Biography
Larry Jens Anderson was born in Randall, Kan. He earned a B.A.E. in 1970 from Wichita State University and an M.F.A. from Georgia State University in 1982. He has been a professor of art for 25 years in the United States, Italy and France. Anderson has exhibited in Germany, Belgium, Japan, France, Italy, Australia and throughout the United States, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. His work is included in many prominent corporate collections as well as at the High Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta, Ga.; the Mint Museum, Charlotte, N.C.; the Wichita Art Museum, Kan.; and the Museum of Modern Art artist’s book collection, New York. In addition to his career as an artist and instructor, he has curated numerous exhibitions throughout the Southeast and was a founding member of the Atlanta-based gay male artist collective, TABOO, which organized highly regarded exhibitions and actions from 1988-99.

Curatorial statement
Larry Jens Anderson’s paintings, drawings and installation typically relate to such subjects as family, identity, politics, religion and popular culture. Wing Studies further evinces his apt combinations of historical and personal references, in which Anderson uses images of Italian angels during a period of mourning in his life.

Artist statement
I make art in search of whom I am. It is a slow process of letting information out, refining it and playing archeologist to my psyche. While teaching in Italy I had three experiences that lead to a body of work named The Repair of Perfection. There are a multitude of angel images in Italy, and Cortona has a commemorative WWI statue of an angel flying away with a dead soldier. The image captivated me. In the Perugia Museum they had a newly cleaned Baroque painting of The Good Samaritan that was breathtaking in every way. It was a doctor pouring ointment into the wound of a reclining male nude. Thirdly, I went to the medical museum in Florence to see the 16th-century wax models on all aspects of the human body. 

The combined images, experiences and concepts all came together in the planning for an image of a doctor down on his knees sewing the damaged wing onto an angel. The angel represented perfection in need of repair. Often life deals us situations that interrupt our seemingly perfect life. Not long before the trip to Italy two of my closest friends died as well as my twin brother. I needed repair. The research into the fabricating on what the anatomy of an angel’s wing would look like was preparation for a painting. Emotionally the drawings were about the grieving process.

Biography
Michael Brown was born in Trumansburg, N.Y. He earned a B.F.A. in painting from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 1991 and an M.F.A. in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1996. He has had solo exhibitions at such venues as the Sarah Bain Gallery Anaheim, Brea, and Fullerton, Calif., 1996-2008; the Oddstadt Gallery, Redwood City, Calif., 2008; Opus Gallery, Savannah, Ga., 2004; and Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Larchmont, N.Y., 2004. Brown has participated in several group shows at Thinkspace Gallery, Los Angeles, Calif., 2010; the Rymer Gallery in Nashville, Tenn., 2009; and Le Flash, Atlanta, 2008-09. His work is included in the private art collections of Sir Elton John and Whoopi Goldberg.

Curatorial statement
This pair of abstracted landscapes from 2005 showcase Brown’s keen attention to lushly rendered tones and surfaces. Unlike his later series of paintings that focus on one, anthropomorphic figure, here all landscape cues are obscured beneath a moss-colored, spotted film.

Artist statement
Elements:

• Landscape:  as presentation instead of representation
• Time: the residue that is beauty and truth
• Medium: the actor for the dramatization

The purpose of this work is to expose the feelings experienced by the relationships that are created within the environment in which we exist. The landscapes are imagined with an emphasis on capturing a sense of place and time using memory and nostalgia as the guide.

The image of the landscape acts only as a support for the addition of applied "history.”  The stains and spots are created to mimic the physical passage of time on an image much like what one would find on an old photograph uncovered in a grandparent’s basement.

The concept of the word "history" is paramount to the image.  It is the focus.  It is the element that lends "beauty" to the image.

