INTO THE TREES

Exposition proposée par
Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art

• OLIVE AYHENS
  Olive Ayhens, "Dry Creek, Whiskey Town", 7 in x 5 in, watercolour, ink on paper

  B.F.A., M.F.A. San Francisco Art Institute, Guggenheim Fellowship 2006, two Pollock-Krasner Grants, 1998, 2001, Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Individual Support Grant, recent one person shows, shows, Frederieke Taylor, NYC gallery Nature/Architecture, 2009, Extreme Interiors, 2007, Suny Geneseo, Perilous worlds of Olive Ayhens, 2008, Mid Manhattan Public Library, Rivers of Light, 2007, Watkins gallery, American University, Gary Tatintsian gallery, NYC, 2002, 2003, 2004, recent group shows, drawing show, Sue Scott gallery, NYC, 2011,Next Wave BAM, Brooklyn,2009, American Academy of Arts & letters Invitational show & Purchase award 2004, Lehman College, Bronx, 2005, Adam Baumgold gallery drawing, 2007, 05, 02 Artist residencies, Ucross, 2010, 2003, St. James Center Creativity, Valletta, Malta 2009, MacDowell Colony, 2007, 1999, Yaddo 2006, Fundacion Valparaiso, Spain 2005, Saltonstall 2003, Salzburg Kunstlerhaus, Austria 2003, Blue Mountain 2002, VCCA 2006, 2001, Djerassi 1994, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council-studio space(former world trade center) 1999, Marie Walsh Sharpe Space program 1996, Harpers Magazine reproductions, 2009, 2007, 2001, Selected Reviews, Art News, The New York Times, New York Sun, City Arts, New York Observer, Art in America, Art Week, Colleges taught, Brown Univ. American Univ. U.C. Berkeley, Stanford Univ., Sarah Lawrence College, Montana State Univ.,Univ. of Texas at Austin, California College of the Arts, San Francisco State Univ., San Jose State Univ., New School Univ., Anderson Ranch, Ox-Bow, among others…

• HEDWIG BROUCKAERT
  Hedwig Brouckaert, Uprooted I, 2010, 50.7 in x 40.9 in, black transfer paper and watercolor on Canson Watercolor paper

  Advertising images of magazines and mail order catalogues are the source of my drawings and installations. I am interested in the tension between the highly representational and readable starting point - advertisements, which have to get a message across as clearly as possible - and the abstracted, illegible result of the process.

  The images I use often have extremely high production value. Magazines arriving as a pristine, glowing object in the mail or on the newsstand yet meant to disappear quickly and to become trash, to be replaced by the most recent up to date information. My work on the contrary, is the result of an antiquated and slow process. It refers to the culture that produced them, but totally transforms the original narrative.

  In my drawing series Uprooted, I transfer images of hair. No other part of the body seems to hold such a variety of symbolic power as the hair, as it can manifest gender, class, religion and politics. I uproot the hair from printed mass media images onto paper, into a mass of lines and textures resembling forms of the biological world.

  
  

  Hedwig Brouckaert (1973, Chile) is a Belgian artist living in Ghent (Belgium) and NYC. She obtained an MFA from the University of California, Davis after completing a Master’s Degree in Sculpture at the Sint-Lukas Hogeschool in Brussels and a Postgraduate Degree at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Belgium. Brouckaert received numerous artist grants from the Flemish Government in Belgium, and fellowships of the Rockefeller Foundation - Bellagio, Liguria Study Center - Bogliasco, Valparaiso Foundation, Cité Internationale des Arts Paris, Yaddo, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ragdale Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center in the U.S.A.

  Brouckaert has taught beginning through advanced level courses of drawing and sculpture at numerous institutions, including the Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art in France, the University of California, Davis and the Montana State University, Bozeman in the U.S.A.

  Brouckaert presented her work in numerous solo shows and group exhibitions in Europe and the US. Currently she is preparing an exhibition about drawing called Re/pro/ducing Complexity with Nelleke Beltjens and Jorinde Voigt. This show is curated by Peter Lodermeyer and will open in September 2011 in the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Deurle Belgium. Her work is represented by Gallery Jan Dhaese in Ghent, Belgium.

