LISE SILVA GOMES: LOVE MAPS

FEBRUARY 2 - MARCH 29

“Love is the bridge between you and everything.” - Rumi

Love Maps delves into the theory that childhood experiences cast a map within the mind to finding love. As we come of age and discover our sense of belonging and purpose, we navigate our adult lives led by those signposts. Although traditionally this theory focused on romantic love, Silva Gomes explores an expansive concept of love that includes close friendships, communal belonging, objects and ambiances that bring intrinsic joy, as well as the roles, vocations and rituals that give deep personal fulfillment. Our markers of love, woven in an ecstatic quilt, offer a reflection of who we are.

Drawing upon the nostalgic and incorporating techniques honed during her residency at Local Language, Love Maps utilizes dimension and texture to a surreal effect. Artworks include dream-like visions printed both on and beneath the surface of acrylic, treated as oracle cards offering mysterious guidance, a large chessboard symbolizing the negotiations made within relationships, and several surreal sculptural pieces. Love Maps inspires an intentional and playful envisioning of love; an introspective check-in that unlocks childhood memories; an invitation to love that whispers, “What you seek is seeking you.”

An artist and author based in Oakland, Gomes Silva honors dreaming as the language of intuition through fiber art, painting, writing and visualization. As a self taught artist with a background in sociology, she considers visual archetypes in our culture to be a compelling study of the collective consciousness and societal messaging. 

TABITHA SOREN: STRUCTURING ABSENCE

OCTOBER 4 - DECEMBER 22

As a visual artist Tabitha Soren has long explored the intersection of psychology, culture, politics, and the body. Her work explores the expansive power of photography by pushing its material limits and embracing its unreliable nature. Her approach underscores not only the bounds of the viewer’s perception but also makes visible the psychological states of the subject matter, creating a tension between what is seen and what lies underneath.

At Local Language Soren explored the material opportunities and challenges of printing on unique surfaces, from metal mesh to bedsheets. Interfering with the way viewers absorb her work via layered mesh and visible stretcher bars, Structuring Absence requires a viewer to slow down and contemplate a quiet, intimate moment. Motherload intentionally mars the visual field with an accumulated experience (layered images captured over time), which questions what in our lives impairs our ability to really see.

Soren was born in San Antonio, Texas and received degrees from NYU and Stanford University. Her work is collected by numerous museums, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, The High Museum, Oakland Museum of California, Harvard Art Museums, and The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. She currently lives and works in Berkeley, California.

Lena wolff: forms of forms of forms

August 4 - september 30

Longstanding correlations between quilts, democracy, craft, and civic engagement permeate Lena Wolff’s practice. On site at Local Language, Wolff experimented with carved plaster and layered low-relief wood sculptures based on the geometries of lyric quilt patterns. The patterns represent a visual language often shared between women, passed down for centuries and across communities in our nation’s fraught history.  Wolff’s work gives rise to an interplay of poetically related images – a call and response – emblematic of the interconnectedness of patterns in the universe, the natural world, and the ongoing pursuit of equality.  

Lena Wolff is a visual artist, craftswoman, and activist for democracy. She lives with her wife, artist, teacher, and illustrator, Miriam Klein Stahl and their daughter in the East Bay. On November 12, 2018, Mayor Jesse Arreguin named "Lena Wolff and Miriam Klein Stahl Day" in the city of Berkeley for their work that merges art and civic engagement.

Leah Rosenberg: make me a match

April 7 - june 30

"The matching game, or concentration, as it is sometimes called, is a popular card game played by children and adults around the world. Good memory is one of the qualities required in order to succeed in it. [Memory], however, is not enough.” Michael S . Paterson, 1992 

Make Me A Match grew out of a combination of several long-standing desires: to create a memory game, to cut perfect shapes out of poured paint sheets, and to explore methods of precisely printing stripes that have only ever been hand-painted. We are doing it all. The concept and creation of these pieces is a puzzle in itself. Make Me a Match consists of pairings and participation, contrasting colors and sentimental shapes. It involves wood and paint, printing and cutting, concentration and imagination, memory and mood, youthfulness and age. There are stools to sit on,  a tabletop to gather around. There are pieces to play with that can be held and moved around.  Others hang on the wall and–because of their contrasting colors and patterns– might appear to move. Together, these colorfully striped and marbled shapes and surfaces, make up an artwork that hopefully provokes a here and now kind of joy in us that has been there all along.

rachelle reichert: silver peak

november 5 - December 18

Over the course of her residency at Local Language, Rachelle Reichert created artworks using satellite images of the Clayton Valley, Nevada, the site of the only active lithium salt ponds in the United States. 

