Oriane Stender, 0 Dollar | Mixed Media, dollars, thread, 9" x 5.5"
Empire Falls is a two person exhibition featuring the work of Nancy Baker and Oriane Stender at Flanders Art Gallery in Raleigh, North Carolina March 4 to 28, 2010.
The cycle of history dictates that where an empire rises, eventually it shall fall. These predictions are inherently troubling, for they create a tension that inspires a sort of Chicken Little mentality – a belief that any time of trouble is the apocalyptic herald of a collapse and restructuring in hegemonic forces. While not always universally disconcerting, it is certainly an unsettling realization for those who have benefited from the general prosperity of being a resident of a nation in power. Empire Falls, featuring works by Nancy Baker and Oriane Stender, examines the frailty and fragility of the current economic climate in United States politics. READ MORE
Nancy Baker, Twin | Painting, oil on wood panel, 48" x 60"
Benson Avenue Collective is delighted to invite you to the opening reception of the OutOffSide group exhibition, curated by Uros Jelic. A reception will take place at 7pm on Saturday the 7th of November 2009 at the Artscape Wychwood Barns Gallery, featuring Lynne Heller’s performance “Dancing With Myself”, a mixed reality exploration, attempting to confuse and subvert the boundaries betwee the online virtual world, “Second Life” and reality.
OutOffSide exhibition is showcasing works of 12 artists, each working with different media, highly individual and experimental, escaping contemporary art classification, exploring new ways to use old media or inventing new ways of expression.
For more information contact Uros Jelic at bensonavenuecollective@gmail.com
Participating artists are:
David Brown, Pierre Bouchard, Batya Cavens, David Cumming, Scott Garant, Mahla Ghasempour, Neil Harrison, Lynne Heller, Nancy Price, Sylvia Ptak, Zahide Tulugglu-Ugur, and Jennifer Wardle
Dead Soldier Project, 2002- infinity
newspaper, acrylic sealant, ink, thread on paper
dimensions variable
I started the Dead Soldier Project when the number of US soldiers killed in Afghanistan (and/or Iraq; it’s been so long I can’t even remember) reached 1,000. The Times printed a tiny picture of each dead (American) soldier, along with their name, age and hometown. These thousand faces, with just the briefest identifying information called out to be made into something beyond a statistic, so I saved them and started to make a quilt out of them. When the number reached 2,000, then 3,000 and 4,000, I realized it would never end. I couldn’t go on processing these deaths. I had to leave the project unfinished, which seems apt.
Visit Oriane Stender’s NEW WEBSITE
submitted by Oriane Stender
Artist Tara Bursey’s show ‘paperwork/foodwork is currently on show at Poplar Online. One of my favourite pieces is ‘shrimplace’ pale pink shrimps enmeshed together like a doiley. It seems to me to hint at craft practices once traditionally associated with women. Crochet, lacemaking – repetitious, labour intensive, domestic. Tara’s choice of food as artworks is an interesting one. Surely the refusal or rationing of food is a position of power and control. Manageing the ‘unmanageable’? A British artist who appears to have similar concerns is Kirsty Hall.
‘Quiver’ Kirsty Hall shown at ‘Prick Your Finger’, London (2009)
In her work she also deals with repetition and obsession using pins, knots, burnt matches. Her ‘Pin Series’ began in 2001 as performance and is ongoing in such sculptural pieces as ‘Scatter’ and ‘Quiver’ (2006) in which the sheer weight of pins affects the fabric which supports them. For me there is a fine dividing line in the work of both these artists. When, exactly, does an interest, idea or concern become an obsession or evident as obsessional or obsessional compulsive behaviours? As creative people I feel we all have obsessive traits otherwise how is the artwork nurtured, sustained or finalized? I have no immediate answers just a fascination with these artworks.
Dualités, mixed media, Carole BaillargeonClick here to view the workAn exhibition on the interaction between the creative process and the environment.
July 11 – September 5, 2009
The title of the exhibit refers to a situation that we often deal with when it comes to new technologies. Click here to view the work, is a nod to the battle against all this technological progress by offering objects and paintings, which, apart from the context of daily life, are transformed into sculptures that are sympathetic, disruptive, threatening and, ultimately, very creative.
Exhibition features the work of Maskull Lasserre, Eva Brandl, Natalia Rizo, Carole Baillargeon
submitted by Carole Baillargeon
Ground Cover 01, (temporary) site-specific fiber installation, New Mexico, 2006
Abigail Doan is a mixed media and environmental installation artist. Her work has been exhibited in conjunction with the United Nation’s Environment Programme, Art into Action/The Natural World Museum, and in curated exhibits worldwide. Abigail is a contributing editor to Supernaturale.com and Inhabitat.com, where she writes about art farming, craft, sustainability, and the use of fiber in the landscape. In 2007 she exhibited her Crocheted Snow series at Lafayette College’s Williams Center Art Gallery, in an exhibit called, “On Ice” and her Tumbleweeds in the show, “Stretched Threads”, at The Atlantic Center for The Arts in Central Florida. She also participated in the 2007 Fiber National Exhibition at the Lancaster Museum of Art in Lancaster, PA. Her work appears on Greenmuseum.org, the online environmental art museum, and in periodicals such as Knit Knit, and in the DIY book, Craftivity.
“As a geomorphic agent and environmental tinker, I create tactile maps, floating topographies, and in situ souvenirs that highlight the delicate nature of our environs and the degradation of spirit that results from our repeated abuse of natural resources and shared terrain. By festooning and inserting leave-no-trace materials into a landscape, I hope to reinforce the inevitable processes of decay and destruction with galvanized seeds and visual cues that hover as poetic hosts for ecological and narrative propagation.”
“My visual tools for working in the field might include paper garland ropes or knotted string, a crocheted fiber canopy, or hand stitched seeds packets or pods. I might also allow fiber to move freely over a soil or vegetal surface in order to pick up small organic bits like dust, seeds, and vegetal particles in the same manner that tumbleweed collects and carries information over terrain. My final documentation of a site consists of drawings, photographs, sculptural fiber or (non-harvested) vegetation bundles, crocheted forms, assemblage maps, and, writings.”
Learn more about Doan’s work on her blog.
View images of Doan’s work HERE
submitted by Abigail Doan
$20 Weaving (new 5’s), 2005, 6″ x 6″woven $5 bills, photo by the artist
“I have always been drawn to weaving as a process because of its structural integrity. By this I mean that, unlike painting or drawing, where a base structure is set up (such as a stretched canvas) and then decorated, or some forms of sculpture in which an armature is created, then a surface treated added, the process of weaving creates structure and surface simultaneously. The structure, surface and imagery are built, incrementally, weft by weft, and are inseparable. I find this satisfying both conceptually and as an actual working system. Weaving also connects me to an ancient technology, one that developed independently in different parts of the world thousands of years ago, and was a precursor to the invention of the computer.
In contrast to this historical process, my materials are generally very modern and nontraditional. I like to use (or re-use) materials that carry pre-existing meanings and connotations. This piece is from an ongoing body of work made of money, specifically US dollars, a substance that has universal significance, a substance that carries not just symbolic, but real power.”
submitted by Oriane Stender, Brooklyn, New York
Poplar Gallery.Online
CARE Canada
