Vignette: James R. Southard

"Untitled" by James R. Southard, Archival digital print, 18x28in, 2018, $750

Most recently, James R. Southard has started to turn the lens around towards himself, altering his regional material gathering technique into a biographical survey of his late father’s experiences in the 1970s. The resulting work has been a digital collage of still and moving images along with life action shots building a body of work that hopes to open a dialogue with his young father and himself.

“These (untitled) images were created from the thousands of slides my father shoot 40 years ago on his return from a tour of duty during the Vietnam War. He was actually at a similar point in his career and life as I am now, so I found this material very relevant to my current studio practice.”

Although we can assume that there is some degree of manipulation in the three images included here, it is not always clear what is the separation between the elder Southard’s original and his son’s contribution. But there is an unmistakable yet subtle incongruity that demands a close inspection, drawing the viewer into a close relationship with the work. Even the magnificent, apparently natural view of a city from between two high hills may not be what we assume.

The other photographs presented here are the latest example of Southard working with small community groups in the hopes of building collaborative digital photo and video projects. Each series has been catered to the issues and concerns of each region though documenting local habits, patterns, rituals, language, history and so on. 

“In the summer of 2018, I spent a month in rural northern Vermont working with local dairy farmers. I was interested in documenting the changing state of affairs up there due to milk prices and costs of farming. Farms that have been in the family for generations are now going broke. This landscape looks to fade away soon and many of the farmers were interested in my capturing their lives before it disappears.”

"Untitled" by James R. Southard, Archival digital print, 18x12in, 2018, $500

Farms and cattle have been photographed ad infinitum, but Southard’s take is fresh and unique. Perhaps in part because the rural landscape has come to seem so foreign and removed from modern life, yet there is a delicate and irresistible tension in the cow caught in mid-turn, as if he has been arrested in the first stage of a much more dramatic action. Is he about to fall, or about to confront the photographer intruding on her haystack reverie?

In fall 2018, Southard will have a solo show at Vermont Dairy, Working Title, University of New Mexico-Taos, Taos, NM. Since 2014, he has been a Full Time Lecturer for the School of Art & Visual Studies at University of Kentucky, Lexington.

Hometown: Middletown, Kentucky
Education: BFA University of Louisville 2005
MFA Carnegie Mellon University 2011
Website: www.jamesrsouthard.com

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"Untitled" by James R. Southard, Archival digital print, 16x28in, 2018, $750

"Untitled" by James R. Southard, Archival digital print, 18x12in, 2018, $500

"Untitled" by James R. Southard, Archival digital print, 18x28in, 2018, $750

"Untitled" by James R. Southard, Archival digital print, 16x16in, 2018, $500

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved

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Vignette: 2018 Hadley Prize Recipient KCJ Szwedzinski

The Community Foundation of Louisville, in partnership with Louisville Visual Art, is pleased to announce that Louisville-based multi-media artist KCJ Szwedzinski is the winner of the sixth annual Mary Alice Hadley Prize for Visual Art. The $5,000 award is an opportunity for local artists to enhance their careers through a targeted enrichment experience of their own design.

Szwedzinki’s submission outlines a series of research trips, “designed to synthesize seemingly disparate bodies of knowledge (and) archival practices for historical information and my personal inherited legacies.” Her intention is to, “broaden my ability to make work that is rooted in my own Judaic heritage, while facilitating engagement of a more universal audience.” Her itinerary is:

·      Seven days in San Francisco to visit the Jewish Contemporary Museum and The Holocaust   Center.

·      Fourteen days in Washington DC and Philadelphia to visit the United Sates Holocaust Memorial Museum and Archives (DC) and to take a six-day course, entitled “The History of Artists’ Books since 1950”, at the Rare Book School (Philadelphia).

