TRACES: Mad Art Gallery’s Fifteenth Anniversary Exhibition
Tandem Show to Feature Abstraction Created By Hand and Machine
Opening: 7 -11 pm, SATURDAY, JANUARY 23rd, 2016
Closing: 7 -11 pm, SATURDAY, MARCH 19th, 2016
St. Louis, MO – The two-month long show will feature the work of Hubert Dobler and Jacob Berkowitz. Dobler, an Austrian-born, New York-based artist, will be showcasing the medium for which he is most known: motorcycles. Standing in for the artist’s hand and pencil, a Honda CB550 motorcycle will be installed from the ceiling then released to create burned rubber marks on primed panels. Local artist Berkowitz is known for his large scale monochromatic abstract paintings done with a proprietary dry brush technique. Berkowitz will be unveiling a new mural spanning over fifty feet in the Gallery. Both artists will be showing additional paintings and will have work for sale.
The award-winning Mad Art Gallery is housed in the former Third District Police Station in the historic Soulard neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. With its renovated 1930’s Art Deco architecture, it is the city’s most spectacular and unique venue for art exhibitions and other events. This fifteenth year anniversary and exhibition celebrates Mad Art Gallery’s mission is to cultivate and inspire art audiences in St. Louis by exhibiting emerging and established artists.
Curated by St. Louis based artist Ellie Balk, “Traces’ compares the similarities in both artists’ mark-making and contrasts the way in which both are created. The artists share a central focus: controlling their environments to create works that suggest spontaneous and unrestrained gestures. Suspended, bound, and/or tethered, Dobler’s roaring motorcycles become wild animals. The back tires leave strips of burned rubber on substrates and floors; the built-up surfaces becoming abstract paintings in the process. According to Dobler “…I like to turn them on and let them go …., sometimes they do endless circles, on other occasions they freak out and go crazy…” Berkowitz works in a more traditional form of gestural mark-making by altering his tools in such a manner as to create long and wide brush strokes that emit an entire grayscale in one pass. In varying the length and angle, the strokes can become evocative of man-made forms or architectural elements mimicking nature.
Both the opening on January 23rd, and the closing on March 19th will feature performances from Dobler’s motorcycles. More information on the artists can be found at www.dobler.us and www.jacobberkowitzstudio.com/. Mad Art Gallery is located at 2727 S. 12th Street, St. Louis MO, 63118.
The NURTUREart Curatorial Students at Juan Morel Campos Secondary School worked with Artist Ellie Balk to curate an art exhibition that explores the story behind the making of art: the process made visible, the mental mapping, and the space between. We put out a call for artwork that asked: Where do you go when you let your mind be free? What are the limitations of freedom? What are the tracks of your creative process? What does your mental map look like?
The work that artists submitted is as varied as the possible responses to these many questions. We received work from artists who let materials guide their process, artists who examine the everyday routine as an art practice, and artists who analyze the role of change connection in the way they create their work. We are delighted to present a collection of work that takes us inside the mind of artists, revealing secrets of the time and process of when their idle mind becomes a busy mind.
Featured artists: Angela Earley, Ariel Luisa Mercado, Brian J Hogan, Carol Radsprecher, Deanna C. Lee, Denise Martinez, Eduardo Alexander Rabel, Eileen Hoffman, Elisa Pritzker, Elizabeth Riley, Jennie Booth, Julie Oppermann, Kristin Brenneman Eno, Linn Edwards, Madeline Stillwell, Margaret Inga, Maria Spector, Mario Barrera, Matthew C. Wilson, Michael Krasowitz, Mitchell Marco, Natasha Harsh, Rebecca (Marks) Leopold, Robin M. Jordan, Sarah Paulson, Vida Sacic, and students of Juan Morel Campos Secondary School
IDLE TIME/ BUSY MIND is Lead by Artist Ellie Balk and a production of the NURTUREart Education Outreach Programs. Learn more about all of NURTUREart's programs and opportunities for emerging artists and curators at www.nurtureart.org
Photos by Emily Shu
2002
932 South Wintergarden
Bowling Green, Ohio
Joe Balesteri
Ryan Burghard
Ellie Balk
Drew Malcolm
Celia Barresi
Shannon McClure
Beth Marinelli
Anthony Mickler
The Way of the Well Witchers
The project’s name is derived from the ancient practice of “dousing”, which is using a “y” shaped rod to divine water underground. Well withchers are supposedly gifted with a certain sensitivity, which allows the rod in their hands to detect an energy contained in the elements surrounding the uncovered stream. As the well witcher seeks this energy, so is the source of expression sought by the artist, who must rely on symbols and tools offered in the world to bring surface, so to speak, an abstract hunch.
The underground source cannot be found unless the well witcher waits for the matter around the water to cool and become an orderly pattern so that the energy has an identity which he can detect, just as an artists vision is livid and moving and must find physical boundaries to form to.
Many dowsers will say that they don’t know how dousing weeks, and strive blindly for an unknown location, Eight young artist were divined, some weeks ago to the unused barn at 932 S .Wintergarden, and combined their energies to resurrect it, take what is offered, and transform it into a well of artistic liberation, using it to draw their metaphorical water to quench a community of thirst.
May 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014
Brooklyn, New York
A project of South of the Navy Yard Artists
The SONYA Art Walk is a self-guided tour of fine arts studios and other art venues in four of Brooklyn’s most vibrant neighborhoods: Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Wallabout, and Bedford-Stuyvesant.
The SONYA registry encompasses a full spectrum of disciplines, including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and ceramics, at the emerging, mid-career and established levels of practice. The Art Walk gives viewers an opportunity to meet with participating SONYA artists, and immerse themselves in spaces of creation.
About the SONYA Art Walk:
• Over 50 artists in the most evocative neighborhoods of Brooklyn will be opening their studio doors! Get a voyeuristic view of the elegant brownstones of Bed-Stuy, Clinton Hill and Fort Greene, to the warehouses and lofts around the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
• Workshops and live events will take place at participating merchant spaces as well as outdoors at Putnam Triangle and Fowler Square.
• Creativity + Commerce: Visitors can take time to reflect over a bite or drinks with our featured sponsors including: Speedy Romeo, Brooklyn Public House, Corkscrew Wines, 11238 Coffee, Dick and Janes, The Great Georgiana, Madiba, Hops Hill, Brooklyn Moon, Alice Arbor, Greene Grape Annex, DC Optics and Tipsy! Make it an Art Bar Crawl!
• Our neighborhoods are accessible via the MTA C line between Lafayette and Franklin Avenue stations, the G line between Clinton-Washington and Bedford-Nostrand stations, the B, Q and R lines at Dekalb Avenue station, and all lines stopping at Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center.
• Access the artists and merchant map via the SONYA ArtWalk app, available during the event.
The SONYA Art Walk is FREE, family friendly and open to the public.
