Two Sisters
“Two Sisters”
Not an official title, but maybe.
Glass, Cinder & Thorns Press Release
323East Gallery Presents “Glass, Cinder and Thorns” on March 20, 2010
All Star Female Group Exhibit Explores the Dark Side of Fairy Tales and Identity
323East presents “Glass, Cinder and Thorns,” featuring over 15 female artists from Detroit and around the globe. The exhibit opens on Saturday March 20 with an artists’ reception from 6 p.m. – 11 p.m., and runs through April 18, 2010. The show is free and open to the public.
Showcasing female artists from around the world including Detroit, Montreal, Portland, New York, France, Australia and elsewhere, “Glass, Cinder and Thorns” explores the dark side of fairy tales and their impact on identity. “As children, our parents would read to us bedtimes stories of little mermaids, sleeping beauties, and little red riding hoods. These innocent stories often had evil lurking beneath the pages. What Disney failed to tell you is that, the mermaid dies, multiple suitors defiled sleeping beauty, and the wolf ate Grandma,” explains 323East show curator April Segedi.
Participating Detroit artist DeEtta Harris agrees. “As children we are engulfed in this fairytale world with underlying meaning and darkness. Yes they lived happily ever after, but it usually took great sacrifice and dark magic to achieve it.”
As such, the show’s provocative imagery often appears to be on a mission to decipher the puzzle of identity. “The images they offer up are menacing and ambiguous, soft and dreamlike, familiar and uncanny,” further explains art critic Robert de Valle.
In honor of this exhibit, 323East is offering a limited edition of 10 signed and numbered Giclee prints of Audrey Pongracz’s “Gooses Geeses”. The print is 18′x15′ printed on canvas, adorned in the original frame. This limited edition offer will go on sale March 9th at 10am on 323east.com. In 2009 Pongracz was named “Artist of the Year” by Real Detroit Weekly, with “Gooses Geeses” gracing the magazine’s cover. The original was sold at Los Angeles Gallery1988 last summer.
In addition to Pongracz, exhibiting artists include Kelly Vivanco, Jessica Dalva, Edith Lebeau, Megan Frauenhoffer, Maria Finna, Tina Tourikis, Nicole Cummings, Lisa Petrucci, Jessamyn Patterson, DeEtta Harris, Jaclyn Schanes, Lost Fish, Crystal Mielcarek, Jeannie Paske, Jenna Colby, Stephanie Skuzenski and more.
Don’t miss what promises to be one of 2010’s most intriguing art exhibits – “Glass, Cinder and Thorns” – when it opens on Saturday, March 20.
323East is located at 323 E. Fourth Street in Royal Oak, Michigan. For more information please call 248-246-9544 or visit 323East.com.
323East is a collection of creative energy materialized in a mash-up of art, culture, lifestyle and fashion. In addition to the gallery, 323East’s new boutique offers 400 square feet of extra space dedicated to handmade goods by local and international artists including jewelry, handbags, clothing and more.
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The official event press release! I might get to go this show afterall. I still need to look up plane ticket prices, but fingers crossed!
throw-away image
I’m definitely not using this image, but I do get entertained by how it looks like a wrestler and an insect combine.
Next steps
I don’t have concrete plans on my next few prints. This week I’m going to fix the ones that were shown and work on finalizing the thesis paper. I messed with the scans on photoshop, but I’m not sure if anything fruitful will come out of the process. It’s certainly fun, but I’m not sure how fitting it is for the series. I might just have to go back and do some reading for fresh ideas to draw upon. It might just be a writing week with some studio visits for extra feedback.
Thesis Artwork In Progress
I took better photos when I went to take the prints off the wall. Here’s some of the more complete prints. I’ll show the others when they’re finished.
This print is the most resolved out of the batch. I don’t plan on changing too much with it.
This one is got some splotches I need to fix, but otherwise near completion.
This photo is still a little off, I can’t seem to get it to look right.There’s a lot of shimmer in the ink that’s hard to capture.
I need to have something opaque to overlay on this print. There’s a lot of transparent layers that are making it hard to focus.
Prints that were in my portfolio, barely started. I’m going to try more restraint with printing on these prints. I don’t want to overwork them.
Press for Upcoming Shows
First off, here’s the promotional graphics for the upcoming 323 East Gallery show! It’s looking pretty fabulous. I want to go really badly, but it’s hours of driving and there’s so much work to do to graduate (it’s during my spring break too, so horribly tempting). Hopefully there will be tons of photos taken.
More info about the show on Facebook!
Second, there’s an online article for the Altered Esthetics Gender show:
Fun fun! Have a good weekend.
preview!preview!preview!
