Form/Space Atelier Exhibit for September 2009
Show Title: Program
Show Duration: September 11- October 4, 2009
Opening Reception September 11, 6PM, as part
of Belltown Second Friday Artwalk www.belltownartwalk.com
“Program” is a collection of Lynn Schirmer’s autobiographical large-scale figurative paintings, drawings, and other products. These recent works explore in more detail methods of external control, identity, and how experiences impact our sense of physicality. At the (opening) reception, audiences will have the opportunity to program Schirmer, or alter her mental state, by interacting with the elements in one particular piece.
Lynn Schirmer received her BFA from University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana and studied at the Atelier of Seattle Academy of Fine Art (now Gage Academy).
Artist’s website: http://www.lynnschirmer.com
Attached image:
Schirmerprogram.jpg
Detail of: “The 4 Corners, (Corrupted Over Time)”
Pastel on drafting film and colored paper
7’ x 7’
2009
Curator's notes:
I had known of Lynn Schirmer's artwork for some years previous to becoming associated with her professionally in 2007. Our professional association came about as a result of an exhibit in February of 2006 I curated at 1907 2nd Avenue, Seattle, the first geographic location of Form/Space Atelier. In the course of planning the exhibit in late 2005, I met artist Julia Gfrorer ( www.thorazos.net ) a member of Cult of Youth art group. Julia Gfrorer soon after taking part in the Cult of Youth group exhibit at 1907 2nd Avenue in February 2006, recommended me to Lynn Schirmer for a curator's position at Angle Gallery, where Schirmer was director.
I contacted Lynn Schirmer and forwarded my credentials and curriculum vitae. I was instantly and poignantly impressed with Lynn's striking combination of astute professionalism and courtesy in her person, with the well-wrought and absolutely original expression of her artwork. Lynn hired me to curate Angle Gallery, I filled out the necessary paperwork as required by Artspace Projects, Inc., and I was given the keys to Angle Gallery.
During my tenure as curator of Angle Gallery, there were several outstanding exhibits; paintings by Sam Birchman come to mind, as does an exhibit of collagraphs by a collaboration of a White-Eyed Conure parrot called Carlos and a human named Steven Schrock.
There were also trying times at Angle Gallery. The familiar curator's landscape of artists failing to meet press deadlines, delivery obligations and failing to honor contracts; the usual problems with artists "acting famous". Lynn was a stalwart redoubt of leadership during these tribulations, a bulwark of managerial acumen executed with spectacular diplomacy.
I curated Lynn Schirmer's first show at Form/Space Atelier in March 2008; comprised of sculpture, painting and drawing by Lynn Schirmer with an opening reception dais by independent art critics Jim Demetre, Jae Carlsson and Steven Vroom. Lynn Schirmer presented a collection of mixed-media sculpture, as well as paintings and drawings on the theme of attachment. Some pieces referred directly to the late 1950‘’s-era experiments of psychologist Harry Harlow on rhesus monkeys. Others were the result of self reflection on her attachments, negative and positive, and how these have affected her sense of security and identity. The show utilized an ingenious variety of site-specific sculpture in a multitude of materials. Plaster limbs floated in a re-purposed construction netting. Two six-foot-long carved closed-cell insulation foam clitorises nearly touched over the gallery's dramatic stairwell space. Small paintings on one wall.
I contacted Lynn Schirmer a little while after Harlow Monkey asking if she would exhibit again at Form/Space Atelier in the near future, she declined at that time because she was to busy dealing with the aftermath of the the death of her friend Su Job. She suggested postponing Program for the Fall of 2009. Program will be her second consecutive solo show at Form/Space Atelier, and undoubtedly another magnificent critical triumph.
