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Lila Snow: A Retrospective Exhibition
Kay Hwang: Generation
Studio: Collaborative Siteworks

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  February 12, 2004

In an ideal world, all artists would be celebrated for their best works, regardless of current trends, fashions, or where they might stand at any moment during their career. In this particular world, patrons vying to build collections would compete for the chance to buy prized works while simultaneously alleviating financial challenges that most artists face. Critics would enthusiastically write about overlooked artists and works made by those standing outside of recognized career paths, while numerous exhibition venues would welcome the most daring contemporary artists. When evaluating nations, public leaders would provide generous funds while also lauding the names of contemporary artists among their greatest cultural treasures. Currency would sport portraits of artists as well as the usual important icons, streets would be named for artists, and children would recite artists’ names as easily as favored singers or sports stars… In the meantime:

Baltimore, MD – Five relatively unknown artists are exhibiting their work at Maryland Art Place, representing several stages that artists will experience during the span of a full lifetime career. The Lila Snow Retrospective features a wide array of ironic, quirky, didactic, political and sumptuous paintings, drawings and sculptures, made during the past five decades by this relatively unknown artist who lives in Chevy Chase. Kay Hwang’s compelling and unnerving ceramic installation, Generation, pushes boundaries between real and imagined worlds, and represents work by an artist poised to gain far greater renown as her career evolves. Meanwhile, the collaborative group known as Studio features three new, monumental sculptures focused on commonly-shared childhood memories by DC-area emerging artists and studio mates Adam Bradley, Patrick Burke and Erik Sandberg.

The collective experience of viewing each singular installation within MAP’s three galleries exposes the power of these artists’ intent and suggests both similarities and differences between their individual concerns. Where Hwang’s work may be characterized as incredibly feminine, Studio has produced more recognizably masculine, mechanical work, and Snow’s methods explore an entirely different realm of language, history, humor and culture. What is perhaps most compelling about MAP’s current exhibition is the possible recognition that whether an artist is celebrated at the exact moment when works have been made, or if attention is gained years later, that ultimately, the most successful artworks seem to represent a specific moment in time and history, while also transcending any reference to a trend or style. We are left to consider whether it is preferential for artists to be valorized during early moments of a career, or celebrated later, since ultimately, the artists and works they have created become unfamiliar treasures to explore. A gallery talk on February 28th will provide audiences an opportunity to meet the artists.

THE ARTISTS:

KAY HWANG: is a recent transplant from Atlanta and originally from Korea, who currently has a studio at School 33 in Baltimore. This innovative artist has created a dynamic pair of works, Generation I & II (2000-2003,) utilizing numerous cast porcelain objects that have been arranged in a dramatic large-scale installation. Part of this work, Generation I, was first installed at the Georgia Museum of Fine Arts, Athens, Georgia, and was partly informed from Hwang’s idea that if lived fully, life can simultaneously be both profoundly beautiful and yet violent.

LILA SNOW: was born in Harlem, New York and was a jump rope champion of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn and a “Leg Contest” winner at the Tuxedo Theatre in Brighton Beach in New York. Later in life (and on a more serious note,) she received her BS in Chemistry from Brooklyn College, and undertook graduate biochemistry study at the University of Wisconsin, in Geneva, Switzerland, and at the Dante Allegheri School of Rome, with later studies in art at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC and at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Snow exhibited frequently at the Corcoran School of Art, as well as galleries in the US and in France, and feels pride to be recognized as a comedian. Her Torah Scrolls have exhibited as part of a Retrospective at the Washington Hebrew Congregation in Washington, DC., and the work she made while living in Japan brought Kohoku Shimpo to write, “With Western eyes, Snow has seen what we no longer see, and has revealed the beauty of Japan to the Japanese.”  Michael Welzenbagh wrote in the Washington Post, “When a number of Lila Snow’s wall constructions are on exhibit together, they give the impression of a miniature museum dedicated to the turbulent history of the 20th century as perceived through the artist’s eyes.” Snow’s autobiographical memoir, With a Name Like Tuchmacher… (distributed by the Xlibris Corporation) was published In 2002.  The work in MAP’s retrospective exhibition spans five decades of Snow’s work, made between the 1960s and 2004, and serve as an important opportunity to learn more about this dynamic and productive artist.

STUDIO: is comprised of three studio mates who first met at school, and currently share a studio space at the Mob Warehouse in Washington, D.C. Each artist lives in the Washington, DC area.

ADAM BRADLEY: an emerging artist who claims that this exhibition at MAP represents “a turning point in his artistic career and the opening of a new vein of aesthetics.” Bradley, who frequently works with found objects and simple robotics, is a 2000 graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, Rinehart School of Sculpture. In 1995, Bradley graduated from George Mason University, and is currently represented by the Fraser Gallery in Washington, DC.

PATRICK BURKE: studied at the University of Maryland and George Mason University, where he first exhibited in a 1995 student exhibition. Burke’s work explores ideas of permanence, industrial aesthetics, and repetition, and he has designed and built several furnaces for casting sculptures. His current work uses wax cast in wooden molds, as well as wood, steel and cast metals.

ERIK SANDBERG: was born in Quantico, Virginia and first exhibited in 1995. Sandberg received a MFA in painting at George Washington University in 2000, and is represented by Conner Contemporary Art, located in Washington, D.C. In January, 2001, Jessica Dawson raved about his paintings in the Washington Post, “Ditch Aunt Nelly and go see them. They’re unforgettable.”

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Maryland Art Place (MAP) is a non-profit center for contemporary art established in 1981 to: develop and maintain a dynamic environment for regional artists to exhibit their work, nurture and promote new ideas and new forms, and facilitate rewarding exchanges between artists and the public through educational leadership. MAP is fully accessible to persons with disabilities. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 5pm. There is no admission charge to enter the gallery.  For more details, contact MAP’s Director of Programs, Lisa Lewenz at 410.962.8565 or llewenz@mdartplace.org or go to MAP’s web site: www.mdartplace.org