Over 150 years ago, the Clayton Valley, sacred to the Shoshone tribe, was colonized by white settlers seeking silver, salt, and gold. When lithium was found near the town of Silver Peak, private companies began extracting the element. Lithium is used to treat mental illness by calming the brain. It is also used in batteries for smart technologies such as smartphones, electric cars, and computers. A renewed rush for resources has begun. 

In Silver Peak, Reichert challenges the notion of objectivity that is assumed when an algorithmic data visualizer composites satellite imagery into a visual description of a place. She manipulates the images of the lithium ponds and surrounding environment, then prints the images onto shaped aluminum panels. Her arrangements play with form and color, highlighting her subjective understanding of the land.

kieu tran: bloom

September 11 - October 30

BLOOM is an exploration of human transformation and growth; a reminder of how we are all continually growing even when we don’t feel like we are blooming. The concept for this show grew out of Kieu’s recent decision to quit her financially secure tech job in January 2021 to become a full-time artist. It’s the second time that she has drastically changed her career to break into male dominated fields that lack BIPOC representation. She believes this will be a very relatable theme for many people who may be grappling with the same desire and fear of changing their lives. While the body of work in this show is extremely personal, they convey universal struggles and emotions. Given her experience as an immigrant and woman of color, there is also an inescapable undercurrent of emotion about the cultural and societal expectations she has had to overcome to finally pursue her true passion. 

geoff kim: stereo hangul

July 10 – August 25

“Stereo Hangul” represents a moment to reflect on the current state of Korean identity in the United States. A layered media landscape, contrasted narratives on race, shifting economics and a multi-year pandemic are all colliding into a new era, a new time. In contemplating what it means to be of Korean descent in this country, these works reflect a multitude of personal and familial histories. They aim to represent a feeling of being between two sonic and visual worlds: 한글 (Hangul) and English, Korean and American.

These pieces reflect strength in language, culture and identity made stronger by circumstances of racial prejudice and strife felt by the Korean American as well as the Asian American community at large. In these sculptural collages, the hope is to celebrate the beauty in intersectional identities and embrace the difference found within each unique story and individual. An inherent aspect of collage is that it builds bridges between worlds from the past and new. By building these physical emblems, made from collage and UV paint, the artist celebrates the vibrant colors and symbols of Korean culture. The ultimate aim is to enhance words and ideals that reflect principles of solidarity, togetherness, and hope.

MINOOSH ZOMORODINIA: MADE LANDS

MAy 1 — june 26, 2021

While walking in different environments, Minoosh Zomorodinia documents her explorations and records the routes of her walks on land that does not belong to her. She began this walking project in 2016 when the immigration policy was on the precipice of change and she was in the process of changing her visa status. The work playfully and humorously referenced the colonization and origin of the United States. Zomorodinia turned the paths into 3D objects as if they are imaginary living spaces and subsequently owns the “land,” both virtually using a GPS app on her phone, and through the object she produced. 

In this new series, My Ziggurat, Zomorodinia re-forms and reshapes the borders, while referencing historical monuments and the memory from the spaces and land in the digital age. She turns these routes into monumental forms based on the outline of her paths to represent topography in the digital age. The abstracted natural imagery is printed on leftover layers with the texture from the actual location. The printed images transform perceptions of the natural environment in the new media age. She is interested in how technology forms memory through digital archiving, transforming invisible routes that exist as a memory into actual objects in abstract form, is there any limitation? How will the history of a place exist in the future? 

ruth le roux: a mountain of hills

MARCH 6 — APRIL 24, 2021

A mountain (a collective noun for hills) is a place to escape for adventure, but also a place where one can find solace. Similarly, Le Roux views her artistic journey as beginning with expressive, bold painting and ending with meditative mark-making. The second aspect of her process could not take place without the first, and that tension transforms the first painting into something layered and altogether new. The white hash marks of the printed acrylic overlays produced during her Local Language residency are a callback to the start of her artistic path, when she studied woodcuts and linocut printmaking. “I don’t have the patience now to dive into that process of drawing, cutting, printing, then cutting again, so I was really excited when I discovered that drawing white lines and marks over an otherwise chaotic painting was the best of both worlds.” The resulting artworks are colorful and layered, physical in their dimensionality and graphic in their window-like viewpoints, harkening to worlds both real and mythical.

aMY NATHAN: OBJECTS AS HANDWRITING

sEPTEMBER 1—november 30, 2020

Amy Nathan explores the relationship between representation and reality in her multifaceted drawing, sculpture, and installation-based practice. She asks questions about how meaning can be expressed through visual languages, guided by ideas such as the gendered nature of politics and power, classical mythology and contemporary literature, and the body’s visceral reaction to its environment.

