In, On & Of Paper
January 18 – March 9, 2019
In this exhibition, Bentley Gallery features 22 artists who recalibrate the limits of the traditional paper surface, breaking boundaries and challenging preconceived notions of materiality. They explore form, sustainability, language, gender, architecture, spirituality, psychology, fashion, genealogy, and modernity.
Paper, as a viable surface, whether it be for writing, calligraphy or drawing, came into being in China during the Eastern Han Period (25 – 220 CE) with the advent of woven plant fibers, later refined in the 13th Century with paper manufacturing utilizing watermills, only to be fully realized in the 19th Century with the invention of the wood-based papers that we use today.
Paper as a drawing surface was traditionally used as the first step in the preparation of a work of art in another medium. i.e. painting, yet drawing as a singular expressive technique in and of itself gained significance in the early part of the 20th Century. In terms of contemporary art practice, works made on paper have the advantage of immediacy and fluidity of line and form, while also suggesting a more informal gesture and the impulse toward broader improvisation and experimentation.
Paper has contained within it both the advantages and challenges of being a mutable surface, a less rigid and predictable substrate, allowing for greater exploration and variation within the larger work as a whole, thus allowing for a greater sense of whimsy, freedom, and improvisation in the initial creative process.
Participating artists:
Click on images to view full image:
Merryn Omotayo Alaka
Wosliatu,
Merryn Omotayo Alaka is a Phoenix-based multi-media artist. Her work often combines printmaking techniques with collage, photo-transfers, patterns, textiles and hair materials. Alaka is a Nigerian-American artist exploring themes of family history, cultural identity, and contemporary multiculturalism.
Malena Barnhart
Sticky Chain,
Malena Barnhart is a feminist artist who makes work from repurposed cultural materials including YouTube videos, children’s stickers and party decorations. Her art centers around the process of enculturation and its role in perpetuating harmful gender norms. She has shown extensively throughout Arizona at venues including the Tucson Museum of Art and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. She has also exhibited nationally and internationally in locations including Washington DC, Chicago, Portland, Detroit, San Francisco, Finland, Italy, Israel and London.
Kristin Bauer
Colossus,
Kristin Bauer is a multimedia artist that was born in Minneapolis and lives and works in Tempe, Arizona. Bauer works across disciplines creating visual art that explores collective cognitive relationships with word and image, with a combined focus on perception, poetry, and propaganda.
Bauer has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, including New York, Los Angeles, Chile and Melbourne, Australia, as well as the Arizona Biennial at Tucson Museum of Art, Phoenix Art Museum and Mesa Arts Center. Her work was included in the Transborder Biennial of 2015 in Mexico and the USA. Bauer was a recipient of an Artist Grant from Phoenix Art Museum’s Contemporary Forum in 2012.
Cece Cole
In Light,
Cece Cole’s drawings and installations are constructed with a sense of immediacy and reverence for economical materials. Her most recent investigation of pattern and textile-inspired works explore spatial tension and informs her site-specific installations.
Cole contemplates shifting focal points while employing a playful interaction with atmosphere, light, shadow and existing architecture.
In her project space installation for this exhibition, Cole has created a series of paper works that activate wall spaces with subtle, dimensional shifts and low-tech light and shadow effects.
Ashley Czajkowski
Tokology,
Ashley Czajkowski is an image-based artist whose research explores gender, mortality and the psychological manifestation of the human-animal. Though situated in photography, her practice also incorporates video, installation, and alternative print processes, pushing the expected boundaries of the photographic art medium. Czajkowski achieved her Bachelor’s of Fine Art in 2009 from Emporia State University in Kansas and earned her Master’s of Fine Art in photography in 2015 from Arizona State University. She currently resides in Tempe, Arizona where she teaches college photography courses and was the recipient of the inaugural TAFF Award from Phoenix Artlink in 2017.
Kenosha Drucker
Reflection304,
My mom teaches math, my dad teaches physics, my brother is a bartender and can build you a computer. I studied printmaking and drawing at ASU, and now work at Green Restaurant as a server and curator. I live downtown with my cat Lou, who is plump and beloved. I make visual art using a variety of mediums and styles and am motivated by a love of process, exploration, and a desire to build a unique visual language. Through this language, I can express myself, connect with others, explore my reality, and give an outlet to my overactive imagination.
