Opening Saturday, July 17th hosted by DDR Projects
About the Artist and the exhibit Housing Complex
This work explores the relationship between House and Home. A house is a shelter that we crave first for protection, and then for status. Notions of home may overlap with our mental image of a house, however our life’s path, circumstantial or chosen, will challenge us to redefine our home. Do we reach this sense of belonging through architecture, community, family, life-style, or personal meditation? Do we live in a home, or does home live in us.
I present two bodies of work in this exhibition. For nearly a year I have been getting to know the homeless community in Long Beach by doing quick charcoal sketches of them while they wait for their turn to take shower at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. These urban cowboys describe their challenge as the “Survival of the Fittest,” and have described home as “an emotional state,” their “soul,” or “the whole earth.” (Lonnie, Curtis and friend – Spring 2010).
Simultaneously, I have been creating small assemblages using a wide variety of reclaimed wood (relating to the architecture of “house”) and small objects/materials that filter daily through our houses, slowly imbuing them with a sense of home. Some of these are made in response to my own thoughts on house and home, while others are made in response to the stories I hear from the homeless community.
Camilla grew up in the conservative Mormon town, Provo Utah. She went to high school at Provo High School, where she had a much abused and poorly functioning letterpress. That was her introduction to printmaking, and she became attached to it immediately. Straight from high school she enrolled into the art department at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where she learned much more about the craft from Justin Diggle. She revisited the U of U printshop recently, and like a childhood home it seems much smaller than she remembers it, but when she was a student there it was so vast.
While pursuing her undergrad, Camilla worked in the series of jobs that people with little experience and odd schedules get into: barista, cook, baker, call centers, etc. She learned how to sew when she began working for a small bondage gear business, a skill which has become invaluable to her.
After moving to Phoenix, AZ and without a press, she began working in sculpture instead of printmaking, producing a series of fabric and ceramic dolls, among other things. As a gift, she received a small flatbed press and began experimenting with merging the recent work in sculpture with her previous work in 2-D prints. Camilla moved to Long Beach, CA to begin graduate school at Cal State, Long Beach, where her life is very boring to tell other people about but only because she gets to spend so much time doing exactly what she wants to do.
Statement
How we perceive depth and objects is not a codified and certain thing, as anyone drawing two converging lines in a piece of paper may know if not entirely realize. We can perceive something as possessing of depth even while intellectually knowing it is a flat plain. My work is an exploration of on the vagaries of perception and created using traditional methods of printmaking and utilizing imagery that is figurative. The ways in which depth is perceived, as physical or as illusory, inspired a series of three dimensional prints. For these works, the image is superimposed upon an original fabric form and mapped out in a complicatedthrough a complex series of steps. When fully constructed, a viewer can see the object itself as possessing depth andphysical depth through form that is simple and iconic, but can also see the detailed imagery upon the form as possessing depth even though it is flata two-dimensional illusory depth. This series has logically extended to include a discussion on the useages of fabrics and ephemera of sewing; new forms are made out of the old printed pieces, and made using the scraps of other prints. The original relief print is re-imagined into other forms.
Tyler Ferreira received his early training in drawing, painting, design, and printmaking at the College of the Sequoias. While attending C.O.S Tyler received the Sophia award for excellence in printmaking. Tyler received his Bachelors of Fine Art at the University of South Dakota. Tyler was awarded the vice presidents, faculty, and Chairs purchase award at the Stillwell Student Exhibition. Tyler is also a six time Frogman’s print and paper workshop participant, and a five-time teachers assistant at the workshop. He is currently getting his masters of fine arts degree at California State University Long Beach. Tyler received the Baker awards grant, the Werby scholarship, and the Frogman’s graduate student scholarship award.
Rob Brown currently lives in Long Beach, CA, where he is working towards his MFA in printmaking and drawing at Cal State University Long Beach. He received his BFA from the University of Nevada Reno in painting and drawing in 2008.
