REVIEW: A Northern Refuge: Cherish, Protect at the Work Gallery

VanVoorhis's "Tamarack Lake."
Cathy VanVoorhis’s “Tamarack Lake”

I attended the opening reception for A Northern Refuge: Cherish, Protect at the Work Gallery this past Friday evening. Stamps lecturer Cathy VanVoorhis curated the exhibition and also contributed several paintings to the exhibition. Other contributing artists included the painter, Nora Venturelli, and the photographer, Lisa Steichmann.

A moderate amount of people attended the opening reception. A Northern Refuge: Cherish, Protect spotlights the natural environment. The natural environment has been a source of inspiration for artists for centuries and the exhibition highlights its ongoing utility to contemporary artists. Several of the pieces were old-school and impressionistic paintings rather than more contemporary installation or mixed-media pieces.

The following is an excerpt from Venturelli’s artist statement: “I find an overwhelming, therapeutic tranquility while painting outdoors, and a spontaneity that does not happen in the studio. The rush of the breeze, the heat of the sun, the sounds of the fields. It all adds freshness and vivacity to my work. I am usually drawn to long vistas, wide-open spaces. I’m attracted to subtle changes in textures and color, the overlapping and layering of planes.” The piece included in the exhibition was a sepia-toned and slightly melancholic landscape painting. Click here to visit Venturelli’s website.

Steichmann’s photographs were scattered between the paintings. The photographs were also shadowy and slightly melancholic. The photographs were the most contemporary and visually-surprising pieces of the selection. Click here to visit Steichmann’s website. 

Here is an excerpt from VanVoorhis’s artist statement: “For me, a landscape painting is a portrait of a specific place with the plants and terrain of that location. All of the species together create a community of interdependence, with a life of its own.” She continues with the following couple of sentences: “There is great satisfaction for me in using the time-honored materials and craft of oil painting. I’m glad to get away from electricity and technology for a while, to simpler processes that feel very direct and immediate.” VanVoorhis’s pieces exhibited artistic talent yet were visually-predictable. The piece, Tamarack Lake, is displayed prominently. Click here to visit VanVoorhis’s website. 

The exhibition will end on Thursday, November 12.

PREVIEW: A Northern Refuge: Cherish, Protect

The opening reception for A Northern Refuge: Cherish, Protect will take place tomorrow evening at the Work Gallery. Stamps lecturer Cathy Van Voorhis curated the exhibition.

A Northern Refuge: Cherish, Protect spotlights the natural environment. The natural environment has been a well-established source of inspiration for artists for centuries and I’m interested in the ways in which it continues to inspire contemporary artists. The exhibition’s theme is timely with the ongoing discoveries of pollution in nearby Lake Erie.

Admission is free! Click here for more event information.

REVIEW: Medium Rare – 2015 IP Exhibition

The openings for the seniors Integrative Projects (IP) at the Stamps school featured a wide variety of works from paintings to installations of around 85 student’s work. They were located at three different locations around Ann Arbor, creating the feel of an Ann Arbor art walk as people were walking between the Work Gallery on State Street to the Argus Building a few blocks down on Fourth Street. The other location was on North Campus at the Slusser Gallery.

The Work Gallery featured mostly 2-dimensional pieces. The walls were sectioned off to display each artist. On the first floor there was the work of one student where they used a 3-D printer to make these white organic forms with deep cuts and grooves in the surface. Inside the grooves sat a bright orange nondescript pill. The work invited viewers to examine more closely these manufactured sculptures not just to admire them as sculptures but, because of the placement of the pill, as containers for something. It reminds the viewer that medicine is a manufactured good and how sometimes medication and pharmaceutical companies can be an unquestioned authority when it comes to our health. A thing sometimes need to be explained more than as what it is as such but as what it is made for, how it is made, and with what goal in mind is it made. Some of these questions too can be applied to the making of the the sterile 3-D shapes that initially inspire a sense of aesthetic interest in the shape but then upon closer viewing, they inspire questions of ‘for what purpose was this sculpture made?’

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Other works that were on display at the Work Gallery included a set of clutch purses inspired by the question: what do you clutch?  She had made a large quantity of those clutch purses for her project, inviting the sharing of personal stories to coincide with her art-making process.  Another piece was a sculpture with a physical human making the art in the gallery.  What appeared to be a sculpture of a head on a pedestal also had a person sitting crouched behind the pedestal with a laptop.  As he typed away searches onto his computer, information documenting those searches was transcribed on a receipt that was printed underneath the pedestal for viewers to read.  Simultaneously, water was sprayed on the relief sculpture of a head causing the head to slowly disintegrate.  It was a clear commentary on the visibility of our internet presence to others we are unaware of, and how the internet is shaping our identity.