Biography
Charles Clary was born in Morristown, Tenn. He earned a B.F.A. in painting from Middle Tennessee State University in 2006, and an M.F.A. in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2009. Recent solo exhibitions have been held for his work at Catron Gallery, Morristown, Tenn., 2002; May Poetter Gallery, Savannah, Ga., 2007; and Galerie Evolution Pierre Cardin, Paris, France, 2009. His works have also been included in group exhibitions with Dangenart Gallery, Nashville, Tenn., 2006; Alpha Cult Gallery, Long Beach, Calif., 2007; New York Work Space Open Studio, N.Y., 2007; Red Gallery, Savannah, 2008; and a forthcoming exhibition at Rymer Gallery, Nashville, Tenn. Clary’s work was recently featured in Le Figaro, Paris, France, 2009, and Wired Magazine, January 2010.

Curatorial statement
Charles Clary's intricate cut paper pieces reveal a subtle hand-made quality with a keen eye for design. Inspired by drumbeats and Clary’s strong affinity for music, these brightly colored cavernous wall pieces allow the viewer to weave through their many layers of intricacy.

Artist statement
I use paper to create a world of fiction that challenges the viewer to suspend disbelief and venture into my fabricated reality. By layering the paper I am able to build intriguing land formations that support both mechanical and organic life forms. These strange landmasses contaminate the surfaces they inhabit with their energy, transforming the space into a suitable living environment. Towers of paper and color jut into the viewer’s space inviting playful interactions between the viewer and this conceived world. These worlds escape reality, growing beyond my control. With each new evolution this world continues to grow and morph into strange new embodiments, developing new worlds and limitless manifestations of new species.

Biography
Jason Hoelscher was born in St. Louis, Mo. He earned a B.F.A. from Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in 1998 and an M.F.A. from Pratt Institute in 2000. In October 2009, Hoelscher received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant. Recent solo exhibitions have been held for his work at Pinnacle Gallery, Savannah, Ga., 2010; Rule Modern and Contemporary, Denver, Colo., 2009-10; and Cornell DeWitt Projects, New York, N.Y., 2004. Hoelscher has participated in many group exhibitions including Art Santa Fe, N.M., 2003; Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles, Calif., 2005; Gutstein Gallery, Savannah, 2009; and is included in forthcoming exhibitions at Petrovic’s Castle, Center of Contemporary Art, Podgorica, Montenegro, 2010 (traveling exhibition); and ParisCONCRET, Paris, France, 2010.

Curatorial statement
Hoelscher’s vibrant, abstract paintings are primarily sourced from the rules of perspective and modernist abstraction, but are also influenced by comic novels, along with pop and punk culture. This seemingly unusual combination of elements offers an enlivened investigation of the historical and contemporary influences in art.

Artist statement
My paintings result from a determination to make art that can stand up to the rigors of “official” art world aesthetic judgment and critique, yet still possess enough visual impact and oomph to engage the vernacular glance of the untrained eye. In other words, to make paintings that work within and contribute to the cultural context of “fine art” while also being just plain cool enough to be worth looking at by the average person who, while not formally learned in contemporary art, is quite visually sophisticated from a lifetime of iconographic training via mass media.

Through exploring this aesthetic interzone I’ve arrived at works that acknowledge a simple truth: Embedded as we are within an attention economy, there are too many things vying for our focus. As with everything else, artworks often receive only a fleeting glance from viewers trained on quick-edit TV flashcuts and cross-pollinated, recombinant media. If it’s to be the case that even an informed observer who likes a painting might give it only a minute of viewing time, then I believe there should be enough there to capture interest in that flashbulb burst of attention, a sort of aggressive and in-your-face terseness. Just as the early modernist painters had to deal with the perceptual changes wrought by the invention of the camera, I believe that today’s painters have to address contemporary changes in perceptual processing speeds, information intake and attention span, and make these changes our own.

Beyond the initial gestalt read, however, there are elements of the paintings that reward additional attention: the use of classical geometry like the golden section; interplays between illusionism and literality; self-reflexive strategies regarding the work’s status as a mediated aesthetic object; and the creation of a pictorial space that combines an abstraction of Renaissance depth with a representation of modernist flatness. I do not consider my paintings to be strictly representational or nonobjective; to the extent that they can be considered “abstract,” the process of abstraction proceeds from elements that are already abstract, if not virtual, to begin with.

