SPACE Gallery focuses on visual arts which emphasize contemporary and emerging artists, ideas and dialogue.
Gallery Exhibits 2005
Dec. 3 - 23, 2005
New Works by Cassie Jones and Michael Zachary.
Jones’ new paintings—acrylic on Duralar—operate in a dialogue between their cool, almost diagrammatic style and their eccentric, intuitive sense of abstract form. Where her earlier work often featured a play between biological and technological processes, the new work favors biomorphic forms presented in a more symbolic manner. Zachary’s paintings strike a balance between the destruction of information and the creation of information. New marks obscure existing ones, while allowing past configurations to emerge through the surface.
Cassie Jones, Three, 2005, 17x14", Acrylic on Duralar
Michael Zachary, Collection, 2005, 7.5x8", Mixed Media on
Paper
Nov. 3 - 24, 2005
Kids with Cameras
http://www.kids-with-cameras.org/kidsgallery/
In Calcutta's red light district, over 7,000 women and girls work as
prostitutes. Only one group has a lower standing: their children. Zana
Briski became involved in the lives of these children in 1998 when she
first began photographing prostitutes in Calcutta. Living in the brothels
for months at a time, she quickly developed a relationship with many of
the kids who, often terrorized and abused, were drawn to the rare human
companionship she offered.
Fascinated by her camera, Zana thought it would be great to see the world
through their eyes. It was at that moment that she had the idea of teaching
photography to the children of prostitutes. To do so would involve overcoming
nearly insurmountable obstacles – brothel owners, pimps, police,
local politicians, and organized crime syndicate.
Zana held weekly photography workshops between 2000 and 2003. There the
children learned camera basics, lighting, composition, the development
of point-of-view, editing, and sequencing for narrative. To Zana's delight,
equipped with inexpensive point-and-shoot 35mm cameras, the children produced
incredible work. Their images are explosions of color: self-portraits,
family pictures, street scenes, stunning tableaus of Bengali life.
September 9 - October 21, 2005
Reclaiming Space
Art in the public realm.
For full details, go to the Reclaiming Space page here.
July 23 - August 13, 2005
The Steel Yard
http://www.thesteelyard.org/
Opening Reception: July 23rd, 6-8 pm, followed by Providence Music Show
at 8:30 $5
On Saturday July 23rd, the SPACE Gallery will host the opening reception
for the Steel Yard Summer Tour, an art exhibition showcasing the diverse
talents of the Steel Yard’s artist community. Artwork on display
will include sculpture, ceramics, paintings, site-specific installations,
and performance.
The Steel Yard is an industrial arts center located in Providence, Rhode
Island and offers arts and technical training programs designed to increase
opportunities for cultural and artistic expression, career-oriented training,
and small business incubation. Designed as a multipurpose community resource
and industrial arts center the Steel Yard does not limit itself to a single
notion of service, preferring to emphasize a sense of possibility over
a single, narrow project.
The Steel Yard has recently begun working towards building relationships
with other out of state spaces and organizations such as the SPACE Gallery
in an effort to develop and grow a supportive network for the arts and
artists that stretches across state lines and other not so literal borders.
Artists involved in the exhibit are: Alex Williams, Amanda Brown, Anna
Shapiro, Brent Baggett, Charlie Cannon, Chris Kane, Daniel E. Campbell,
Dave Cole, Elizabeth Buddington, Gillian Christy, Howard Sneider, Jennifer
Liese, Jon Oles, Kik Williams, Korinna Winkes, Llewelynn O. Fletcher,
Lu Heintz, Manya Kay Rubenstien, Meredith Younger, Neal Walsh, Stephanie
Ewans, and Will Machin.
Before its opening in Portland ME, The Summer Tour was hosted in Providence
RI by the Brown Creative Arts Council. For more information about the
Steel Yard and its programs, visit their website at www.thesteelyard.org
or contact Dave Sharp at (401) 273-7101. The Steel Yard is located at
27 Sims Ave in Providence Rhode Island.
July 21 - August 13, 2005
VENDETTA RETREAT
Jon Brumit
http://www.jonbrumit.com
"Where else can one turn for a creative and non-violent alternative
to revenge? Vendetta Retreat makes explicit the benefits of creative sublimation
within a collaborative environment. There are eight highly interactive
phases so far, each of which requires collaboration to varying degrees.
You are here because something has happened to you which you feel you
don't deserve, and you're right! Explore the possibilities of revenge!
Develop the creativity, intensity, depth, and symbolic meaning of your
next vendetta, and do it with or to someone you love! Vendetta Retreat
offers accomodations for singles and groups. Make reservations today,
for a brighter tomorrow!