Objects as Handwriting references small mechanisms that are everyday connectors and disrupters. Paper clips, noisemakers, sawblades, fishing weights, heating coils, locks, straps, and ropes operate like letterforms to write an idea into the space. These are objects that bend towards bodies and language, as a word leans towards the thing itself, without inhabiting its exact likeness.

kim kei: the sac, the sieve, and the mirror

march 6 - april 25, 2020

While the figure as a form is absent, implications of the body are present throughout Kim Kei’s multidisciplinary work. Kei uses a variety of experimental processes involving sculpting, photography and painting that allow unnameable forms to begin to contort and unfurl. The forms reference anatomy, flesh, and skin—the “sac”—and mimic the body's acquired marks through time, injury, repair, and illness. Simulated skins reveal what we attempt to keep hidden, bringing these unruly parts of ourselves fully to the surface and communicating a body in motion—the “sieve.” Viewed closely, there is opportunity for empathy and intimacy, and the work is open to a reflection back into oneself—the “mirror.”

These works are reflections on moments that caused Kei to ache: a band aid peeling off the face of a passerby, chewed nails, swollen ankles, blisters and cuts…instances that encompass both the fragility and resilience of the body.

Kei’s process consists of sculptures, photographs and paintings created from an assortment of fragile distressed everyday objects. Kei warps dried paint of skin-like texture that was previously formed on misshapen sculptures. Photographs are taken in varying compositions, becoming the foundation for her paintings. The work is representational and abstract, capturing true movement and visceral form.

keith secola: the uncompahgre

january 3 - february 29, 2020

The Uncompahgre people are a tribal band/community from the Ute Indian Tribe that reside on the Uintah & Ouray Indian Reservation in Northeastern Utah. Before the tribe was created, Ute people were eleven communal bands stretched across the Western Slope of the Colorado Rockies. Utes lived a life of movement and oneness with nature, summering in the high mountains and spending winters in the low valleys. Due to ongoing wars and westward expansion, the Uncompahgre were relocated by military force to the Utah Indian Reservation hundreds of miles from their original homeland, in the hopes that the Uncompahgre would assimilate to farming and give up their hunter-gatherer lifestyle. During these times the people did what they could to survive and hold on to their cultural and spiritual practices.

The photographic archives in this exhibition are of the Uncompahgre people after their forced removal to the Utah Indian Reservation. They were collected by the artist from archival albums from his grandparents and represent his Ute Indian and Uncompahgre heritage. 

Keith Secola’s recent body of work involves the reinsertion of the American Indian image onto collaged and deconstructed book covers of American colonial history, creating a new surface for printing and painting. The use of archival photography on the textbooks allows Secola to create a layer between the past and present and to form new narratives that question Native identity through the fusion of image, text, and memory.

ROB MINERVINI: CRYSTAL PALACE

November 1 - december 28, 2019

Crystal Palace is an investigation into our relationship to objects, landscape, and the act of looking. The viewer is presented with window-like displays of silhouetted still-life objects camouflaged into an idyllic landscape. The relationship between foreground and background is obscured in the imagery: flatness and illusionistic space slip in and out of focus as one grapples with the distinction between inside and outside, and as distance and proximity vie for position and prominence. 

Rob Minervini’s work examines spatial environments and notions of utopia in large-scale cityscapes, landscapes, and still-life arrangements. In this body of work, Minervini conjurs themes of displacement and reflection on nature while simultaneously exploring the tension between digital and analogue. 

LISA OSTAPINSKI: FOREVER

SEPTEMBER 6 — oCTOBER 26, 2019

Forever is an expression of the beauty of the natural world through photography, encaustic painting and mixed media artwork depicting bodies of water. It is a meditation on impermanence, the human relationship to nature, the passing of time, and the fragility of water systems. 