Biography
Richard Krepel was born in Alton, Ill. He earned a B.F.A. from the University of Arizona in 1964, a B.F.A. from the Art Center College of Art and Design in 1974 and an M.F.A. from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1996. Krepel has worked as an illustrator on a national level for the past 30 years––and as a professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design for the past 17 years.  He has enjoyed a wide range of assignments including cover commissions for Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report; poster and program art for the New York City Ballet; and corporate imagery for countless Fortune 500 companies. In 2005, Krepel completed 25 illustrations for "Hallelujah," a collaborative book project featuring the poetry of selected hymns.

Krepel’s work has won awards in many of the nation’s top industry shows, magazines, and annuals including: Applied Arts, Digital Design, Step Inside Design, Step By Step, RSVP, Spectrum, American Illustration, Communication Arts, and the New York Society of Illustrators.  He was singularly honored when his work was chosen for the cover of the New York Society of Illustrators 43rd Annual. 

Curatorial statement
In these works, part of SCAD’s permanent collection, Krepel creates an imaginative world of layered and patterned natural imagery. These whimsical visions of transit evoke SCAD’s successful advancement in the East.

Artist statement
Train and Boatman were originally commissioned for a corporate brochure. Both images attempt to express the client’s mission to offer one “true path” to success. Lesser, more perilous paths were included in both compositions in order to stage this concept. The images were later repurposed for use in the book "Hallelujah: The Poetry of Hymns."

Biography
Kent Knowles was born in Cheyenne, Wyo. He earned a B.F.A. in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1997 and an M.F.A. in painting and drawing from the University of Georgia in 2006. Knowles has had recent solo exhibitions at Gallery See in Atlanta; Piedmont College Gallery in Demorest, Ga.; Pinnacle Gallery in Savannah, Ga.; and Gallery House in New Orleans, La. His work has been included in many group exhibitions at Kai Lin Art Gallery in Atlanta, Ga.; the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, Ga.; Fay Gold Gallery in Atlanta; and the Mona Bismarck Foundation in Paris, France. In addition to working as a visual artist, Knowles is also the author and illustrator of the children’s book "Lucius and the Storm" (Red Cygnet Press, 2007).

Curatorial statement
Kent Knowles’ body of work reflects an interest in the technical aspects of traditional painting as well as the expressive qualities of figure, pattern and design in contemporary art. His more recent series depict young, fashionably dressed women in natural but at times fantastical outdoor landscapes.

Artist statement
Although you wouldn’t know to look at it, the image Attraction in my recent show Ornament endured a tumultuous and unsteady birth. Unlike the majority of my paintings, which are drawn out and composed around a single figure, this piece began with the ancillary figures of the blue moths, themselves born from random marks on a white surface. The cropped figure of the girl was inserted afterward, in response to the floating blue forms. 

The experience of creating work that focuses on the environment first and the figure second, is a new and refreshing approach for me.  One that I find particularly “attractive,” as it challenges me to invoke order from the chaotic scrapings and smears of a newborn painting, and relies less upon preliminary drawings and design. I am currently employing the technique in my newest body of paintings.

Biography
Aaron Kober was born in Normal, Ill. He earned a B.S. in studio art with an emphasis in drawing from Illinois State University in 2006, and an M.F.A. in illustration from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2009. While at SCAD, Kober received an Artistic Honors Fellowship from 2007-09 and graduated with a 4.0 GPA. After interning at Working Class Studio in 2008, he served as a graduate teacher’s assistant in 2009, instructing undergraduate students about illustration techniques and materials. Recent exhibitions of his work took place at Smithfield Cottage, Savannah, Ga., 2009, as well as a traveling exhibition as part of the Teatrio Book Illustration Competition, also in 2009. Published illustrations have been featured in Chesapeake Family Magazine, August 2009 (cover); Metro Spirit, 2009 (cover) and What’s Up? Magazine, 2009.

Curatorial statement
Aaron Kober’s illustrations are a combination of photography, drawing, installation, sculpture and digital art. Working in his hybrid style, Kober is able to create a playful conversation with his viewers and fulfill his love of the narrative. For this work, Kober created detailed sketches based on thumbnails that served as the blueprint. He then captured photographs and created drawings based on the sketches. For the final step, Kober created a collage of all the final elements, using Adobe Photoshop to digitally paint over them, ultimately creating the illustrations as seen in Teatrio 2.

