On View: July 15 - August 6, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, July 15, 7-9pm

Ken D. Ashton resides in Washington, DC, and has spent the past decade photographing neighborhoods throughout the world, with DC as a starting center point. He has undertaken an encyclopedic project of photographing communities in the Northeastern corridor of the US, from DC to Boston, entitled Megalopolis. Ashton's work has been featured in exhibitions in many venues including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington Center for Photography, Museum of Contemporary Art (DC), Anacostia Museum, Arlington Arts Center, Charlottesville's Second Street Gallery and Longwood Center for the Arts in Farmville, VA. Ashton received his BFA from James Madison University.

Robin Bell is a multi-media artist based in Washington DC. His primary mediums are video documentation and projections. He also works on news stories and fiction pieces. Building upon his formal training as a classical printmaker, Robin is also known for his unique style of live video collage, which he has performed at well-known venues. including the The Kennedy Center, 930 club, and the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Central Park Center Stage in NYC, and The Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles California.

Jeremy C. Darby, also known online as “ArtifexJay”, is a Southerner heart, an illustrator, a graphic designer and an artist of many mediums. He is originally from South Carolina and has been living in the Washington, DC Metro Area for the past year. His art is influenced by comic books, music, pop culture, history (Black & Southern), and nerdy sci-fi entertainment. He has never had a solo exhibition but has been apart of group and juried art exhibitions in SC and DC such as Tapps Gallery, University of South Carolina, Trident Technical College, MOJA Arts Festival, Spoleto Festival, Black Like Me, City Gallery at Waterfront, and Holes in the Sky to name a few.

His medium of choice is watercolor, which he often intermixes with black ink strokes, alcohol based markers, color pencils, acrylics or gouache. In each piece he makes use of some form of shadowing or hatching.

His work can be found here:
www.artifexjay.com
IG: artifexjay
tumblr: artifexjay

John David Deardourff is an artist and freelance designer born in Virginia and currently residing in DC. In 2012 he received a BFA with an emphasis in printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied under Karl Wirsum and Albert Oehlen. JD has exhibited his screen prints, collages, and paintings widely, both internationally and domestically, including shows in Paris, Sydney, Toronto, Chicago, San Francisco, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and DC. In 2015 he was a Yaddo Fellow and a Fine Artist in Residence at the Strathmore Mansion. He is currently the Artist in Residence at Open Studio DC. In addition to his personal artwork, JD often works with commercial clients including Burton Snowboards, Misfit Juicery, RAMP Records, Palette22, Sweetgreen, Cava Grill, and the DC Department of Public Works. You can find out more about his work at www.deardourff.com and follow him on instagram @jddeardourff.

Kate DeCiccio is a DC artist & educator. Kate holds a BFA from University of Colorado, Boulder & MA in Interdisciplinary Studies from the Union Institute of Vermont College. Kate's dedication to local story telling as a tool for counter narrative is a result of her experiences teaching in institutional psychiatric & prison settings including Worcester State Hospital, John Howard Forensics at St Elizabeths & San Quentin Prison. Currently Kate is working in a long-term portrait series of parents who have lost their children to police brutality. She teaches at several local after school programs & will spend 2 weeks this summer working with Performing Statistics, a program in Richmond VA that brings incarcerated youth into a studio setting to collaborate with Teaching Artists.

Artist Statement: For me, teaching & making art is an integrated creative practice. As an educator & artist, I work to use story telling & portraiture as a tool for historical critique & counter narrative. The majority of my work is a process of partnering with different communities to think together about their collective identity, values & goals. We work together to consider how I can paint portraits that reflect how people see themselves & want to be represented in contrast to negative stereotypes that serve to promote monolithic understandings about disenfranchised groups. This print is very unique because I rarely paint pop culture figures. It took me a long time combing through online images because usually I meet with my subjects, photograph them and decide together which picture best captures their spirit. When I painted the backgrounds, I tried to channel the aesthetic of his many brilliant costume & set concepts.

Kyle Goen’s work is exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries and on street corners. His first major project “Elect a Madman You Get Madness” was mass distributed as a sticker to over ten thousand people. The themes of this street project were reinterpreted as two installations exhibited at White Box in New York, and Gallery Klinkogbang in Reykjavik. 2010 saw a solo show at Dash Gallery and an installation commissioned by Performa. In 2012 he performed “United We Stand Stand” with Dread Scott, his installation “Who’s Chelsea Manning” won “Best Project” in the 2013 Dumbo Arts Festival, and in 2016 exhibited two works at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building in D.C., as part of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center’s CROSSLINES exhibition.

Born in London, England, Sarah C. B. Guthrie and her parents emigrated to the States when she was a toddler. She grew up a cultural stranger speaking fluent British, growing up as a first-generation immigrant in America. That sense of outsider observation and fascination with language and expression drives her work today. She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, an MA from The George Washington University, and a BA from Davidson College. She lived for 20 years in the DC area and then picked up stakes for a new adventure in Seattle in 2012. Her paintings and collages have been exhibited in group and solo shows in Seattle, Washington DC, Virginia, and Maryland. Her works are held in private collections in New York, London, Toronto, Seattle, Washington D.C., Virginia, and Vermont. Her online presence includes: sarahguthrie.com, Facebook, and @ArtistGu3 on Twitter and Instagram.

