Form/Space Atelier Program For November 2008
Show Title: Spire
Show Duration: November 14- December 7, 2008
Opening Reception: Friday November 14, 6PM (Belltown Art Dealers Assn.
Second Friday Art Walk)
Location: Form/Space Atelier 2407 1st Avenue Seattle, WA 98121-1311
Stencil artist Greg Boudreau creates an exhibit emphasizing the unique
vertical qualities of Form/Space Atelier, combining nearly two hundred
stenciled panels and a towering spire installation of salvaged wood.
Greg Boudreau prepared this proposal statement prior to the execution of November 2009's exhibit: "The project for Form/Space will be called "SPIRE." It will essentially consist of a central spire constructed of salvaged wood on the '2nd landing' (of the gallery) with possibly one or two separate partial spires. The spires will be loosely modeled on the structure of construction crane frames. The walls will be filled with a "massive" quantity of single layer hand drawn bird stencils printed on frames of salvaged wood. The intent to create a project/installation that emphasizes the vertical quality of the gallery of Form/Space Atelier. Spire also combines our original ideas (Boudreau and Form/Space Atelier Curator Paul Pauper) of having outside studio work mixed with an atelier project. Because of the 'freer' nature of the execution of the project I've been changing my ideas and approach more than usual."
The build for Spire can be witnessed here: http://alwaysbebuilding.blogspot.com/
GREG BOUDREAU
SOLO_
- “A FUTURE OF CONCRETE AND STEEL.” Canvas Art. Seattle, WA. August 2008. Solo Exhibition.
- “Auburn: People and Places” or “Greg Boudreau’s More Than You Imagined” Auburn Parks and Recreation Department. June, July 2008. Auburn, WA. Solo Exhibition.
- Twilight Artist Collective. Seattle, WA. May 2008.
- “You Were Always My Favorite.” Canvas Art Gallery. Seattle, WA. March 2008.
- “Publicis Commission.” 152 panels created and installed for company collection, August and November 2007.
- “I’m Only Friends with Attractive People.” 619 Western Artist Studios. Seattle, WA. August 2007.
- “Big Game Hunters.” Calamity Jane’s. Seattle, WA. April 2007.
- Solstice Café. Seattle, WA. April 2006.
GROUP_
- “Spray It, Don’t Say It.” Bherd Studios. Seattle, WA. August 2008. Group Exhibition.
- “American Dream.” DDADX Studios. Portland, OR. June 2008. Group Exhibition.
- “Papercuts.” 108 Occidental Gallery. Seattle, WA. June 2008. Group Exhibition.
- ArtReach. Sea Sound Lounge. Seattle, WA. May 2008.
- Forgotten Works’ 30-30 Challenge. OK Hotel. Seattle, WA. December 2007.
- “SS Marie Antoinette Group Art Exhibit.” 619 Western Artist Studios. Seattle, WA. September 2006.
- “The Anti-Terrorism Handbook.” OK Hotel. Seattle, WA. April 2006.
EDUCATION_
- Bachelor of Arts, Business Administration, Marketing, Seattle University, Seattle, WA, June 2005
- 2008 EDGE professional development program through Artist Trust.
Form/Space Atelier Program For October 2008
Show Title: Crossing Boundaries
Show Duration: October 10- November 9, 2008
Opening Reception: Friday October 10, 6PM (Belltown Art Dealers Assn. Second
Friday Art Walk)
Second Chance Opening Reception Tuesday October 14, 6PM
Crossing Boundaries is an exhibit of Yuriko Miyamoto’s acrylic paintings on canvas, each canvas 18x24 inches. The scale of the paintings was chosen creatively and intentionally by curator Paul Pauper, who, with his own hand grounded each canvas with a gesso tinted a pale yellow.
Yuriko Miyamoto creates paintings, illustrations and graphic design, characterized by a child-like playfulness and strong use of characters. Yuriko is an employee of the Frye Art Museum.
More info: www.ysquare.net
Using simple life forms such as cat, dog, fish, bird and insect often helps to reflect and symbolize ourselves, our emotions and the quiet space of our thoughts. In each of my paintings, a character and scene has a special moment and each element is challenged to cross boundaries—gender, species, dimension, and relationships to universal laws. The scene inspired by nature, from the microcosmic world to outer space with a sense of our existence being the part of the cosmic universe.
Challenging the world by crossing boundaries, I find a good dose of humor, great surprises and enjoy a playful skew to the familiar world.
Yuriko Miyamoto, a.k.a ysquare is a Japanese-born artist residing in Seattle, Washington. She works in a variety of mediums including painting and digital illustration. Her works have been shown in Seattles Blue Bottle Gallery, DV8 Cafe and Dr. Vigari Gallery in Vancouver, BC, and a number of places in Los Angeles.
Miyamotos experience ranges from analog to digital and her artwork gives an organic and natural sense whether its a painting or a digital illustration. Whichever the medium, her sensibility is for expressing beauty through simplicity, harmony and an awareness of ourselves as simple creatures.
Her strong belief that use of simple geometric shapes (such as circle, triangle, and square) are essential to grasping the beauty of space, whether 2-or 3 dimensional, shows throughout her work. Miyamoto shows simple life forms and moments of familiar life circumstances in the hopes that it will help connect us and free our concepts of gender, species, and dimension.
Her influences include nature, music, architecture (Gaudi), fashion (Issey Miyake) and artists such as Hundertwasser and Paul Klee.
Form/Space Atelier Program For September 2008
Show Title: Play: Intuitively Altered Spaces
Show Duration: September 12- October 5
Opening Reception: September 12, 6PM
Exhibit is free.
Julie Alpert exhibits at Form/Space Atelier September 2008, addressing illusionism in collage,
painting, and installation as a metaphor for the way we suspend belief as a form of escapism. Her
process holds as much importance as her finished pieces. It begins with an intuitive response to the
architectural space the work will inhabit using found objects and building materials to distort the
space and create a loose narrative. She then manipulates photographs of the installation in collages,drawings, and paintings, distorting the already altered space. The work is an homage to German Expressionist film, contemporaries such as Jessica Stockholder and Lisa Sigal, and the tromp l‘’oeil artists of the 1600‘’s ‘– early 20th century.
Julie Alpert is a recent MFA graduate of the Painting and Drawing program at UW School of Art. She particiapted this year in Oliver Herring‘’s Task at Seattle Public Library, and also co-exhibited at Ouch My Eye gallery with Whiting Tennis.
Image Description: Julie Alpert, ‘“Questioning the Fabric of of Reality Using Formal Considerations of Painting and Drawing,‘” detail, 2008 (Exhibited At The Henry Art Gallery).
The Septmeber 2008 installation at Form/Space Atelier will be new site-specific work from Julie Alpert and “Baltimore” may or may not be exhibited.