• E. G. CRICHTON
  Susan Working and E. G. Crichton, From performance of Discourse: Table 2, 18 in x 30 in, digital c-print

  E.G. CRICHTON uses a range of art strategies to explore social issues, history and site-specific subject matter. She often works within community settings and in recent years has collaborated across disciplines with performers, writers, an experimental composer, art historian and a team of chemists. She is currently Artist-in-Residence for the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Historical Society of Northern California where she is developing a multi-phase interactive project called LINEAGE: Matchmaking in the Archive.

  E.G.'s work has been exhibited in art institutions and as public installations in Europe, Japan, Australia and across the U.S. She has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Ragdale Foundation and Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and visiting artist fellowships from Anderson Ranch Art Center and the KunsthØgskolen in Bergen, Norway. Her work has been funded by The Creative Work Fund, the Horizon Foundation, UC Institute for Research in the Arts, the Astraea Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, the Nexus Gallery in Philadelphia and Art Matters, among others. She is an Associate Professor of Art at UCSC.

• DAHLIA ELSAYED
  Dahlia Elsayed, Middle Earths, 2009, diptych, 24 in x 20 in each sheet, acrylic on paper

  Writing and painting are close processes for me, coming in part from my background in writing, as well as an interest in the relationship between language and image. For over a decade, I have been making paintings and installation that synthesize an internal and external experience of place, connecting the topographical with the psychological.

  Visually, the work pulls from conceptual art, comics, cartography and landscape painting and employs symbols of hard data- text, geologic forms, geographic borders, signs/markers, coastlines, tide schedules - to frame the soft data of the ephemeral, adapting a quantitative schema to the qualitative.

  
  

  b. 1969, New York, NY, USA Dahlia Elsayed combines text and imagery to create visually narrative paintings that document internal and external geographies. Her work, influenced by conceptual art, comics, and landscape painting, is informed by autobiography and environment, to create illustrated documents of places and memories. Her paintings, prints and artist books have been shown at galleries and art institutions throughout the United States and internationally, including BravinLee Programs, Clementine Gallery, the 12th Cairo Biennale, and solo exhibitions at Aljira Center for Contemporary Art and the Jersey City Museum. Her work is in the public collections of the The Newark Museum, US Department of State, Johnson & Johnson Corporation, New Jersey State Museum, amongst others. Dahlia has received awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, Visual Studies Workshop, Women’s Studio Workshop, Headlands Center for the Arts, and The NJ State Council on the Arts. She received her MFA from Columbia University, and lives and works in New Jersey.

• HORATIO LAW
  Horatio Law, Ciel, 36 in x 24 in, digital inkjet print on transparency

  Inspired by the arbors near the Tremelo Chapel in Pont Aven, "Ciel" is a meditation on the kaleidoscope of life.

  
  

  Horatio Hung-Yan Law is an interdisciplinary artist who was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the United States in 1972. In studio work, public art and community residencies, Law deploys common cultural artifacts to explore issues of identity, memory and cross-cultural struggle in the evolving global community. Currently an assistant professor in Intermedia and Photography at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregan, Law received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis.

• AMY LOVERA
  Amy Lovera, Handmade Awakenings, Gabrielle , 45 cm x 30 cm, 17.5 in x 11.5 in, archival ink-jet print

  My work explores the interplay between biography and fiction. Utilizing narrative strategies, I reimagine personal histories and give image to desires. While I use the media that I feel is best suited to each project, my work is always rooted in the photographic. I am interested in the common perception that images made by cameras are somehow truthful. Using the camera’s frame as a space for performance, I create photographs, stop-motion animations, and videos that attempt to document what I feel I am unable to capture with the camera. I feel there is empowerment in acknowledging the subjectivity of experience; it gives one ownership and agency in creating one’s history. My materials and methods are simple and direct: painted backdrops, cut paper, photographic parlor tricks which suspend disbelief. These constructions simultaneously create and break the illusion of the photographic, calling attention to the complicated nature of representation.

  My current project, Handmade Awakenings, visualizes the personal stories of people in my community. I work collaboratively with each narrator, using recorded interviews as a point of inspiration. The following images are from one particular story; a fourteen year old girl named Gabrielle told me about her difficult year in eighth grade when she was diagnosed with a rare vascular disease. She tells a tale of self assurance and empowerment despite the hardships of her illness and the strange spontaneous nosebleeds that are its symptom. This dialectic process has been extremely rewarding; it has enabled me to reach out directly to others, allowing me to work with biographical material while giving my collaborators agency in their depiction.

