November 12- December 4, 2011

Opening reception: Saturday November 12th, 6-10 pm

Room 1:

Lee Deigaard
Unbidden
 
Not ordered or commanded. Not invited or asked. Spontaneous.
Unwanted, unwelcome, unforced, unprompted. Unwilling.
Free. Voluntary. Unbidden.
 
Trespasser, stalker, prey, protagonist. New works by Lee Deigaard explore life in the crosshairs.
 
http://www.leedeigaard.com/Lee_Deigaard/Unbidden.html

Room 2:

Kyle Bravo
This and That

This and That is a collection of collages made from images of objects culled from art, office, and home product supply catalogs. These minimal interventions result in unexpected juxtapositions that are absurd and functionless yet suggest wholly new potentials and possibilities.

www.kylebravo.com

Room 3:

Barb Hunt
Rain

I am a pacifist, a heritage that I received from my family. When we were young, my parents did not let us watch TV because it was too violent, and we were not allowed to play with toy guns. Later, we lived in the United States during the Vietnam War and I have strong memories of its impact on individuals and families. My father was an agricultural economist who worked in the ‘developing’ world and I realize now, years after his death, how much influence his commitment and idealism has had on my world‑view. My mother was a nurse, and I think this has given me a focus on the body as a site for healing the wounds of war, both physical and psychic.

My recent art practice has focussed on textiles related to the rituals of death and mourning, and this evolved into my current work with issues of war, using camouflage fabric and patterns, and used army fatigues. Although I use domestic processes in this work, I am experimenting with intentionally rough craftsmanship; for example torn fabric as an expression of grief. This is contrasted with careful obsessive sewing that is about the fragility and beauty of the human body. In this work, I am trying to balance the cruelty of war with my empathy for the soldier.

Barb Hunt studied studio art at the University of Manitoba and completed an MFA at Concordia University, Montreal. Her art practice is based in textiles, and her current work is about the devastation of war – knitting replicas of antipersonnel land mines in pink wool and creating installations from worn camouflage army uniforms. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across Canada, the United States, and internationally. She has been awarded residencies in Canada, Paris and Ireland. She has also been the recipient of Canada Council grants, as well as the President’s Award for Outstanding Research from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, where she teaches in the Visual Art Program.

www.barbhunt.com

Room 4:

William Downs and Brooke Pickett
Crossing Lines

Merging line, landscape, and vision into one cohesive body of work, Crossing Lines is a collaborative endeavor by William Downs (b. 1974, Greenville, SC) and Brooke Pickett (b. 1980, Shreveport, LA). The artists, who met in New Orleans several months ago, embarked on this journey hoping to synthesize their distinct drawing practices and fueled by their admiration for each other’s practices. Downs deftly captures movement and gesture, while Pickett’s thoughtful drawings depict quirky shapes and indiscernible objects. Together their drawings encompass a multitude of imaginary spaces, ideas, and musings. The project began with a series of conversations that became a desire to harmonize two vastly different voices. More akin to “call and response” than an actual duet, the work produced over the last couple months has, in the most literal sense, been made in the same physical space. The drawings represent four distinct groups:  drawings made solely by Pickett, those made by Downs, those that clearly lean in one direction or another even though they were made by both artists, and finally there are drawings in which the artists’ individual visions disappear, where line and gesture become one. According to the artists, the content of the drawings was never discussed. Instead, an ongoing dialog about materials, various approaches to mark making, and the idea of what it actually means to work so intimately with another artist were important topics of conversation throughout the process and is perhaps, the unintentional subject of this series of drawings.