Artist statement
The Story: Grace used to love to play outside, but she chose to stay inside watching television more and more. She traded her friend Sally for sitcoms, and then later her friend Gregory for game shows. Grace’s soul became tired and weary. Unknowingly she became older and older as time slipped by unnoticed. Television entranced her with its slick electric ties, and Grace became a permanent resident on the family couch. Grace’s guardian angel used to love to play outside. The angel would laugh and run along side of Grace. Watching Grace turn numb in the prison that television had incarcerated her in saddened the angel greatly. One day the angel decided she could no longer sit and watch Grace waste her life away anymore, so she took action and intervened. Appearing before the sleepy-eyed Grace, the angel cut the televisions ties, and presented her a ball from her past. The angel showed her the way outside again, and Grace ran out into the glorious sunshine with her prized ball in hand. Outside she found her friends Sally and Gregory, and many others whose guardian angels liberated as well. They ran and played just like they used to. Grace had such a time that she didn’t realize that she had become unplugged. Grace became the beautiful girl she once was when she finally remembered what it was like to have fun again.

Biography
Adam Kuehl was born in Oak Park, Ill. After earning a B.F.A. in photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design, he worked for the university in producing award-winning fashion catalogs, ad campaigns, and other special projects. Although Kuehl photographs a variety of subjects, his work is rooted in his landscapes. His series, "Savannah Nights," has exhibited around the country and was showcased in "25 Under 25: Up-And-Coming American Photographers, Volume II" as well as Magenta Foundation’s "Flash Forward 2009: Emerging Photographers." His work has appeared in PDN, Vogue, The New York Times Style Magazine, Metropolitan Home, among many other publications. Kuehl currently lives and works in Chicago.

Curatorial statement
In his award winning "Savannah Nights" series, Adam Kuehl extracts the whimsical, fanciful, and often haunting qualities of the city with a unique perspective that blends nature and industry. Kuehl’s photographs pair some of the cities most favored natural elements such as the wistful live oak trees, the glossy Savannah River, and mysterious marshlands, with 19th-century architecture, modern bridges, and shipping equipment in a way that reveals its historicizing beauty.

Artist statement
These long exposures, often between 5 and 15 minutes, reveal the delicate balance between man and nature in this uniquely designed city. These forces tug and pull on each other undistracted under the quiet illumination of the night.

Biography
Debora Oden earned a B.F.A. in 1996 and an M.F.A. in 2003 from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Recent solo exhibitions have been held for her work at Folsom Gallery, Lincoln, Neb., 2004; Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Mo., 2006; and the Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearney, Neb., 2006. Her works have also been included in group exhibitions at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Neb., 2004; Lux Center for the Arts, Lincoln, 2005; American University in Cairo, Egypt, 2005; Haydon Art Center, Lincoln, 2006; Gallery Trois, Atlanta, Ga., 2007; the ACA Gallery of SCAD, Atlanta, 2009; and Pei Ling Chan Gallery,  Savannah, Ga., 2009.

Curatorial statement
Debora Oden’s prints fuse abstracted personal imagery with a love for line and color. Oden uses these mark making elements to construct the basis of a space, both shallow and deep, in which the viewer can become immersed. Whether inspired by her children’s drawings or the militaristic conflicts in our current war on terror, Oden fuses these aspects into works that are a seductive blend of line and color and are both formal and conceptual.

Artist statement
I have been printing with the same plates for many years. I often etch new plates, but I am drawn to these hatch marks over and over. Often, when I prepare to print, I find myself grumbling about these mistreated, worn-out plates, but as soon as I begin to ink them, I remember why I am so enamored with them. They are juicy lines that do not need to dominate; they allow the ink to be as inky as is its wont.