Ada Hao is a multidisciplinary artist who has worked in photography, performance, text and sculpture. With extensive practice of photography at Camberwell College of Art, University of Arts, London and a background in performance art, art criticism and economics at College of William and Mary, VA, Ada Hao’s work always involves extensive research and projects on various contexts. Move and occupy, bear the witness, improvise the limit, humor is always key to her work. She is going to Royal College of Art, London Sept. 2016 for MA in Contemporary Fine Art Practice (Performance Pathway).

Ryan Hill is a Los Angeles born, Washington DC-based artist who creates drawing series and installations. His work has been shown in Los Angeles, CA, New York City, NY, Washington, DC, and in traveling exhibitions. He has also performed in both academic and art settings including the L.A. County Museum of Art and LAX.

Rose Jaffe is artist, activist and educator born and raised in Washington, D.C. She earned her BFA at the School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan. She has taught middle and high school art at Parkmont School and Words, Beats and Life Academy in Washington D.C. The content of her work is most often based upon the human form, with themes of social justice and female empowerment. She is constantly seeking ways to use art as the powerful tool it is to spark narrative and create change.

Jobi Jovanka is a Washington D.C. native based artist and earned her BFA degree at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in 2007. She attended Montgomery College of Art and Design in 2003-2005 with honors and honorable mention in painting. Classical portraiture and figurative drawing is her inspiration and has taken classes at the Alexandria Art league with Professors like Rob Liberace, master figure artist. Jovanka has been a self taught artist prior to holding her degree and studied the figure by holding several life drawing classes for herself and community artists for several years. Her activism enabled her to organize the first D.C., Adams Morgan Juried Art Fairs from 1999-2002. Website: www.jobijovanka.com

Artist Statement: My aspiration to become an artist started during the David Bowie era and prolonged into Prince's catapult to fame. Not only did I want to paint but I wanted to become a dancer, singer and musician. Fashion and Glamour magazines is where I learned to draw and paint as a kid. The opportunity to paint Bowie and Prince brought those memories back since they embrace all these things. They both are art. Painting these portraits from pictures from different magazines while listening to their music brought their influence in my dreams as though they never died. To the point that I even dreamed with Bowie himself. Painting their images over and over again in different mixed mediums and watercolors have enabled me to translate the joy and sadness in my use of color, composition and texture. For me, my ultimate goal as an artist is for the viewer to be able to hear that song or memory of these two iconic artists again and again.

Nilay Lawson is an artist, curator, teacher, and graphic designer rooted in painting the day to day. Nilay's art practice is multidisciplinary, broken up into distinct parts that are interdependently bound together via ethos and lifestyle. Nilay has exhibited nationally and internationally with Transformer Gallery in Washington DC, USA and Garash Galeria in DF, Mexico. Currently living and working in Los Angeles she ties together her curatorial studies and art practice with her studio SSSLA.com.

Christopher Lee, born 1962 in New York City, has exhibited in the New York and DC artworlds for 20+ years. His drawings and paintings combine facile line work and bold color sense to access topical issues of contemporary art and politics. An alum of Rhode Island School of Design, he likes to explore the hybrid nexus of the classical cannon with the urgency of urban zeitgeist

The Basquiat series is from a project called “Urban Legends”. It was inspired by growing up in NYC and my experience of Downtown culture in the 1980s and 1990s. The Screen print s and drawings are references to the NYC artworld and street art aesthetic. “Urban Legend One” is a screenprint with acrylic and various graffiti elements that come from my memories of visually exciting distressed and “bombed” surfaces in NYC. Made of a found wooden palette it is an artifact of the street life.

Adrian Loving’s academic career spans 8 plus years as an Adjunct Professor of Art and Graphic Design at Marymount University, University of Maryland College Park and Howard University. He currently maintains a full-time faculty position as an Instructor of Visual Art, Film and Video at Georgetown Day School in Washington, DC. Adrian has curated art exhibitions and programming at various museums and cultural institutions in the DC area including The Smithsonian Museum of African Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art and many others. In 2005, Loving and two creative partners were instrumental in founding the highly successful independent gallery and studio called Dissident Display on H Street NE, Washington, DC.

As a DJ, Adrian has created the musical soundtrack for events in Washington, DC, New York, Miami, San Francisco, and abroad which include: The W Hotel, Black Entertainment Television, Downtown DC.org, Art Basel-Miami, Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, Modern Luxury Magazine, Italian Embassy of Washington and many more. He has been able to synthesize his love and passion for music in unique ways to create sonic experiences on the dancefloor and in art spaces. The use of “sound as art” has driven his recent forays into mixed media production and spatial installations.