The first committee meeting went well. The general vibe was to keep working and let the intuitive process flow. The prints shown are by no means finished. Some are more complete than others. Others look complete, but are far from done. I could go into more detail what needs to get fix, but I’ll spare the chatter. The prints are poster size and the process has been quick and rewarding. I’ve been having fun for the first time in a long while. It’s nice to remember what it’s like to be energized with art making and investigating content.
I’m silkscreening this semester and creating monoprints (wiki link for my folks) . Some of the prints have a painterly and tactile quality. There were seven prints presented, four I kept in my portfolio since they weren’t nearly as completed, and four prints at the studio that I just started. This was all done in two weeks. If I keep this up, I could feasibly have a decent thesis show on my hands!
homage
I’ve been fixing scans of silkscreen mylars on photoshop. I’m hoping to make new stencils for printing by manipulating some of my pre-existing drawings. Essentially I’ve been drawing characters and then compiling them together onto a print to create a narrative. It’s more intuitive and less planned/structured than I’m used to, but I think it’ll work towards the content of personal narratives and fairy tale/psychology. This character was suppose to be a kind of Red Riding Hood with her hair becoming the hood, but she’s kind of coming off more like Cassandra in Greek mythology. Anyway, her pose slightly mimics the main figure in Edvard Munch’s The Scream, so I get to fit a little homage into the thesis show.
Sneak peek
Detail of an in progress print. Starting to put together the beginnings of my thesis stuff. MAKE IT WORK.
working working working
Drawing by Chloe Piene
Print/Street art by Swoon
I’ve been sketching a lot to figure out a different way to draw my figures, mostly in pen to break my perfectionist needs. I’m too embarrass to show anything now, but here’s two artists I’ve been looking at for inspiration. Chloe Piene just had a lecture at my school, which I missed it because of work. Sad. I’m kind of surprised nobody’s mention her name in critiques for me to research. Her work would have been helpful for me. I’m going to go research her drawings more at the library. Hopefully this will set off inspiring drawing ideas.
Creo Magazine
Creo Magazine is an online quarterly magazine that promotes student artists and visual culture. I got asked to be featured in their spring issue, “Nature vs. Nurture” along with a grouping of other artists from around the country. This is a preview of a page with my work. There’s another page with an interview included. I’m pretty impress with the flashy online magazine viewer. I got caught up in reading and forgot that I couldn’t physically move the pages except with my mouse.
Back to the studio/library/printshop/runningwithmyheadcutoff!
Website Overhaul
The entire website has been cleaned up. Art page is updated with the artwork shown throughout last semester. Since I have a nice camera now, the last five prints I made are finally represented better digitally. The About page is entirely new with information on my exhibitions and other info and I re-added the “contact” page again. I also cleared up almost a hundred blog posts. I review my blog entries from a 1-2 years ago and the cheery optimism mixed with extreme naivete became a little embarrassing to archive. I kept shaking my head and felt the desire to figure out time travel so I could shut up 2008-9 version of me.
Anyway, it’s squeaky clean and ready for a whole new semester!
-Megan
Water!
What would be my first hardcore studio day of the semester is starting off badly. There’s currently four trashcans set up to keep the leaky roof from flooding my studio floor. I probably need to put away any prints in the flat files for safe measure. Apparently, this will happen every time it rains. Bah.
Gallery 148 Exhibition
“Master of Fine Art candidates Thomas Boyer, Galen David, Megan Frauenhoffer, Graham Judd, and Levi Murphy will be exhibiting their work in the inaugural show in Gallery 148 from January 20th to the 29th. This, an exhibition of current MFA work, marks the first showcase, in recent memory, of MFA opus done at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. This show was organized to bring awareness to MCAD’s MFA program to both the undergraduates and patrons alike through the aid of a public and professional space that is Gallery 148.”
I spent yesterday setting up for the school exhibition. Tomorrow is the reception, along with two or three other school sponsored shows.
Here’s photos of setting up and a sample of the work being exhibited:
Galen David’s paintings, mostly installed.
Levi Murphy’s furniture, installed.
A sample of Thomas Boyer’s photographs.
Graham Judd’s woodblock prints. Printmakers! Yay!
I put three of the collage/prints I made last semester. I’m itching to make new art. I’ve grown tired of constantly displaying/photographing this body of work. I want new prints to show! Hopefully this weekend will be the start of that.
Altered Esthetics Calendar
The calendars came in for the Altered Esthetics Featured Artist Contest:
The print quality is top notch and my image looks snazzy for the month of March:
Since I’m one of the featured artists, I received 10 copies for free. Now maybe I can keep track of my semester and deadlines… key word being “maybe.”
School starts the 19th, the last semester of graduate school. Scary! I still don’t feel quite ready, but maybe the start of the semester will get me out of my creative slump. It’s now or never I suppose.
-Megan