·      Three days at the Genealogy Center in Fort Wayne Indiana

"The Klezmer Step | Glass Study" by KCJ Szwedzinski, Enamel on glass, 22x22in, 2018

Memory is a central preoccupation of art in the early years of the 21st century. Perhaps it is the turning of the century, or perhaps it is because we can now look further into our immediate past than earlier periods. The last 100 or more years have allowed a continuum of understanding and a voracious appetite for ongoing social narrative that is endlessly fed by digital technology. That continuum is important to Szwedzinski:

“Every time a story is retold it takes on a new life,” she states. “Simultaneously preventing that information from being lost to history while slowly transforming into something new altogether. These mechanisms for transmission slowly shape collective memory across time and ultimately have a huge hand in shaping personal identity. These are the tools and teachers of belief and belonging. My work reflects on belonging, displacement, and the shifting nature of narrative across time and considers the intersection of art, belief, ethics, and atrocity.”

“Printmaking, glassblowing, and kiln forming are the main processes I use in my
work. Although producing very different visual results, print and glass have
historically played a large role in the documentation of history and the passing on
of stories. From the printing press to the spreading of political propaganda,
printmaking has always disseminated information to multiple people. Glass as a
material often goes unacknowledged but plays a huge role in informing our
experience of the world, whether its creating barriers to keep us safely in or to
isolate information and objects within a museum or archive setting. I particularly
find it interesting that glass and printmaking have been silent, but active,
witnesses throughout history and as an artist concerned with legacy, these
processes both present rich and dynamic stories that support the concepts I
choose to work with.”

Szwedzinski will be interning at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma Washington for the months of July and most of August. 

Louisville Visual Art will honor KCJ Szwedzinski on Thursday, June 21, from 5:30-7:00 p.m. in their Portland gallery at 1538 Lytle Street, 40203. The reception is free and open to the public.

"Woven Debka and Klezmer Step" by KCJ Szwedzinski, Graphite on stonehenge, 50x38in, 2018

Recent exhibitions (2018):

·      Doors: A Collaborative Book Project, University of Louisville, KY

·      Blue Grass Bienniel: A Juried Exhibition of Kentucky Artists, Claypool-Young Art Gallery, Morehead, KY

·      Glass Art Society International Online Student Exhibition

·      Freeze State: Disassociating From the Here and Now, print exchange and exhibition (co-curator),
Louisville, KY (upcoming)

·      It’s Your World: Art About the Future of Community, 1619 Flux: Art + Activism, Louisville, KY (Juried)

·      What’s the Theme?, OPEN Community Arts Center, Louisville, KY (Group Show)

·      OH + 5: Ohio Border 10th Biennial, Dairy Barn Arts Center, Athens, OH (Juried)

Hometown: Jacksonville Florida
Education: MFA candidate. University of Louisville, Louisville, KY (expected May 2019); BA cum laude, Art History and Printmaking, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL, 2009
Website: www.kcjszwedzinski.com

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"Coincidence of Opposites I" by KCJ Szwedzinski, Stonehenge paper, steel, 11x15x9in, 2018

"Coincidence of Opposites II" by KCJ Szwedzinski, Stonehenge paper, steel, 11x15x9in, 2018

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

Vignette: Ashley Cathey

Ashley Cathey at the installation of her mural for the Kroger on West Broadway. Photo: Sarah Katherine Davis Photography.

Ashley Cathey is a painter whose creative journey began with performing arts before she was eventually encouraged to develop her visual art talents, which, up until then had been purely for her own personal edification, by exhibiting in Chicago before returning to her native Louisville. She came to prominence when ArtsReach commissioned Cathey to create a series of portraits for their annual Keepers of the Dream celebration at the Kentucky Center for the Arts. In 2016 her work was featured on the cover of LEO Weekly as part of an extensive story on artists of color in Louisville.