  
  

  Amy Lovera is a multimedia artist whose work explores the interplay between biography and fiction. Her narrative works translate personal histories through reenacting them as photographs, animations and drawings. Recently, Amy has been awarded grants by LEF Foundation and by the Rhode Island State Council of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited and published both nationally and internationally. This fall, her most recent animation, Handmade Awakenings, will be screened at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston. Amy has been on the faculty of the Massachusetts College of Art, the Rhode Island School of Design and Southern Connecticut State University and was recently a visiting artist at the Pont-Aven school of Contemporary Art in France. She received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and makes her home and work Providence, Rhode Island.

• BARBARA MCBANE
  Barbara McBane, The Cure, "A Forest" [guitar sting in Soundbooth], 2011, 15 cm x 15 cm, archival ink-jet print
  Songwriters: Robert Smith; Simon Gallup; Matthieu Hartley; Laurence Tolhurst

  Come closer and see
  see into the trees
  find the girl
  while you can

  Come closer and see
  see into the dark
  just follow your eyes

  I hear her voice
  calling my name
  the sound is deep
  in the dark

  I hear her voice
  and start to run
  into the trees

  Barbara McBane heads the Critical Studies program at the Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art. Before coming to PASCA, she taught visual culture studies, film studies, gender and sexuality studies or film post-production at the University of California, Davis; University of California, Santa Cruz; Ardmore Studios, Dublin, Ireland and the UCLA Department of Film and Television. She has many years of experience as a sound editor and designer on projects ranging from feature and experimental films to public and studio art projects. Barbara holds a PhD degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz in the History of Consciousness; her feature-film credits include a number of Academy-Award winning projects in sound post-production.

• DAVID OATES
  David Oates, Texts from “Rendition”

  The graphic texts for this show are from "Rendition," the centerpiece of my recent book of personal essays What We Love Will Save Us (Portland, Ore.: Kelson Books 2009). This essay grew out of my moral outrage and frustration in 2007. As citizen of a torture regime, what was my responsibility? What act or statement could answer such massive organized evil, committed by the government in my name (and with my tax dollars)?

  I spent several months that year in Pont-Aven (Brittany), Paris, Berlin, and Prague. Here I found perspective on our American military propaganda machine. I have woven these perspectives into the narrative of my confusion and heartbreak.

  Pont-Aven, March 2011

  
  

  David Oates' books, articles, and poetry about nature and urban life are widely published -- most recently in a feature article for Orion (May/June issue) and poetry in ISLE. His recent book of essays about the creative spirit overcoming lies and political outrage is entitled What We Love Will Save Us (Kelson Books 2009).

  For his 2006 book City Limits: Walking Portland's Boundary (Oregon State University Press) he walked and kayaked the city's 260-mile perimeter. His 2003 book Paradise Wild: Reimagining American Nature challenged environmentalists to refocus on the joyous wildness that is never far away. His poetry has appeared in journals including Yellow Silk, and Poetry/LA. His scholarly work has explored major figures in American and British literature and public writing about science, including Thoreau, Whitman, and Darwin. He teaches workshops in writing and creativity around the Northwest and elsewhere in the US and abroad, and conducts the ongoing Wild Writers Seminars in Portland.

  David Oates also curates and organizes various provocations, events, and exhibitions. He organized the Whitman 150 Project, a public performance of the long poem "Song of Myself" with 52 readers, in October 2010; installed temporary guerilla poetry among urban highrises; and curated an exhibition for artists and designers around the creative use of urban natural spaces on Portland's Ross Island, in collaboration with Orlo Magazine. His Ph.D. is from Emory University.

• PHIL PETERS
  Phil Peters, Chairy Trees, 2.5m x 4m, Plaster, Styrofoam, PVC

  My work is centered on the creation of objects for reflection, introspection, and meditation. I draw inspiration from my educational background in cognitive psychology, and often use theories of human cognition as a departure point to address broader social and cultural issues of communication, intimacy and isolation.

  Though the chair is inaccessible, the viewer is invited to project him or her self mentally and emotionally into this physical space. This series grew from an interest in "mental models" as described in cognitive psychology, and how we reason and problem solve via simplified internal representations of the external world. This series inverts the paradigm, proposing an external object as a “functional” solution for internal issues.

