April 2011

Artspace in Raleigh, NC, Features Works by Addison Paige, Wendy Savage, Morgan Craig, Tim Kiernan, Greg Lindquist, Jason Mitcham, Julie Davidow, and Nava Lubelski

Artspace in Raleigh, NC, is presenting several exhibits including: Haystack featuring works by Addison Paige, on view in the Lobby Gallery from Apr. 1 - 30, 2011; Palimpsest: Navigating Terra Incognita, featuring works by Wendy Savage, on view in the Upfront Gallery from Apr. 1 - 30, 2011; Rising Into Ruin, featuring works by Morgan Craig, Tim Kiernan, Greg Lindquist, and Jason Mitcham, on view in Gallery Two from Apr. 1 through May 7, 2011; and Dis/Order, featuring works by Julie Davidow and Nava Lubelski, on view in Gallery One through Apr. 30, 2011. Receptions will be held on Apr. 1, from 6-10pm.

Addison Paige was awarded a scholarship to study at the internationally known Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, ME, during the summer of 2010. While at Haystack, Paige served as the teaching assistant to well-known quilter Jan Meyers Newbury during her Shibori Dyeing class.

This exhibition visualizes Paige’s experiences not only during class time and the knowledge gained therein, but also about the people she met from around the world while at Haystack, her brief glimpse into the way of life on the coast of Maine, the amazing beauty of the school’s grounds and the bay surrounding it, and most importantly the atmosphere of learning and sharing that takes place at the center.

Paige has worked in several different media over her 20 year career as an artist. Trained as a printmaker at the University of Texas (BFA) and Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia (MFA) she has also worked as a painter, fine craftsman (which had her traveling around the country doing shows and selling to craft galleries worldwide), and most recently in the area of fiber and art quilts. Over the last year and a half she has taken on the dyeing of the fabrics which are used for her art quilts using MX and acid dyes on both silk and cotton.

A palimpsest is a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but traces remain. It can also be thought of as something reused or altered but still bearing visible marks of its earlier form. In short, it is an object that embodies it’s own histories. Terra Incognita is an unexplored region or unknown territory. It is a term used in cartography for regions that have not been mapped or documented.

Wendy Savage introduces her palimpsest work reflecting personal memories that are both real and imaged. Each of her pieces maps emotional traits and sensations regarding her recovery from a brain injury following a serious cycling accident. Memory loss, painful injuries, and sensory overload were recurring struggles. In time, an emerging cognition reworked itself as Savage’s brain and body healed and became restored. The artist’s experiences motivated her to create this body of work, enabling her to express a variety of perspectives as she navigated through the healing process.

Savage is a photographer and digital artist. Her interest in photography has spanned nearly twenty-five years and continues to be the foundation from which she builds her images. She has always been interested in alternative photographic processes as well as integrating photography with other mediums. Savages’s formative years in photography were spent utilizing traditional darkroom techniques, combining liquid emulsions, paints, pastels, watercolor papers, canvases, silks, and alternative chemical processes to create her final pieces. It is her love for texture and the tactile qualities often seen in paintings, sculpture and nature that lead her to experiment with photography in the way that she did.

It is from this foundation that Savage developed her ideas regarding post-process surface manipulation and image enhancement while integrating them with digital technology. Using Adobe Photoshop to bring all her imagery together was the perfect way to blend imagery from many different sources. Savages’s work is a natural fit within the context of her Palimpsest project.

Rising Into Ruin features the works of four artists, each exploring the changing urban landscape in a unique way. Morgan Craig’s large scale paintings explore identity transformation as influenced by architectural edifices present within a given landscape. Presenting more than simple documentation, Craig hopes his works compel the viewer to analyze the impact (emotionally, historically, environmentally, etc.) of construction, abandonment, and destruction on the landscape.

Craig earned his BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, and his MFA from University of the Arts, both in Philadelphia, PA. He has exhibited throughout the US, Canada, and Europe. Craig has received numerous prestigious awards including the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Individual Grant (2006 and 2008). He has participated in several residencies including Atelje Stundars, Finland, the Macdowell Colony, Bemis Center for the Contemporary Arts, and upcoming at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program.

Tim Kiernan’s urban landscape- focused video installation, like much of his works, conveys the artist’s interest in the transformative aspect of video – the notion that reality viewed through the camera lens alters one’s perspective and understanding.

Kiernan earned his BA in Art & Design and a BA in Mass Communication with a minor in film studies from NC State University in 2002. He currently works as a freelance video and dynamic media designer. His video works and installations have been exhibited in Raleigh and Brooklyn, NY.