Adrian's recent work explores the transition between the audio/visual material culture of the 1970s and 1980s and the modern digital world of today. Much of Loving’s work is inspired by classic art and science fiction films that he grew up with as a young person in the '70s and '80s, such as Blade Runner, Logan's Run, Star Trek, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Videodrome and Poltergeist. Loving’s combination of sound, visuals and an academic approach yield amazing and complex multimedia experiences for his audiences. Such an experience will be created at the forthcoming exhibition Fade 2 Grey: Androgyny In Eighties Popular Music

Katie Macyshyn is a creative costumer, avant-garde theater performer, poet, video artist, installation artist, vocalist, burlesque performer, puppeteer and stylist. In her new media/performance pieces, the lens of camp is used to enact the duties of magical female protagonists.The performances consider subtle shifts between exploitation and empowerment and observe how mass media can (techni) color memories. Hailing from the Corcoran College of Art + Design, her work has shown in the Corcoran Gallery along with other art venues and alternative spaces. Katie is from Toms River, N.J.

Joseph Orzal was born and raised in Washington DC. He attended Atlanta College of Art and the Corcoran College of Art. He is the co-founder of NoMüNoMü.

Born to Nigerian immigrant parents, Chinedu Felix Osuchukwu spent his early years between his birthplace DC and Nigeria. He has been greatly influenced by his children and both his Nigerian- American culture. Osuchukwu graduated from Duke Ellington School of the Arts and Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, DC. He uses his gift of to bring awareness to issues of social and political justice. Chinedu has been featured in museums, galleries, esteemed personal collections and periodicals worldwide such as the:, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine, and Peggy Cooper Cafritz Collection just to name a few. In 2016 Osuchukwu’s piece was selected into DC Commission of the Arts and Humanities Washingtoniana Collection, as one of the long standing artists of the DC area. For the past fifteen years he has been teaching visual arts in Washington DC area and he has inspired thousands of students. Chinedu is also the founder and CEO an arts education and portfolio development program. He finds his strength being active in in the community. He is currently working on his MFA degree in Fine Arts and Education at MICA in Baltimore, Maryland.

Sargent-Thamm: The past few years Sargent-Thamm has been printing in collaboration creating this collection of prints called “Witness.” It has always been our goal to create a body of work using our printmaking strengths; Pat Sargent loves carving wood while Erwin Thamm loves color using his skills in screen-printing. The collaboration has allowed us to make a tremendous amount of art and exultation to our techniques.

Pat Sargent: Earned a B.F.A. in printmaking at GMU (2012), and has completed his M.F.A. in 2016. He continues to explore papermaking and printmaking processes, and, by extension, an emphasis on collaboration — between artists, communities, and audiences. Erwin (Elmo) Thamm: Earned his BFA in Printmaking at GMU in 2011 and is currently the Assistant Manager of Digital Arts at George Mason University. He teaches painting at the VA Hospital in Washington D.C and is still filled with love of video and photography which had brought into printmaking.

Dan Tague (b. 1974) is an artist whose work relentlessly addresses power structures in contemporary society. He is one of the most visible artists breaking through to international recognition from a post-Katrina New Orleans. Tague's work points to inadequacies in government policy toward education, environmental health, and financial reform and unapologetically stresses the zero sum nature of greed and neglect.

He incorporates dollar bills, screen prints, sound, video, propaganda poster art, and other media to create works of visual riddles and social commentary. Flipping imagery and transforming rallying cries and religious rhetoric, much of his work comes from his survivalist experience in New Orleans through several disasters. Post-hurricane, his home, like many other Americans, was destroyed; all belongings lost. Since this time, he has witnessed environmental justice and education reform take a back seat to corporate greed, frenzied consumerism, and apathy.

Tague's work is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of Art, the Weisman Foundation, the West Collection, and numerous private collections. His work has been used in conjunction with The Spirit Initiative, The Clinton Bush Fund for Haiti, Help USA, and Teach for America. He has been featured or reviewed in "Raw: A collection of Photographs from Classic to Contemporary Art" (Tectum Publishing), Art in America, Russian Esquire, British Vogue, the New Yorker, Neon Magazine (Munich), Mondo Magazine (Venezuela), Frieze Magazine, Utne Reader, Inside Art, The Times-Picayune, The Washington Post, The Austin Chronicle, UK Daily Mail, The Daily Serving, Art Daily, Art Info, and more. His work is included in the forthcoming book “For Which It Stands: Americana in Contemporary Art,” curated by Carla Sakamoto. Farameh Media.

Antonia Tricarico has been taking photos since 1997. In the past years she has been working as a photo archivist for Lucian Perkins (Pulitzer Prize photographer for the Washington Post) and has collaborated with Tolotta Records, Dischord Records, Kill Rock Stars, and Youth Action Research Group. Her work can be found in the private collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Publications in Photo Review 2006/2013. She lives in Washington, D.C.
www.antoniatricarico.com

Martine Workman is an artist making books, drawings and animation. She has been participating in small press fairs across the country since 2004. She is a graduate of California College of the Arts. In 2013, she was a VCCA fellow and exhibitor at the New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1. In 2014, she was a Sondheim Artscape Prize semi-finalist, placed 3rd for the Trawick Prize and was awarded the DCCAH Artist Fellowship Grant for 2015. She is currently based in Seattle.

 

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