Julie Alpert:
jlynnalpert@yahoo.com - www.juliealpert.com
Education
2008 MFA University of Washington, Seattle, WA
2002 BA University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Teaching
2008 Intern, Advanced Painting The Landscape and Figure
2007 Instructor, Issues in Contemporary Art
2007 Instructor, Introduction to Drawing
2007 Intern, Introduction to Drawing
Solo Exhibitions
2008 ‘– Play: Intuitively Altered Spaces Form/Space Atelier, Seattle, WA
2008 - MFA Exhibition Sandpoint Gallery, Seattle, WA
Group Exhibitions
2008 - Oliver Herring‘’s Task presented by the Frye Art Gallery Seattle Central Library, Seattle, WA
2008 - MFA Thesis Exhibition Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA
2008 - Coupling VI: Flashforward Collaboration with Whiting Tennis, Ouch My Eye, Seattle, WA
2008 - School of Art Open House Juried by Billy Howard of Howard House, Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Seattle, WA
2008 - Sandpoint Open Studios Sandpoint Gallery, Seattle, WA
2008 - Flashback Strange Coupling Benefit Auction, Sandpoint Gallery, Seattle, WA
2007 - Small + Flat Juried by Greg Bell of Gallery 4 Culture, Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Seattle, WA
2007 - Over the Line ‘– Second Year MFA Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Seattle, WA
2007 - Sandpoint Open Studios Sandpoint Gallery, Seattle, WA
2007 - Works in Progress ‘– First Year MFA Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Seattle, WA
Bibliography
Thomas May, “Fall Arts Preview.” Seattle City Arts Magazine. September 2008
Jen Graves, “The Art of Doing What You‘’re Told: Torture, Rape, and Making Noise at the Library.” The Stranger. July 8, 2008
Regina Hackett, “Henry Hosts MFA.” Seattle P.I. Blog. May 23, 2008
Regina Hackett, “Henry Gallery exhibit is a strong showing from 2008 UW master’s degree class.” Seattle P.I. May 22, 2008
Peter Kelley, “Making Meaning: Master of Fine Arts Students Show Their Work at the Henry.” University Week. May 22, 2008
Sheila Farr, “The Week Ahead.” The Seattle Times. March 23, 2008
Jesse Barracoso, “Over the Line: Artists Change Mediums and Explore Boundaries.” The University of Washington Daily. October 4, 2007
More info:
Paul Kuniholm, Curator
Form/Space Atelier
2407 1st Avenue, Seattle, WA 98121-1311
206-208-9843
Where:
Form/Space Atelier
2407 1st Avenue
Seattle, WA 98121-1311
More Info:
206-349-2509
As an atelier, a working gallery space, Form/Space Atelier is committed to Three E’s for the art community. Providing beautiful and thought provoking Exhibits, Entertainment at our monthly opening receptions, and Education in the form of figure drawing sessions, lectures, multimedia presentations and other academic programs.
Form/Space Atelier Program For August 2008
Curated By Paul Kuniholm
Show Title: Clouds
Show Duration: August 8- September 7, 2008
Opening Reception: August 8, 2008 6PM
Clouds is an exhibit of large-scale abstract oil paintings by Shannon Barry. The exhibit is inspired by children‘’s drawings, brightly colored and with cartoon-like elements.
Shannon Barry studied at Gage Academy of Art, in the drawing and painting atelier of Mark Kang-O‘’Higgins.
Form/Space Atelier Program For July 2008
Curated by: Paul Kuniholm
Show title: Findings
Show duration: July 11- August 3
Opening reception: July 11, 6PM
Findings, Britta Johnson‘’s first site-specific video installation, is composed of several video elements installed throughout Form/Space Atelier‘’s dramatic architectural spaces. Johnson‘’s imagery is mysterious and beautiful, a thought-provoking spectacle of sensuous frivloity. One element, titled S`©ance for Descartes*, employs sculptural means to creatively alter the exhibit space. Johnson‘’s newest work, 2008‘’s 21 Landings, gift-wraps beautifully the futlity of repetition. The exhibit is free, a limited number of copies of the video elements are for sale.
Britta Johnson received a BA from Carleton College in Northfield,
Minnesota in 1997. She has been doing stop motion animation in
Seattle for more than 10 years; she directs shorts and music videos,
and her film collaborations with musicians have shown in places
including Seattle‘’s On the Boards, the PICA‘’s Time Based Art festival
in Portland, OR, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, MassMoCA
in North Adams, MA, the Boston MFA, and Dance Theater Workshop in NY, NY. This is her first show of installations. Britta Johnson website
www.thekmpi.net.
*Cartesian coordinate system
Fig. 1 - Cartesian coordinate system. Four points are marked: (2,3) in green, (-3,1) in red, (-1.5,-2.5) in blue and (0,0), the origin, in yellow.
Fig. 2 - Cartesian coordinate system with the circle of radius 2 centered at the origin marked in red. The equation of the circle is x2 + y2 = 4.
In mathematics, the Cartesian coordinate system (also called rectangular coordinate system) is used to determine each point uniquely in a plane through two numbers, usually called the x-coordinate or abscissa and the y-coordinate or ordinate of the point. To define the coordinates, two perpendicular directed lines (the x-axis, and the y-axis), are specified, as well as the unit length, which is marked off on the two axes (see Figure 1). Cartesian coordinate systems are also used in space (where three coordinates are used) and in higher dimensions.
Using the Cartesian coordinate system, geometric shapes (such as curves) can be described by algebraic equations, namely equations satisfied by the coordinates of the points lying on the shape. For example, the circle of radius 2 may be described by the equation x2 + y2 = 4 (see Figure 2).
Contents
1 History
2 Two-dimensional coordinate system
3 Three-dimensional coordinate system
4 Orientation and handedness
4.1 In two dimensions
4.2 In three dimensions
5 Representing a vector in the standard basis
6 Applications
7 Further notes
8 See also
9 References
10 Bibliography
11 External links
History
Cartesian means relating to the French mathematician and philosopher Ren`© Descartes (Latin: Cartesius), who, among other things, worked to merge algebra and Euclidean geometry. This work was influential in the development of analytic geometry, calculus, and cartography.
The idea of this system was developed in 1637 in two writings by Descartes and independently by Pierre de Fermat, although Fermat did not publish the discovery.[1] In part two of his Discourse on Method, Descartes introduces the new idea of specifying the position of a point or object on a surface, using two intersecting axes as measuring guides. In La G`©om`©trie, he further explores the above-mentioned concepts.[2]
Two-dimensional coordinate system
Fig. 3 - The four quadrants of a Cartesian coordinate system. The arrows on the axes indicate that they extend forever in their respective directions (i.e. infinitely).
A Cartesian coordinate system in two dimensions is commonly defined by two axes, at right angles to each other, forming a plane (an xy-plane). The horizontal axis is normally labeled x, and the vertical axis is normally labeled y. In a three dimensional coordinate system, another axis, normally labeled z, is added, providing a third dimension of space measurement. The axes are commonly defined as mutually orthogonal to each other (each at a right angle to the other). (Early systems allowed “oblique” axes, that is, axes that did not meet at right angles, and such systems are occasionally used today, although mostly as theoretical exercises.) All the points in a Cartesian coordinate system taken together form a so-called Cartesian plane. Equations that use the Cartesian coordinate system are called Cartesian equations.
The point of intersection, where the axes meet, is called the origin normally labeled O. The x and y axes define a plane that is referred to as the xy plane. Given each axis, choose a unit length, and mark off each unit along the axis, forming a grid. To specify a particular point on a two dimensional coordinate system, indicate the x unit first (abscissa), followed by the y unit (ordinate) in the form (x,y), an ordered pair.
The choice of letters comes from a convention, to use the latter part of the alphabet to indicate unknown values. In contrast, the first part of the alphabet was used to designate known values.
An example of a point P on the system is indicated in Figure 3, using the coordinate (3,5).
The intersection of the two axes creates four regions, called quadrants, indicated by the Roman numerals I (+,+), II (?,+), III (?,?), and IV (+,?). Conventionally, the quadrants are labeled counter-clockwise starting from the upper right (“northeast”) quadrant. In the first quadrant, both coordinates are positive, in the second quadrant x-coordinates are negative and y-coordinates positive, in the third quadrant both coordinates are negative and in the fourth quadrant, x-coordinates are positive and y-coordinates negative (see table below.)
Three-dimensional coordinate system
Fig. 4 - Three dimensional Cartesian coordinate system with y-axis pointing away from the observer.
Fig. 5 - Three dimensional Cartesian coordinate system with the x-axis pointing towards the observer.
The coordinate surfaces of the Cartesian coordinates (x, y, z). The z-axis is vertical and the x-axis is highlighted in green. Thus, the red plane shows the points with x=1, the blue plane shows the points with z=1, and the yellow plane shows the points with y=-1. The three surfaces intersect at the point P (shown as a black sphere) with the Cartesian coordinates (1.0, -1.0, 1.0).
The three dimensional Cartesian coordinate system provides the three physical dimensions of space ‘— length, width, and height. Figures 4 and 5 show two common ways of representing it.