Greg Lindquist creates “memorial” paintings, documenting both the past and present of various industrial landscapes. This series began as a way of exploring Lindquist’s own surroundings, specifically the Williamsburg and Redhook waterfronts in Brooklyn, NY, and more recently, has expanded to include an investigation of architectural disuse and decay globally.

Lindquist earned his dual masters degree in Fine Arts (Painting) and Art History from Pratt Institute in 2007. He is the 2009-2010 Pollock Krasner Foundation Grantee and the Sally & Milton Avery Arts Foundation Grantee for the 2009 Art Omi International Artist Residency. His work has been written about in various publications including Art in America, ARTnews, Bomb Magazine, Frieze, The New York Sun, and The New York Observer. Lindquist recently participated in Frozen Moments: Architecture Speaks Back, organized by the Laura Palmer Foundation (based in Warsaw), in the Ministry of Transportation building, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. He writes about art for artcritical.com, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and ARTnews.

Through subtle animations, Jason Mitcham investigates why and how we use the space around us. Each of Mitcham’s animations presented in Rising Into Ruin depicts the evolving use of the land as represented through the video documentation of one of the artist’s paintings.

Mitcham was born in Greensboro, NC. He received his BFA at East Carolina University in 2002 and his MFA from the University of Florida in 2005. He is a recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant. He has had solo exhibitions in 2006 and 2008 at the Wynn Bone Gallery in Annapolis, MD. Recent group exhibitions include Visual Politics: Art and the American Experience, Santa Cruz, CA, Watch This! Emerging Filmmakers, Invisible Dog Art Center, Brooklyn, NY, Absence at the Queens Museum of Art, and The Constructed Landscape at NURTUREart, Brooklyn, NY. He currently lives and works in New York City.

Nava Lubelski and Julie Davidow, though using different techniques and media, both make art from a similar desire – to create structure. While Davidow’s paintings visually depict her influences – biology, botany, geology, cartography, and architecture – her process is focused on organizing, controlling, and making sense of the dichotomy between the natural and built environments.

Lubelski’s works begin as accidental or spontaneous spills, cuts, tears, or punctures in canvas or fabric – wounds. Using embroidery thread Lubelski repairs, mends, controls, and contains the damage. In both artists’ works, there is an attempt to provide structure and order, but the underlying sense of chaos remains, evident in Lubelski’s intentionally unfinished repairs and Davidow’s installations that spill off the canvas, spreading across the gallery wall.

Lubelski was born and raised in New York City and currently lives in Asheville, NC. Her work has been included in several exhibitions at the Museum of Arts & Design in Manhattan and has been shown recently at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, and the Queens Museum of Art in Queens, NY. She has had solo shows with LMAKprojects in New York, OH&T Gallery in Boston and P|M Gallery in Toronto. Additional recent exhibitions have included venues in Stockholm, L.A. and Berlin. Lubelski’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, ArtNews and The Village Voice, among other publications, and she was a featured artist in the book Contemporary Textiles: The Fabric of Fine Art, published in 2008.

Lubelski has received grants from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the North Carolina Arts Council. Lubelski received a degree in Russian Literature & History from Wesleyan University and spent a year as a student in Moscow, Russia.

Julie Davidow attended New World School of the Arts in Miami from 1996-1999 on scholarship. She has exhibited at the Miami Art Museum; The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC; The Ft. Lauderdale Museum of Art; The Tampa Museum of Art; SECCA in Winston-Salem, NC; and numerous galleries nationwide. She is the recipient of ARTslant’s 2009 First Prize Golden Frame award, the Leo & Raye Chestler Visual Arts Award, a Florida Enhancement Grant, and the New American Paintings juror’s pick Vo. 76. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Miami Art Museum, the Girl’s Club Collection in Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Epic Miami Hotel, and many private collections. In addition, Julie is the coauthor of the book MIAMI Contemporary Artists.

Artspace, a thriving visual art center located in downtown Raleigh, brings the creative process to life through inspiring and engaging education and community outreach programming, a dynamic environment of over 30 professional artists studios, and nationally acclaimed exhibitions. Approximately 95 artists hold professional memberships in the Artspace Artists Association. Thirty-five of these artists have studios located at Artspace. Artspace is located in Historic City Market in Raleigh at the corner of Blount and Davie Streets.

Artspace is supported by the North Carolina Arts Council, the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County, the Raleigh Arts Commission, individuals, corporations, and private foundations.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the center at 919/821-2787 or visit (www.artspacenc.org).

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