UNAPOLOGETICALLY ME�� |�� Jessie Hotchkiss

Hotchkiss delves into her own past to process the physical and mental vulnerability that can come from traumatic experiences. Through the use of hand-cut paper and light, she creates shadowbox scenes from past memories that explore these human experiences, and create space for acceptance within her own self.

Slideshow of Artwork

Give your about the show, support an emerging artist.

Artist Statement

I believe that insecurities and guilt mask a lot of creativity and I want to express the beauty in those situations. True artistry comes out when you let yourself feel and let your body speak through your creations. That is exactly what I am aiming to convey by intricately putting these displays together. It helps process an event to its core and takes a lot of mental strength, but the end result gives more satisfaction than is imaginable.

I chose shadowbox art because I literally wanted to bring light to these situations. Not only did I want to use graphic design elements but hand-crafted components to put all of myself into the work. I wanted my creative process to be just as heavily demanding as the situations illustrated. There is no easy route when it comes to reliving the past. You either choose to face it head-on or run away. There is no other way I would want to confront these moments in my life than through art. No, that doesn’t make it any easier, but it is how I am able to accept the things that can’t be changed. At the end of the day, I am unapologetically me.

Bio

Jessie Hotchkiss is a working Graphic Designer based out of Coon Rapids, MN. Although her primary work is focused on digital work, her other interests include drawing and sculpting. She loves creating work based on human experience and expressing the events of others through storytelling. She’s achieved her BA in Graphic Design at �̲�ֱ�� located in the heart of Minneapolis, MN.

Virtual Mock-up

Due to COVID-19 the show in the physical gallery space has been delayed. Here is a virtual representation of what it will look like in the Gallery720 space.

The post Jessie Hotchkiss | Senior Show appeared first on Art Galleries.

Screenshot | Elena J Schaust

A series of acrylic paintings on panel, Screen Shot explores the tenuous nature of texting as a means to communicate impactful information.

Slideshow of Artwork

Give your about the show, support an emerging artist.

Artist Statement

The use of modern text messaging to transmit impactful dialogue is worthy of consideration. A fascination with the implications texting lends to modern communication is at the core of my work with this series. I have built large wooden panels that are to-scale iPhones. Each panel is painted in acrylic, rendered abstractly, and informed by a text chain’s subject matter. Unexpected interviews while compiling text conversations furthered my suspicion that many people experience texting negatively, rather than positively. Each bubble of intimate conversation is hand lettered, a painstaking contradiction to real time texting.

Contemplating the implications of each conversation is a vital part of the process in this series. My own personal relationship to texting as a lifeline was highlighted in 2018 after months of hospitalizations for cancer treatments. It became evident very quickly that the sometimes-tenuous manner of texting could result in wildly varied outcomes. Emotional responses to language in art have historically captured my interest, lending perfectly to the tricky foundation texting can create in relationships. These paintings begin to grasp at the next evolution in human connection through written language.

Bio

Elena Schaust lives and teaches in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has completed her BA at �̲�ֱ�� as a studio art major, with a psychology minor. Elena has a long background in visual arts, stemming back to the late 1990’s as a professional photographer. Currently, she focuses her creative endeavors in painting. Elena has been intrigued by the complex way people use technology to communicate since the arrival of modern cell phones. This interest drives her to explore language as a means to convey impactful moments. Elena’s current series of paintings inspired by text message conversations were collected through interviews with friends and family.

Virtual Mock-up

Due to COVID-19 the show in the physical gallery space has been delayed. Here is a virtual representation of what it will look like in the Gallery720 space.

The post Elena��J Schaust | Senior Show appeared first on Art Galleries.

MARCH��26 – APRIL 5, 2018

Christensen Center Student Art Gallery

Artist Talk: Thursday,��April��5,��5:30 – 7��p.m. Christensen Center Student Art Gallery

Desire to Explore is a series of digital collages that invite the viewer to examine daily busyness. By exploring regular routine, Fox asks if there is more to life than the schedules we create.

Statement

Through reflection and making these pieces, I began to see the routine of life that can put restrictions on new experiences. Exploration��starts a journey one may take to an unfamiliar place or a familiar place they have been but didn’t explore and learn from those experiences. The range of ideas flows naturally based on past and present events. These events are created by cultural knowledge of what is going on in today’s society or what has happen in the past.�� As I began preparing for this show, I��came up with so many ideas that they could not all be expressed in one show. I didn’t know what I would do or how it was going to happen, but suddenly it hit me like a burst of water hitting my face as I got ready for the day. Everyone has a routine in the morning to start the day. This routine of work, school, social media, and entertainment are what I think of as busywork or distractions for today’s society; it is something we consume regularly. You may not know whom to blame, but it��has been regularly becoming more ingrained for decades and will be an ongoing practice that frankly will be hard to break. As I look at my work, I notice my��pieces��reflect what is happening or��what happened in my life whether it was with my own experience or listening and learning from others. This time around, I wanted to change; I wanted to look at what could be possible, to see what we as humanity could do without an institutionalizing society. I desire to explore more.