Lisa Ostapinski’s worked with lustrous, visually rich materials such as gold leaf and beeswax and traditional processes such as encaustic painting, sgraffito, and oil paint marbling. And Local Language’s technology allowed Ostapinski to introduce a previously unexplored visual medium to her work: photography. Incorporating digital prints of her nature photography with varying layers of handwork—including encaustic, gold leaf, gesso, and etching—allowed her to explore new visual ideas and pushed her to deepen her practice.       

anastasia tumanova: sunflower

july 12 — august 31, 2019

For this new body of work, Anastasia Tumanova explores the symbolic reunion of the feminine and the sun. Tumanova is inspired by the current art and craft scene and the astrological community, where the feminine is symbolically linked to the moon. This connection led her to study the divine feminine and ancient goddess mythology and to discover evidence that the feminine is symbolically associated with the sun as far back as 7000 B.C. Tumanova rekindles this association, as more women assume the symbolic role of sun in our modern society: as visionaries, inventors, thought leaders, company founders, and heroines.

“When presented with the unique opportunity to work with Local Language, I was thrilled to create this large-scale series with their CNC (computer numerically controlled) router. Being an image maker at heart, wood was the perfect material to use as a setting for my ceramic paintings. The organic texture of the wood pairs well with the ceramic, as well as the theme of land and nature in this collection.”

– Anastasia Tumanova       

hughen/starkweather: climate empathy project - miami

may 3 — june 27, 2019

Climate Empathy Project, site-specific abstract artworks about locations impacted by climate change and human intervention, is the focus of the artist collaboration Hughen/Starkweather. Incorporating extensive research including source maps, photographs, data, and oral histories, the resulting artworks reinterpret complex narratives of the past, present, and future. 

During their residency at Local Language Hughen/Starkweather focused on the experience of a Miami resident who fled Hurricane Irma and its aftermath in 2017. Text excerpts of the interview along with maps of evacuation routes and Irma’s path were carved and printed on fabrics and wood via Local Language’s digital technology. Hughen/Starkweather then added handwork including fabric staining, drawing and painting to push the artwork beyond the scientific research and convey the complex challenges of areas and individuals directly impacted by climate events.       

carrie ann plank: interference | confluence

march 1 — April 27, 2019

In Interference/Confluence, Carrie Ann Plank employs new technology to create large-scale printing matrices while revisiting anachronistic classical printing techniques. Plank's work explores the reinterpretation and reorganization of visual information systems, how context shifts meaning, and how information is translated through the mash-up of old and new technologies. Plank is interested in the confluence of the hand and digital mark and includes abstracted halftone variations (unique to the world of printmaking) in much of the pieces as a nod to the unique process of the residency.

I’m a classically trained printmaker and very focused on the hand-made mark and the quality of ink on paper, so working at Local language and employing digital fabrication in a way that honors and accentuates the hand has been so exciting. I really concentrated on traveling between the hand and digital realm and how to combine the best of both tools. –Carrie Anne Plank @ Local Language 2019.

KELLY ORDING: SHADOWS & LIGHT

DECEMBER 7 - JANUARy 26, 2019

Kelly Ording’s work employs intuition and intention that questions the limits of minimalism and representation. She compiles simple repetition, geometric patterns, and mathematical markings that contain an inherent capacity to evoke representation.

During her residency at Local Language, Ording sought to push beyond her historically two-dimensional framework by exploring sculptural concepts. This expansion birthed a new medium and series: Shadows and Light. Ording expanded her ideas on color, shape and line-work through layers of acrylic. Each layer is movable, further unlocking the possibilities of color and subtle pattern already inherent in each slice. Additionally, Ording experimented with depth and texture in her two-dimensional works by translating hand-painted lines into engraved patterns on wood. These CNC-routed planes mimic Ording’s more traditional works on paper and canvas, yet their precision and depth explore new dimensions through light and shadow.

windy chien: mutations

October 5 - december 1, 2018

Windy Chien makes art that activates space and crafts objects that elevate the daily rituals of life. She is best known for her 2016 work, The Year of Knots, in which she learned a new knot every day for a year. Her work ranges in size from a knot that can fit in the palm of a child's hand to majestic, room-sized installations. Following long careers at Apple and in the music industry, she launched her studio in 2015. Chien’s book about her creative pursuits and the Year of Knots will be published by Abrams in 2019.

In Mutations, Chien explores the potential of splices, among the most animal, fertile knots. To the artist, they are palpably alive, as if the ropes are biomorphic organisms dividing and growing, consuming themselves and others. Exploring the capabilities of the CNC router at Local Language, the exhibition also features a series of “spinal column” mobiles, themselves corporeal creatures given life via a single knot and an unbroken 200-foot line. Accompanying the exhibition is the debut of the Year of Knots fine art print, showcasing Chien’s breakthrough work of 2016, where she learned and made one new knot each day of the year.