  
  

  Phil Peters received his BA in psychology from Carleton College. He was a Post Baccalaureate Resident at PASCA and in the Fall of 2010 he co-taught a Professional Development Practicum in Digital Media. Before coming to Pont-Aven, Phil lived in Brooklyn, NY working as a web developer for several international design firms. He specializes in web and database design for both art galleries and artists.

• JENNIFER STEFANISKO
  Jennifer Stefanisko, Monkeyman,11 in x 16 in

  This image is taken from a series of photographs shot on Halloween in Los Angeles, CA over the course of eight years. The idea was to document the visual humor of Halloween, capturing strangers in the midst of their day, doing ordinary things in costume. The wide-open spaces and minimal pedestrian culture of the city underscore a certain visual and psychological isolation, which on this holiday becomes heightened, theatrical and oddly metaphorical.

  
  

  Jennifer Stefanisko ( b. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is a Los Angeles-based actress and filmmaker. She received a BA in Art-Semiotics from Brown University and an MFA in Filmmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was awarded a Princess Grace Foundation Grant. Her films and videos have screened at numerous festivals including Ann Arbor, Bangkok International, Hawaii International, and US Super 8; screening spaces: Artists’ Television Access, The Aurora Picture Show, Chicago Filmmakers, and at various art venues around the United States and Europe.

• JAY STUCKEY
  Jay Stuckey, Looking for Trouble (Eyepoke), 2011 18in x 24in, oil pastel, collage, on paper

  The unconscious is the unknown psyche and for that very reason illimitable, because indeterminable by space and time. This quality is numinous, divine. Science began with the stars, and mankind discovered in them the dominants of the unconscious, the “Gods”. Such projections repeat themselves whenever man tries to explore an empty darkness and involuntarily fills it with living form.

  From the study of unconscious symbols we can see more or less what happens when an earnest inquiry is turned upon the unknown regions of the soul. The forms which the experience takes in each individual may be infinite in their variations, but, like the alchemical symbols, they are all variants of certain central types, and these occur universally. They are the primordial images, from which the religions each draw their absolute truth.

  
  

  Jay Stuckey is a Los Angeles based artist. He graduated from Brown University, Phi Beta Kappa with Magna Cum Laude honors, and received his graduate degree in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Jay exhibits regularly in L.A. and is represented by Abel Neue Kunst in Berlin, Germany. Recent exhibitions include group shows at ACME and Andrew Shire in Los Angeles and the Long Beach Museum. His work is in numerous private and institutional collections throughout the country including Sprint Telecommunications and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

• ELIZABETH WHALLEY
  Elizabeth Whalley, Paulownia tomentosa, princess tree, 2011, 8in x 7in, watercolour, ink, acrylic on paper

  Princess tree is a deciduous tree that grows to 60 ft. (18.3 m) in height and 2 ft. (0.6 m) in diameter. Leaves are opposite, 6 to 12 in. (15.2-30.5 cm) long, heart-shaped (sometimes with three shallow lobes) and hairy on the underside. Flowering occurs in the spring, when showy, 1.5-2 in. (3.7-5 cm) long, tubular, pale-violet flowers develop in upright clusters. The pecan-shaped fruits occur in terminal clusters and split to release thousands of seeds. The thin, fruit capsules persist well into winter. Princesstree usually invades disturbed areas, but has the ability to invade a wide variety of places. Once established, it is difficult to remove due to prolific seed production and its ability to re-sprout vigorously. It is native to eastern Asia and was first introduced into North America in the early 1800s for ornamental purposes and as a potential export for carving wood.

  
  

  Elizabeth Whalley is a Canadian artist based in Québec and NYC. She uses painting, drawing, and printmaking as tools to gather and study phenomena from the natural world. Her projects evolve in response to site, materials, and technologies. She has participated in numerous collaborative and interactive events including the Conflux Festival and the Science Fair at Flux Factory in NYC. She has taught at Haverford College, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn College, and Adelphi University.