Statement
I am interested in the exploration, emotional experience and impact of minimal obsessive mark making. These marks are informed by and draw reference to both synthetic sound waves and naturally occurring patterns, such as those found in rocks, trees and other geologic formations. They begin to overtake both narrative and figurative elements that previously dominated my work, pushing them out and obscuring them; creating visual and conceptual tension. These marks are created with an acute attention to detail, yet are allowed to organically evolve. These marks predominately take the form of tightly packed, finely drawn parallel lines. These lines are drawn in sequence alternating from top to bottom; by the time they merge in the middle their form is organic and unpredictable. They become a sort of generative sequence that evolves from specific parameters and eventually takes it’s own unique form albeit still within the original constraints. These marks rely heavily on slow meticulous draughtsmanship to imbibe them with energy and power. I use printmaking, graphite and ink to accomplish these delicate, yet powerful marks that upon interacting with each other push into a more organic, meditative aesthetic experience; one that is less reliant on personal symbols and stories.
The artists in Corporeal Construct join organic form with construction, exploring the dynamics between human intervention and nature. Primarily consisting of sculpture and installation work, which have physical presence and inhabit spaces that confront the viewer with references to the body, whether it be that of the viewer’s or another’s, the works in this exhibition blur the boundaries between what is natural and what is man/woman-made, illustrating the complexity of our relationship with the natural world. Though we humans may distinguish ourselves with reason, a bigger brain, and opposable thumbs, we remain animals and connected to life within and around us.
The artists in the exhibition include Vicki Barkley, Maria Csepanyi, Laura Goble, Tamara Mason, Dao Nguyen, and Kelly West. Corporeal Construct was curated by Laura Goble, Tamara Mason and Dao Nguyen. Additional information regarding the show is available on www.ddrprojects.com
Artist Statements
Vicki Barkley
This piece explores the relationships between bodies in space. It could be seen as a family or colony of forms, which may be part of a bigger system, either biological or geological. The interplay of material and texture of the different forms is important, as well as the variety of materials, color, and size. I wanted to explore how disparate bodies interact, and how this parallels human experience.
Mariah Caterina Csepanyi
Inspired by processes of cooking and entertaining and communication through food and reciprocity.
Laura Goble
I’m interested in the feelings spaces can provoke. Space can contain ideas, and emotions. Materials and processes become a metaphor personal experience, juxtaposing hard and soft, round and square, sharp and dull, making hard materials appear soft. I enjoy structure and form and creating objects that test physical boundaries. My work references the human body, nature, and natural systems.
Tamara Mason
I am interested in the taking and defining of space, of materials transforming into a new form, of organic forms from functional human made materials, of giving a quality of life to lifeless materials–the work seems to be growing and moving, living and breathing.
Dao Nguyen
My work examines systems in nature, which function as metaphor for human intentionality. I am fascinated by how the self-organization of life and phenomena in nature just ìhappenî without any seeming intellect orchestrating them. Somehow human consciousness manifests from a concert of organic machinery having evolved over centuries of time. Formal and textural considerations, choice of materials, and process reflect these directions of inquiry. The physical remnants of human existence often serve as a starting point for transformation and have included both natural and manmade materials such as human hair, cat fur, wool, used tissues, LEDs, and obsolete domestic objects. I find inspiration in what is often considered refuse, but which has acquired meaning by its connection to human life.
Kelly West
Debris has been thrown to the wayside, left to depreciate in city streets, parking lots and empty fields; weather erodes, machines trample, dust covers, and uncovers. No longer useful, consumer items accumulate in corners and highways in and through urban areas and in water passages. Everything molts, either naturally, or culturally. I blend and compile these textures into building something that for me is either an exorcism or a celebration.
