June - August 2010, Salem, Ore.
SAA Project Space is a temporary, evolving, experimental venue for artists to exhibit work and engage in creative dialogue. In addition to exhibits, SAA Project Space is home to installation art works, performance, work spaces, conversation, and cross media experimentation. SAA Project Space is located at 150 Liberty Street and is open to the public 11 am to 6 pm, Tuesday-Thursday and 12 to 7 pm Friday & Saturday. For more information please go to saaprojectspace.org
Amanda Wojick
Juror’s Statement
May 2010
The 9300 square foot cavity of the old Metropolitan department store could swallow up plenty of things. While reviewing the artists’ proposals in the space, this was a big factor in my decision making process. Ultimately, I selected the artists who were best positioned to respond specifically to this site. The projects I chose have the potential to expand, contract, and adapt to the architectural opportunities found here.
Drawing from sculpture, drawing, and installation, each of these projects stood out as a compelling synthesis of these practices. In addition, they each would engage audience in specific and intentional ways.
As a series, the works provide three distinctive approaches to activating space, responding to site, and implicating viewers. While each of the projects sets different ideas in motion, cumulatively, I imagine viewers’ experiences to be particularly rewarding.
JUNE 2010
Artists, Rosalynn Rothstein and Adam Rothstein
PLEASE TREAT THINGS AS YOU WOULD LIKE THEM TO BE TREATED
Opening Reception June 2, 2010 5:00-7:00 pm
Anti-:
Anarchistic Artistic Augmented Autonomous Balanced Chaotic Collective Distributed Echoed Evolving Experiential Independent Individualistic Instant Interpretative Lateral Liberal Ludic Multiplistic Multivocal Networked Rhizomatic Self-governing Shared Specific Spontaneous Unbiased Work.
Pro-:
Anti-Social Authoritarian Binary Bureaucratic Censoring Centralized Controlled Dendric Disgusting Dualistic Incorporated Invasive Libidinal Mobbed Obligatory Ordered Owned Programmed Pollutant Schematic Segmented Shrieking Sorted Stratified Structured Unified Universal Vertical Violent Product.
Adam Rothstein is involved in production, the space and time of which is certainly having some brutal times. He is a writer, printer, assembler of assemblages. He lives and works in Portland, Oregon and enjoys collecting broken technology.
Rosalynn Rothstein lives and works in Portland and grew up in New York. Her father worked at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and one of her first memories is drawing cats and flowers in a Pratt studio. She supplements her current work for the city of Portland with hobbies, including collecting ribbons, knitting and baking, for which she received several blue ribbons at the Oregon State Fair. Recently her study of the Sogetsu school of Ikebana has served as a strong influence and developing force on her paintings and sculpture.
Barbara Rowland
Photographs
Fast-Forward: with Inoshiro Honda’s The Mysterians.
This work is about viewing art/media and the impossibility of having one “fixed” reading of art, no matter what the intention was of the original artist. My approach was to take photos of The Mysterians while viewing it with the fast forward function of a VHS player. The electronic anomalies create a different viewing experience and a different representation of the movie’s imagery.
Dead Air
These images are overlays of photos of “retired” military aircraft and of people walking. The composite images point to the normalization of the intersect of the mechanical with the human and the military with the civilian.
Train Talk
This series consists of photo overlays of train cars. While there is some typical graffiti tagging, I found the rudimentary drawings to be interesting in that they seem to tell a story in an abbreviated and expressive manner.
We move through the days
This is an ongoing series of people and places in my neighborhood. The people I encounter are incredibly generous to allow me to photograph them and the daily interactions have created friendships and a sense of community. Images from this series were recently made part of the 591 Photography blog’s permanent collection: http://www.591photography.com/
June 2, 2010 –7:30 pm New Works Lecture and Performance Series event
Improvisational Dance and Music
Interacting with an installation by Rosalynn Rothstein and Adam Rothstein, Makoto Matsushima and Mike Nord’s improvisational pieces reflect influences from east and west—from jazz and “new” music to modern dance theater, martial arts, and chant.
JULY 2010
Artist, Michael Boonstra
Parallel Processes
Opening Reception July 7, 2010 5:00-8:00 pm
Burnt forests and flooded landscapes have been the subject matter of my drawings in recent years. These are landscapes altered by relatively short-lived events, oftentimes taking place so suddenly that they are difficult to comprehend and absorb. I am interested in what comes next. The blurred memory of what was, and the experience of seeing the landscape adjust to its changed circumstances. Trees begin to grow, roots begin to take hold, pools of floodwater recede and evaporate. The drawings I am working on refer to this kind of landscape, but over time I reorganize it by drawing it to different scales with different materials in different places. This reorganizing process parallels the psychological processes we may go through after floods and fires, whether actual or metaphorical. We begin to put things back together, to expand, to refocus. I see these environmental processes and psychological processes as parallel, my drawings somewhere in between.