With the lushness of the ink, I had something. I was using it to express my desire, or to cause you dear viewer to feel it for me. Fields of color full of life, or void and dying. They build space for me, for us. The subject of my work has long been about this energy, this movement. Someone in the world always wants to take something from someone else, even matter itself is always moving, on the go. Nothing is fixed. The latticed structure of a solid vibrates, hums and moves. Within all of this matter, space is filling the gaps. Making the movement and density of the matter, matter. This is what has been the structure of my work. Now, time itself has changed for me. As I grow as an artist, a parent, an educator, I find less and less time for such thoughts. I question the luxury of dallying in these modernist tendencies.

Now new, how does my desire evolve? Does it move from a shapeless form to actual objects that express longing? Does the way light presents an object tell more about time than layering ink layers over each other? What happens when these phenomena exist in the same visual image (sentence)? Does a blurry photo of young lips speak of temporal moment, loss of time (and hence create longing?) Does crusty bloody ink give us this longing by reminding us of mortality and death? And of what value is desire? Does it give sweetness to our ordinary lives, or does it keep us from experiencing the moments that we are in? Desire, growth, change, and the constant forward march of our experiences. What is the structure of time, does it stack and build a complex layer of experience and feeling (of ink)? Does it stretch out into a sequence of events? Does our desire to achieve, build and love create the energy to move us through the present? Or does it deny us our present?

Time and desire; ever present and in motion.

Biography
Michael Porten was born in Huntsville, Ala. He earned a B.F.A. in illustration from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2004, and is currently working towards an M.F.A. in painting from SCAD. Recent solo exhibitions have been held for his work at Hall Street Gallery, Savannah, Ga., 2008; and Galeries de l’Olivier, Lacoste, France, 2009. His works have also been included in recent group exhibitions with Late Show Gallery, Kansas City, Mo., 2008; Miami Art Basel satellite fair (ARTery Art Fair), Miami, Fla., 2009; and SCAD Gallery, Hong Kong, China, 2010.

Curatorial statement
Michael Porten began his undergraduate education as an illustrator and has since moved into SCAD’s painting department. His most recent body of work explores the self-portrait, a theme consistent in Porten’s painting, and the way in which contemporary pop culture and historical portrait painting can unite on one surface. While a very traditional portraitist, Porten adds abstracted and simplified graphic elements such as hound’s-tooth patterning, the “thumbs up” image, diamonds and teardrops. Physically covering the surface of the image, they ultimately reference a personal iconography the artist has integrated into his artistic vocabulary.

Artist statement
My work focuses to a large degree on the synchronizing of seemingly disparate content and contexts, such as rainbows, addiction, home, family, painting, theory, science, computers and religion. These themes originate from discursive research and converge to from an amalgamated self-portrait that is imbued with a statement.

These Symbolic Paintings were inspired by the legend of the great blues musician Robert Johnson. It was widely whispered that he must have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for some unholy music lessons. The paintings get their title from his song, Stones in My Passway, which speaks of the hellhound that is always on his trail.

Biography
Aleksander Rodic was born in Belgrade, Serbia. Rodic is a technical artist who is currently working toward a B.F.A. in visual effects from the Savannah College of Art and Design. In 2006, his work "Eclipse" won the grand prize of ArtTech Festival in Pancevo, Serbia; and in 2007, his work "Energy Plant" was awarded first prize at the American Wind Energy Association wind power conference in Pittsburgh, Pa.

Curatorial statement
Aleksander Rodic’s work combines art, design and technology. He brings theoretical scientific concepts to life with an emphasis on visual effects and technical direction.

Artist statement
This experimental video was created as a final project for my procedural animation class at the Savannah College of Art and Design. It was inspired by demoscene, 3-D pipes screensaver and subatomic particle collision images. The name of this work, Mass Origin comes from the Higgs boson particle, The God Particle, which is expected to provide a scientific foundation for the origin of mass in the universe.