Estrella Payton Esquilín
Blurred Life on Paper, 3,
Estrella Payton Esquilín is an interdisciplinary artist based in Phoenix, Arizona. Formally trained as a printmaker, Esquilín’s artwork also explores the use of building materials, constructed spaces, movement, abstracted and appropriated blueprints, text, collage, and place-centering experiences. Her research interests relate to walking, city planning, and investigating the built environment especially as it relates to social experience.
Sam Fresquez
Nesting,
Sam Fresquez is a multimedia artist based in Phoenix, Arizona. She is currently an Undergraduate at Arizona State University working towards a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Intermedia Art with a minor in Spanish. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and she was included in the 2018 Arizona Biennial. She is also currently the Artist in Residence at Xico Inc. Arte y Cultura.
Dani Godreau
Mea Culpa,
Dani Godreau is a local artist who is best known for her explorations of women’s traditional crafts and domestic duties through paper cutting and paper sculpture. Her work stretches the definition of drawing by creating line and form through incisions and shadow while paying homage to the global tradition of paper cutting as an art form and valorizing devalued women’s labor. She graduated from Florida State University with a BFA in Painting and BA in Art History in 2012 going on to receive her MFA in Drawing/Painting and from Arizona State University in 2016. In 2015 and 2016 Godreau was awarded funding from the Nathan Cumming’s Travel Grant and Shangyuan Artist Residency to facilitate her research in Beijing and Foshan regarding Chinese folk art and traditional paper cutting.
Danielle Hacche
Untitled, Coalescing Form and Focus Series, #60 (a pair),
Danielle was born in Poole, Dorset in the Southwest of the United Kingdom. After moving to the United States with her family in 1993, Danielle attended New School for the Arts where she was able to focus on developing her style and craft in high school. After graduation, she pursued a foundation degree at Falmouth College of Art and Design in England. Danielle went on to get her BFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago on a presidential scholarship. She now resides in Phoenix, AZ.
Heidi Hogden
Up in Smoke,
Heidi Hogden’s drawings and installations look toward the natural world to understand the relationship between place and identity. Hogden received a BFA in painting from Minneapolis College of Art and Design (2008) and a MFA from Tufts University in affiliation with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2012). Hogden received an artist’s grant to attend the Vermont Studio Center Artist Residency in Johnson, VT (2014 and 2018) and a fully funded Artist Residency from the Windgate College of Art and Design in Little Rock, AR (from 2015 to 2017). Her work has been published in the Boston Globe (2012), Manifest’s 10th International Drawing Annual (2016), and Studio Visit Magazine (2018). Hogden has had the opportunity to show and present her work in ten solo exhibitions as well as numerous group exhibitions.
Lena Klett
Just another Rock
(Diagram 1),
Lena Klett is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Phoenix, Arizona. She graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in May, 2014 with a dual BFA in Fiber and Art History. Klett has exhibited both solo and collaborative works at the Kansas City Art Institute and Vulpes Bastille Gallery in Missouri, Art Intersection, Halt Gallery, the ASU galleries in Phoenix and Tempe, Arizona, and internationally at Shiro Oni Studio in Onishi, Japan. While at KCAI, she was awarded the Susan Lordi Marker Award for Excellence in Fiber in both 2013 and 2014. Her work is included in the private collection of Gregory M Glore, and in the KCAI Fiber Department Collection, both located in Kansas City, Missouri. Klett is currently pursuing her MFA at Arizona State University with an emphasis in Fiber.
Annie Lopez
Favorite Things,
An active member of the Phoenix art scene since 1982, Annie Lopez has consistently created new bodies of narrative work exploring race, stereotypes, and family. The images she uses and statements she makes through her art make poignant statements, often with a sense of humor. She is best known for her use of cyanotype, an archival photographic printing process.
Ashley Macias
Anatomical Reflections,
Ashley Macias was born in Laguna Niguel, California in 1989. Raised in Arizona surrounded by the human condition and desert landscapes she found a peculiar taste for the unknown. She is best known for her Abstract-Surrealism and anatomical line work extracting organic elements and connections made between man, nature and the cosmic universe. Often pulling the human psyche and inner romanticism of her own life trajectory, the work represents a deeper emphasis on the infinite chaos that makes up the threads of our existence. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States including Phoenix, Los Angeles, New York, and Colorado. She lives life nomadically.
Monica Aissa Martinez
Mapping A Living Organism:
A Human Cell as the City of Phoenix,
Monica Aissa Martinez, born and raised in El Paso, TX, lives and works in Phoenix, AZ. She attended the University of Texas at El Paso and earned a Master’s of Fine Arts from New Mexico State University. The focus of her work is anatomy and physiology – human and animal.
