Experiments Memories And Devices: Works that Measure Amplify Connect Define

at the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Gallery

Every day but Sunday from 01/28/2010 to 02/25/2010

Works by Christy Georg, Richard Metzgar, Leslie Schomp

Artists are a lot like alchemists. They take raw materials and transform them. Whether graphite, or steel, or ordinary things like string and wax, or cigarette butts and maps, a transmutation of materials is the essence for any work of art.

Artists have been altering materials since humans began to make objects from clay or etch marks onto stone. In a broader context, we all seek ways to tap into the creative well. Whether we plant seeds, learn about typography, follow a recipe, or examine forensic evidence, each of those events relies on assumptions about the relationships between the parts and transformation of them into something new.

Each artist in this exhibition seems to have settled upon singular, distinctly provocative ways of defining and mapping the creative process. And in so doing, each has utilized methods to connect or redefine things that we think we already know.

Christy Georg earned her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art. She studied at Pacific Northwest College of Art and earned the BFA from Kansas City Art Institute. She says. “I build devices which function either actually or metaphorically. Together the user and tool results in an experience/experiment, and together they act as a machine. The objects here are seen without their users. As a result their intentions exist as possibilities. Is it any different than viewing 17th century devices, inventions and innovations far removed from our digital world in the 21st?”  Ms Georg’s residencies include Wurlitzer Foundation, Taos NM (upcoming); Residency Struts Gallery, New Brunswick Canada (upcoming); Residency Art 342 (upcoming); Nominee 2010 Foster Prize, Boston Institute for Contemporary Art (results pending); Residency Virginia Center for Creative Arts 2009; Residency I-park 2009; Grant Blanche E. Colman Award 2009. She has exhibited at the Khyber Institute of Contemporary Art, Halifax; Trustman Gallery, Simmons College, Boston; Walker Gallery, Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA; Boston Children’s Museum Artist Window Installation, and others. 

Richard Metzgar has created a body of work that is the result of “a cycle of investigations on urbanism and in the everyday as a primary space of cultural experimentation,” he says. “Through interventions I test and invent mediators through which to understand place and public space. Driven by a series of ongoing algorithmic walks undertaken individually and with collaborators, I have sought to capture human and nonhuman agents with photography, video, audio, and physical collections of the nonhuman and material culture (e.g., plants, rocks, water, soil, consumer detritus, etc.).”  Metzgar studied at Nazareth College, Syracuse University, and SUNY at Purchase. He earned both the BFA and the MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. He received five New York Foundation for the Arts Special Opportunity Stipends and has been awarded travel grants for research in Montreal, Taipei, and Vancouver.  Exhibitions include Everson Biennial at the Everson Museum of Art and at Shippensburg University, Pennsylvania School of Art and Design, Monroe Community College, Chautauqua Center for the Visual Arts, Rochester Contemporary (formerly Pyramid Arts Center), Amos Eno Gallery, Visual Studies Workshop, Pleiades Gallery, The Cooper Union, and the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester.

Leslie Schomp writes: “I am creating a series of stitched drawings on fabric that form a visual diary. My drawings are not a record of exact events but more an examination of relationships, roles, and moments. I work with vintage handkerchiefs that are alternately objects of commemoration and objects that bear contact with the body. Handkerchiefs commemorate the ordinary as well as the extraordinary and represent a history of female domestic craft. My inspiration comes from my fascination with historical samplers, quilts, miniatures, embroideries, Victorian mementos and tokens of love. I also often use organic materials such as pressed flowers from my garden or hair from loved ones as they hold dual qualities of beauty and decay. They conjure up notions of humility and mortality.”  Schomp earned the MFA from Massachusetts College of Art, and the BFA from Florida State University. Some exhibitions include Essex Center of Arts, Lawrence MA; Charles City Center of Art, Iowa; Faculty Show, Cantor Gallery, Holy Cross College, Worcester, MA ; and Faculty Show, Emmanuel College, Boston, MA.