New Work and Opening - Category: From the Studio

 

As some of you may know last Friday was my opening  at Caggio. This was my sixth exhibit there over the last two years. It is hard to believe that two years have already flown by. I will have to say this was one of my favorite openings thus far because of all the people that came out to support me. When I first moved here I didn't know anyone and as I talked to people on Friday I realized how many of you I have come to know through my exhibits. So thank  you again for all your love and support. 

       

Matt Eich released his EP "Dirty Screen" at the opening, which was based off of six of my paintings. It was wonderful to have music that connected with the work. Matt is a very talented musician and if you are interested in hearing more of his work check out his website www.matthewroberteich.com. The CD comes with six postcards of the paintings that Matt wrote about and costs ten dollars. If you are interested in purchasing a CD please contact me or Matt.

 

I don't like to explain my work too much beyond the artist statement unless people have questions. So I will try to keep this short and sweet. To start off here is an excerpt from my statement at the opening:

"When I create a new body of work I challenge myself to slightly alter my conceptual framework, which is based on one's relationship to a place. Each body of work in my portfolio has dealt with a different concept such as the act of traveling, contrasting urban vs. rural landscapes, and exploring local economies. This new work's visual vocabulary comes from Milwaukee's "city middle." The majority of works, focus on one street, like Wisconsin and North Avenue, as opposed to representing an entire city.  Other works like "City of Steeples" and "Ma Bells of Milwaukee" are limited to representing one defining feature of our location, such as churches or telephone poles."

I threw in a few new challenges with this work such as working with a CNC Milling Machine. Tuan Tran is an architect from Design Fugitives who helped me fabricate one of my past works as a carved panel. I am still in the beginning stages with this work and am considering it as a starting point for prints, drawings, and paintings. I am having a show in October at BYO Studio and I am hoping to exhibit more of these works. We will see how it goes and I will keep you posted on the process. 

The Sentinel Revisited

Another challenge I set up for myself was to limit myself to making work about one street in Milwaukee.This all started because of all the construction on I94 this past spring. I took the side streets to avoid traffic and as a result I accessed parts of the city that I had never been to before. I now try to take the side streets whenever possible. Several of the works were based off of the "hidden treasures" I found on North and Wisconsin Avenues. 

   

The Ambassador

City Middle

Finally, I also forced myself to work with only one image/ form for some of the works. As stated in my artist statement I did this to bring forth one defining feature of my location. The three characteristics that I chose to work with were the steeples, row housing, and telephone poles of Milwaukee. I chose these because they were the top three things I noticed immediately about Milwaukee when I moved here. Through repetition I hope to convey the significant role they play in forming the landscape of our city. The interesting part of these works for me was that they were born out of the blog entry that I wrote awhile ago called "I Come From A City Of Steeples." In the past I would always make the work and then write about it. This time around the process was flipped, I got the idea from writing. I always painted because it was difficult for me to express what I wanted to say through language, and the painting helped me to arrive at what I wanted to say. Now I see the writing occasionally informing the painting, which is exciting for me. 

City of Steeples

Out of the Fire

The Ma Bells of Milwaukee

If you have any questions about the work please feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer them. In the next two weeks Maureen Mulhern, will be posting an interview that she conducted with me about the show. I will provide a link to it when it is released. I will leave you with a couple more images from the show. Thank you all again for coming out on Friday! 

       

Off of Prospect    Near Farwell

The Golden Dragon

           

Sign On North

Fish Grotto

MKE to PDX