The three Cartesian axes defining the system are perpendicular to each other. The relevant coordinates are of the form (x,y,z). As an example, figure 4 shows two points plotted in a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system: P(3,0,5) and Q(?5,?5,7). The axes are depicted in a “world-coordinates” orientation with the z-axis pointing up.
The x-, y-, and z-coordinates of a point can also be taken as the distances from the yz-plane, xz-plane, and xy-plane respectively. Figure 5 shows the distances of point P from the planes.
The xy-, yz-, and xz-planes divide the three-dimensional space into eight subdivisions known as octants, similar to the quadrants of 2D space. While conventions have been established for the labelling of the four quadrants of the x-y plane, only the first octant of three dimensional space is labelled. It contains all of the points whose x, y, and z coordinates are positive.
The z-coordinate is also called applicate.
Orientation and handedness
see also: right-hand rule
In two dimensions
The right hand rule.
Fixing or choosing the x-axis determines the y-axis up to direction. Namely, the y-axis is necessarily the perpendicular to the x-axis through the point marked 0 on the x-axis. But there is a choice of which of the two half lines on the perpendicular to designate as positive and which as negative. Each of these two choices determines a different orientation (also called handedness) of the Cartesian plane.
The usual way of orienting the axes, with the positive x-axis pointing right and the positive y-axis pointing up (and the x-axis being the “first” and the y-axis the “second” axis) is considered the positive or standard orientation, also called the right-handed orientation.
A commonly used mnemonic for defining the positive orientation is the right hand rule. Placing a somewhat closed right hand on the plane with the thumb pointing up, the fingers point from the x-axis to the y-axis, in a positively oriented coordinate system.
The other way of orienting the axes is following the left hand rule, placing the left hand on the plane with the thumb pointing up.
Regardless of the rule used to orient the axes, rotating the coordinate system will preserve the orientation. Switching the role of x and y will reverse the orientation.
In three dimensions
Fig. 7 - The left-handed orientation is shown on the left, and the right-handed on the right.
Fig. 8 - The right-handed Cartesian coordinate system indicating the coordinate planes.
Once the x- and y-axes are specified, they determine the line along which the z-axis should lie, but there are two possible directions on this line. The two possible coordinate systems which result are called ‘right-handed’ and ‘left-handed’. The standard orientation, where the xy-plane is horizontal and the z-axis points up (and the x- and the y-axis form a positively oriented two-dimensional coordinate system in the xy-plane if observed from above the xy-plane) is called right-handed or positive.
The name derives from the right-hand rule. If the index finger of the right hand is pointed forward, the middle finger bent inward at a right angle to it, and the thumb placed at a right angle to both, the three fingers indicate the relative directions of the x-, y-, and z-axes in a right-handed system. The thumb indicates the x-axis, the index finger the y-axis and the middle finger the z-axis. Conversely, if the same is done with the left hand, a left-handed system results.
Figure 7 is an attempt at depicting a left- and a right-handed coordinate system. Because a three-dimensional object is represented on the two-dimensional screen, distortion and ambiguity result. The axis pointing downward (and to the right) is also meant to point towards the observer, whereas the “middle” axis is meant to point away from the observer. The red circle is parallel to the horizontal xy-plane and indicates rotation from the x-axis to the y-axis (in both cases). Hence the red arrow passes in front of the z-axis.
Figure 8 is another attempt at depicting a right-handed coordinate system. Again, there is an ambiguity caused by projecting the three-dimensional coordinate system into the plane. Many observers see Figure 8 as “flipping in and out” between a convex cube and a concave “corner”. This corresponds to the two possible orientations of the coordinate system. Seeing the figure as convex gives a left-handed coordinate system. Thus the “correct” way to view Figure 8 is to imagine the x-axis as pointing towards the observer and thus seeing a concave corner.
Representing a vector in the standard basis
A point in space in a Cartesian coordinate system may also be represented by a vector, which can be thought of as an arrow pointing from the origin of the coordinate system to the point. If the coordinates represent spatial positions (displacements) it is common to represent the vector from the origin to the point of interest as . In three dimensions, the vector from the origin to the point with Cartesian coordinates (x,y,z) is sometimes written as[3]:
where , , and are unit vectors that point the same direction as the x, y, and z axes, respectively. This is the quaternion representation of the vector, and was introduced by Sir William Rowan Hamilton. The unit vectors , , and are called the versors of the coordinate system, and are the vectors of the standard basis in three-dimensions.
Applications
Cartesian coordinates are often used to represent two or three dimensions of space, but they can also be used to represent many other quantities (such as mass, time, force, etc.). In such cases the coordinate axes will typically be labelled with other letters (such as m, t, F, etc.) in place of x, y, and z. Each axis may also have different units of measurement associated with it (such as kilograms, seconds, pounds, etc.). It is also possible to define coordinate systems with more than three dimensions to represent relationships between more than three quantities. Although four- and higher-dimensional spaces are difficult to visualize, the algebra of Cartesian coordinates can be extended relatively easily to four or more variables, so that certain calculations involving many variables can be done. (This sort of algebraic extension is what is used to define the geometry of higher-dimensional spaces, which can become rather complicated.) Conversely, it is often helpful to use the geometry of Cartesian coordinates in two or three dimensions to visualize algebraic relationships between two or three (perhaps two or three of many) non-spatial variables.
Further notes
In computational geometry the Cartesian coordinate system is the foundation for the algebraic manipulation of geometrical shapes. Many other coordinate systems have been developed since Descartes. One common set of systems use polar coordinates; astronomers and physicists often use spherical coordinates, a type of three-dimensional polar coordinate system.
It may be interesting to note that some have indicated that the master artists of the Renaissance used a grid, in the form of a wire mesh, as a tool for breaking up the component parts of their subjects they painted. That this may have influenced Descartes is merely speculative. (See perspective, projective geometry.)
See also
List of canonical coordinate transformations
Graph of a function
Point plotting
Orientation (mathematics)
Right-hand rule
Regular grid
Taxicab geometry
Euclidean space
Curvilinear coordinates
Stereographic projection
Point (geometry)
Line (mathematics)
Plane (mathematics)
Integer point
Complex plane
Coordinates (mathematics)
Coordinate systems
Geocentric coordinates
Parallel coordinates
Other coordinate systems
Orthogonal coordinates
Two dimensional orthogonal coordinate systems
Cartesian coordinate system
Polar coordinate system
Parabolic coordinate system
Bipolar coordinates
Biangular coordinates
Two-center bipolar coordinates
Hyperbolic coordinates
Elliptic coordinates
Three dimensional orthogonal coordinate systems
Cartesian coordinate system
Cylindrical coordinate system
Spherical coordinate system
Parabolic coordinate system
Parabolic cylindrical coordinates
Paraboloidal coordinates
Oblate spheroidal coordinates
Prolate spheroidal coordinates
Ellipsoidal coordinates
Elliptic cylindrical coordinates
Toroidal coordinates
Bispherical coordinates
Bipolar cylindrical coordinates
Conical coordinates
Flat-Ring cyclide coordinates
Flat-Disk cyclide coordinates
Bi-cyclide coordinates
Cap-cyclide coordinates
History
Ren`© Descartes
Discourse on Method
La G`©om`©trie
Related topics
Ordered pair
Analytic geometry
Abstraction (mathematics)
Notation system
ISO 31-1
Graph paper
References
Descartes, Ren`©. Oscamp, Paul J. (trans). Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology. 2001.
^ “analytic geometry”. EncyclopÃ`dia Britannica ¨mes qu’on peut construire sans y employer que des cercles et des lignes droites (Book one: Problems whose construction requires only circles and straight lines). (French)
^ David J. Griffith (1999). Introduction to Electromagnetics. Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-805326-X.
Bibliography
Morse PM, Feshbach H (1953). Methods of Theoretical Physics, Part I. New York: McGraw-Hill, p. 656. ISBN 0-07-043316-X, LCCN 52-11515.
Margenau H, Murphy GM (1956). The Mathematics of Physics and Chemistry. New York: D. van Nostrand, p. 177. LCCN 55-10911.