I’m a Chinese-American woman who grew up a US Army “brat” and lived all over the country, including a decade in Hawaii. Due to my ethnicity, love of fringe culture such as punk rock, and uncommonly audacious attitude towards life, I’ve always felt like an outsider. Indeed, I’ve embraced outsider status as a means to self-define, rather than let the world tell me who to be.

yulia pinkusevich: isorithmic

August 3 - september 30, 2018

Yulia Pinkusevich is an interdisciplinary visual artist born in Kharkov, Ukraine. Relocating to the US from the USSR at the age of nine, her world view has been rooted in change. She creates large-scale environments that deal with urban and social systems, addressing the psychology of space and perceptions of our fragmented environment. Formally, the work is engaged with the direct experience of the viewer through perspectival illusion that plays with the subconscious and cognitive understanding of space.

At times Pinkusevich creates spontaneously allowing the process to inform her,  while at other times she embarks on deep research and iterative design prior to creating the work. While an Artist in Residence at Local Language she explored ways of working with aluminum; printing, etching, cutting, and folding.

The exhibition features a new series of drawings and prints based on Cold War military maps that study the impact of nuclear bomb airbursts and display fatal and non-fatal casualty isorithms* over particular types of cities. Pinkusevich was struck by the immense tension between the elegant geometries of the maps and the chaos and mass destruction they represent. The works attempt to reconcile the rationalization of nuclear war in a formula by adding an empathetic variable.

*Isorithm: line connecting points of equal population density

LAUREN NAPOLITANO: +BENT TEMPLE+

jULY 6, 2018 - JULY 28, 2018

Lauren Napolitano is a traveling mixed-media artist who creates anything out of everything. Her work celebrates the handmade and the imperfections that come along with it. She is influenced by her mother’s Mexican heritage and leans heavily on her ancestors as she creates and gathers inspiration. Napolitano uses symmetry as a starting point. Any flaw is a celebration of the human hand.

“My process is incredibly analog, which has made my residency a unique learning experience. I adapted both my mental and physical process from the very moment pen hit paper...drawing in layers, with as much precision as my body allowed. I wanted to create pieces that were strong yet subtle and still feminine at their core, slowly drawing you towards them to take a deeper look at the details.”

rECHENG TSANG: LINES & CONVERSATIONS

jUNE 1, 2018 - JUNE 30, 2018

For Lines & Conversations, ReCheng draws inspiration from textile design and from the work of Richard Tuttle, Leonor Antunes, and Louise Bourgeois. During the one-month residency at Local Language, ReCheng explored the dynamic relationship of lines. She is interested in the visual relationship and aesthetic qualities of these lines that also speak to a state of being that’s in flux, untethered, and in conflict. 

The exhibition is divided into two parts. The first part, titled Weightless, is a series of four prints on linen. The lines overlap, squeeze together, and float in mid-air. The second part, titled Vestige, features a series of printed images on porcelain panels and linen scrolls. 

In Lines & Conversations, ReCheng is presenting her two-dimensional work publicly for the first time. Drawing has always been an essential part of her studio practice and is in direct conversation with her wall installations and sculptural work in porcelain in this exhibition.

JEFF HANTmAn: Informal structures

may 4, 2018 - may 30, 2018

Jeff Hantman is intrigued by the challenge of working with wood in an unconventional way by creating curved structures and assemblages with this rigid material. An alumni of the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in printmaking, Hantman is an avid scavenger and recycler; he is drawn to discarded items, from plywood with oil stains to metals covered in old paint. His studio is packed with weathered objects, plywood scraps, 2x4s, broken furniture and a variety of other found / used materials. Hantman combines woodworking, painting, drawing, printmaking, laser cutting, and CAD to create curved wall hangings and freestanding sculptures.

Hantman worked on a combination of digital tools during his residency at Local Language: the CNC to cut armatures and the UV flatbed to print imagery on found wood. Back in his studio Hantman reassembled the artworks, modifying and adjusting imagery to create new narratives and compositions.

VICTORIA WAGNER: OUR VISION WILL BE BETTER ON THE MOON

MARCH 2, 2018–APRIL 1, 2018

In this series of dimensional paintings made during her residency at Local Language, Wagner ponders questions of human cognitive and physical flexibility in regards to atmospheric, industrial, political, and emotional change. She remains darkly optimistic, continuing to scale her color scheme, materiality, and mark-making to meet the 1970 voyage of the Apollo 14 and the epic experiences and ethereal, transcendent conclusions of astronaut and noetic scientist, Edgar Mitchell. 