I have been drawing for as long I can remember. I would even draw my favorite cartoon characters with my little brother. Throughout my life, I have wondered. My wonders became daydreams and my daydreams became reflections. As I get older, these became my art pieces. DESIRE TO EXPLORE has been my favorite wondering. I wondered what life would be like if no one had to work or attend school; what would society look like? What kind of person will I be? Although I know I am hardworking and I do love school and work,��I question if there is more? One day knowing I could leave and walk without a location in mind would be a dream come true. As I walk, I would begin an authentic��journey learning about today’s society. I would not only learn something new about myself but also about the environment, the human condition, and how everything connects. I feel I would begin a journey connecting with the earth using my senses to explore��the universe. I remember��as a kid looking at the lines in the blinds. They appeared to be moving or lying on the ground, and, as I looked up into the sky, I began to feel as if I was floating. DESIRE TO EXPLORE is a series of digital collages that reflect my longing to capture my senses and walk into the universe using photography and drawings. However, DESIRE TO EXPLORE isn’t just for me. It questions the sense of reality and if there are multiple realities to explore.�� A reality where people might find their true selves and connect to the universe.

The post DESIRE TO EXPLORE by KEEYONNA FOX appeared first on Art Galleries.

THE FAIR UNKNOWN

Reception: Saturday, October 4, 1 – 5 p.m.

September 2 – October 23, 2014

Using thick layers of resin and fragmented fashion magazines, Josie Lewis creates intricate dimensional collages that reference cellular biology, starscapes, kaleidoscopes, and explosions.

Artist Bio

Josie Lewis was raised in northern Minnesota on the shores of Lake Superior in an octagon shaped house. Her work has been widely exhibited in the Twin Cities area and nationally. She has an MFA from the University of MN and currently lives in North Minneapolis with her husband and daughter.

Artist Statement

I make semi-sculptural slabs of epoxy resin and found paper collage. I use cut fashion magazine images that are intricately layered between multiple pours of resin. My attraction to these magazines consists of a complex push-pull of distaste mixed with formal relish. Like an archivist, I dig, sift and edit. The magazine is milled into a kind of analog pixilation wrought by my scissors and utility blade. I seek to draw attention to the source material while simultaneously damaging it almost to the point of elimination. The glossy magazine becomes a glossy and heavy slab; shredded, exploded, inside out and backwards. I am administering a its rebirth to a more perfect object: solid, definite, personal, precise and terribly permanent. The resin slabs are seductively handmade and aggressively beautiful.

Hours:��M – F, 8 a.m. – 8 p.m.; Sat. & Sun. 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

THE FAIR UNKNOWN – Studio Tour

“How did you make that?”

Josie Lewis hears this a lot. At first glance, her work is a large, glossy mosaic of colors and abstract shapes. Coming closer, it reveals itself to be a series of layers – clipped images that combine to create something that might be found under a microscope (intricate and lifelike) or perhaps a telescope (celestial and expanding). And suddenly we are lost in wonder.

This ponderous moment, suspended in thought like pieces of paper in resin, is the result of both a meticulous process and an intuitive hunt and response. On her studio’s table, stacks of magazines stand in the midst of small pieces of “found treasures” through which she digs, looking for the right color, image, or pattern—anything that inspires her.

She starts, typically, by looking in Vogue Magazine, not because of the content but the quality of the pages. The paper from these and National Geographic holds up the best throughout the creation of her work.��The fair unknown��originates in the former, 12 copies of the same issue from 2013. Within a wooden and aluminum mold, she pours black ink, a layer of resin, and waits 24 hours. Then a layer of magazine forms, a layer of resin, and wait… repeating this layer by layer until a patchwork form emerges over the course of 8 – 15 layers. Sometimes an idea is clear from the beginning, while other times the piece works itself out as she goes.

With a drawer full of scissors and another of Elmer’s glue sticks, Lewis thinks of this process as “reordering something that already exists,” cataloging Vogue through another perspective. Through the destructive act of cutting, the magazine is demolished and revived, transforming it into something redeeming and life-giving.

To those watching as she works, the process is clearly meditative. Small bits from an ocean of glossy pages carefully congregate, sit, and move around the composition, coming together to create a greater whole.

Lewis started out painting at the University of Minnesota. Gifted with a knack for technical skill but frustrated by a lack of voice in her work, she began cutting her work apart. Discovering an interest in the surface of the paint, she created collages in secret, experimenting with the resin she saw her sculpture friend using. The urge to create work that had been whispering to her now had a voice. She found the new medium, materials, and a symbiotic relationship in which the materials informed the work and vice versa.

Now, Lewis would be in the studio all the time if she could, but life intercedes. Usually found working on her current series in sporadic bursts throughout the day and after her little one goes to bed, she holds to the advice she gives artists of any stripe or level of expertise: The more you make work, the better you get and the easier it is to find what you like. Time is essential. Spend time making work.

Next, Lewis looks forward to casting objects in resin and also returning to paint, exploring its surface and the gradation of color. In the meantime, she loves the reactions people have to her work, especially kids. “It’s like a firework mixed with a flower mixed with a machine.” The material gives people an entry point to engage in the work. We are familiar with and thrown off by the material. The depth, the trick, the illusion engages people as they come closer. And from the pages of what we feel we know, we respond in common, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

www.josielewis.com

THE FAIR UNKNOWN –��images

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