Korn GA, Korn TM (1961). Mathematical Handbook for Scientists and Engineers. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 55‘–79. LCCN 59-14456, ASIN B0000CKZX7.
Sauer R, Szab I (1967). Mathematische Hilfsmittel des Ingenieurs. New York: Springer Verlag, p. 94. LCCN 67-25285.
Moon P, Spencer DE (1988). “Rectangular Coordinates (x, y, z)”, Field Theory Handbook, Including Coordinate Systems, Differential Equations, and Their Solutions, corrected 2nd ed., 3rd print ed., New York: Springer-Verlag, pp. 9‘–11 (Table 1.01). ISBN 978-0387184302.
External links
Cartesian Coordinate System
Printable Cartesian Coordinates
Cartesian coordinates on PlanetMath
MathWorld description of Cartesian coordinates
Form/Space Atelier June 2008
Show Title: Resurfacing
Show Duration: June 13-July 6
Opening Reception: June 13, 6PM
Carolyn Polk‘’s exhibit ‘‘Resurfacing‘’ is the first showing of the new body of work she has been developing. The pieces in the show illustrate her continued exploration into scarab imagery and realizing her previous encaustic paintings in new ways. These new works illustrate a melding of not only an assortment of mediums, but also a connectivity of intent that permeates through all her artwork. The various media used in creating Polk‘’s artworks in this show include: acrylic paint and mediums, paper, recovered barn wood, recovered washers, resin, metallic pigment, coasters, image transfer, and print. The common thread throughout her work is color and texture and their dominating and subtle presence. She is intrigued by their influences and how she manipulates their relationships.
For several reasons Polk is drawn to painting scarabs: the intoxicating quality of color they possess; and how she is be able to represent them in a wax medium, with the undulating layers and transparencies of colors. She appreciates the symbolism attached to scarabs. They are an ancient symbol and possess a variety of meanings from many different cultures. Historically, scarabs were first identified as an important icon in ancient Egypt. Polk‘’s focus of scarab imagery is also rooted in her ardent appeal of the symbolic meaning that the image holds, that of renewal, good luck, and protection.
The scarab imagery used in these works was all original encaustic painting by Polk that she discovered a new vehicle for. Her encaustic paintings are created using a small travel iron to apply pigmented wax to paper. The original paintings are kept at very intimate size, no bigger than 8x10 inches. The artwork in ‘‘Resurfacing‘’ pushes the images further, to be experienced in sizes ranging from 4x6 inches to 3x4 feet.
Born in 1979, Polk lives and works in Seattle, WA. She received her BFA in 2001 from Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts. Exhibitions of her work have been shown in galleries in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Virginia, Georgia, and Washington. Polk‘’s broad audience includes private collectors from across the globe as well as corporate entities that have purchased and commissioned artwork from her.
May 2008
Form/Space Atelier Program for May 2008
Show Title: Mentor: The Unknown Work of Nancy Lee
Show Duration: May 9-June 8
Opening Reception: May 9, 6-10PM
Zhi LIN, Associate Professor, Co-Chair, Painting + Drawing Program
Co-Chair, Art Division University of Washington School of Art, Art History + Design lectures this
Saturday May 10th at 7PM, Form/Space Atelier 2407 1st Avenue, Seattle, WA 98121-1311.
The lecture’s title is:
FromTiananmen Square to Promontory Summit - a Painter’s Journey
Across Culture and History.
Link to Zhi Lin sample jpg and detailed description:
http://people.tribe.net/8d061aed-0311-4f18-bbd8-ce3b7389111d/photos/e93b757c-64c8-42d1-8fac-34914497c2f3
Title: Names of the Unremembered: Transcontinental
Medium: painting and video projection on canvas
Dimensions: 76 x 135 inches
Date of Completion: 2008
Attribution: Zhi Lin (concept, composition and painting)
Dan Boord and Luis Valdovino (video)
Seattle artist and much-loved middle-school art teacher Nancy Lee died in 1990, leaving behind a fascinating but virtually unknown body of work. Following the death of her widower, Dr. Robert C. Lee, in 2006, a large number of pieces by the artist were discovered while the Lees‘’ home of many years was being cleared of their belongings. Mentor: The Unknown Work of Nancy Lee represents a journey by a living artist, Paul D. Natkin, into the work of a deceased artist, Lee, who was his long-time family friend and early mentor. The several works by Lee presented in this show exemplify her passion for a wide variety of materials, from the durable to the ephemeral‘—including canvas, watercolor paper, paper towels, scrap metal, gauze, cellophane, plywood, watercolor, oil paint, house paint, sticks, clay and mud‘—and her very intuitive, stream-of-consciousness approach to image-making. The pieces by Lee are shown side by side with copies of biographical documentation and written ruminations on her work by Natkin.
Nancy Erlene (Vandenberg) Lee was born August 13, 1933 in Wichita, Kansas. She was the daughter of William Vandenberg and Elvida (Peluso) Vandenberg. She was raised in the Catholic tradition. In 1955 she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in art education from Wichita State University. She taught at Hamilton Intermediate School in Wichita for two years, circa 1956-1958. She also taught crafts in YWCA camps in Colorado and taught art to children at local YWCAs and Wichita University. In 1958, she was awarded a graduate teaching fellowship in the college of fine arts at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. In May of 1958, her engagement to Robert Charles Lee was announced in the Wichita Beacon. In the same announcement, it was stated that she would work toward a master‘’s degree in painting and art history while teaching art classes. This course of study was to last two years but was apparently cut short when, in the summer of 1958, she married Robert, and moved to Seattle so that he could pursue a PhD in musicology at the University of Washington. Nancy taught art at the junior high/middle-school level in the Seattle Public Schools. She taught for many years at Madrona Middle School. The Lees lived in Warsaw for a year, 1968-1969, and also spent a year in Budapest, 1971-1972. In both of these countries Robert researched the life and work of composer Franz Lizst. She died March 6, 1990, of lung cancer.
It appears that Nancy Lee’s work was not widely exhibited. One of her oil paintings, entitled November Journey, was included in the 47th Annual Exhibition of Northwest Artists, at the Seattle Art Museum, in 1961, and seventeen pieces of hers were exhibited in a show featuring five artists at the University Unitarian Fine Arts Gallery in 1966. (The other artists were Peggy Hatte, Stanley Pipes, Dee Wardall Raible and Lillian Rehbock.) This gallery was founded in 1961 by Dee Raible and Annie Polack. According to a history of the gallery, at the time it was started, there were only four other galleries in Seattle. The gallery showed such artists as Mark Tobey, Guy Anderson, Kathe Kollwitz, Richard Gilkey, William Cumming, Glen Alps, Art Hansen, Robert Fulgham, Alfredo Arreguin, Ray Meuse and Dee Raible (later known as Dee Rainbow). One of Lee’s paintings in this show, Early Summer, was mentioned in a review in the Seattle Times, Sunday, March 27, 1966, by the Times art reviewer, Anne G. Todd. According to a resume for Lee in the notes of Annie Polack, who directed the gallery for twenty-some years, Lee’s work was included in juried exhibitions in Kansas and Indiana, but records of these exhibitions have not yet been located. In concluding her history of the University Unitarian Fine Arts Gallery (this history, along with her notes, now housed in Special Collections at University of Washington‘’s Suzallo Library), Polack lamented the disappearance of artists who were “very talented, competent and already known” from the “scene,” particularly women. She attributed the problem to “too much other work” or “no money and having to work on other things as their work would not support them.” Lee was prolific but does not appear to have shown much‘—maybe for the very reasons Polack listed. It is the curator’s hope that over the course of this show, more information about Nancy Lee’s life, career and work will come to light. If significant information does surface, it may be incorporated into the exhibition during the weeks that it is on view.
Curator‘’s Statement
In 2007 I encountered a large body of work, previously unfamiliar to me, by my old friend and early artistic mentor Nancy Lee. Discovering this work, I came to appreciate her capabilities on a new level. Although I had known her for close to three decades before her death in 1990, I had not fully understood the depth and range of her work.