This architecture is not static
These works are expansions of my drawing practice. They are floods in progress. Projections of constant movement juxtaposed with what they are projected upon, architecture we view as being solid, unmovable. The constant movement makes focusing difficult if not impossible. Anything recognizable is there only for an instant, difficult to absorb, almost impossible to retain. When we turn away, what we know as solid may seem less so, if only for an instant.
Benefit for the Birds
Wildlife Emergency – Call to Action
July 13-16, 2010 Purchase a 3 inch canvas
July 21, 2010 5:00-7:30 Sale.
All proceeds will benefit the National Wildlife Federation
You are invited to join a collaborative arts project.
How: Purchase a 3” canvas for $5.00 at Project Space available July 13-16.
What: Paint, collage, draw, write, or whatever, on your canvas – either at home or at PS.
Some materials will be available or bring your own.
Canvases must be returned to PS by Friday, July 16.
When: Canvases will be displayed and sold for $20.00 each on Wednesday night, July 21, 2010 from 5:00-7:30. The public, patrons and artists are encouraged to attend.
AUGUST 2010
Artist, Jenny Kroik
Supply/Demand
Supply/Demand
Opening Reception August 4, 2010 5:00-8:00 pm
My current work is, in part, an attempt to question the authoritative powers of a work of art. By inviting a community authorship and other inclusive creative games, I attempt to seek alternatives to a traditional mode of culture production and consumption.
The show I am working on for Project Space will be split into three sections:
The first is an experiment involving a community feedback that will result in a form of "commissioned" work. With the use of fliers and other public notices, I am asking the public to contribute themes and subjects that interest them, but in two words only (Example: Child’s Play, kitty cat, etc), two words that, to them, represent what art should be about. I will then use the suggestions to create a series of works to correspond to the suggested words.
The idea is to include the public in the artistic process, question the idea of the sole “creative genius” and explore the connection between art production and the audience it is meant to address. One of the ideas is to examine the line between demand and artistic interpretation. How far does representation go when it looses its audience, and, on the other hand, what happens to work that bends and yields to public demand to a point of artistic failure?
The second part of the show are a series of large paintings and painted objects. In this work I try to evoke narrative and play on an abstract development of character using scale, color, texture and the conversation with the viewer's proximity to the work.
The third part of the show will be a "store-front". This shop will display art objects and everyday objects for which I have created duplicates using a limited vocabulary of craft (mostly painted fabric). In this work I try to investigate the "original", our relationship to mass production, how we consume and remove ourselves from making and project ourselves onto inanimate objects.
Working with illustration, puppets, animation, painting and installation encourage me to explore the importance of remaining un-specialized, and hoping to be diligent in keeping my practice diverse, fun and interesting.
My current work is, in part, an attempt to question the authoritative powers of a work of art. By inviting a community authorship and other inclusive creative games, I attempt to seek alternatives to a traditional mode of culture production and consumption.
The show I am working on for Project Space will be split into three sections:
The first is an experiment involving a community feedback that will result in a form of "commissioned" work. With the use of fliers and other public notices, I am asking the public to contribute themes and subjects that interest them, but in two words only (Example: Child’s Play, kitty cat, etc), two words that, to them, represent what art should be about. I will then use the suggestions to create a series of works to correspond to the suggested words.
The idea is to include the public in the artistic process, question the idea of the sole “creative genius” and explore the connection between art production and the audience it is meant to address. One of the ideas is to examine the line between demand and artistic interpretation. How far does representation go when it looses its audience, and, on the other hand, what happens to work that bends and yields to public demand to a point of artistic failure?
The second part of the show are a series of large paintings and painted objects. In this work I try to evoke narrative and play on an abstract development of character using scale, color, texture and the conversation with the viewer's proximity to the work.
The third part of the show will be a "store-front". This shop will display art objects and everyday objects for which I have created duplicates using a limited vocabulary of craft (mostly painted fabric). In this work I try to investigate the "original", our relationship to mass production, how we consume and remove ourselves from making and project ourselves onto inanimate objects.
Working with illustration, puppets, animation, painting and installation encourage me to explore the importance of remaining un-specialized, and hoping to be diligent in keeping my practice diverse, fun and interesting.
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Founded in 1919, the Salem Art Association (SAA) is one of the largest and oldest community arts organizations in Oregon. SAA operates the Bush Barn Art Center and Annex, and Bush House Museum in historic Bush’s Pasture Park in Salem.
The Bush Barn Art Center is home to three galleries run by SAA: the A.N Bush Gallery and the Focus Gallery, both contemporary exhibition spaces, and the Camas Gallery, a sales gallery featuring Northwest arts and fine crafts. The Bush House Museum, an Italianate mansion containing an extensive collection of 19th century fine and decorative arts, is the former residence of pioneer businessman Asahel Bush II and his family. SAA also runs an extensive Community Arts Education program which provides art instruction to students in regional public schools.
The Bush House Museum and the Bush Barn Art Center are located in Bush’s Pasture Park at 600 Mission Street, SE in Salem, OR. For more information about the Salem Art Association, call (503) 581-2228 or visit www.SalemArt.org
For information, please contact Kathleen Dinges at (503) 581-2228, ext. 312, or by email at kathleen@SalemArt.org.