“Cherena” by Ashley Cathey, Acrylic, graphite on canvas board, 16x20in framed, $400

Cathey is currently featured in Looking Up: Heroes For Today – An LVA Exhibit at Metro Hall, which is on exhibit through January 11, 2019 at Louisville’s Metro Hall, 511 West Jefferson Street. The work included there consists of portraits of Women Of Color in acrylic and oil, striking in their use of non-traditional colors for skin tones and an almost complete omission of the hair. While the faces are rendered in rich, graphic layers of texture, where the hair would be Cathey has left mostly empty space, with perhaps a few marks to indicate the shape or direction of the women’s hair.

“So often Black women are judged by their hair, and I wanted to take that away and let them be judged for themselves. I didn’t want to focus on their color or their hair,” explains Cathey, “but on the colors of the paint, the expression on the face.”

“I wanted to do portraits of people that aren’t often acknowledged, such as single mothers. They are rarely, if ever represented at all, much less for what they accomplish: raising kids, feeding a family - simple things that many of us take for granted, but for which some of these women are heroic acts.”

Cathey’s portraits are largely these kind of “ordinary” women for whom just living can seem like an act of courage: surviving against economic challenges and fighting an uphill battle just to make it through the day. They include refugees and immigrants for who home is no longer viable.

“Kaila" by Ashley Cathey, Acrylic, graphite on canvas board, 9x12in, NFS

But some of her subjects are women striving to make a difference in the community that surrounds them, people such as Dr. Kaila Story, who is Associate Professor in both the Department of Pan-African Studies and Department of Women's & Gender Studies at the University of Louisville. “Her work on Strange Fruit (a weekly podcast of musings on politics, pop culture, and black gay life, that is broadcast on WFPL) is so important,” says Cathey. “There is not always a voice of color when it comes to dealing with LGBTQ issues.”

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: Studied theatre at Roosevelt University, Chicago, Illinois
Website:

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"Lakeishia” by Ashley Cathey, Acrylic and graphite on up-cycled plywood panel, 36x40in, $750

Illustration for the cover of LEO Weekly by Ashley Cathey, February 2016

"Nina Effect" by Ashley Cathey

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

Vignette: Lindsey Dezman

"Grenadier 5" by Lindsey Dezman, Ceramic, 16x16in, 2017

Artists are known for repurposing materials, but Lindsey Dezman’s most recent approach is a little more unusual. She captures the detritus from a communal studio sink trap, a plumbing fixture that collects discarded clay and glaze particles that would otherwise clog sewer lines. Although a new technique for her studio practice, it is consistent with the anthropological thread that seems to run through Dezman’s career.

“I explore materials and objects as a means to understand rhythms of time. As we age, so do the things around us; the steps upon our front door creak and slump more with every season, while a fossilized, thousand years old dinosaur bone is a test of time. My work is inspired from these rhythms and pulses of life. The results are simple, abstracted forms through which material explorations take place. I specifically choose to highlight the inherent life spans and the nuances within each of the materials that I use.”

“As my methods of making vary, my focus is always upon utilizing clay in alternative ways. "Grenadier" is a collection of wall works that highlight a continued self-interest in material research, recording, and beauty in the discarded. The sludge is ever changing from red, white, beige to blue depending upon the materials used by myself, and others in the studio. I collect this accumulated sludge of clay and glaze and build the work using the Japanese process of Nerikomi. It incorporates a layering and stacking technique that, once cut into sections, reveals a decorative pattern. The wall pieces illustrate the transitional shifts between material usage over time while the sculptural works are core samples. By harvesting materials from the sink trap, the results are spontaneous and the pattern is unpredictable. The work becomes indicative of the materials washed away and becomes a record mapping the activities within a communal studio.”

Even though Dezman’s past work does include examples of what could described as more conventional forms and vessels, she seems far more conceptual than a potter. Her perspective feels fluid, shifting between an absorption in the craft and an objective point-of-view of her position in the world as both an artist and a human being.