I remember visiting Nancy and her husband Bob with my family when I was a young boy. The Lees lived in Montlake in a little white house surrounded by a low white picket fence. While the others sat talking in the living room, Nancy invited me to go down to the basement with her to see her studio. She said she wanted to show me her ‘“Holy Rock.‘” We went down the stairs, and she picked up a little box from her work table in the middle of the room. She opened the box slowly, a gleam in her eyes, as though it contained something very mysterious and precious. ‘“This,‘” she exclaimed, ‘“is my Holy Rock!‘” She took out a beach pebble with a hole through the middle of it. This was my first visit to an artist‘’s studio.
Whenever we got together with the Lees, Nancy wanted to see my artwork. She would go through great piles of my paintings and drawings with me, making perceptive comments on each piece. She was a natural teacher, very sensitive to a young person‘’s tender ego. I recall how deftly she offered me a piece of advice on one occasion, referring not to my work, which lay in front of us, but to her own: ‘“Anytime I‘’ve ever tried to copy nature,‘” she said, ‘“I‘’ve failed.‘”
Nancy was my mentor and no doubt the mentor of countless other young people. But who were her mentors? I have thought about this a lot since recently becoming better acquainted with her work. Unfortunately I have not yet succeeded in determining the names of her teachers at the various schools she attended, let alone the name of any individual occupying that very special position of mentor‘—that is, someone who not only gives instruction but serves as a role model or wise and trusted counselor.
Nevertheless, judging from Lee‘’s collections of postcards and art books, and her work itself, we can draw some conclusions about the well-known artists who probably influenced her. She must have done a lot of looking at Kandinsky, Braque, Picasso, Ernst, Miro, Masson, Schwitters, Klee, Dubuffet, Gorky, de Kooning, Pollock, Motherwell, Kline, Mitchell, Frankenthaler, Rauschenberg, Twombly and other artists whose work would probably have been dicussed at the schools she attended. Her frequent use of unusual, often ephemeral, materials can be linked to the work of Picasso, Braque, Ernst, Arp, Schwitters, Rauschenberg and the Arte Povera artists. Her untitled collage with a plywood disk painted white and black (date unknown), for instance, bears at least some superficial similarities to Rauschenberg‘’s Bed, 1955, although Lee‘’s piece does not involve the vertical placement of an object that is typically horizontal, as Rauschenberg‘’s famously does. The similarity between the two pieces has more to do with the layering of textures and the combination of paint from the tube and found materials that they share. Lee made use of a very wide range of materials, from fine watercolor paper and printing papers to colored construction paper, paper towels, magazine pages, gauze, housepaint, ticket stubs and newspaper clippings in various languages, masonite, scrap metal, string, sticks, clay and mud. However, her relationship to these famed artists never comes across as slavish imitation, adulation or self-assigned apprenticeship. She moved from one influence to another with spontaneity and a light touch, keeping her emotional integrity and ultimately creating something unmistakably ‘“Nancy Lee.‘”
To appreciate Lee‘’s work we must look not only to the giants of art history but also to the visual vernacular of the period in which she was active. In particular, we see in many of her pieces the esthetic of the late 1960s and early 1970s‘—the visual world of the University District street fair, with its gaudy candles and elaborate macrame plant holders, or the groovy sets of TV programs of the period, such as Laugh-In and the Dating Game. However, Lee‘’s version of this esthetic is much more‘—its highs much higher and lows much lower. Orange, fuchsia, scarlet, turquoise, purple, ultramarine, aqua, golden yellow and black‘—these were all her friends, but in her best pieces the colors are carefully calibrated to convey a sense of passion and emotional fragility not to be found in this contemporary cultural material at large. In her tie-dyed cloth pieces she elevates a technique most commonly associated with prosaic, if ‘“psychedelic,‘” T-shirt decoration to a world of powerful emotions.
It is also worth mentioning that both Nancy and Robert Lee loved folk art and the art of small scale societies (‘“tribal‘” art). They had many interesting encounters with traditional artists and the decorated their home with many things from around the world, in an unusual way to which I cannot do justice in words. This passion for the variety of the globe‘’s cultures and their artifacts is also reflected in Nancy‘’s work. I should also add that she owned many objects that speak of her Catholic background, although to my knowledge she was not a practicing Catholic later in life. She had, for instance, a collection of votive cards from her mother‘’s funeral, and a little plastic statuette of the Virgin Mary inside a rounded wooden compartment that opened and closed. Although there is no specifically Christian imagery to be found in her work, there is certainly a penchant for the iconic‘—interspersed with the purely abstract.
In my mind‘’s eye, I see Nancy Lee wearing jumbo-sized sunglasses and a funky headscarf, an ‘“ethnic‘” purse slung over her shoulder and a string of big seashells or shellacked macaroni dangling from her neck. She was a very responsible person, always gracious and dedicated to helping others. But she had an otherworldly aura about her, a certain childlike innocence and vulnerability. For me, she was a walking artwork, a white rabbit ready to lead me down the rabbit hole to a realm of brightly-colored dreams.
My encounter with Nancy Lee‘’s work almost two decades after her death and my deepened appreciation of her creative output has lead me to ponder many questions about the passage of artistic practice from one generation to another. I hope that her unique vision will not be forgotten and that it will have an impact on generations to come. May this exhibition be a celebration not only of her life and work but of the role all mentors play in leading us forward!
Image: Nancy Lee Untitled, collage on masonite 13 1/8‘” x 10 5/8‘”
Link To Image: http://people.tribe.net/8d061aed-0311-4f18-bbd8-ce3b7389111d/photos/e1aa7505-eb3f-4e36-ba53-2a7fc4ba3e96
April 2008
Form/Space Atelier Program For April 2008.
Current Exhibition
Curated By Paul Kuniholm
Show Title: An Exhibit Of Robert Storr’s Autograph And Other Work
Show Duration: April 11-May 4.
Show Title: An Exhibit Of Robert Storr’s Autograph And Other Work
Opening Reception Friday, April 11, 6PM
An Exhibit Of Robert Storr’s Autograph And Other Work is the century mark in terms of the number of exhibits of fine art that have been curated by Paul Pauper. This exhibit pays homage to the legacy Paul Pauper established with regard to assembling massive group shows during the early part of his curatorial career. An Exhibit Of Robert Storr’s Autograph And Other Work features sculpture by John Hawkley, photographs by Dan Hawkins, paintings by Stacey Chapelle and the rare and precious autograph of Robert Storr, the Dean of the Yale School of Art, critic, painter and one of the most influential people in the history of art. Bread and wine will be served at this reception, placed site-specifically on a twenty-foot-long table, covered with a solemn black cloth, intentionally representing a sacred feast. Non-alcoholic beverages, Bibi Cafe, will also be served for those unable to take the sacramental offering. Conversely, cheerful balloons will be attached to the Form/Space Atelier A-Board, site-specifically representing the profusion of balloons attached to local-area condominium sales office A-Boards. Visitors to the exhibit are encouraged to “speculate” on the meaning of both the sacramental installation and the balloon installation.
David Brody Lectures At Form/Space Atelier April 18, 6PM
David Brody was born in New York City. He did undergraduate work at Columbia University and Bennington College and received an MFA in painting from Yale University. In addition to solo exhibitions at Gallery NAGA in Boston, Esther Claypool Gallery in Seattle, Gescheidle in Chicago, and Galeria Gilde in Portugal his work has been featured in over 70 group shows including those at the Chicago Center for the Print, the Center on Contemporary Art (COCA) and the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, The Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Florida, Tallahassee, and at The Painting Center, Alternative Museum, and Bridgewater Gallery in New York City. His work has also been shown at the Feria Internacional de Arte Contemporàneo (ARCO Art Fair) in Madrid, the RipArte Art Fair in Rome, the Trevi Flash Art Museum, in Trevi , Italy, the FAC Art Fair in Lisbon and at Art Chicago in the US.
