UPCOMING | PREVIOUS





Art Work                   April 17th -- May 9th


Opening Reception ------------>:                                Thursday, April 17, 2003 6-9PM

Special May Day Performance ---------------->:          Thursday, May 1, 2003 8 PM

Closing Reception ------------>:                                   Friday, May 9, 2003 6-9PM

Gallery Hours --------------------------->:               Saturday & Sunday, NOON - 5PM


Ross Bell- Toronto, Canada, Sculpture
Ross Bell is a sculptor who maintains a studio practice in Toronto and works for Pacific Art Services (Pacart) as a driver / field technician. He received a BFA from the University of Lethbridge (Alberta) in 1996 and went on to complete his MFA at the University of Guelph in 2000. He has had solo exhibitions in regional galleries in Alberta and Ontario including The Old Courthouse Gallery (Red Deer, Alberta/Canada) and The MacDonald Stewart Art Center (Guelph, Ontario/Canada).

My sculptures reference my work at Pacart and the influence it has had on my process in the studio. Materials and forms have remained relevant in my art practice even after I have finished working with them as an employee in a job context. Carpet and carpet tack strip remain in my work in a way that is similar to the animal tallow and felt of sculptor Joseph Beuys. Moving art has had a profound effect upon my tactile experience of reality. The materials and forms of art shipment are used sculpturally to provide alternate meanings and implications through the work that transcend and shift notions of space and time.


Noel Heberling & Carlyle Micklus- NY, NY, Installation
In January of this year Carlyle Micklus and I, Noel Heberling were responsible for the dismantling of 7 large painting by Olivier Mosset. The painting were installed at Spencer Brownstone Gallery in SoHo, NYC. The canvasses hung on the two main walls of the gallery. Olivier Mosset painted all 7 canvasses flat orange, in the gallery with a roller. The process of dismantling there large minimalist paintings required the removal of all the staples from the frames. This process required two workers and 4 days. However, we almost immediately saw the value in this experience...we saved the staples.

We are interested in how our work forms a dialogue with the work of artist and art handler. If Mosset's work serves as a template for minimalist painting, we have used, literally, the elements of his work to create a template that describes our relationship to his work. By reincarnating these paintings using the discarded staples, we have transformed the original work into a living, contemporary installation.


Christopher Lowery- Brooklyn, NY, Mixed Media work
Christopher Lowery received his MFA from the University of Iowa. His work has been exhibited at the Eve Drewelowe Gallery (University of Iowa), Gallery 304 (Great Barrington, MA), the Bachelier-Cardonksy Gallery (Kent, CT), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC,NY), Burling Gallery (Grinnell, IA) and ABC No RIO (NYC, NY). He is currently employed as an art handler and installer for the City University of New York's Graduate Center.

In 1995 I began a drawing series title "The Work Drawings." The premise of the images was to create an ongoing body of work, with no predefined subject matter, pivoted around the fact that they were made during "down time' in the work place. It began while an assistant registrar at The University of Iowa Museum of Art. The series then documents a brief stint temping in corporate New York. Then, it moves through two years as a security guard and one and half years as a library technician at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I currently continue the body of work during lunch, coffee breaks, and down time managing art storage at the City University of New York's Graduate Center, where I am art handler and installer for the art gallery and exhibition spaces.


Donna Keiko Ozawa- Berkley, CA, Sculpture and Installation
Donna Keiko Ozawa received an MFA in Sculpture from the School of theArt Institute of Chicago in 1997. She has exhibited her work in several galleries, festivals, fields, gardens, and sanitary stations, including the Crucible Steel Gallery at CELLspace (San Francisco, CA), the Design Festa (Tokyo, Japan) the Creative Art Center Gallery (Sunnyvale, CA), and the Euphrat Museum of Art (Cupertino, CA).

In 2001 she was Artist-in-Residence at the Sanitary Fill Company. She currently works as a mountmaker/art installer at the Asian Art Museum,(San Francisco, CA).

I am exploring constructions and symbols of cultural identity through the everyday and often invisible aspects of culture.

Machines and their parts, toys, and things that move or suggest movement are aspects of my exploration sand inquiry about social and cultural systems.

Many of the objects that I make are inspired by my hope to have some kind of influence on how viewers are participants in culture and not simply subjects to it.

Through my use of touch or the allusion of physical interaction, I hope to pose questions to viewers about collective responsibility and the nature of culture, to focus on the implications of the ordinary and to confront serious issues through playfulness and humor.

dozawa@exploratorium.edu
http://www.exo.net/~dozawa


Andrew Prayzner- New Haven, CT, Painting
"In the end the work you do is about yourself, your fears and desires...You must do the work that feels authentic - in the end it will show who you are."" -- South African photographer David Goldblatt on being asked about the political nature of his work.

I have a strong interest in consumer culture, mass media and how it affects our society.

I began painting The Future Decays, the series based on suburban tract housing and banal fast food landscapes at the end of 1998, The work was born out of my frustration with middle class America's apathy that has, in part, allowed the suburban sprawl and unfettered commercialism that pervades our culture.

As I researched New Urbanist literature, I realized how much land and resources are consumed to create these mundane places and it seemed the large expanses in my paintings represented this waste.

The paintings minimal approach allows them to be viewed either as separate units or as a whole installation.


Theodore Kersten- Brooklyn, NY, Painting
Exploring the tender side of cynicism, my paintings provide a humble critique of contemporary culture. And yet, underneath the comic exterior I strive toward a kind of aggressive optimism - celebrating the humanity, struggle, and mystery of everyday life.


Mike Smith- Long Island City, NY, Sculpture
Through the construction of scale models my work implies narrative. These models represent vessels, characters, and environments. The vessels are exacting and precise, yet they are empty, anonymous, and unengaged. The peculiar characters are average and ordinary, yet they find themselves caught in dramatic, unresolvable situations. Lacking certain information such as color, grime, or wear, these objects are, nonetheless, specific in detail. The construction materials are left raw: white styrene, unpainted fiberboard, cast urethane, and grey primer. Dilemmas enter into these model worlds. Miniature characters encounter mythic problems of self identity, isolation, and vulnerability.

Mike Smith was born in Southern California in 1972 and grew up in Utah's Salt Lake Valley. In this environment, Smith's sensibilities were influenced by the collision of desert topography, urban sprawl, and idiosyncratic religion. In 2000 he received his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited in the Chicago community where he has attracted the interest of collectors and curators. Smith recently participated in a group exhibition titled "American Dream" at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in NYC. Currently, Smith is developing new work that will be displayed by Bodybuilder & Sportsman Gallery at Art Chicago this May. Mike Smith lives and produces art in his apartment in Long Island City.

Anonymous Entries
Art Handlers spend countless hours around art. Sometimes they develop projects as a direct result of what they are doing while handling the work. See Noel Heberling and Carlyle Micklus's work. These photographs were sent to us as an example of such a project. Artworks (some very well known and others less prominent) are taken out of their usual context, gallery, private home, museum, and placed in a more open environment. The photos openly challenge the sacred space that certain well known art by well known artists occupies. It asks you to consider what it means to value art as a commodity, and if art should be treated in a particular way based on its monetary value.