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The subject of internet presence is very relevant to today’s culture and other pieces in the exhibition also dealt with this issue.   At the Argus Building one person created an installation of video, booklets, and USB drives.  The viewer entered a partitioned area of the gallery, to a video of someone’s desktop.  The video looped footage of a user opening files of different typefaces and trying out those typefaces, all of which were illegible and looked more like a seismograph readout than a written language.  The booklets featured black and white images of distorted web browsers and a sign was posted above saying that it is hard to know who reads what you write on the internet and to take a USB with a custom typeface on it.  Small USB’s were hung on the wall by pins and people were cautiously removing them and taking them home.  The artist invites the user to take precautions against those trying to invade ones privacy.  There is also a sense of appreciation for this anonymous gift.  The viewer is able to not only connect with the artist through the subject matter but also by physically taking a physical part of the artwork with them.

Physically removing parts of a piece was also encouraged in another exhibit where the artist had set up tables filled with odds and ends: anything from oversized boxing gloves and a kid’s cassette player, to clay mugs and Jedi swords.  A sign on the first table encouraged people to look around and if they found something they liked, the price was listed on the item, and to place the cash in the cash box.  Paper bags were located under the tables for buyer’s convenience.  I found the pop-up garage sale style shop in the gallery to be disorienting at first but harkening back to the removal idea from the other piece, I found that this to be another angle at tangibly connecting artist to audience.

Other pieces at the Argus Building was a large scale installation of a technicolor painted wall of an artist studio.  Paintbrushes, unfinished canvases, paint cans, and other equipment, were scattered and hung on the wall and on the floor in front of the wall and all of it was colored solid with paint.  The emphasis on explosions of paint and the covering up of the tools involved in painting examined the great importance of paint to the artist of the piece.  Another installation was a partitioned room that was barricaded by large plant fronds.  Looking through the leaves into the room, there were other plants inside, a video of a girl watering plants, pieces of roots hanging from walls.  In addition, a small crane machine was placed on a pedestal right in front of the install, begging users to come try their luck at fishing for a packet of flowers the artist had made.  The limited accessibility of the majority of the exhibit, except through visual perception, made the plant life seem all the more valuable.  Recognizing not only the limited nature of the piece, there was also the limited use of any sort of material other than plant material in the actual piece, creating a stark contrast with the white walls of the gallery and making nature the intruder and us the outsider, as opposed to the more commonly seen dichotomy of humans as the intruder into nature.

To see these pieces and others in person, stop by the Work Gallery, Slusser Gallery, or Argus Building during open hours.  The exhibition will be up from April 17- May 2.

(An aside: the catering at the galleries was amazing.)

PREVIEW: Word of Mouth StorySLAM: FALLING

WORD OF MOUTH STORY SLAM: FALLING

Ever found yourself in free fall, fallen head over heels, or just down right tripped and fallen? Come tell us about it! Join Word of Mouth Stories for our next

Story SLAM event

Friday November 9, 2012

Work Gallery, 306 State Street

Doors at 6:30pm

Never been to our slams before? Audience members tell five-minute stories from their lives relative to a theme. Judges from the audience rate the stories; the winner takes home the title for the evening, as well as an invitation to the finale event in April. The friendly competition includes appetizers and live music.

This month’s performance will feature student band Palisades and coffee will be generously provided by The Ugly Mug. Sponsored by Dawn Treader and funded by Central Student Government. This month’s theme is FALLING. Whether it is about stumbling, bungee jumping, falling from grace or falling in love, come share your story at our SLAM.

Hope to see you there!

In the meantime, check us out online:

BLOG //FACEBOOK PAGE //SOUNDCLOUD

And take a listen to this months live performance by Palisades on Facebook or Band Camp

To get emails about more upcoming events and workshops or to join our planning crew, shoot us an email.


PREVIEW/ Announcement: EQMC presents MUSICAL SENSATIONS 10/19/12

Work Gallery: 306 S. State St. Ann Arbor
Friday October 19th
8pm Free (donations appreciated)

A group of experimental musicians are going to showcase their music for an enthusiastic crowed tomorrow night!
Their music varies in style and content although they all mix and sample other artists, loop sounds and play around with different themes to create interesting new musical pieces.
Much of their music is listening rather than dancing music, although it’s definitely good social hang out/ get to know each other and move around to a beat kind of music at times too.

If you want to broaden your auditory surroundings I suggest you join us tomorrow night!

Blithe Field (Ohio)
http://blithefield.bandcamp.com/

Samn Johnson (Ann Arbor – Michigan Student)
http://samnjohnson.bandcamp.com/

Jonah Baseball (Ann Arbor – Michigan Student)