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s'LOTTERY! II

For Immediate Release: January 14, 2005

For more information contact:
Julie Ann Cavnor 410-962-8565 / jcavnor@mdartplace.org

Maryland Art Place proudly presents the: s’LOTTERY! exhibition

Fifteen Maryland area artists exhibit their recent works

Rachel Bone, Leah Cooper, Debra Diamond, Susan ADLer George, Iva Gillet, Jeanine Hall, Michelle Hagewood, Chrystal Healy, Donna Hepner, Orlando M. Johnson, Zahi Khamis, Michelle McCullom, Tim Lonergan, Zachary Thornton and Anthea Zeltzman

 

January 18 – February 5, 2005, Gallery talk and closing reception on Thursday, February 3, 6-9pm (see details, above.)

MAP opens its full gallery space for this exhibition without selection panels, jurors, curators, rules, regulations or restrictions. Artists entered their names in a random drawing and the fifteen selected winners are installing their work at MAP this week. Installation starts January 12, 2005, and audiences may view the process before the opening on Tuesday, January 18 at 11am

Baltimore, MD – On a recent Thursday night, despite the nasty weather outside, a group of artists from diverse backgrounds gathered at Maryland Art Place, filled with anticipation that their name may be drawn (at random) from a paint bucket loaded with entrant’s names. Thus began MAP’s second s’LOTTERY! exhibition…In recognition of the dilemma that most artists face [they usually want to exhibit their work more often than prominent venues are able to schedule their work,] MAP is proud to mount this, its second s’LOTTERY!exhibition. This is a fully democratic exhibit that artists in any point of their career can enter, where the only juror is—well, simply put-- fate. Nearly one hundred brave souls provided a small selection of recent images, a resume and statement, and set their hopes that the odds would be in their favor and their name would be among the ones that were selected in a random drawing. One well regarded artist asked (incredulously), “you mean there won’t be a jury to select the best of the lottery selection?!” The opportunity brought the artist Marcel Duchamp to mind, as someone who reveled in the exquisite (and seldom celebrated) beauty of random events.

Last year in January 2004, as part of the inauguration of MAP’s first s’LOTTERY! exhibition, we wrote, “Who was it that said that being an artist takes about five percent talent, and another ninety five percent of knuckle-grinding, back-breaking, bank-emptying hard work? Artists (and the people who know them) can attest to the enormous challenges required to forge a life in the arts. There are common issues most artists face: how to maintain studio space; where to find time to balance jobs with the struggle of making art (and still have a “life”); how to face technical dilemmas while managing to facilitate one’s ideas in the best way possible…and more.”

During a public celebration shortly before the exhibition opening, the fifteen lucky s’LOTTERY! artists’ names (and their corresponding exhibition spaces) were pulled out of a basket filled with every candidate. Several of the exhibiting artists are well known in the region, while others are newly emerging or recently moved to the Maryland area.

Each selected artist ‘stepped up to the plate’ and rapidly pulled together the work in this exhibition, which may introduce you to artists whose names you may not know, paired with others whose work and names may be more familiar. s’LOTTERY! once again has opened a door to the vibrant arts communities around the state and welcomed many new artists who have never exhibited at MAP. Our hope is that regardless of where each artist currently finds themselves in their career, that this exhibition will lead to many opportunities to share their work in the region and beyond. These artists are:

SPACE 10            Rachel Bone
Rachel Bone grew up on children's books and mudfights in Westmoreland, NH. She has a  father who teaches high school English,  a librarian mother and an older brother who is currently snowboarding somewhere in the backwoods of Colorado.  Her first art show was on the mantle of a living room in Cape Cod, MA, in the home of her great aunt Virginia, who awarded Milano cookies for decent drawings of sailboats and gold star stickers for exceptional ones. In May, 2004 Rachel received her BFA in Printmaking at Syracuse University after additional education at Wells College,  Cornell University and five months abroad in Florence,  Italy at the Lorenzo De Medici School of Fine Art.  While at Syracuse,  Rachel taught Lithography and worked for a small letterpress printing company called The Boxcar Press. She also prints gig-posters and t-shirts for local bands. Rachel moved to Baltimore in August and currently works in an art store and is working on a painting series.

      SPACE  2            Leah Cooper
Cooper is a mixed media artist with a degree in Studio Art from the University of Maryland, who has been living and working in Baltimore since 1989. Although, her background and training are in painting, over the past 10 years her work has become increasingly more three-dimensional.  Minimal in nature, her elegant pieces combine the compositional principles of painting with the materials, textures and physical layers of sculpture. Paper, wood, and wax are three of the predominant materials she currently uses, and found objects are an important element, reflecting an inherent character and sense of history.  Rarely are her works pre-planned, but rather, they evolves, with purpose and reason—organically rather than mechanically.  The theme or feeling connected to each piece is developed in tandem to the work itself.   Each sculpture is meant to represent an abstract visual memory or feeling rather than a concise narrative of an emotion or experience.   

