Redaer's Art 12: Jamie Weaver

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home


Jamie Weaver

West Virginia in Quilts recalls my childhood memories of growing up in rural Appalachia.  My family has long been involved with folk arts and crafts, and I was encouraged to explore these creative outlets both at home and in school.  Looking back, I realize that much emphasis was placed on West Virginia as a center for Appalachian crafts and tourism, and larger issues affecting the state, like mountaintop removal and rampant meth use, were swept under the rug.  When I was in school, we weren’t taught how to be socially, financially, and environmentally loyal to our state – we were told that to be successful adults, we’d probably have to move out of state.  So, with West Virginia in Quilts, I wanted to use a traditional Appalachian craft, quilting, to bring awareness to more serious issues affecting West Virginia. 

            I chose an accordion fold structure so that the book unfolds and spreads out like a quilt.  The title of the book works on a couple of levels:  It is a glimpse of West Virginia through beautiful quilt patterns, and it is also a state in quilts, or covered from view.  Since the truth rarely remains hidden, I let the ugliness underneath peek through the quilts on the surface; when the quilt unfolds, the whole story is revealed.  The front and back are covered with handmade paper that reminds me of quilt batting.

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home
March 16- April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12: Judith Strom

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home  

Judith Strom- This book is an exploration of our acreage here in Montana.  All the materials for book except the thread for binding & stitching and the computer inks came from our property as did the images.  The paper is handmade from yucca.

As with most of my work this piece grows out of my love of the natural world and most especially the beauty of our home here in Montana.

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home
March 16- April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12: Marilyn Stablein

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home

Marilyn Stablein - An ongoing series of artist books Notions and Accessories explores an artist’s whimsical narrative history of needlework, notions, and women’s antique fashion and fabric accessories.  By utilizing actual found antique objects I hope to honor and celebrate everyday women’s historical tools and handiwork. Current completed artist books in this series include works devoted to The Bias Tape, Needles, vintage Handkerchiefs, and vintage nylon stockings and a stocking bag.


Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home 
March 16- April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12: Claire Siepser

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home   Claire Siepser

Choices :

This artist’s book is a personal exploration of reproductive choice. With the numerous and intense political messages and brash facts and figures, sometimes it becomes difficult to see the intensely personal nature of the choices we make about our bodies. Despite all the political rhetoric, it remains taboo to speak about reproduction in most circles.

This book acts as a place of calm reflection about the choices I have made and why I feel strongly about women's rights. I have deep convictions regarding my own body but, despite these convictions, this issue makes each of us deeply vulnerable. I decided that I should create a piece that made me deeply vulnerable and shared my difficult trek towards being positive about my reproductive life. I wanted to share my vulnerability with the world in the hopes that it might speak to other individuals trying to make their way in the world.

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home
March 16- April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12: Elizabeth Schendel

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home   Elizabeth Schendel- I have always enjoyed looking through my family’s collection of photographs and listening to the stories that have been passed down and told over and over again, and I recently realized that my family’s stories are significant to me not just for what I can learn about the past, but also for the new perspective that I can take on the present. My grandparents’ stories provide insight into their character, into my parents’ lives, and even into myself, as I see their influence on the family and also learn about what influenced them.  Even the family stories that I am not personally aware of have influenced how I view myself and understand the world.  Because of this recognition of both the textual and visual narrative influence, my work makes use of found texts and photographs, as well as original imagery, to create pieces that, while of a personal nature for myself, create a space for viewers to create and consider their own narratives.

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home

March 16- April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12: Vida Sacic

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home   Vida Sacic

Cityscapes project - hand-bound letterpress printed book (4 colors / 64 pages /50 copies produced)

produced during an artist residency at the Center for Book and Paper Arts Columbia College Chicago

The printed book serves as one of two parts of the project - the second being an interactive app that can be viewed on a personal iPad. In both iterations of the books, the same content is used but presented in a way that takes advantage of the medium.

Thematically, in this collection of over 40 illustrations of imaginary landscapes, themes of materiality are explored through images of cities whose landscapes juxtapose buildings from varied time periods and geographic areas. The landscapes mostly combine sights from Chicago, where I currently live, with images from my home town in Croatia. In such spaces realities collide and coexist furthering a notion of vague familiarity mixed with displacement that mirrors the 21st century experience.

I believe that this book is well suited to the theme “longing for home” because of it’s strong personal subtext which alludes to our tendencies to carry our past with us and often find it resurrected in front of us when we least expect it. I find it fascinating that we carry it all with us no matter where we go.

