Capital City Arts Initiative

The Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI] presents its exhibition, New Crop, with work by Amy Aramanda, Kaitlin Bryson, Logan Lape, Kath McGaughey, Emily Rogers, and Karl Schwiesow at the CCAI Courthouse Gallery from June 5 – September 4, 2012.

In conjunction with the exhibition, CCAI commissioned Sarah Lillegard to write the following essay. CCAI extends its sincere appreciations to each of the artists, Sarah, the Carson City Courthouse, and all those involved in the exhibition. New Crop has been made possible with lead donations from Wally Cuchine and the Hop and Mae Adams Foundation Trust.

The Presence of Time

Working across various mediums, the six emerging artists featured in New Crop create an exhibition that showcases their individual strength in voice and clarity of vision. While each body of work maintains distinction, they all carry an underlying mindfulness to the passage of time. Without projecting into the future, the pieces take on the “now-ness” of coming to terms with age, history, and transitions affecting both people and places.

Of the six artists, Amy Aramanda’s series Salon de Mélange pulls heaviest from the past. Referencing nineteenth century expressionist paintings, Aramanda’s images recreate historical masterpieces as photographs through a process of painting her models’ bodies and posing them to duplicate the original. Through this, she converts the 19^th century masterpieces into contemporary works.

Salon de Mélange’s process alludes to Japanese photographer Yasumasa Morimura (1951). In his work, Morimura utilizes heavy make-up to transform himself into the characters of historical paintings and photographs. While similar in approach, Aramanda’s pieces are not concerned with self-identity in context of the past, but rather a dishevelment of art’s hierarchy of painting above photography. By printing the photographs on canvas and framing them as though they were classical paintings, Aramanda further “blurs the lines between painting and photography.”

The photographs themselves are instantly recognizable by the painting they mirror. These works appear so frequently in our culture that they are familiar outside of art academia. Aramanda uses this level of recognition to her advantage. Instead of just replicating the paintings, Aramanda and her models, predominately friends and fellow art students, collaborated to create a new version of the original image. A yawn, a cigarette, an animated expression– these minute details offer a window into a younger generations’ commentary on the canon of art history.

Sharing the “stories that accompany a home”, Emily Rogers’ photographs, A Portrait – West of Wells, place the past in context of the present. In her photographs and newspaper clippings of houses in the Wells Addition neighborhood of Reno, Rogers illuminates the coincidences within each location’s history, where the present reflects similar moments from the past.

Roger’s approach to these photographs references William Eggleston (1939), a pioneering color photographer noted for only taking one shot of a scene. Drawn in by the architecture of a house, Rogers filters the image to what exists inside her viewfinder waiting for “a gut feeling” before taking the shot. This sort of instinctual approach reveals itself in the emotions of each image. The quiet contemplation of the photographs truly captures the moment as it stands.

Taken on a medium format camera, the scale of the photos celebrates the small details of the lives lived within the homes. From dust on the floor to wind chimes on the porch, the inhabitants of the houses are revealed without ever actually being shown. By consciously not including people in the frame, Rogers allows the homes themselves to be the subject of the image. Their story prevails in the photos and their history is revealed in the newspaper clipping. Looking through the articles, the viewer becomes the historian connecting the house’s past to the present.

Sharing Roger’s preservation of the passage of time on a space, Logan Lape’s pieces bring a sense of tactility to the conversation. Taking cues from naturalists like John Muir (1838-1914) and environmental author Edward Abbey (1927-1989), Lape’s work exists “in and of landscapes”.

While not intentionally environmental, the casts and photographs of Touched/Retouched Landscapes present markers of man’s impact on the land. In creating each piece, Lape becomes a part of that impact cycle taking a cement cast of the “scar” and then re-touching the space with his hands. These interactions represent both the observer and the mender; Lape’s own actions inferring the question of which was more natural: the scarred landscape or the repaired one.

Comparatively Survey Light, Survey Dark invites the viewer to be the active participant. The solar powered machine Lape built draws a seemingly infinite clockwise circle. If left untouched, the circle would continue to compound on itself, creating a patina from repetition. By inviting the viewer to move the drawing arm in accordance to the amount of light outside, Survey Light, Survey Dark becomes a connector between people and their environment. With that interaction, the circles begin to resemble star trails in the sky or the concentric circles on a tree stump. Each circle marks the passage of time whether over a few hours or merely a few seconds.