“My general focus is the human body – anatomy and physiology. The body is like a landscape of intricate structures, complex and full of variety. It’s a whole organization, made up of systems and connecting parts. A cell and a city are each living organisms. Knowing one helps me better understand the other. For the record, I place both the government offices and the art’s district within the nucleus.”
Kathryn Maxwell
Domestic Constellations IV,
E. M Forster wrote, “only connect,” a quotation that Kathryn Maxwell takes to heart in her artwork exploring the many forms of human connections to each other and the universe. Images from nature and the iconography of science and spirituality combine in mixed media works, prints, and installations that have been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou; Dundee (Scotland) Contemporary Arts; Detroit Institute of Arts; and Denver Art Museum. An avid traveler who has been profoundly influenced by her journeys, Maxwell seeks opportunities to travel and has been awarded artist residencies in China, Belgium, Greece, Scotland, and the U.S.
Originally from Illinois, Maxwell resides in Tempe, Arizona where she is the Associate Dean for Students in the Arizona State University Herberger Institute for Design and Arts and Professor in the School of Art.
Jessica Palomo
Paradisaeidae Asteraceaes,
Jessica Palomo is a Phoenix-based artist who works in drawing and sculpture to investigate uncomfortable situations. She received her BFA in Sculpture from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX and her MFA in Drawing from Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Her work has been exhibited internationally at the Palazzo Rinaldi in Italy, the Contemporary Art Space in China and locally at Tucson Museum of Art in Arizona.
Katharine Leigh Simpson
Lady of the Rain,
Katharine Leigh Simpson is a multidisciplinary artist, whose work expresses the delicate beauty of impermanence. She attended the Katherine K. Herberger College of Fine Arts graduating with a BFA in Painting in 2005. In 2010, Simpson began exploring the fleeting moment through performance art. Over time, becoming known for her unique costuming and performance style, employing elements of change to express transformation embodied in all her art.
(Image shown was taken when dress was unveiled at the Denver paper fashion show.)
Beth Ames Swartz
Arizona Fault Line #1,
Beth Ames Swartz enjoys recognition that includes four one-person traveling museum exhibitions originating at The Jewish Museum, NY (1981-3); Nickel Arts Museum, Calgary (1985-90); a retrospective beginning at Phoenix Art Museum (2002); and Arizona State University (2008-9). Three books, reviews by ArtNews, Art in America, and ArtForum plus many catalogs, articles, and videos document her accomplishments along with the 2017 PBS TV documentary on her life and work.
In 2001, Swartz received the Governor’s Arts Award, the highest honor in Arizona for an artist. In 2003 she received the Veteran Feminists of America, Medal of Honor.
Swartz is represented by ACA Galleries, New York.
Elizabeth Taber
Sea Level Headed I,
Lizzy Taber is currently working and living in Tempe, Arizona while pursuing her MFA degree at Arizona State University. She grew up in South Florida and graduated from The University of North Florida with her BFA in Printmaking in 2014. Lizzy’s work has been shown widely in museums and galleries in the U.S. and internationally. Taber’s work ranges in mediums and focuses on topics such as human emotion, attachment, loss and the fragility of landscape.
Claire A. Warden
No. 42 (Emphasis),
Claire A. Warden (b. Montreal, Quebec) has exhibited her work widely in the United States and abroad. She has been named LensCulture’s Top 50 Emerging Talents, Photo Boite’s 30 Under 30 Women Photographers, and a Clarence John Laughlin Award finalist. She received an Artist Research and Development Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center exhibition award and the Ed Friedman Award from the Griffin Museum of Photography. Claire was awarded artist residencies through the Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program for Artists, Art Intersection in Arizona, the Center for Photography at Woodstock and LATITUDE in Chicago.
Denise Yaghmourian
Dozens,
Denise Yaghmourian was born in Bethpage, New York. She moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1976. She enjoyed her childhood in central Phoenix, and spent lots of time in the pool, playing in vacant lots (filled with date palms and olive trees) and enjoyed gardening with her grandparents.
Denise earned her degree in art through Arizona State University and works as a full-time artist. Her work is in public collections including the Tucson Museum of Art, Banner Desert Samaritan Hospital, The Institute for Mental Health Research and The University of New Mexico. She is currently represented by Bentley Gallery and Bogena Galerie in France.
To learn or see more of Yaghmourian work please CLICK HERE.
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