A fulfilling future starts with us! No more failed attempts at revenge,
get it right the first time! And don't throw your life out of balance
getting even, we assist you in creating vendetta production schedule that
works for you! (It is suggested that guests provide their own calendars,
planners, or PDAs for maximum efficiency.)"
July 11 - July 21, 2005
THE DAILY POST
Michael Kolster
mkolster@bowdoin.edu
What appears in the window is a portion of a 20x50 image grid presenting
the first 1000 photographs posted to the Daily Post.
The Daily Post is a web-based collection of photographs that grows by
one entry each day, as its name suggests. The project began on March 27,
2002, and has no scheduled end date. With few exceptions each photograph
is posted on the day it is made.
Subscribe
Join the Daily Post mailing list and receive a daily email with a link
to that day’s photo. Send your request to Michael Kolster at mkolster@bowdoin.edu
to be added to the list.
- "Heraclitus says somewhere that all things pass and naught abides;
comparing things to the current of a river, he says you cannot step twice
into the same stream." - Plato
- Aristotle says the same thing, "All things are in motion,"
"nothing steadfastly is."
please visit The Daily Post:
http://dailypost.bowdoin.edu
June 21 - July 8, 2005
“Animals R Us” originates from my interest
in taxidermy, specifically, the resulting distortion the display of taxidermy
characterizes. Taxidermy, as a form of wildlife representation, is an
attempt to capture and preserve the real through articulated representation
of what was once real (ie alive) in the most comprehensive and complete
of forms, the sculpturing of the actual animal body or head. This process,
in which animals are “trophied” or “souveniered”
as wall hangings becomes a simulation of something that never really was
and ultimately becomes even stranger and more alien than the original
real thing. Eyes are exchanged with glass replicas, flesh and bone replaced
with platonic fiberglass poses.
Kind of like going to an open casket funeral and seeing the deceased in
the coffin. All evidence suggests that the person is your dead uncle and
you recognize him, but no matter how well pressed his suit is or well
combed his hair, it’s not really him, not like he used to be. It
is him, but not. This representational removal from subject is kind of
the fuzzy area I was interested in exploring with this work; how a simulation
is the thing it represents and simultaneously a model for the very act
of representation itself.
This work also provided me a way to explore how we as a westernized culture
mediate animal images and forms into products of decoration, entertainment
and play as typified through lawn ornaments, masks and plush or plastic
figures. We alter animal forms in perverse and removed manners, no longer
building totem poles or objects of reverence but rather, saving money
in ceramic piggy banks, bathing with rubber duckies and using plaster
elephant bookends.
I find these observations curious and provoking.
Mike Libby
May 31 - June 20, 2005
"what haunts ..."
Cathy McLaurin
What haunts are not the dead
but the gaps left within us
by the secrets of others.
Nicolas Abraham
L’ecorce et le noyau
Inspired by the artists’ family secrets, "what haunts…
" is an interactive art installation that explores secrets and their
universality. Viewers respond and participate by reading and adding, in
anonymity, their own –often-intimate – secrets to the installation.
The varied secrets evoke sadness, horror, shock, humor, and reassurance.
The installation, created in 2002, consists of a wall papered with secrets
and a booth where participants add secrets to the project. Written in
pencil on hand-cut 4”x5” newsprint rectangles, the secrets
have the visual tone of a whisper, on an intimate scale. More than 2500
handwritten secrets have been collected to date. The newsprint yellows
over time, evoking remnants of the past, old family letters, and nostalgia.
The booth creates a private and meditative space – a confessional.
Participants write and then deposit their secrets into a locked box. During
the time in which the project is installed, the secrets are periodically
unlocked and added to an adjoining wall. Thus, participants experience
the power of having written their secret and then seeing it posted alongside
those of previous participants. “Viewers often spend hours reading
all of the secrets posted on the walls and often come back multiple times
to view the project… "what haunts.."...demonstrates how
much people have in common and how common their secrets are. It is a snap
shot of what makes us human and of the human condition.” (1) Participants
are invited to note where they are from in an accompanying project notebook
and their origins include: Liberia, West Africa; Philadelphia; Brooklyn,
NY; Venezuela; El Paso, TX; Chillan, Chile; Guatemala City; Libertyville,
IL; Hermosillo, Mexico; Equador; among many others.
"what haunts…" has been installed in seventeen venues
to date (in MA, OR, CT, and NC), including a lounge, a church, two college
campuses, and a public library. Plans are in the works to travel the project
internationally, expanding the participation in and viewing of "what
haunts…" across ethnicity, class, education, race, and income
levels. A project web site will be completed by June 2005, allowing participants
to continue reading the contributed secrets: www.cathymclaurin.com
1. Kathleen Bitetti, “Participation Required” exhibition statement,
Lillian Immig Gallery @ Emmanuel College, October 2004.