Brody has received numerous awards including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a Fulbright Grant, a Basil H. Alkazzi Award, an Elizabeth Foundation Grant, two Massachusetts Artist Fellowships, and was a Fellow at the Shave International Artists‘’ Workshop in Somerset, England.
His work is the subject of two monographs, “David Brody, Selected Painting 1985-1994” and “David Brody, Selected Painting 2000-2001” which features an essay by Elisabeth Sussman, curator at the Whitney Museum in New York. He has been written about in other publications including The Boston Globe, the New Art Examiner, the Spanish journal, Lapiz, and in the Lisbon daily O Publico.
An exhibit at the Esther Claypool Gallery in Seattle was described by the Seattle Weekly as, “daring, humorous, and superbly executed . . . a witty meditation on our culture‘’s discomfort with the human body . . .”; in Art New England they wrote, “Brody humorously questions our notions of reality and the order of nature. Brody knows how to make one laugh but walk away questioning whether it is actually funny - or much worse than that.”; in Artforum they wrote: “Brody’s . . .paintings . . . provide a stunning visual punch . . . [and] are rendered with a bravura that is both compelling and hypnotic.”; and most recently, Sue Taylor, a reviewer for Art in America, wrote, “A highly intelligent artist . . . Brody is absolutely serious about technique. An emphasis on fine drawing, delicate surfaces and careful considerations of color and light informs all his pictures.”
David Brody has been a visiting critic at Harvard University, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The University of Chicago, and Carnegie Mellon University. He is currently a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.
An Exhibit Of Robert Storr’s Autograph And Other Work features 187 separate and distinct art objects, shattering Paul Pauper’s previous record for number of objects, which was 131 for a show exhibited in December 2006 at Form/Space Atelier.
Contributing Artists, An Exhibit Of Robert Storr’s Autograph And Other Work:
Amy Oberstein, Drawing
John Hawkley, Sculpture
Dan Hawkins, Photography
Stacie Chappell, Painting
Eileen Bryan, Painting
Nicole Maron, Silkscreen/Solar Plate
Shannon Barry, Painting
Laura Grey, Mixed Media
Franceska McCullough, Sculpture
John Monson, Painting
Michelle Smith-Lewis, Photography
Thya Littell, Photography
Qathi Hart, Photography
Mac Crary, Painting
Dudley Moorhead, Photography
Andrew Drawbaugh, Digital Media
Lonn Haggerty, Painting
A’alia Brown, Photography
Mark Brown, Phtography
Mike Woo, Photography
Hannah Phillips, Painting/Dolls
Erin McGloin, Drawing
Toni Bigby, Drawing
Mick Lorusso, Drawing
Robert Storr, Ink On Paper
March 2008
Sculpture, painting and drawing by Lynn Schirmer with Opening Reception Dais by independent art critics Jim Demetre, Jae Carlsson and Steven Vroom.
Lynn Schirmer presents a collection of mixed-media sculpture, as well as paintings and drawings on the theme of attachment. Some pieces refer directly to the late 1950‘’s-era experiments of psychologist Harry Harlow on rhesus monkeys. Others are the result of self reflection on her attachments, negative and positive, and how these have affected her sense of security and identity.
Lynn Schirmer is a Seattle-based artist and IT contractor. She manages Corridor and Angle Galleries in the Tashiro Kaplan artist complex, Seattle.
February 2008
Ryan Molenkamp At Form/Space Atelier February 8-March 2
Show Title: “a place to call your own”
Show Duration February 8-March 2
Large-Scale Paintings By Ryan Molenkamp
Opening Reception February 8, 6-8PM
January 2008
SHOW TITLE: “SCANT PLUSH” PAINTINGS BY JESSICA HACHMEISTER
Opening Reception Lecture: Clark Humphrey January 11, 6-8PM. Info: www.miscmedia.com Seattle Weekly Wire recognition for excellence: http://www.seattleweekly.com/2008-01-09/calendar/clark-humphrey.php
Exhibit Opening Reception, January 11, 8-10PM.
Exhibit duration: January 11-February 3.
Jessica Hachmeister is drawn toward large and dramatic abstract painting, developing a style based
on dominant shapes and interconnecting lines. Hachmeister distributes these marks across multiple
canvases to creat a balanced landscape of form and space.
Jessica Hachmeister was born in Cincinnati and spent her early life abroad: Mexico City, Rome,
Havana, Heidelberg. She graduated the American School, Lugano, Switzerland, and has received
formal training at Villa Mercede, Florence, Italy, Boston Museum of Fine Art, University of
Washington, Cornish and Pratt, Seattle.
December 2007
FringeShift
Shawn Foote Exhibits Oil Paintings at Form/Space Atelier December 6-28.
November 2007
Paintings by Matthew Kandegas.
Lecture by Kyle MacDonald.
Matthew Kingston Kandegas was born December 29, 1960. He grew up feeling the harshness and anger of White Center, a ghetto of Seattle, caused by the pall of stadium rock of the 1970s. He was born in 1960, in a family of three children and a father who was a simple factory worker of Danish descent. It is sufficient to say that Kandegas’s early life has very little to do at all with his eventual career as an artist. Kandegas did not have access to any artistic materials, coming from a poor family, although he thoroughly enjoyed when his grandfather allowed the children to experiment with his paintball gun. As a child, his torment was soothed somewhat by reveries of living someday in a travel trailer on the campus of the University of Washington with his younger brother Odd, where his mother, Kristin Kuniholm had been a sorority girl at Sigma Kappa sorority and graduated Summa Cum Laude in Visual Communication. Since marrying Kandegas's father, her
life was one of penury and privation, though she made sure her son Matthew understood the subtle but distinct difference between matters of the heart, as an inexplicable attraction to a bad person, and art; the creation of the sublime and sacred. Kristin Kuniholm was descended from the Finnish indigenous people Sami, and her family was known as a tribe of shaman in Vasa, Finland prior to emigrating to Seattle in 1850. Her grandfather Kuniholm was a famous Seattle area wicker-worker at Five Corners on Queen Anne hill.
His real beginnings as an artist began when Kandegas left home at 14 to financially aid his family and earn a living for himself. Like thousands of others, Kandegas changed from one dismal job to the next, extremely discouraged by the misery and hopelessness around him. As a sensitive and intuitive person, Kandegas was compelled to respond and decided to look into art as a hobby. He could not afford art school, so he attended simple life drawing classes three times a week, and in his free time studied reproductions in the Seattle Public Library. He enjoyed the works of post-impressionists, such as Modigliani, Van Gogh and Cézanne, especially the expressionist works of George Grosz, Otto Dix and Max Beckmann. These expressionist works demonstrated a means of expressing the anger Kandegas felt during the popularity of stadium rock. Kandegas considered himself a post-minimalist, and is generally considered the "forgetten" post-minimalist because his work
has been exhibited only twice during his lifetime, though he has donated many of his paintings to charity, including Lihi, Cascade People's.
Throughout the 1970s, Kandegas continued to hone and refine his skills, whilst experimenting with his homemade paints, unable to afford others. He was ultimately a very self-taught artist, but this leaves him free from artistic conventions that would have been learned in art school, though he was academically trained at the University of Washington, taking studio classes with Norman Lundin, and elsewhere at the atelier of Sharon Munger.
In the late 1970s, two important social realists arrived in Seattle – Art Munny and Lotta Loven. Their images were realistic representations of harsh truths seen in society that characterised stadium rock. This had a great effect on Kandegas’s work, as he too, begins to explore confronting truths of stadium rock. However, Kandegas’s work began to take more shape in the next decade, the “Angry Decade” of the 1980s, as the artists respond the horror of marijuana abuse, incensed by the abolishment of hope, just after stadium rock appeared to be clearing up.