• BARRY WHITTAKER
  Barry Whittaker, Jukai 841mm x 1189mm, 33.11 in x 46.81 in, poster

  It’s almost impossible to completely understand another person—it’s often hard enough to fully express oneself. How are we expected to accurately decipher what someone else means? This process is made infinitely more complex when you place a series of machines in between you and the person you are talking to. The possibility for something being lost in the process increases exponentially with each added technology. It’s the equivalent of placing all your thoughts in a food processor and handing the pieces to a person who will carry them to another person that will reassemble them for the person you want to speak to. You hope they will get the idea of what you are saying, but they are likely to miss a lot. I think this is an interesting point of departure. Misunderstanding is what makes history and mythology most interesting. It creates a greater story when we attempt to understand something that seems alien and ultimately get it wrong. I like to image miscommunication in its most fractured and disrupted forms. It’s an inaccuracy that traveled across both space and time. We’re only aware of our communication tools through their failings and shortcomings. Photography, video, interactive installation, audio, websites, and drawings are among the many methods I use in my individual practice and in my collaborations. I believe that artwork should inspire dialog—whether between individuals or between a work and its audience. With this in mind, I experiment with technology and the structure of communication both as subjects and as processes.

• FRED OF THE WOOD
  www.fredofthewood.fr

  Processus de connection fantaisiste et préfiguration du fruit:
  

  Distortion et traduction,
  d’une pensée,
  d’une accumulation de possibilités,
  de sons,
  en une sensation,
  de n’avoir qu’une détonation
  de temps
  pour transfigurer,
  sans transcrire, l’idée
  mais au contraire l’abstraire.
  
  De l’imaginé a la vision
  d’une évolution de formes,
  d’un alphabet mécanique,
  grincements,
  taches, vitesse,
  condensation et formation,
  noir, blanc;
  étalé.
  Gris;
  effacé.
  Noir.
  
  Réception et transmission,
  oeil, peau,
  le fluide cosmologique
  actionne et dérègle
  le corps machine,
  transition et circonstance,
  pour une possible traduction.
  
  De l’écoute,
  à l’expiration de l’outil,
  pont,
  brouillage des informations,
  chargé de pigments,
  le corps automatique
  exerce sa pression et
  extracte l’essence.
  Apparition sur le support
  du résultat de l’équation.
  
  A quoi peut ressembler une invention
  qui ne ressemble à rien?
  Comment représenter quelque chose
  qui ne représente rien?
  L’inconnue matière
  noire de l’univers.
  Décomposition
  Recomposition.

  Février 2011

  
  

  Fred Of The Wood est né en 1975 à Thionville, en Lorraine, région industrielle. La vue, le bruit et l’odeur des usines de l’est de la France sont des sources premières d’ inspiration. Depuis 2001 il vit et travaille en Bretagne, en 2003 il est diplômé des Beaux-Arts de Cornouaille à Quimper. Artiste sans frontières, il mène un travail de recherche et de création en alternance avec une activité professionnelle de régisseur et graphiste pour un centre d’art, le CIAC et PASCA. Passionné de sciences, de musique expérimentale, de poésie concrète, cet artiste aime autant l’humour que la tragédie. Il utilise de multiples techniques, comme le dessin, la peinture, la sculpture, l’outil informatique et plonge le spectateur dans ses mécanismes de pensée, le fait voyager, laissant l’esprit de chacun libre de communiquer et de suivre un fil qui relie entre elles des idées et des images.

• SUSAN WORKING
  Susan Working and E. G. Crichton, From performance of Discourse: Table 2, 18 in x 30 in, digital c-print

  SUSAN WORKING:

  My work is interdisciplinary, and merges craft-based techniques with traditional fine arts methods (painting, sculpture, photography) and with New Media (video and digital technologies; performance art).

  This still image is drawn from a series of sculptures, videos and installations E.G. Crichton and I made about tables. We chose this archetypal furniture form to suggest systems of relationship both embedded in the physical object and projected onto it by social need. A table comes into the world through a complex set of material processes: gathering, labor, transport and fabrication, to name a few. But its functional lineage also requires a social imagination, the needs we project onto an object, the ways our bodies, minds and emotions interact with it. In this image, the camera view is from below, a kind of subterranean voyeurism beneath the surface of these social vignettes.

  Susan Working is the Academic Director of the Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art. She was the director of the Furniture Design and Sculpture Programs and the Visiting Artist Program at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village Colorado from 2002- 2009. Her current work as both artist and arts administrator at PASCA has focused on the combining of wood with other media such as painting and digital media and on the collaborative process. Her hybrid sculptures combining studio furniture, drawings, painting, prints and video have been exhibited at the Salone Internazionale de Mobile, Milan, Italy, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York, the Milwaukee Art Museum, Fuller Craft Museum and in galleries across the U.S. Susan received her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. She has taught at California College of the Arts, Rhode Island School of Design and Anderson Ranch Arts Center.