Dec 08- Jan 09/ Perfectionless

Perfectionless
Featuring the work of Allison Lindner, Sam McMahon, & Nick Wieczorkowski.

According to Jean Arp, much of his work was created employing "the laws of chance", explaining that chance is "simply a part of an inexplicable reason, of an inaccessible order." Embracing ideas of chance allows an artist to create at anytime from anything and imbues images with their own language of meaning. These artists work with chance and free association to investigate how the personal extends to the universal and the result are works deep with honesty and insight.

Allison Lindner's prints are minimal compositions exploring social issues by reducing their components to simple, childlike imagery. Her handmade book of plentiful meals juxtaposed with the repeated and bland image of macaroni and cheese illustrates the result of rising food costs; and the reoccurring icon of a house facing oppositional forces situates the individual in mounting domestic crises.

Sam McMahon's drawing and installation work are reflections of the depth of the human psyche. Working with a practice of intutive almost ritualistic drawing, he discovers images existing in his mind since childhood. In his installations, different kinds of associations are revealed as he arranges tableaus from collected objects. Sam expresses that "art is not about a precious final product... it's about experience."

Experience is at the very center of Nick Wieczorkowski's work. His work is constantly affected by his environment as he steps, spills and spits on it. He lets the moment shape each work, saying "I don't know what I'll create when I start... I don't really care. How I create, the process and the composition are the things that interest me". The final product represents an experience and journey where each personal act and interaction with it deemed significant.

Opening Reception: December 12th, 6-10p
Closing Reception: January 16th (Winter Gallery Night)

October 08/ Meet Your Neighbor

Meet Your Neighbor
Featuring the work of Andrea Avery

Combining her background of traditional needlework with postmodern elements of collage and appropriation, Andrea Avery concocts playful, nonlinear narratives. Each piece represents a personal reaction to events affecting people from her hometown; and although each piece has a personal connection, Avery aims to make these stories universal through her use of material and open ended imagery. Using idealized figures and ambiguity, she explores the “complexity of human relationships, birth, procreation, and death” by presenting “recognizable imagery and everyday objects [such as] paper dolls and their clothing” so the viewer may gauge the meaning based on his or her own experiences and associations. The result is an exploration of one’s own connection and attention to community through the collection of human stories and experiences.

Meet Andrea Avery at http://www.ajavery.com/

September 08/ The Flyover Report

The Flyover Report
Featuring artist Annushka Gisella Peck

The experience of travel is inherently a 'liminal' (i.e. threshold or transitional) state. In this state, one can often find themselves in a position of vulnerability. Yet, it is also the case that within the vulnerability that such changing circumstances create, great opportunities for growth and transcendence also can be found. When the trajectory of the event can be anticipated, or understood prior to engagement however, as is often the case with "tourist" experiences of place, the opportunity for growth becomes limited by the pre-ordained routes of travel and package excursions. A corollary to this can be found in "armchair tourism" – an experience of 'place' derived by engagement with a mediated source, rather than a physical encounter. Such 'tourism' often occurs within the comfort of one's own home, though it may occur in any setting that offers easy familiarity, such as a hotel room television. This exploration of other cultures, places or events, provides the observer with a pre-selected viewpoint, a vantage point that is not arrived at through one's primary experience, but a secondary, pre-viewed and pre-digested understanding of the particular place, culture or event. This body of work is based, in part, on the recent experience of traveling to and from Ankara, Turkey via Frankfurt, Germany. The images used in this series are part of a larger series of television photographs taken while experiencing an unintended layover in Frankfurt, Germany. This series of pieces is intended to cull these different sets of experiences: the frustration of direct physical experience with the limitation of images of events and cultures one may only ever experience via mediation."

August 08/ Redefining Pattern

Alexander Kain (above)

Daniel David Kaiser (Both Above & Below)

Redefining Pattern
Alexander Kain, Daniel David Kaiser, Steve Sorrentino

Fashion is dominated by different forms of pattern; surface pattern, pattern in construction, the pattern of trends and pattern in display. Within these patterns of fashion, society has created a standard of beauty and design unique to our time, place, and modern culture. To push these standards, these artists have deviated from and redefined the idea of fashion and pattern to create new, fresh and progressive designs and concepts. Kain creates unique and custom fashions for dolls pushing ideas of design and collection on both an intimate and tangible scale. Kaiser and Sorrentino mirror themes of fashion, pattern, model, and beauty in their work to celebrate and criticize the contemporary fashion industry and to comment on the relationship between the pattern and the model by integrating and dissolving them into each other. These artists demonstrate both how art influences fashion and how fashion influences art.

June 08/ Re-vision: New Photographic Works

Josh Martines (above)
Tom Harris
Emiko Franzen
(L-R) Franzen-3, Rodriguez-2, Franzen-1, Harris-2, Rodriguez-4

Re-vision: New Photographic Works
Tom Harris, Emiko Franzen, Josh Martines, Dominic Rodriguez

Re-vision: New Photographic Works, is an exhibition that brings together a group of Milwaukee photographers who have positioned themselves within environments that have been neglected, discarded, or unkempt. It is the vision of these photographers to seek out and compose imagery that is beautiful and novel from sullied spaces. The resulting work presents a fresh examination of various derelict landscapes and creates a sense that one is in the presence of relics or records of modern ruins.

May 08/ Peculiar Creatures, Charming Beasts

Delaney Jane Larson (Above)

Tara Klamrowski (Below)

Peculiar Creatures, Charming Beasts
Delaney Jane Larson & Tara Klamrowski

"Plane Jane" is a world created by a very curious girl, me, Delaney Jane Larson. Primarily working with gouache, ink, and collage, I concoct curios ruled by nonsense, love, unexpected reveries, and wishes. Myriad peculiar creatures and charming beasts live in simple spaces, where they find themselves in absurd situations. I use familiar iconography as a language for the characters, and employ a limited color palette to counterbalance the situational idiosyncrasies. White creates simple dreamscapes and evokes a childlike innocence.

My process is ever changing. Every piece is conjured from games I play, built on ridiculous scenarios, silly poems, and outlandish narratives. I play with the collaged elements like puzzle pieces. The pieces are connected through pencil sketches, and completed with ink and gouache. The result is a world where clouds are summoned from the wool of ornery sheep, the moon may sprout legs for a midnight stroll, and reports of a troublesome chicken-fish are commonly heard.

Delaney Jane Larson was born in Colorado, and then moved to New York to attend the School of Visual Arts, where she received her BFA. Larson currently lives and works in New York. Larson’s work was a recent feature in an art publication, “Milk Magazine”, released in Hong Kong. More information about Delaney Jane Larson can be found on her website at www.planejaneproject.com.

April-May 08/ Mnemonic: Visual Echoes

Andrea Larson (Above)

Dave Watkins

Frank Juarez

Chuck Wagon

Mnemonic: Visual Echoes
Frank Juarez, Andrea Larson, Chuck Wagon, Dave Watkins

Mnemonic: Visual Echoes features four abstract artists who use color and composition as a catalyst for creating images that map memory, thought, and experience. A mnemonic device is a system set in place to aid memory and prompt thought toward a specific place and time. These artists use elements of color, line and shape to surface memories within themselves and each viewer to create a collective reflection of the world around us. Through their respective studio practices, Frank Juarez, Andrea Larson, Chuck Wagon and Dave Watkins create rules and methods to structure this silent, veiled exploration. Each one has developed specific guidelines and systems to push each painting or drawing to a new, liberated consciousness revealing an awareness of the mind to the connectivity of collective contemplation.