From Kandegas’s perceptive response to the world around him, he was recognised by two people - Art Munny and Lotta Loven. These two saw connections between Kandegas’s work and other artists, angry too at the social situation. Art Munny and Lotta Loven were members of the Nowadays Arts Society, set up to promote these emerging artists, known as the Recentists. The Society was set up in 1978 by Mark Hofer, in opposition to the Hoquiam Academy of Art, which was believed to promote conservative art and not the Recentists.
The Recentists included Albert Kandegas, Joy F. Sexton, Siddhartta Sunshine, John Longfellow, Arthur Drawbridge and Jean-Noel Vandaele. These artists met to discuss material on a regular basis. Kandegas enjoyed being part of what he saw as a like-minded group of artists, all focused on producing works along similar themes, in response to marijuana abuse, stadium rock and moral denigration. The artists also brought influences from European movements such as Surrealism, Cubism, Expressionism, Dadaism and Constructivism.
From this “Fidelis” group of Recentists, formed a group known as the Canis Fidelis which also included many social realists. The Recentists and social realists in this group shared the same concerns, and their work became focused on stadium rock and its horrors, along with moral decay and the emergence of Americanism. The Canis Fidelis was also a publication that these artists wrote for, published by Harris Shapiro. Kandegas’s original influences, Angonka Toulouse and Cyrus Vance, were part of this group. The Canis Fidelis was the major outlet for the expression of avant-garde ideas.
Kandegas’s main inspirations can be divided into periods, although he was originally influenced by the depression, post-impressionists, expressionists and social realists, also keeping in mind his involvement with the Canis Fidelis, and his responses to stadium rock. Ultimately he is always best known for paintings of paper clips, or trombones as the French call them.
Kandegas’s first significant works were produced during his involvement in the Boy Scouts. In 1980, Kandegas was called up for service and spent most of his time working in Western State Hospital drawing patients suffering from horrific wounds and mental illnesses as a result of stadium rock. He produced three important works at this stage, Seated Man, a pen and ink illustration of a man whose nose had been sliced off by a Braun blender, The Waste Treatment Plant at Fort Lawton, an image of death sitting on a stool watching and waiting, and Floating Logs, of two figures floating down a hall, a third with a demented smile. All of these images illustrated the horror and madness of stadium rock. At this time, Kandegas was influenced by raw images of death and horror, wishing to present a blunt, direct, succinct image of stadium rock’s consequences. This is similar to the way social realists wish to present their messages, although Kandegas’s actual
delivery was surrealistic and expressionistic in appearance.
In 1982, Kandegas ignored stadium rock and returned to a Seattle he did not like. He was particularly disgusted, but inspired by scenes of Seattle’s nightlife, of a city he felt demonstrated a collapse of simple morality. He was shocked and outraged by images of brutish laborers, pig-like, grinning and clutching the meager frames of young women in bawdy red lipstick, as if possessions or prizes of stadium rock, representing a clear confusion as to what stadium rock actually reaps. This painting was the catalyst for his series of works known as the Urinating on Car Door Handles, all depicting similar nightlife and exploitation of women figures, or comodification of sex, symbolized in recurring motifs; sticks or skin-toned blobs with red smiles and single, elaborately styled eyes with curly lashes. As Kandegas continues creating these images, the subjects become less and less human and occupy space in more and more disconnected ways; floating or melting,
being abducted from above, slumped on the side of the road, lying in the shadows of movie theaters. His source is clear, after seeing immoral scenes of sex, abduction, confusion and clear gender stereotyping, and maintains the same surreal, expressionistic delivery with socially realistic content.
The post-stadium rock period did not bring peace to visions at first he had hoped for, explaining humanity's status after stadium rock as “irreparably damaged”, viewing the world with great anxiety and a loss of hope. In early 1987, Kandegas traveled to Japan with a local newspaper as an art correspondent, required to interpret the devastation he saw there. He produced a monochrome pen drawing called Fishmobile; it contains no figures, just the aftermath of complete devastation, with somber tents and shelters littering the landscape. During this time, Kandegas was influenced by his sense of hopelessness after seeing the stadium rock, depression, and the fact that society had never improved. Hiroshima does indeed appear hopeless and empty.
Upon returning, he broke up with Candace Carson, who had already had a son, Swiney, in 1975. Out of bitterness, Kandegas left for Europe later in 1987 for the next 13 years. In England and Europe until 1998, Kandegas painted many prostitutes, highly influenced by the fact that no city seemed to be free of this “disease” of prostitution, and so painted them in abundance. He then moved to New York in 1998 and his subjects switched from the city to Hoquiam, feeling rather homesick. Where some works of Bronco Nagurski and Elijah Pitt had reached international level, Kandegas rejected them as being sports-themed. He depicted the landscape as being a harsh, barren and sterile wasteland. He distorted stereotypes and icons of the White Center, including early professional football stars George Blanda and Walt Suggs. He was influenced by the sheer barrenness and hopelessness that White Center conveyed, and added these icons as pawns to White Center's deadly game.
Throughout the 2000s, Kandegas began to face many personal traumas. He had begun to form a good relationship with Swiney, who had been adopted by Angonka and Napoleon Toulouse, but unfortunately he committed suicide in 1999. A few years later, the Toulouses both died within a week of each other from being run over by a motorcar. Kandegas's father found them lying in the street, and served them with rice to his sister who was visiting. He began to feel that many of the people he had influenced in his life were quickly slipping away from him, looking back at Candace Carson, who had also died in 1990. As a tribute, and to immortalize his contemporaries, he produced the "Paperclips Series". The series saw Kandegas move away from his most celebrated themes, and to variations of the paperclip, a representation of an explorer’s conflict with the environment that eventually fuses the two together to become of the same element, as both the landscape and the
heads were created using the same medium, texture and color. His other major subjects were the “intruders” or “fauns” that became mindless metallic beings that patrolled dead environments with guns and weaponry. This added to his recurring themes of hopelessness and loss.
Kandegas’s style, subjects and attitude stay the same throughout his life as an artist. They are implied but never visible. Only his resolute image- the paper clip- is allowed to speak for all the figural ideas, theoretical landscapes, virtual still lifes. His attitude always comes across as perceptive, pessimistic, disgusted and generally critical of the environment around him. Whenever he portrays males or females together, they seem to be sexually confused – the females maintain an extreme prostitute image and the males appear lustful and greedy. He often depicts scenes of madness, destruction and horror especially in response to the stadium rock. He portrays many scenes of hopelessness in his post-stadium rock stage, of the desert, the total eclipse of 1979 and of his personal losses. And paperclips.
His style retains a surreal, expressionistic quality. He often places subjects on barren, dream like and hostile plains, with confused or distorted bodies, appearing surrealistic. He wonders in text printed on the back of several of his works on paper if Klimt had been frought with minimalism if his strokes would resemble his own, paper clips suggested in later embodiments, strokes which held the threshold of making marks ambiguous, vague, but present. He enjoys disfiguring his subjects’ forms to emphasize an issue or point, while being very expressive in his appliance of mediums, linking to expressionism. His messages however are ultimately of social realist quality, apart from his surreal explorations into his losses in his final artistic stage. He always wants to bluntly and confrontingly display social issues that are harsh, but real and very much a part of society. But mostly paperclips.
Kandegas’s subjects often recur. He starts with many psychologically disturbed subjects in his stadium rock period, and also wounded subjects. He then moves to a subject of modern evil, with the recurring motif of the fake smile, single eye and pole and/or blob-like masses for bodies, with pig-like males. His subjects then move to hopelessness and loss in the post-stadium rock period, including the desert, football icons, Antipodean Heads, “Fauns” and Puget Sound. The theme linking all of these is often moral confusion.'' But mostly he paints paper clips.
October 2007
Paintings By Jeff Jacobsen
Margie Livingston lectures on her work.
September 2007
Paintings by Susan Barron
August 2007
Paintings by Paul Gasoi
July 2007
Paintings by Sam Birchman
Trimpin lectures on his work.
June 2007
Paintings by Michael Lane, Mikal Whoberry and Sam Birchman.
Countdown / Build 2 Destroy
May 3 - May 27
Opening Reception: May 3, 6-10PM
Form/Space Atelier Lecture Series with Rebecca Albiani, May 5, 6PM.