"Grenadier 7" by Lindsey Dezman, Ceramic, 16x16in, 2017

Dezman splits her time between New Albany, IN and Detroit, MI. Earlier this year she was featured in Small Favors: Think Inside the Box, The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA, and from July 26 through August 22 you can find her work in Small Works 2018 at the Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Her work is part of permanent collections including Cranbrook Art Museum and Icheon World Ceramic Center. Dezman is currently the Resident Artist at Indiana University Southeast in Southern Indiana.  

Hometown: New Albany, Indiana
Education: Master of Fine Arts, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI, 2014; Post Baccalaureate, Oregon College of Art & Craft, Portland, OR, 2012; Bachelor of Fine Arts, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 2011
Website: www.lindseydezman.com
Instagram: lindseydezman

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An exhibition at ROYGBIV Gallery in Columbus, OH, July 2017  Installation View

"Grenadier 8" by Lindsey Dezman, Ceramic, 16x16in, 2017

"Miniature.25" by Lindsey Dezman, Ceramic, 3.5x1.5x22in, 2018

"Grenadier 4" by Lindsey Dezman, Ceramic, 16x16in, 2017

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

Vignette: Clare Hirn

"Guest View Epic" by Clare Hirn, 2018

Although Clare Hirn has been a working artist pretty much her entire life, she had never been to an artist’s retreat or had a residency experience. “Raising two kids was one of the reasons,” she explains, “it always seemed so difficult to get away.”

But she has just returned from a month spent at Rancho Linda Vista near Oracle, Arizona. The retreat was established 50 years ago by artists who were teaching at the University of Arizona and Hirn found it to be a very welcoming artist community. 

Hirn's studio at Rancho Lindo Vista

Hirn was given a guest cabin with studio space in which to live and work, and describes the experience as, “so rejuvenating! It was just what I needed!”

“My stay was a mini-sabbatical that allowed me to concentrate on painting and drawing for 30 days.  Because I was “dropped” into an amazing landscape so new to me, and literally right outside my kitchen window, I allowed myself to just focus on that as subject matter.  I took paper and a few other painting supports that fit in my borrowed luggage, and ample drawing and painting supplies. I bought canvas and some other materials in Tucson, about an hour south of Oracle.”  

Hirn has a strong reputation as a landscape artist in the Ohio River Valley, and the change in terrain provided opportunity for discovery: “The distances can be deceptive. The landscape would dip and roll more than you realize. After I did a drawing, I would go walking into what I had just drawn, only to find that there were steep inclines. The ground would open up a whole other space.”

She found unexpected inspiration in in the chain fruit cholla, which grows in abundance in the area. It appears in the drawings that we see here, but it also became a part of the work itself when Hirn filtered the desert soil through the physical openings of the porous bark onto paper coated with medium. The result was "Cholla Triptych".

"Oracle Egg" by Clare Hirn, 2018

Even though the hand of an artist is evident in the marks of the drawings and paintings, Hirn’s proportion and sense of light are still realistic enough to suggest photography, but no filter would capture the same understanding of how color defines space that we detect in this work. 

Clare Hirn received a significant scholarship to attend the New York Academy of Art – Graduate School of Figurative Art, located in Manhattan. The curriculum continues to focus on strong foundational skills for working “realistically” from life and the figure.

After graduating with her masters in painting and drawing in 1990, Hirn worked for a mural design firm in NYC, learning the techniques of working large scale. Upon returning to her hometown of Louisville, KY she pursued both mural work and her personal painting, participating and receiving awards in many regional shows. Hirn’s fine art murals and paintings grace many homes, businesses, and public spaces and have appeared in numerous publications.

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: BA (Individualized Major Program), Indiana University in Bloomington; MFA in painting and drawing, New York Academy of Art - Graduate School of Figurative Art.
Website: http://www.clarehirnstudio.com

 

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Clare Hirn at Rancho Linda Vista.

"Live Oak Wash" by Clare Hirn, 2018

"Oracle Postcard" by Clare Hirn, 2018

"Cholla Triptych" by Clare Hirn, 2018

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

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