Biography
Lucha Rodriguez was born in Caracas, Venezuela. She earned a B.F.A. in graphic design from The Art Institute of Atlanta in 2006, and an M.F.A. in printmaking from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2010. She has had recent solo and two-person exhibitions at Twist Gallery in Nashville, Tenn.; Gallery Stokes, Young Blood Gallery, and Art House Gallery in Atlanta, Ga.; and the Blue Gallery in Lacoste, France. Rodriguez’s print work has been included in numerous group shows in Mexico, India, France and the United States. She has received much recognition for her work, including the Alexander Ink Creative Print Award in Savannah, Ga., 2008; the ARTLANTIS Best in Show award from Beep Beep Gallery, Atlanta, 2009; the Best in Show Award for the MOCA GA Annual Pin-Up Show in Atlanta, 2009; and a nomination for the Eleventh Annual Forward Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award, 2010.

Curatorial statement
Lucha Rodriguez produces artwork—nicknamed by the artist as “pink projects”—in a variety of media including etchings, monoprints, serigraphies, and at present, immersive, surreal constructed environments. Her organ-inspired "Creaturettes" series utilizes an extravagant iconography to explore a central theme in her work: the body as an internal space. As a means of increasing viewer interaction with her pink creations, Rodriguez has begun completing sculptural wall pieces with auditory components.

Artist statement
Thoughts on "Mega Melo Creaturette":
Mega Melo Creaturette is the exploration and interpretation of surfaces and their possible constructions within a specific space, contemplating ideas of light reflections and shadows. Images arise from the surface of the paper, extending and floating as if liberated from gravity. The shadows cast by the multiple paper applications create an intricate seductive space that emerges before us. Subtle changes of light shed on the paper surface and control volume and depth in the piece. The work defines and constructs a place for meditation, creativity and self-examination, all actions encompassing private dialogue claiming the mind as an intimate private space. It reveals the experience of the internal, as a metaphysical state of the mind fomenting dialogue between science and metaphysics. The work has the ability to navigate from the suggestive-representational to the abstract. The simplicity of the paper contrasts with the intricate hand cutting work that transforms the paper into organic symbols of meditation.

Thoughts on "Outside Creaturette":
I consider my personal art as a life long project that can be shaped only by time and new work. My artwork is constantly being informed by the piece before and after itself. A body of work can be definitely analyzed through a chronological and linear timeline of “progress,” but in my mind it is always a cyclical labor to be continued throughout the artist’s life.

When approaching my work, I like to expand ideas of materials beyond their primarily intended use. I allow myself to bring those materials to life, to experiment and be as flexible as possible in the making process. I particularly enjoy the twisting, bending, knotting, perforating, stitching, cutting and tearing of my materials. By doing this, I always leave an open window of new opportunities and chances to appear in my body of work. Outside Creaturette shows my belief that every object and being are connected through the work of art, and that the only path of materializing ideas and concepts is found by connecting with your materials and becoming “one” in concept and physicality. The rope in this piece, transcends its primarily intended use as a material to become part of a larger conceptual framework dedicated to art. It depicts a seductive internal space coexisting with our everyday reality.

Biography
Todd Schroeder was born in Defiance, Ohio. He earned a B.F.A. from Ohio University in 1990 and an M.F.A. from Kent State University in 2002. Recent solo exhibitions have been held for his work at White Columns, New York, N.Y., 1997; 2CarGarage Contemporary Art Gallery, Savannah, Ga., 2008; Pinnacle Gallery, Savannah, 2006; and Gallery Stokes, Atlanta, Ga., 2009. His works have also been included in group exhibitions with Murray Hill Galleries, Cleveland, Ohio, 2005; 2CarGarage, Savannah, 2008; and Pei Ling Chan Gallery, Savannah, 2009. His work can be found in collections of Franklin Sirmans, Houston, Texas, and Brice and Helen Marden, New York.

Curatorial statement
Schroeder’s works respond to media as he creates conceptual and ultimately visual stories in reaction to news, television shows, movies and media. Often using both adductive and reductive approaches, Schroeder has developed a visceral approach to image-making, He carves into stainless steel metal surfaces, scratching away elements to reveal an abstract pattern, or applies layers of paint to his surfaces to build up the existing space.

Artist statement
This work started with the news of David Carradine’s odd and puzzling death. The drawings were first. They began as reactions, a response to the mystery, manifestations of my response to the news as it came out and as I heard it (random snippets from the radio, TV and conversations with people). This reactive approach evolved into a series of more directed tangents based around David Carradine, especially focusing on his defining role as Kwai Chang Caine in the early 1970s TV series “Kung Fu.”

