen

Maya Hoof (detail), 2007

willow, hemp, marble mix and pigment

63 x 7 x 8”

32. Jane Rosen

Change of Tune, 2009 - 2015

casein, charcoal, rabbit skin glue paper on wood

24 x 48 x 1”

32. Jane Rosen

Crystal Mei Buddhi, 2016 kiln cast crystal and marble mix

20 x 5 x 4”

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Jane Rosen Jane Rosen’s horse hooves, presented here in willow, hemp, marble mix and paint as well as pigmented cast bronze are a powerful presence. By focusing solely on the strength and shape of the hoof, tapering it to bone, Rosen has captured the presence of the horse by its absence, its power and nobility encapsulated in this essential part of its anatomy. The three hooves are presented in an installation with her tablet, Change of Tune, an extraordinary image of a raven made of casein, charcoal, rabbit skin glue and paper on wood. Ravens are part of the family at Rosen’s mountaintop studio. They stand at doorways and are poised in the surrounding trees giving the artist ample opportunity for observation. In this drawing, the raven’s dark form is an unmistakable presence among the shapes surrounding her. Drawing is at the heart of everything Rosen does. Before creating a work, she draws it multiple times, until she arrives at the essence of the animal, not just what is seen by the naked eye, but something deeply respectful of the animal’s being.

Rosen’s Buddhi series, a favorite among collectors are animal spirits, their animal bodies ambiguous, representations of an internal rather than external existence. The heads may be that of various animals – dog, wolf, fox, deer. . . The word Buddhi, coined from Buddha and buddy speaks to her deep identification with animals. In Crystal Mei Buddhi Rosen uses kiln cast crystal and marble dust to create a work that transcends the temporal qualities of glass and captures something lasting and essential in the rising spirits of these animals.

Rosen was selected by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for inclusion in their Annual Invitational in New York in 2010 and again in 2015. This prestigious exhibition is juried by some of the greatest artists of our time. A masterful and sought after teacher, Rosen has taught at numerous elite institutions including the School of Visual Arts and Bard College in New York, LaCoste School of the Arts in France, Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley. Rosen’s work has been reviewed in the New York Times, ArtForum, Art in America, and Art News. She has been exhibited across the United States and is in numerous public and private collections including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Aspen Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Chevron Corporation, the collection of Grace Borgenicht, JP Morgan Chase Bank, the Luso American Foundation, the Mallin Collection, the Mitsubishi Corporation, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

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Tim Tate Artist Tim Tate sees his sculptures as self-contained video installations. Blending traditional craft with new media technology gives him the framework in which he can explore history, storytelling, popular culture and memory. In I See How Far I’ve Wandered, a hand writes the words on a screen.

“Sometimes unexpected paths lead to happiness,” says the artist, referring to the role chance had played in his life. “My original plans for the way I lived my life were dramatically changed when I contracted HIV, but while I have wandered from that path, it has been toward something I never had dreamed of before - becoming a full time artist with a wonderful partner. “ Huzbunnies, Tate’s Laurel and Hardy image is part of his Queer Beginnings series. The video is of the comics asleep in a small bed, embracing one another as they change positions in their sleep. Representations of queer intimacy were infrequently found a century ago. But taking that Victorian sensibility and using the technology and values of today, we see how important these few images were to that culture and the sweetness carries through...a full century later, even if unintended at the time.

The important revelations here are in the viewer’s response to his hybrid art form and its conceptual nature. These works are phylacteries of sorts, the transparent reliquaries in which bits of saints’ bones or hair — relics — are displayed. In many cultures and religions, relics are believed to have magical or spiritual powers, especially for healing. Tate’s relics are temporal, sounds and moving images formally enshrined, encapsulating experiences like cultural specimens.

Tim Tate is co-founder of the Washington Glass School. He has shown nationally and beyond since the 1990’s, including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, SOFA New York and Chicago, Art Basel Scope in Switzerland, the Art Miami at Art Basel-Miami, the Luce Foundation Center for American Art at the Smithsonian, the Renwick Gallery and commercial galleries from Washington, DC to London and Berlin.

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37. Tim Tate

I See How Far I’ve Wandered, 2015 cast polyvitro, video

18” diameter

38. Tim Tate

Huzbunnies, 2014 cast polyvitro, video

9 x 11”

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Barbara Wildenboer Barbara Wildenboer produces sculptures pieced together from delicately cut books, thin strips of paper splaying out from each book’s spine. Wildenboer’s found books are often ones containing maps, atlases, and scientific subject matter, sometimes using images from the book as central elements to her pieces. Imagery, words, and sentences become components of the larger designs, as she crafts new visual narratives from the raw material.

In Proteus Turning into Water, the artist represents the book as Proteus, who in mythology was the son of Oceanus, charged with taking care of the sea calves (seals). If captured and held, he could foretell the future, but it was not something he gave up easily. In order to evade capture, he could change into many things, one of them being water, rendering him difficult to hold on to.

By producing visual metaphors, Wildenboer attempts to capture her own wonder of complex systems in nature like fractal geometry and the interconnectedness of all beings. She works across several academic disciplines to showcase how our understanding of life is often mediated through text, stretching the world of each book she manipulates outside of its own cover.

39. Barbara Wildenboer

Proteus Turning Into Water, 2015 altered book

19 x 14”

Wildenboer lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa, where she received her Masters in Fine Art from the Michaelis School of Art at the University of Cape Town in 2007. Her latest body of work, “The Lotus Eaters“, toured South Africa after opening at The Reservoir at the Oliewenhuis Art Museum in Bloemfontein in 2014.

M aterial M atters Lucrezia Bieler . Joe Brubaker . Kim Bruce . Squeak Carnwath . Lia Cook Stephen Paul Day . Ellen George . Andrew Hayes . Margaret Keelan . Lisa Kokin Ted Larsen . Sibylle Peretti . Alexander Rohrig . Jane Rosen . Tim Tate . Barbara Wildenboer