April 3-25, 2015 Doritos Locos Tacos, DLTs, are a combination of powerful, volatile forces. The result is both tasty and hazardous. GJohn David Deardourff is an artist residing in Washington, DC. In 2012 he received a BFA with an emphasis in printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. JD has exhibited his screen prints in Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and DC. In addition, he has designed graphics for Burton Snowboards and album art for RAMP Records.
April 3-25, 2015 Beyond Layers is a group exhibition featuring Leda Black (DC), Anna Fine Foer (MD), Ruth Pettus (MD), Judith Pratt (VA), Marie Ringwald (DC), and Sylvie van Helden (MD). These six local artists show work that presents how artists today are using both the traditional methods of paper layering and found objects, as well as newer digital techniques to create contemporary collage and assemblage.
April 2015 Glen Kessler paints images that initially appear to be atmospheric urban and industrial landscapes, but are, in truth, manipulated views of computer circuit boards. These ‘CircuitScapes’ illuminate the microcosmic world inside of our computers under lighting conditions and from angles that make them appear uncannily familiar. By invoking compositional devices from early American landscape painters like Bierstadt and Church, the work references a new Manifest Destiny—the uncharted world that computers have already begun to usher in. It is a landscape both glorious and ominous, filled with uncertainty about a future where computers reshape our world literally and figuratively. Throughout Kessler’s work the analogous nature of these two worlds is formally and conceptually explored. The physical similarities between city design and circuitry are obvious, each exerting a bias towards efficient geometric utility. At ‘street level,’ however, the similarities become uncanny, as the mechanisms that increasingly drive our culture appear to resemble the urban and industrial areas that they maintain. Kessler plays with clarity and obfuscation encouraging viewers to fill in their own connections to places they have been or places they know while they explore these unique worlds. Kessler’s work examines the larger paradigm shift from analog to digital that began in the late 1970s with the personal computer and continues its exponential expansion into all facets of daily life today. Glen Kessler (b. 1976): Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Painting from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA); Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Painting from the New York Academy of Art. Glen has been awarded a 2013 Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC) Grant, 2 Elizabeth Greenshields Grants, and the Prince of Wales Fellowship. His artwork is collected widely internationally, and is in the public collections of Prince Charles, Ford’s Theater, Yale University, The George Washington University, Boston University, Maryland Institute College of Art, and St. Mary’s College of Maryland. He has earned Best In Show honors at numerous national competitions including ‘The Artist’s Magazine.’ His work has been prominently featured in ‘The Artist’s Magazine,’ ‘Professional Artist Magazine,’ and ‘ArtsyShark.’ In addition to his own studio work, Glen is also a renowned teacher and mentor. He has taught avidly at both the university and community level for nearly 2 decades. He has taught upper level painting and drawing classes at Maryland Institute College of Art, George Washington University, George Mason University, Boston University, as well as The Yellow Barn Studio. In 2013 he opened his own revolutionary art school, The Compass Atelier, to facilitate the teaching of a cohesive art curriculum that takes students through all the necessary elements for artistic success in the most logical, efficient order.
March 6-28, 2015
“What fascinates me is the intersection of two nearly simultaneous realities–while we live in the present, it is the past that is ubiquitous, indeed, omnipresent.” Ruth Lozner is immersed in the practice of making the immateriality of that concept into something tangible, redolent and evocative.
Ruth Lozner, BFA: Carnegie-Mellon University; MFA: American University; Royal Society of the Arts Fellow; Professor Emerita of Art, University of Maryland, College Park; previously, at the Parsons School of Design and the University of the Arts. Her paintings, collages and sculptures have been exhibited in both solo and group shows in numerous galleries and museums.
March 6-28, 2015
I explore my relationship with time by creating ambiguous images. Using mixed media and collage painting, my work unfolds parts of a story in a fragmented way. I use collage as a process of collection and isolation in order to reframe personal imagery using enigmatic plots. These motifs are in action when materials gather on the picture plane. The ambiguous spaces that develop serve as a container for the images I collect. Fragments become isolated from their original context, displacing the routine of domestic spaces into the peculiar. Curious figures, machine like inventions, cutout forms, and abstracted objects become visual islands, the edges of which serve as barriers.
Oil paint, spray paint, acrylic paint, ink, plastic, and paper are my methods of creating edges. Using a process of erasure, re-creation, and dissection, I force the elements to cohabit the same loosely defined space and create a logic of their own. Each layer struggles to clarify or obliterate the previous. I look for moments that balance the absurdity and spontaneity of collage with the fluidity and mark making capabilities of paint. Only odd moments prevent the entire scene from slipping into abstraction or an irresolvable dream.
Misappropriating and transforming memory to create a fictitious embodiment is what propels the work. This metamorphosis occurs when one image shifts into another, or when forms dissolve into the formless, often eliciting strong feelings of curiosity. Sorting through the tension and narrative leaves the viewer searching for an undisclosed secret as the means to access the dense and intimate moments depicted. The inexplicable leftovers meld into an assortment of jettisoned memory, misinformation, and imagination gone awry.
Casey Snyder is a mixed media painter who lives and works in the D.C Metro area. Snyder is an Adjunct professor at Montgomery College and Frederick Community College. Snyder is originally from Michigan and received her BFA in Painting from Ashland University in Ashland Ohio, later she received her MFA in Painting from Kendall College of Art & Design in Grand Rapids Michigan.