Biography
Whitney Stansell was born in Greenville, S.C. She earned a B.F.A. in fiber arts from the University of Georgia in 2003, and an M.F.A. in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2008. Recent solo exhibition have been held for her work at TEW Galleries, Atlanta, Ga., 2007; Stokes Gallery, Atlanta, 2008; and forthcoming at Whitespace, Atlanta, 2010, and Swan Coach Gallery, Atlanta, 2010. Her works have also been included in group exhibitions with TEW Galleries, Atlanta, 2007; Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta, 2009; James Cohan Gallery, New York, N.Y., 2009; and Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 2009. Her work has been featured in Art in America, 2008; The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 2008 and 2009; and forthcoming in FiberARTS magazine, 2010.

Curatorial statement
Whitney Stansell’s paintings, drawings, prints and textiles reveal a family history that also resonates with American urban society. Incorporating figures into stark landscapes with light washes of color, Stansell creates focus on very intimate familial scenes that stem from stories of her mother’s childhood.

Artist statement
My work combines painting, drawing, printmaking and textiles to create work that explores memory, history and imagination. Much of the work is presented as a series of “tableaux” which present a moment in time that intimates a fuller narrative. Conceptually the work is based on ideas of absence and the exploration of liminal spaces or interstices, (the mundane moments that occur before and after the dramatic—or traumatic—moments).

The work began with my memories of my mother’s stories of growing up in a Catholic household with her six brothers and sisters and the absence of her father, literally an “absent center.” This exploration has become a point of origin from which I have created an extended cast of characters, their stories developed from other family stories or the family histories of friends or neighbors. Most of these people grew up and lived in my neighborhood, born at differing times in the last century. My work interweaves these disparate characters’ stories, allowing them to exist simultaneously in the same world.

I believe that imagination, memory and environment work together to create substance and meaning.  Therefore my work is created mimetically, often responding and recreating places in the small town where I live. I have constructed my own visual interpretation of others’ orally transmitted memories: my memories of their memories.

I have chosen to adopt a storybook quality in my work to reflect the fact that many of these are stories I have heard throughout my life: they are an oral storybook. I use a color palette that is specific to the time period I am illustrating. When exploring my mother’s memories, tiffany box blue, and pale green and yellow all evoke the 1950s idea of perfection and ideal happiness that was often absent from her home. If the work is created on canvas or a fibrous medium, I will stitch the contour lines of the figure and surrounding objects with one continuous thread onto the finished painting. Embroidering the canvas reflects ideas of linage and generation. If the work is a drawing, the line quality of the work must be rendered in strong black lines, referencing my interest in the line quality of a simple thread.

There is a literal quality to the work that captures and augments history in physical terms where it wasn’t physical before. I have made my “second-hand memories” into a physically existing history, and by doing so I have a greater understanding and greater interest in oral narratives, family history, and memory.

Biography
Caomin Xie was born in 1974 in Shanghai, China. He earned a B.F.A. from the China Academy of Arts in 1998 and an M.F.A. from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2001. Recent solo exhibitions have been held for his work at Rx Gallery, San Francisco, Calif., 2005; Gallery 55, Shanghai, China, 2006; and Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, New York, 2008. His works have also been included in group exhibitions with Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., 2006; Red Gallery, Savannah, Ga., 2007; Galerie Barthe & Senarclens, Geneva, Switzerland, 2007; and Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, China, 2008.

Curatorial statement
Caomin Xie’s work takes an in-depth look at how media and paintings have evolved in the dialogue of contemporary art. In addition to the formal movements of shape, line and color, Xie’s paintings also move visually between religious and media-driven imagery. With a careful overlapping of two images, Xie’s paintings have a vibrating quality that suggests we are viewing a “still image” on a television screen.

Artist statement
If painting is comprehended as a productive practice, we cannot make much difference between painting, photo or motion graphics. All of them are the same as image producing, and all kinds of image producing are painting; the producer is desire. The image producing is desire’s practice as metonymy and metaphor.