Focusing on the temporal nature of life, Kaitlin Bryson’s pieces Transformation, Convolution and Shelf Life provide an “understanding that death and waste are the starting points of transformative processes”. The diptych works elevate the wasted, both fruit and paper, to the desirable. This sort of rebirth of materials reflects the “up-cycling” in the modern craft movement where discards are converted to valued objects.

Bryson’s use of the discarded ties heavily to being a gardener– compost being the transformation of decay into growth. Working from five years’ worth of outdated library cards, Bryson cuts out words, rearranging or removing them to make her own story. Through this process Transformation, Convolution grew into a narrative no longer in Bryson’s control, but rather resting in the hands of the viewer. The narrative of the piece evolves with each new visit, morphing into what peoples’ own experiences bring to it.

Shelf Life sits below the cards as its partner. Like the canning process that the name alludes to, Bryson preserves the fruit, not for consumption but rather consideration. Gathering fruit from her backyard, Bryson allowed it to age and deteriorate. Her control over the decaying process comes at the point she chose to halt the progression, coating each piece in polyurethane. Stacked together on the shelf, the rotting fruits are no longer repelled but seen as important objects.

While in visual contrast to Bryson’s delicate pieces, Karl Schwiesow’s “Bells” convey the same interest in decay and transformation. This interest manifests itself both in the process and the completed works. In creating his ceramic pieces, Schwiesow builds them to be distressed and worn down. He mimics what abuse and weather do to man-made objects– the act itself serving as a response to the impact society has on the environment. Mark del Vecchio, ceramic expert and author of Postmodern Ceramics alludes to this tension between the organic medium of clay and the human act of forming it: “Everything we do to clay thereafter [removing it from the ground] is unnatural and a process of deliberate manufacture …”

Schwiesow’s Richard, Dianne, and Francis reinterpret the give and take between man and the environment. Sitting on top of shipping pallets, each piece makes a stated contrast between the “pristine newness of the man-made and the degradation of nature”. The pallet, although an object that receives steady abuse through the process of shipping, remains unsoiled in this setting. Placed on the pallets the weathered and rough “Bell” looks like oxidized metal in a junkyard. The pallet labors to support the “Bell” while the “Bell” has been labored over.

Rituals and the recognition of mourning propel Kath McGaughey’s pieces, Wire Crows and Contemplation Benches into the weightiness of how time affects our own lifelines. She describes her work as an “ongoing narrative about the things we overlook within the familiar”.

Building from culturally relevant symbols, Wire Crows represents part of McGaughey’s series of repeated crow forms. This repetition provides a visual meditation, the act of considering each one like running prayer beads through your fingers. In Native American culture, the crow represents the messenger between life and the hereafter. Her choice of this particular bird fits into that symbolism as well as the transitions the birds have marked in her own life: harkening in the news of her father’s terminal illness and ultimately his death.

Facing Wire Crows, the blue surfaces of McGaughey’s Contemplation Benches make a hollowed space, inviting viewers to reflect on the inevitability of loss. Created in the style of ferry seats, the benches mark the transition from one space to the next, whether mentally or physically. The transitory symbol of the ferry alludes to Greek mythology, where the ferryman Charon would transport souls across the river Styx, taking them from the realm of the living to the Underworld.

This passage from life to death carries universal significance. People continually see and feel the passage of time, to the point that it becomes the underlying factor in most of our actions. Moving through the pieces in New Crop, this mindfulness of time reveals itself but in hints and allusions. Overall the pieces speak most loudly of their individual messages, whether personal or environmental, pulling the viewer into a new awareness and mindset.

Sarah Lillegard
Reno, Nevada
June 2012

Writer and artist Sarah Lillegard manages the visual art programs for The Holland Project in Reno and earned her BA degree in Art at Walla Walla University in 2007.  She has been involved in independent publishing since 2000 and co-founded the ‘zine collective Go For Broke Collective in 2009.

CCAI selected artists from Sierra Nevada College [SNC] and the University of Nevada Reno [UNR] to participate in New Crop. Lape and McGaughey graduated in 2011 with BFA degrees from SNC. Schwiesow will graduate from SNC with his BFA degree in December 2012. Aramanda and Bryson graduated in 2012 from UNR with BFA degrees. Rogers is a graduate student in the Art Department at the University.