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home
March 16-April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12: Michelle Ray

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home  Michelle Ray-

Admeasure

2011
text and image printed from photopolymer plates and linoleum blocks on handmade and Somerset Book papers, edition of 35
8 1/8" x 3" x 1/4"

The act of naming things creates a sense of relative safety at sea. Like the pilot’s verse that guided sailors through dangerous shoals, Admeasure is about gaining a false sense of control through signifiers and ritual that guide one through a world that is largely uncontrollable. This book explores the dialectic tension between the dangerous unknown and measure, rules and tradition. While at sea, measurements, maritime law, navigation aids and other modes of dominance through organization are easily lost to the forces of nature and the psychology of a journey. The content of Admeasure draws from a variety of archetypal journeys including Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Homer’s Odyssey, Bas Jan Ader’s In Search of the Miraculous and my own time spent in small boats.

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home
March 16- April 26, 2012

Reader's Art 12: the opening

Reader's Art 12 opened, Friday, March 16 to good crowds and good sales.  The evening was the first lovely, dulcet evening of our extremely early spring.  Today the elm  trees are spewing pollen and the daffodils are poking up through the soil, eager to bloom .

The evening of the opening was busy enough that I forget to get photos of all the people reading the books.

Reader's Art 12 :Mary Bergs and Beth Dorsey

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home  Mary Bergs and Beth Dorsey are Minneapolis artists who collaborate. For the Reader’s Art Exhibition they are creating a collaborative book. Using the structure of an accordion book they plan to visually explore the concept of home as: 

·      A place

·      A state

·      A building

·      Something within us

·      A memory

·      A history

·      A facade

·      An emotion

·      Something familiar

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home
March 16- April 26, 2012
opening reception, Friday, March 16, 2012

Reader's Art 12: Alicia Bailey

Reader's Art 12: Longing for Home  Denver artists Alicia Bailey says, "The phrase “home is where the heart is” is one that confounded me in childhood. Others seemed to think that home was a house somewhere.

I asked my mother about it once, or maybe more than once. Her response to my idea, if my home is where my heart is, then my body must be my home, was an exasperated “Where do you come up with these ideas?”

The conviction that my home is the one that I carry with me everywhere, my physical body, has stayed with me and continues to make sense. I find comfort in the notion of my home as something that is wholly mine. A thing while it can be shared, used or abused by others, exploited even, belongs to no other. A place that will cease to exist at the same moment that I do.

The five books here reference the physical (Shedding), the sensual (Burning Me Open), the psychological (Two Hearts), the spiritual (Mercy) and all the above (Ab)."

Reader's Art 12 : Longing for Home

March 16-April 26, 2012

opening reception Friday, March 16, 7-10pm

Time Consumed!

Though Jeff's show project gutenberg project continues, and people do come by to see it, my time has been consumed with saving the building!

It was time to attack stucco repair, before winter heaved more off. As is the usual nature of stucco repair, issues were revealed and the repair quickly doubled in scope and price. There was rotting along the foundation line...now fixed. Phew! It could have been so bad! Really bad!!! But Donnelly Stucco found it in time.

Lots of news here!

Art Books for sale, among other things!

Big Annual Book Sale with A load of Art Books for Sale Corcoran Neighborhood, is pleased to present the 8th Annual Book Sale, October 15, 9am-4pm,at the Neighborhood Office, at the corner of Cedar Ave and 35th St, South Minneapolis. Every Fall, the Corcoran Neighborhood puts on this one day sale, with refreshments, to raise money to support the neighborhood organization and especially the expenses associated with the Lutheran Volunteer Corps year-long volunteer position. I have donated 7 boxes of art books to the sale this year! There are some real plum finds in the lots...some rare books, some odd books, contemporary art criticism, exhibition catalogs, graphic design, artist monographs, art history, and a large group of books on ceramics. So why have I donated so many books? When I lived in Michigan, the library system was weak, with inter-library loan largely unavailable. In order to continue my lifelong learning, I had to BUY the books I needed. By comparison I now live in library heaven. So, I am moving books out to make room for more! And to make room for my retirement business: Sue's Luxury Fibers. This is What Retirement Almost Looks Like Susan Hensel Gallery will soon change its footprint in the neighborhood. The month in month out exhibition schedule is nearing its end with the current show. Monday hours will continue, but the space will become my working studio. Come in on any Monday to see what I am up to. I may be up to my elbows in paint and charcoal. On Mondays you can see my work in process or you can come shop Sue's Luxury Fibers for yarn and materials for spinning, dyeing, weaving, knitting and felting. In March, 2012, the show Reader's Art will return for the 12th year! I am committed to keeping that show alive and will continue presenting in this space for the forseeable future.