Since 2000, I have produced a series of paintings called Still Image. Still Image is not painting mimicking screens, but the metonymy between different images. Images in the screen not only give us disordered and impermanent experiences, they also offer different profiles of the image debris in the stream of time. Still Image is the suspension in the process in which the image transforms from one kind of destruction to another. The image producing is the metonymy of destruction. That is why I am always obsessed with painting modern ruins. However, the sense of the image producing is not consistent with what it has produced, but in the process of producing as such reality.

In 2006, I developed the Still Image series into a new group of paintings—Thousands Buddha. This series of paintings is my interpretation of the Buddhist concept of the infinite universe and the self as a micro cosmos. The existential wonder of the individual’s chance dwells in the uncanny feeling of the infinite universe; every element in the painting prefigures finitude and infinitude. It is impossible to confirm or deny by its own. It appears not in a long-term contemplation but in a short glance.

My interpretation of the Buddhist’s idea can be seen in my recent paintings The Ruins’ Mandala. Mandala first appeared in Tantric Buddhism as a form of sand painting. In the making of Mandala, different colors of sand processed in metempsychosis like pictures changing in a kaleidoscope. It embodies the Buddhist concepts of creation, maintenance, destruction and emptiness. Mandala also is a kind of visual presentation of holography. It reflects the relationship between happenchance and eternal return of the whole universe; not only can we search out the information of universal existence in the detail of chance; we can also find contingent chance in the existence of the whole universe. When we are confronting the stupendous creative and destructive powers of today’s technology, for me, Mandala is the best visual metaphor of our world.

The series painting The Facial Makeup of Chinese Opera is created through other series of paintings in these recent years. The idea came from my thoughts about the question of cultural identity. To my thinking, the most charming quality of facial makeup in Chinese opera is that it reveals the chanciness between representational sign and essential identity. A male character can be represented by a female performer; an elder can be shown by a youngster. The essential identity of actor is not the assured fact. The most important is the sign of the representation. As a trick of metaphor, it is the facial makeup that creates the role, not the actor himself. The facial makeup replacing an actor’s facial expression is one signifier replacing another signifier. The facial makeup is not a representational depiction of a natural subject but a revelation of its creative nature through its splitting from how it is signified as subject. People always criticize today’s Chinese art as becoming more and more symbolized. This point of view implicates a sort of essentialist call of cultural identity. The demonstration of the facial makeup of Chinese opera is a jeering overturn of the essentialism.

Biography
Sojung Yu graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2008 and is an M.F.A. candidate in illustration at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Recent exhibitions have been held for her work at Mills Pond House Gallery, St. James, N.Y., 2008; Altered Esthetics, Minneapolis, Minn., 2008; and Studioplex Gallery, Atlanta, Ga., 2010. She has been awarded the second place accolade in the American Design Award’s 2008 Winter Semi Annual Contest and was accepted into the Society of Illustrators Los Angeles 2009 Annual Competition.

Curatorial statement
Blending fantasy, color and drawing, Sojung Yu’s harmonious illustrations are personal expressions inspired by diverse collaboration with peers. Her current illustrations bring forth familiar concepts, creating a medley of imaginative stories.

Artist statement
As an illustrator, I try to make my work very personal, although the story comes from another person. I explore themes through fertile imaginations and interesting symbols relating to the subject. Therefore, my work can interact with imagination and the curiosity of the public. In school, I have enhanced my illustration education by sharing ideas with fellow students who have come from different countries and experienced totally diverse artworks in style. I also have learned various areas of illustration, and I understand who I am and what I want to be through the art of visual communication and illustration.

My current body of work reflects my interest in portraying mankind in common moments in a selective edition. In addition to design elements, imaginary colors, lyrical drawings and illustrative concepts are the methods I manipulate to express what I want to present in my illustration. I am looking forward to being a professional illustrator who fully makes the connection to the public in my visual language through the media of illustration.

There is nothing in the Event ID. First Name
This field is required.
Last Name
This field is required.
Email
This field is required.
Invalid Email.