We are proud to join forces with the late and well respected Long Beach art gallery ddr projects. John Geldbach owner and curator of ddr projects will be guest operating AftH for this months artwalk. Please come by and greet him, he is a good guy and he exhibits great artists.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DDR Projects
ART from the Hive
712 N. Santiago St.
Santa Ana, CA. 92701
Contact: John Geldbach
john@ddrprojects.com
www.ddrprojects.com
“Memories” A Ceramic Exhibition Featuring the Work of Dr. Seong-Heon Kim
Santa Ana, CA, March 11, 2010 - DDR Projects is proud to welcome Dr. Seong-Heon Kim to the new DDR Projects Contemporary Art Gallery at the Art from the Hive Gallery exhibiting his poignant and powerful ceramic work. Show opens Saturday, March 20th, 2010 at 7:00 PM.
Memory is our constant companion; an interpreter that can never be silenced. It continuously reworks our past and in doing so recreates who we are in each fleeting present moment.
Dr. Kim (Seoul, South Korea) has reworked photographic evidence of his own life since childhood in order to visualize this process and question the gaps between evidence recollected and the unending changes worked by memory.
These photo images are printed across thousands of ceramic masks each molded from a segment of his face. This regiment of self-portraits parades the differences possible within the uniformity of a single memory. The aspects of one person on a crowded street or filling a theatre or become a hostile audience. Each scene crosses this inward-looking face as memories may cross the mind: positive images, but also involuntary and inexplicable except by the complex associations invisibly wired into our lives.
In this work the ephemeral image is being made into a permanent thing-translated into the world of the indestructible potsherd which has outlasted civilizations, but which also reflects the dissolution and mutability of human kind. These descriptions of real memory are multiplied beyond any single memory. What do they represent? What is the sum of all these gazes? There is a narrative off a sort: the rich accumulation of images reflects the flickering changes of recollection. Each image is a plausible document, but there is no certainty in these various states of seeing the past, only the fluid psychological flux of oneself.
Please join us for an evening featuring the art of Dr. Seong-Heon Kim.
For additional information, please contact: John Geldbach at DDR Projects. (562) 673-3134 or via email; john@ddrprojects.com
Once again, Downtown Santa Ana is paving the way for “out of the box” artistic endeavors with the launch of “PROJECT: Holiday Projection” Santa Ana, a high-tech 3-D projection, animated light and shadow show Saturday from 7 to 10 p.m. A play on visual perception with multiple projectors will be illuminating the Spurgeon Building façade at 206 W. 4th St. between Main and Broadway.
The building will be immersed in aurora borealis avalanche of snow while a holiday party glows from within. And the show comes with a sound track, courtesy of the electronic outfit Free the Robots and co-owner of Santa Ana’s The Crosby. PROJECT’s debut is coinciding with the Artist Village First Saturday Artwalk, and it will continue to augment the Spurgeon Building throughout the holiday season, continuing with performances every Thursday through Sunday closing Dec. 26.
The Spurgeon Building 206 West 4th St. (between Main and Broadway) Downtown Santa Ana.
In the recent months the original seatbelt bag maker, Harveys, held a contest for artists to design their own tote bag. The bag maker’s “fashion and art gurus” selected the top ten and the rest of the voting went to the public. Online and in store voting went on for months; voting stopped on 11/30 and the results are in. Friend and frequent ART from the HIVE Gallery exhibiting artist Cody “Mustachio” Lusby won the contest. Not only does he get bragging rights but he gets to exhibit his artwork at the Harveys store on Melrose. Cody will also receive royalties on the bag that will be produced and sold.
We currently have some of Cody’s artwork in our gallery which can be seen in a private showing by appointment only. Cody will have new, never seen art at his closing exhibit reception December 19th at the ART from the HIVE Gallery which will be open to the public from 7-11pm.
Thank you to everyone that came out to Saturdays event. It was a lot of fun and we got plenty of art into proud new owners hands. We will be posting pictures soon, if you took some and would like us to put them up on the site please email me at brian@artfromthehive.com.
If you would like to purchase any of the art you saw at the show or would like to see more of a particular artists work we are open by appointment. This show will run until it’s closing party on Saturday December 19th.
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