SO Rhode Island Interview!

I was recently interviewed for what I thought was going to be a short side-bar piece about myself and my role as Gallery Director at Hera Gallery... However, when I picked up the latest issue of SO Rhode Island Magazine, a local Arts & Entertainment Monthly, I was surprised to see a full page portrait of myself smiling (awkwardly) back at me.

Despite the intimidating full page photo, the writing is very generous and references some of my aesthetic philosophies, inspirations, and recent works. They also make note of Chromophilia, which was a great free plug for that show. I'm pretty flattered to have been featured in this months paper, and really appreciate the opportunity to talk about the artistic interests that I'm involved in.

Click on the photo above to enlarge the image and read the article.

Art New England Article

There's a really interesting article in this issue of Art New England about the Providence art scene written by Doug Norris. Doug is a wonderfully observant art writer who primarily reviews for the South County Independent, and freelances for national publications as well.

In Providence: The Artists' Nest, Doug describes the Providence art-scene as a incubator focusing on experimentation, collaboration, and community. This mentality is particularly fostered by the local artist run organizations such as AS220 and The Hive Archive. He also elaborates on Providences thriving anti-establishment art subcultures; artist developed micro-communities built around performances, parties, live music, daily creation, and shared spaces that emphasized the collective nature of making things. An example of this would be Fort Thunder. Fort Thunder refers to an illegally artist occupied warehouse which has recently been developed into gentrified condo space. With the eviction of the artists, Fort Thunder has come to describe a group of people (artists, makers, musicians) tied together by their beliefs and interests, but with out a tangible locale. Exhibitions and events are stages across the city in warehouse, peoples apartments, or unoccupied loading docks (which I've seen temporarily transformed into elaborate stages for plays), information about which is spread the old fashioned way by word of mouth and screen printed posters. One last local organization that the article mentioned is the Dirt Palace, a feminist collective operating out of a re-purposed Library building. The Dirt Palace is a space that promotes personal growth for individuals, and an environment conducive to challenging thoughts and radical actions.

Despite it's gritty appearance, Providence proves to be a ripe locale for embracing and facilitating creative natures. There are so many unique facets to Providences art scene that it's difficult to distinguish or separate these elements. It's this influence and contamination of one genera to the next that I've always found so appealing about this town. Providence really does makes it easy to be a creator, people support one another and businesses actually cater to artists.

Be sure to check out the article below by clicking on the images to enlarge them to a readable size. You'll also note that I've been quoted in this article a lot! I'm excited to have been able to contribute to such an honest, historical, and observant portrait of the city that I live and work in.

Chromophilia Installation Photos

Here are some photographs from the installation of Chromophilia at Craftland. This show, which I co-curated with Devienna Anggraini, features the work of Emiko Oye, Anthony Tammaro, Mike and Maaike, Jimin Park, Jenny Bradley, Amy Weiks, and Mariana Acosta.

I have to say that the final display looks wonderful. The work really brightens up the gallery with the highly saturated hues and tactile materials that each artist used.

Enjoy the pictures, and if you want more information about the show or artists check out the Chromophilia blog!

ELISE GOLDIN

A jewelery collection where the pieces bond two or more people together, to force interaction amongst the participants in a society where we are becoming increasingly void of real human interaction.

This morning I've been wasting time skimming the back-logs of some blogs that I like to read... when I came upon the work of Elise Goldin. Elise is a multidisciplinary designer, focusing primarily on creating artifacts and functional objects. She combines a bold aesthetic quality with unique materials to articulate her ideas. Her explorations with process, technique, and material enable her to create contemporary works that require the active involvement of the viewer.

I came across her 'Knotted Collection,' and clearly fell in love. She has used the laser cutting process to create smaller knotted links, then these rope like units are strung together to create wearable pieces. Her idea for this series started with the desire to physically bond two people together, therefore creating the more couture pieces pictured below. Eventually this concept evolved into a more wearable series like the chest plate pictured to the right.

I appreciate the graphic quality of her work, the knots reference old 'how-to' maritime diagrams. I also appreciate her ability to move beyond the smaller individual units and link the pieces together to create larger pieces that also reference historical pieces of jewelery. By moving the utilitarian into the realm of the decorative she has allowed the viewer to focus on the beauty of the alternative.

TITLE WALL!

It's Saturday night, and we just hung the final piece. (insert huge sigh of relief here) The artist reception is going to be next Thursday... And at the risk of seeming conceited, the show looks amazing and is totally worth fighting to find a parking space downtown in order to go to the opening.

'Jewellery is such a wonderful way to celebrate being human - this strange mess of mind and body, imagination and matter.'

FLORIAN LADSTATTER

Chromo-Card

Here's the show card for Chromophilia. Feel free to download it and email it along...

It's getting colorful at Chromophilia

Devienna and I met today to install our upcoming show, Chromophilia, at Craftland. It took us only six hours to get a majority of the work done, and I'm very pleased with the results! Devienna was the brave one climbing up and down the ladder all day, while I laid out and secured most of the work... Clearly, we were a perfect team, and I'm honestly shocked at how quickly we worked together. I felt like a jewelry-installing zombie towards the end, but it was worth it! So many mono-filament knots.

Now that all the work is laid out in the gallery, the chromatic theme of the show is becoming brazenly apparent. Craftlands gallery has been transformed into a prism of color, texture, and material. Saturated reverberations coming off each artists work and just light up the space. All of the jewelry looks compliments each other nicely, and there is a good balance of styles of making and materials also.

Here are some preview pictures of the exhibition from when we were setting up today. I'll post more detailed images after the show opens.

Dr. Lakra at the Boston ICA

I took a trip up to Boston yesterday morning to visit the Dr. Lakra exhibit at the ICA. The show is only up for another week, and I'm disappointed that I didn't get in to see it sooner because I'd like to experience it again. As it turns out, I'm really taken with Dr. Lakra's work.

Dr. Lakra is a Mexican born tattoo and fine artist based out of Oaxaca. Dr. Lakra transposes his tattooing craft onto the idealized figures found in vintage 1950's magazines, onto pinup girls, luchadors, medical educational drawings, and even onto the iconic cupie doll. Lakra reassigns identity by tattooing and enhancing the original subjects with bats, demons, spiders, gang insignia, and traditional cultural body markings. He even uses a real tattoo machine to achieve a believable image on some of his pieces.

Dr. Lakra deals with concepts of beautification and social identification. His works are a carnival of the grotesque, a medley of kitschy erotica, ancient ritual, and hallucinogenic visions fused in a collage of ideologies.

This show was a slightly unbalanced combination of 2D and 3D work, with most of the emphasis being on drawings and installations. I would have personally preferred to see some more objects included in the exhibition, as those objects reflected his working process more directly.


UPDATE~ Here are two images that I took of the installation at the ICA. I used my phone, so the quality is most likely sub-par. Also, you can check out a video of the installation here.