My good friend Fiona Short traveled from New Zealand via Glasgow where she is currently based to spend two and a half weeks with us preparing for our upcoming two-person show To Arrive Where We Started at 2739Edwin in Hamtramck in Detroit. We’ve been enjoying working steadily in the studio together in anticipation of the show.
To Arrive Where We Started | Amy Sacksteder and Fiona Short
18 August – 15 September 2012
Exhibition Public Reception: Saturday August 18 from 7 to 10pm
Regular Hours: 1pm – 5pm Saturday. Other hours by appointment
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We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. T. S. Eliot
The exhibition “To Arrive Where We Started” grew out of conversations between Ypsilanti based Amy Sacksteder and New Zealander Fiona Short about common themes in their artistic practices. The title, a quote from T.S. Eliot, can be read as a summing up of their respective global wanderings or as a shared tendency of returning to earlier work to see what more it can reveal with time. Either way it indicates awareness of balancing new experience with reflection and looking again.
Sacksteder’s work is rooted in painting and drawing, but for this show might also include installation. Combining source material from her surroundings, life experiences and historical context, and often incorporating landscape and natural imagery, she constructs documents of time and place that are both beautiful and complexly referenced.
Short’s subtle and enigmatic photographs are grounded in the ordinary and are as much about the process of looking as about what is being looked at. Her images reveal a sense of place and order, engaging the viewer in the way that a quiet voice may command attention. One senses that for Short, each image is a small lesson, a discovery of unexpected delight, and that each photograph is an opportunity to communicate this discovery.
Biographies
Amy Sacksteder received a BA in English from the University of Dayton in 2001 and an MFA in painting from Northern Illinois University in 2004. She currently lives and works in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where she is an Associate Professor of Art at Eastern Michigan University.
Fiona Short completed her MFA at The Glasgow School of Art in 2009 and has since travelled to New Zealand, Iceland and the US to participate in residencies and exhibitions. She currently lives and works in Glasgow, and teaches in the Continuing Education Department at The Glasgow School of Art.
The two artists met at the SÍM Residency Reykjavik in June 2010.
The exhibition LOST and FOUND took place at three different venues: the PASSENGER Temporary Project Space in Detroit, Starkweather Art Center in Romeo, Michigan and Detroit MONA in the Russell Industrial Center.
The work in all of the spaces is being documented, but for now here’s an iphone image of my painting Floe, installed at MONA.
I’ll have work in this upcoming show, about which I’m really excited. The artists in the show are wonderful, and it marks the opening of a fantastic new residency program in Detroit. Please come out to the opening if you can make it.
From the press release for the exhibition:
“LOST and FOUND: Belief and Doubt in Contemporary Pictures marks the public launch of programming for PASSENGER , which will be a residency program and project space in Detroit. This show announces the vision, goals and type of ideas that PASSENGERseeks to support while we work towards establishing a permanent location. Showcasing the best local artists in the context of top emerging practitioners from around the country, LOST andFOUND looks at artists engaging with the concept of pictures in the era after the ‘death and resurrection of painting’ in which images in any traditional capacity have become impossible in a critical context. In light of this impossibility comes the demand for a fresh investigation. LOST and FOUND showcases a generation of artists that are aware of the historical critique of the language of painting/images. This awareness informs their practice and a traversal of the liminal space between belief/doubt structures their conceptual framework.”
The gallery is open Thursday-Sunday 11am – 7pm
Passenger Detroit’s Temporary Project Space >> 1261 Woodward, in The Lofts of Merchants Row, Detroit | April 05-May 06. Opening Reception: April 5, 2012, 5-8pm
3 new smalls:
untitled: postcard | 6″ x 6″ | oil and silver leaf on panel | 2012
untitled: mica | 6″ x 6″ | oil, mica and volcanic ash on panel | 2011
November281963369182rebmevoN | 6″ x 6″ | oil and silver leaf on panel | 2011
All up on my website.
Also this week I’m off to Reno for a residency at the University of Nevada which includes and solo show and lectures. I’ll post images soon.
New painting:
Floe
84.5″ x 48″
oil on canvas
2012
I have work in the upcoming five-person exhibition Of Land and Water at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center in Evanston, Illinois.
Here’s the front and back of the postcard with the pertinent info:
Since school ended in April, I’ve been able to spend a lot of time in the studio. I have the help of a couple of students, one who made a big batch of stretchers for me, another who is doing all of the stretching and gessoing. It’s great to have so much help, which frees me up to work on some new paintings, all in progress. I’m working with images from Iceland and algae flows, and playing around with volcanic ash, mica and silver leaf.
Also I have the modest beginnings of a new web-based project: http://deltiophile.tumblr.com/
I’m using it as a place to post the postcards I collected while in Iceland, some collages, pages from my sketchbook and other visual sources for my work.
