“Two Sisters”

Not an official title, but maybe.

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  9^th 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!

I’m definitely not using this image, but I do get entertained by how it looks like  a wrestler and an insect combine.

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.

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.

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:

Citypages Article

Fun fun! Have a good weekend.

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!

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.

Detail of an in progress print. Starting to put together the beginnings of my thesis stuff. MAKE IT WORK.

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.