Capital City Arts Initiative

Exhibition Dates: February 7 – June 29, 2020
Artist’s Reception: Friday, February 7, 5 – 6:30pm
Exhibition Venue: CCAI Courthouse Gallery
885 E Musser Street, Carson City, Nevada

Impact
Exhibition at CCAI Courthouse Gallery

The Capital City Arts Initiative presents its exhibition, Impact, by artist Paula Chung at the CCAI Courthouse Gallery. The Initiative hosted an opening reception on Friday, February 7, 5 – 6:30pm; the artist gave a brief talk about her work at 5:30pm. The exhibition continues in the gallery through June 29, 2020

The Courthouse is open; the gallery is in the second floor atrium. To take a virtual tour of the exhibition, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV82wLeRiI4  The Courthouse is located at 885 E Musser Street, Carson City and is open to the public, M-F, 8am – 5pm.

Paula Chung’s Impact works address violence on sports fields, battlefields, and the streets. Through the use of medical imagery, she illustrates how violence affects us all.

Chung bases her work on enlarged MRI medical scans for their beauty and universality. She searches for images on the Internet or receives them from friends and acquaintances; she and then converts and manipulates the images using Photoshop. After transferring and enlarging the MRIs onto a water-dissolvable film, she uses multiple-colored threads to machine embroider and create the desired values and hues. She sews on different substrates including used tea bag papers, mulberry, and rice papers to convey a sense of fragility and impermanence. The enlarged pieces invite the viewer to become a part of the experience. Photographs of her work are available at http://paulachung.com/

Chung lives in Zephyr Cove, NV, where she gardens and maintains her art practice. Originally from southern California, she moved to Lake Tahoe upon retiring from public school teaching. She began taking art classes at Lake Tahoe Community College, where she began her studio career as a quilter, creating large silk abstract florals. Continuing her work with fibers, she experiments with different substrates, techniques, and now emphasizes social issues.

In addition to her talk at the opening reception, Chung participated in the Initiative’s Nevada Neighbors series of public art talks with Phyllis Shafer. Their in-depth conversation is online at https://youtu.be/KuO3iBlaHJI and is shared with CCAI’s partner schools’ art departments.

Chris Lanier, professor of digital art at Sierra Nevada College, wrote the exhibition essay, “Stitching Images”, which CCAI published as a gallery handout and archived online; read here Impact_Essay. Working in digital animation, web production, and comics, Lanier enjoys producing hybrid forms. His animations have screened at Sundance, and he won the Grand Prize for Internet Animation at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. His art criticism essays have appeared in numerous online and print publications, including The Believer, Comics Journal, HiLobrow, Furtherfield, Rhizome, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

A Western Nevada College Latino Cohort student provided a Spanish language translation of the exhibition’s wall text.

CCAI is an artist-centered not-for-profit organization committed to community engagement in contemporary visual arts through exhibitions, arts education programs, artist residencies, and online activities.

The Initiative is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, John and Grace Nauman Foundation, Carson City Cultural Commission, Nevada Arts Council, Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, RISE, Southwest Gas Corporation Foundation, U.S. Bank Foundation, and its sponsors and members.

top image: Paula Chung at an exhibition of her work, March 2017
2nd image: Torso [detail]; thread, torn mulberry paper, netting; 2019
3rd image: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) 1 – 3; thread on stained tea bag papers, netting; 2018; installation view, Haldan Art Gallery, Lake Tahoe Community College, South Lake Tahoe, CA, 2019
bottom image: Impact exhibition flier