HOWARD HERSH: WITHIN / WITHOUT

DECEMBER 1, 2017–JANUARY 3, 2018

For this body of work created in Local Language's Artist in Residency program, the artist experimented with two new media: printed wall drawings and constructed wood pantings. These pieces create a deeper and wider field of vision, inviting the viewer to expand their understanding of context and their place within/without structure.

sean hibmacronan: beautiful bones

November 3–november 30, 2017

At Local Language, HibmaCronan has continued his practice by creating a series of sculptures with intricate bone structures to honor the character and texture found from the metamorphosis of his "street legal sculpture," created from a 1963 Ford Falcon Deluxe Clubwagon.

MICHAEL KOEHLE: WATER WATER

OCTOBER 6–november 1, 2017

Koehle investigates properties of water, using paper, resin, 3D printing, CNC machining, and laser cutting. At Local Language, he is experimenting with imaging the simulated motion of water. By tracing the paths of individual water particles, he reveals the invisible patterns moving below the water's surface.

CHRIS TRUEMAN: PARALLEL

SEPTEMBER 2017

Trueman’s work made in the Local Language residency is a combination of painting and pigment print on anodized aluminum. This unique interaction of print and paint on the reflective surface allows for a back-and-forth relationship of positive and negative, reversing the norm of gestural painting by presenting the gestural mark and its inversion within the same space.

TREASURE FREY: TEMPORARY BOUNDARIES

AUGUST 2017

In her recent work, Frey has been exploring a juxtaposition of simplicity and complexity, inspired by the contrasts found in her environment. While her work is not representational, the process of creating a piece - and a series - could be a way of relating to a complex and chaotic world. Revising and perfecting lines brings an amount of order; their starkness on a textured canvas, a bit of clarity. Amorphous shapes emerge, resisting that order. Patterns appear, then disintegrate. Just as weeds grow in sidewalk cracks, the lines of a maze are only temporary boundaries.

JEN GARRIDO: RHYTHM

MAY 2017

Garrido constructs her paintings and drawings by using a delicate balance of choice and process. In response to personal narrative and internal dialogue, to the push and pull of the compositions' internal gravity, and to the medium of the paint or drawing materials, she projects images and forms onto the surface. As the artist composes, shapes weave through the picture plane and the gestures she records can read alternatively as flat or as dimensional and sculptural. Garrido favors nature-based forms and rhythms and is drawn to shapes that tangle, overlap, sit, lean and lay. By weighing ambiguity with representation, Garrido works through the many stages of each piece, gradually arriving at a final composition. 

VICTORIA JANG: SERVICE/REPAIR

APRIL 2017

In Victoria Jang’s recent work produced at Local Language, she explores the ubiquitous family operated beauty supply stores, the proliferation of which became synonymous with Korean American businesses in Black communities. Merging traditional Korean ceramic techniques, Jang morphs abstract sculptural forms into complex tangles of nails. Along with the sculptural winding forms, Jang's humanized landforms tied conceptually to geography explore the interwoven and complex relationship of these two minority communities and businesses that dominated the phenomenon of the beauty supply industry. Jang’s work is a complex weave of expectations, and misconceptions of transitioning communities.

MICHAEL CUTLIP: DEPARTURES

MARCH 2017

Throughout his residency at Local Language, Cutlip expanded upon his signature abstract style by experimented with paper and printed collage making, using hang work along with print technology to create unique new layered artworks. 

meghan bogden shimek: transformation

FEBRUARY 2017

Shimek and Local Language collaborated on this exhibition to transform woven works into printed art objects. By experimenting with color blocking and text, the woven pieces have experienced a metamorphosis from decor to artwork exploring social movement, vulnerability, and dissent. 

tobias tovera: uncharted terrain

december 2016

During the one-month residency, Tovera created a new series of work through experimentation and map imaging, incorporating printing and mark-making using minerals, water, solvent, and fire. The images and objects result from processes of accumulation evolving out of research using Google Earth satellite mapping and explorations inspired by geological formation and topography. The paintings and sculpture in this exhibition reflect the synthesis between natural and artificial processes, the relationship between the two, and how both forms, though dissimilar, may propel each other. 

jacqueline sherlock norheim: PARALLEL

SEPTEMBER 2017

Surface tension is the barrier-like force that exists on the surface of a substance, caused by asymmetries in the attraction between surface molecules. Offset molecules create a new tension and attraction at the edge of the material, activating its edge, and developing different properties.