SPACE  6            Debra Diamond
Diamond was trained in business, though art has long been a passion. While it may be counter-intuitive to believe that finance and art engage the same compartments of the brain, in fact, both require an ability to make connections that might not readily exist or be apparent. Both require leaps of faith where not all information is known and having the courage to take risks. Playing it safe may appear to be a risk free way to live your life, but without risk, great ideas would never be born. This is clearly the heart of Diamond’s work, who says that, “I am willing to take bold action if it is right. I am willing to venture in my work as I am invisibly guided. My work is highly intuitive and driven by much that I do not always understand. At the end of the day, it culminates in a circle that will close.”

      SPACE  11            Susan Adler George
Susan Adler George, of Baltimore, was raised outside city limits of Annapolis. Away from close neighbors, she made best friends with her art.  George drew on closet doors, used girlfriends’ old makeup as paint and dreamed of life on Broadway. She studied dance at Peabody Conservatory, and then retired all artistic goals to raise a family. Later in life, George found a renewed inspiration from the Arts. She has degree in English from Towson University, studied writing under award-winning author, Andrei Codrescu, and then studied sculpture under Jim Paulson and Tom Supenski., also at Towson University. George founded and ran a non-profit art gallery, Through the Hands of Women.  She is a published poet and author, and has exhibited her work at the DCCA in Washington, DC, and in Baltimore, at the Baltimore Community Jewish Center, Tomlinson Craft Collection, Gomez Art Gallery and Towson University.

SPACE  13            Iva Gillet
Iva Gillet was born in Louisville, KY in 1937, and moved to Baltimore in 1960. Her career started when she started painting on walls at age three, and continued until today. She has painted murals in hospitals, focused on decorative art and of recent, has painted thematic representations of Adam and Eve. All of her work utilizes negative and positive space and exuberant color, and her subject has always celebrated beauty and joy. Her work has been collected widely, and is in collections in the West Indies, Spain, the Isle of Man and throughout the mid-Atlantic region.

SPACE  8            Michelle Hagewood
Hagewood is fascinated with old and new architecture, and the concept of a world where the structures can exist undisturbed. She depicts a world void of disasters, where a building of string or glass could stand with confidence.  The stories within her works are themselves a constant work in progress, where Hagewood hopes that each viewer conceptualizes the habitants of these homes and villages to their own understanding. A main theme of her work is ladders, bridges, and lines that connect everything, symbolic of a utopia where all doors and buildings would be accessible and welcome to all, in spite of high heights or otherwise impossible conditions.  Invention is another theme, and there are icons of telescopes, boats, and lights that are the creations of the villagers making their homes more enjoyable as well as possible. 

SPACE  9            Jeanine Hall
Hall is currently studying at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she anticipates receiving a degree this spring. Her thesis work stemmed from a need to explore a lack of power that she has always felt. Hall’s work investigates how power and control is perceived and exhibited, as conveyed through images of human hands. Her focus of representing these symbolic gestures stabilizes the concept by reducing the ideal to its components: a portrayal of powerlessness that has overcome the artist. Hall wants her audience to vicariously experience a journey among the weak and powerless, and then venture to “the other side and emerge with an awareness of the sense of torture” that one experiencing powerlessness may feel.

SPACE  15            Chrystal Healy
Healy graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Art in photography from Towson University in 2004, and has been exhibiting her work in Baltimore, her home town. She graduated from Western Senior High, and for several years, has been creating black/white photography about fear, darkness, and hiding. She focuses on the female figure because she feels “it is more fragile and delicate. It can be ripped apart more easily.” Her work is reminiscent of horror movies, inspired by stories Healy has read or nightmares that she has experienced. Her work in s’LOTTERY is exhibited in a compelling and claustrophobic installation in a private space at MAP.

SPACE  3            Donna Hepner
Hepner, a Baltimore native, received BS in painting from Towson University and MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Hoffberger School of Painting.  Hepner has recently exhibited in ARTSCAPE 2003 and the Royal College of Art, London. In 2003, Hepner received an Individual Artist Award and her work has been published in New American Paintings, Volume #51. While Hepner has taught drawing and painting full time at Anne Arundel Community College, for the last 8 years, Hepner has created a series of graphite drawings depicting an atmosphere were the mechanical interweaves with the biomorphic.  Her use of mechanical pencils results in drawings that are precise in nature and technique: her large-scale work can take up to a year to complete, and her patience, persistence, and precision are clearly evident in her work.