Contributing Artists: This Is Nocturne, Donald Daedalus, Zach Carver, Mick Lorusso, Abby Martin, Ben Alberg.
Musicians perform 8:30 PM May 3:
Pianist Chris Blacker - Seattle Times article
Guitarist Bob Limbocker - bio at kaleidoscopeschoolofmusic.com
Guitarist Lonnie Mardis
Drummer Glenn Thilman
Temporary site-specific architectural installation. To gain an appreciation and awareness for our changing urban environments, an investigation of proportion and space will be conducted at gallery Form /Space Atelier in one of Seattle’s emerging downtown neighborhoods. Located at 1907 Second Avenue, the building is scheduled for demolition this summer and will be transformed into a high-rise condominium complex. An early multi-story parking garage, built in 1926 is now a dispensable typology of utilitarian building. Redevelopment of urban downtown centers tears down such structures to make way for higher density living to promote walkable streets. In turn, structures like the parking garage are candidates for new sites for construction. However, through these processes of redeveloping spaces, there provides an opportunity, in all its vacancy to sustain a moment of life, energy, and “collective memory” through temporary architectural installations.
Site Specific Installation Curated By Anna Koosman and Paul Pauper
Figure drawing sessions every 15th of the month in the atelier.
Brad Biancardi, Carolyn Polk, Joanna Stokrotka
Curated by Paul Kuniholm
April 1 - April 30, 2007
First Thurday artist reception: April 5, 6-10PM
Child Care Resources Art Auction to benefit homeless children April 28th. http://www.childcare.org/donors/artsale.htm
Brad Biancardi: Bradley Biancardi explores the architectural and psychological interaction between people and interior spaces through his work in drawing and painting.
Bradley received his MFA from the University of Washington and his BFA from Indiana University. He has exhibited his paintings and drawings throughout the country, and has taught at the University of Washington, the Northern Indiana Artists Association, and at the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Carolyn Polk: My encaustic paintings are created using a small travel iron to apply pigmented wax to paper. The work is also kept at very intimate size no bigger than 8x10 inches. I seek to create imagery that is both calming and compelling, invoking feelings and a desire to look deeper into the image. For several reasons, I am drawn to painting scarabs: the intoxicating quality of color they possess; how it can be represented in a wax medium, with the undulating layers and transparencies of colors. I also appreciate the symbolism attached to that of scarabs. They take a variety of meanings from many different cultures. I am personally drawn to the meaning of good luck.
Also exhibiting:
Toni Bigby, Fred Betz, and Joanna Salska, polish-born non-objective realist painter.
B, As In Blue/ An Extraordinary Violence/Sustainable Image Profile
March 1 - March 31
Opening Reception: Thursday March 1, 6-10PM
Curated by Paul Pauper
B, As In Blue: Cyanotype prints of ghost-like images by Wanda Pelayo provokes thought about the civic environment and lingering presence of monuments and effluvium alike. Pelayo also assents the engineering marvels of metropolis with the Bones Series, a multimedia masterstroke.
An Extraordinary Violence: Sub-Mason-Dixon Line Wunderkind Amjad Faur plays with obfuscation in selenium prints imported from Lebanon.
Sustainable Image Profile: Earth Mother Signe Drake returns to Form/Space Atelier with her new series of images of metaphysical spectres. Form/Space Atelier Lecture Series March 13 with experts in sustainability, 6PM.
Designated Landmarks/ Venerable Upstarts/ Day Shove You
February 1 - February 25, 2007
Opening Reception: Thursday February 1, 6-10PM
Curated by Paul Kuniholm and Caroline Majors
Designated Landmarks: Sculpture installation by Stephanie Robison and Paula Rebsom gives pause to reflect on architectural paradigms in the South Salon of the Atelier.
Venerable Upstarts: A group show of the Cult Of Youth Artists Collective will exhibit in the North Salon of the Atelier. Cult Of Youth counts among it’s adherents the talented expression of urban artists Julia Gfrorer and Davis Limbach, in the matrix of twenty or so members.
Day Shove You: Vladmaster, an artist who constructs her own veiwmaster slide veiwers to accompany a multimedia presentation will show at the opening reception February 1.
Stephanie Robison
Paula Rebsom
Cult of Youth
Julia Gfrorer
Vladmaster
CONSTRUCT EXPRESSIONISM/FIVE ALIVE
January 4-January 31, 2007
Opening Reception: Thursday, Jan 4th, 6-10pm
Curated by Paul Kuniholm
This exhibit of five abstract expressionist painters Barry Connolly, Jeff Jacobsen, Steven Schrock, Shai Steiner and Kenneth Susynski fills the senses with 1980-era goodness. Schrock will paint live in the atelier for the opening reception January 4 using a paintball gun and a suit constructed of sponges soaked with paint.
Can you resist this awe-inspiring spectacle? Can you? Can you honestly?
Of course you can’t!
Jeff Jacobsen
Kenneth Susynski
Shai Steiner
FOLK/POPULI
December 7-December 30, 2006
Opening Reception: Thursday, Dec 7th, 6-10pm
Curated by Paul Kuniholm
form/space atelier is proud to present retablos by the family of Alfredo Vilchis Roque as seen in Infinitas Gracias: Contemporary Mexican Votive Painting.
Also for December, we bring you a wall of art featuring pieces from many Seattle-based artists, designers, photographers, architects and more. Everything is priced at $400 or less.
Be sure to register for the form/space atelier mailing list for your chance to win a piece of local art! Register online here or come by in person to the gallery. Drawing will be held on Monday, December 18.
Portrait Sprawl/Canvas Hardscape
Reception: Nov 2nd, 6-10pm
Show runs until Dec. 3rd
The title for November’s show of four painters is “Portrait Sprawl/Canvas Hardscape”. The show focuses on the small scale two-dimensional aspect of built environment through painting. The artists chosen are either collaborative, complimentary or enmeshing dichotomy of representation through scale, materials used or message.
Lauren Grosskopf
Jaki Martin
Betty Hageman
Macro/Micro
October 5-October 30, 2006
Opening Reception Thursday October 5
Mike Magrath lecture November 22nd, 2006. Link to Seattle Weekly Wire recognition for excellence: http://www.seattleweekly.com/2006-11-22/calendar/sw-s-calendar-of-recommended-events.php
Photography by Signe Drake and Jonelle R. Lind
Curated by Paul Kuniholm
form/space atelier presents photography by Signe Drake and Jonelle Lind. Micro/Macro delves into dichotomy... nature/built environment... twin daughters of different mothers. Drake uses macro focus to investigate flowers, Lind is wide-angle wise to the urban landscape.
Signe Drake has a BS in Zoology from the University of Michigan and is a retired court reporter. She has studied at the Photographic Center Northwest and is a graduate of the Commercial Photography Program at Seattle Central. She has an ever-growing collection of cameras and is particularly fond of an old Speed Graphic. Signe was born in Seattle where she has lived most of her life.
Jonelle R. Lind is a Northwest photographer who spent many years studying photography and design in Seattle and Australia. She has a love of architectural form and the contradiction between nature and man-made objects. Her images reflect a sense of timeless beauty, consequence and transformation.
Form/Space Atelier
2407 1st Avenue Seattle, WA 98121
Tel. 206-349-2509
HOURS: 12-4 WED-SUN
FORM/SPACE ATELIER
2407 1st AVENUE
SEATTLE, WA 98121
206-349-2509
Paul Kuniholm is an artist, has been formally trained in art and design. He has exhibited at museums and festivals including Seattle Art Museum in 2005 and the London Biennale in 2006. As an artist his works number in the hundreds.
Paul Kuniholm is a Seattle art curator specializing in non-mainstream spaces and extra-commerce exhibition of art and spectacle. His career as a curator surpassed 100 exhibits curated as of April 2008. He currently accepts commissions based on the potential to report truthfully what is instructed him to do so by a source of other than self.
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