Project Gutenberg Project closing event November 11, 7-9 pm The Project Gutenberg Project by Jeff Rathermel continues at Susan Hensel Gallery through November 18. This show can be seen as an overall installation, a faux library, a cabinet of curiosity all focused on the idea of the book. The gallery is always open Mondays, 10-5 or viewings can be arranged by appointment. A special event is being offered: Keep in Touch: Physicality in Contemporary Art , on Friday November 11, 7-9pm. Jeff, will be joined in conversation by Marianne Combs and Paulette Myers-Rich. Free and open to the public. Doors open at 6:30 pm. The Original Show at Flow Art Space I am re-launching my exhibition career with this show Flow Art Space is a new gallery in the basement of the Keg House Building in NE Minneapolis. This group show runs October 19-30, with a reception for the artists October 21, 5:30-9pm. Gallery hours: Oct 19,20,26,27- 4-7pm October 21 and 28- 5:30-9pm October 22 and 29- 1-4PM or by appointment Flow Art Space 34-13th Avenue NE, Suite B002B Minneapolis 612-564-FLOW(3569) SiP Coffeebar is in the front of the building.

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project gutenberg project opens FRIDAY, SEPT 23, 7pm

 project gutenberg project opens TOMORROW! 
Friday, September 23, 7-10 pm. The food and beverages are chilling.  The lights are set, the floor needs sweeping, the trim on the new shop windows is painted.  

Now:  BEGIN!

I am so excited!  It is a simply beautiful show.

You must come see to believe it.  Jeff Rathermel has created an installation that is a cross between a bookstore, a library and a cabinet of curiosity!

project gutenberg project

by Jeff Rathermel

Sept 23-November 18

About installing art

 Jeff Rathermel is a master!  His show, project gutenberg project, is a series of groupings around a topic.  The green sheets are the titles of the series.  The red sheets are cut to the precise size of the artwork being installed.  They are laid out in their precise grids before any artwork actually is hung.

project gutenberg project

by Jeff Rathermel

September 23- November 18, 2011

Opening Reception Friday, September 23, 7-10pm

Gotta Love that Laser Level!

Jeff has the coolest tools!

What a cool laser level!

Without a laser level, this is how I would have hung the show!

About Project Gutenberg Project

Project Gutenberg Project Description: Commentaries on the pace of everyday life are far from unique but remain important as humans increasingly forfeit physical relationships for digital immediacy. The Project Gutenberg Project celebrates the beauty of book structures, honors traditional book art processes, exposes overlooked materials, and draws attention to the gratification that comes from tactile experiences. Using the remains of books scanned into digital libraries, Project Gutenberg Project speaks to the lack of physicality in contemporary art and the trend toward fetishizing book objects. Full of irony, the project both embraces and criticizes technology while elevating and violating its subject matter. Equal parts commentary, prophecy and preservation, the Project Gutenberg Project compels viewers to reflect on their interactions not only with books, but with all physical objects in their lives.

Project Gutenberg Project?

Jeff Rathermal, Executive Director of minnesota Center for Book Arts, stopped by the other day to show me how his exhibition, The Project Gutenberg Project, was coming along. He has been hard at work in his studio, working with the detritus from the Gutenberg Project. The Gutenberg Project disassembles old books, of varying value and states of repair, and digitizes them for posterity. You can actually download some from the internet. The gathering of the information is laudable, but the destruction of the books is sad. He has been examining the scraps, working with them to make beautiful objects that also comment on the irony of destroying to preserve.

Project Gutenberg Project

opens September 23, 2011

reception 7-10pm.

The reception of the art was magnificent!

The reception for My Father's Religion coincided with dulcet, balmy weather and the weekend of the Minnesota Quilt Conference. My friend Debra, an art quilter, had come from NYC to see the quilts.
And a group of Korean art quilters were invited to exhibit at the convention. Their work was outstanding! And, they came to meet Carolyn at her reception. We ate cake for CR's birthday, drank wine, listened to live music next door at the Crown Cafe and generally had a wonderful evening!

The show continues through July 12. Do come by.

Hours are Mondays 10-5 and other days by very generous appointment.

Installation is nearly done!

Installing My Father's Religion, is not difficult, but it is slow and painstaking.


It involves wire, tools, plumbing pipe, picture wire, monofiliment, a level...and forming, re-forming, frogging and knitting.
The day was made much easier by the participation of Mark Carlson.

My Father's Religion is showing in conjunction with :

Opening Soon:

My Father's Religion

June 4- July 12

Opening Reception: June 17, 7-9pm