SPACE  7            Orlando M. Johnson
Johnson graduated from the Atlanta College of Art in 1998, where he studied painting and metal sculpture, and also studied at Norfolk State University from 1995 to 1996. Since moving to Baltimore, Johnson has focused on exploring row houses as a theme. The neon bright colors in his paintings have evolved, while his ‘portraits’ of area architecture depicts innately Baltimore dwellings that are infused with personal and historical references. Johnson says of his work that he has been “constantly searching for answers within self and environment through science, mathematics, and magic of painting.  A pushing, pulling, mixing, playing, self mutilating vehicle working to gain understanding and reasoning through a peaceful, yet tormenting, means of expression.”

SPACE 12            Zahi Khamis
Kamis was born in 1959 in the village of Reineh outside of Nazareth, and emigrated to Europe and eventually the US in his early twenties. After earning his degree in Mathematics at San Diego State University, and studying literature extensively, he chose painting as his primary form of expression. His work has been exhibited in a number of solo and group exhibits, including: the United Nations in New York City; and in Washington, DC at the Palestine Center and the Carnegie Institute for Peace. In 2005, his work is scheduled for a solo exhibition in Nazareth, sponsored by the Arab Cultural Association. Influenced by the modernist styles of Picasso and Matisse as well as the Mexican muralists, Khamis’ work follows in a long tradition of artists focused on political and social struggle. His bright, optimistic colors combined with the tragic expressions of his subjects, and express the painful, yet luminous, contradictions of all those who struggle for liberation.

SPACE  1            Tim Lonergan
Lonergan moved to Baltimore in 1994, and received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1997, when he received “what has been the most important honor that I’ve ever received in my life - my graduating class voted me to be the undergraduate commencement speaker during graduation ceremonies. It was a memorable moment in my life, and one that I’ll always cherish”. He subsequently received a MFA in 1999 from MICA’s Mt. Royal graduate school, and another Masters degree in digital art in 2000. The work on exhibited at MAP, entitled 52/52 refers to Lonergan’s age as well as the year he was born (1952). This installation provided an opportunity to create a retrospective of his artistic output in the past decade, when Lonergan lived in Baltimore (1994-2004). The work, in Lonergan’s words, is “chaotic, prolific, messy, adventurous, and challenging. Sometimes disturbing, sometimes comforting, sometimes ugly, sometimes beautiful, always heartfelt and sincere, just like me.”

SPACE 14            Michelle McCullom
McCullom recently moved from Hanover, PA where she was actively involved in the art community.  She graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor in Science and Nursing from Seattle Pacific University in 1988, and studied art with professors Michael Calder and Timothy Malm at SPU, working hard to fit as many art classes as possible into her busy Nursing Curriculum.  Since graduation, McCullom has worked in Cancer Nursing, High Risk Labor and Delivery, Infertility Nursing, Critical Care and Healthcare Management, while also studying work by renowned Impressionist painters, including Monet, Manet, Georges Seurat and Mary Cassett. Most recently McCullom has focused on works by Australian Aboriginal artists, inspired by their focus on spirituality, symbolism, and their ability to tell a story. McCullom’s medical background enables her to take computer-enhanced ultrasounds, Computerized Tomography Scans, Magnetic Resonance Images, and slides of cell structures to create unique works of art.

SPACE 5            Zachary Thornton
In 2001, Thornton received a MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and his skilled paintings have received juror’s Choice Awards for several years in the Mid-Atlantic region. He works primarily focused on the human form, creating compelling portraits of austere simplicity, elegance and beauty. Of his work, he has written, “There is a simple beauty and mystery inherent in the portrait with which I am fascinated. Here is an endless playground to explore, its secrets begging to be revealed. You can toy with it, bending it to your will, and at the same time be consumed and humbled by its complexity; either way, the possibilities for creation and discovery are endless. Human form and emotional expression are a source of boundless and timeless truth. Portrait paintings are an artists attempt to reveal truth through themselves with oil and canvas.”

      SPACE 4            Anthea Zeltzman
Anthea Zeltzman has lived in Baltimore for twenty-two years. She has shown work in galleries around Baltimore as well as publicly in Washington, DC. Currently contracting at the Baltimore Museum of Art and doing freelance costume design for A.T. Jones and Son Costume, Anthea's professional art experience has included juniors fashion design for Cosmic of San Francisco, costuming for dance and film, and children's wear design for ZeeZee Growing of Baltimore. Zeltzman recieved a BFA in Fibers from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and studied fashion design at the California College of Arts and Crafts. Her eclectic portfolio incorporates myriad techniques and media, including: sewing, machine knitting, screen printing, painting and photography.

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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 features three galleries with more than 320 feet of wall space. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 5pm. There is no admission charge to enter the gallery.  For more details, please contact MAP’s Director of Programs, Lisa Lewenz at 410.962.8565 or llewenz@mdartplace.org

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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.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 5pm. There is never an admission charge. For more details, please contact MAP’s Executive Director,Julie Ann Cavnor at 410.962.8565 or jcavnor@mdartplace.org.