Tenthaus

Tenthaus is a performance collaborative made up of Abby Cornelius and Wyatt Niehaus. Cornelius is currently a student at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, while Niehaus is studying in the University of Cincinnati’s DAAP program. In their projects, they stage ambient, playful performances that blend music and theatrical shadow play by employing a camping tent as a barrier between the activity and the audience. Working with loop pedals and a mixture of traditional instruments and less clearly defined noises, Tenthaus’ performances are delicate and whispering, like a musical round of ghost stories. Tenthaus has performed around Cincinnati and Columbus, including the Art Damage Lodge in Northside and the historic Arnold’s Bar and Grill in downtown Cincinnati. For this exhibition, Cornelius and Niehaus will perform on the evening of the opening reception. Relics and leftovers from the performance, including the trademark tents designed and built by Cornelius, will remain in the space for the duration of the exhibition. Tenthaus is a pioneering effort, making use of gear that has come to symbolize adventure: a Walden-esque vision of man, the environment and survival. Their live performances fit into a lineage of oral storytelling, a pastime principal in America’s history, especially in periods of development and expansion. Tenthaus has band pages on both myspace and facebook.

Tenthaus will perform at the opening of COLONY at 8:00 PM on Saturday January 2, 2010, and will perform on the evening of January 23, 2010 at 8 PM.

Travis Meinolf

Travis Meinolf is an artist and self-titled “Action Weaver” currently based in Berlin, Germany. Meinolf works primarily in woven textiles, but builds this traditional practice into interactive social projects that are radical, educational and successful in locating convergence points between community intervention and aesthetics. For COLONY, Meinolf has used his weaving projects as a sounding board to inquire further into his own family’s history with Old World Catholicism. Using a legend about his patron saint, Martin, as a model, Meinolf has designed and woven garments consisting of two layers: one to be kept by the wearer and another to be given away to someone in need.

Meinolf holds a BA in Industrial Arts from San Francisco State University and an MFA in Textiles/Social Practice from California College of Arts. He has been widely exhibited and collected in recent years, including exhibitions at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art, San Francisco; Koh-i-noor in Copenhagen, Denmark; and Guertin's Graphics in Chicago, IL. His society-based weaving projects have been featured in Craft Magazine and Handwoven Magazine. Learn more about Meinolf’s projects here.

From Meinolf’s personal statement: “As a weaver my primary methodology is to make connections, to manipulate elements and produce structure and pattern, which embody meaning. In my studio practice this entails gathering yarns and using the loom to organize them into cloth. My social practice involves engaging with groups and individuals and encouraging them to tap into their own productive capacities; the potential that lies within each of us to create objects which function in a real, physical sense, and also semiotically: these things and the processes used to produce them can operate as political and aesthetic statements. The overarching goal of my artistic project is to present productive labor as an engaging, satisfying endeavor, whose products could be shared freely within a community to serve the needs of all of its members.”

Earlier this month, Meinolf’s work was reviewed by the Acquisitions Director of SFMOMA. The museum purchased the resulting work from his first public weaving project.

Additionally, Meinolf’s woven textiles are also currently featured at PS1 in a project by Stephanie Syjuco included in the exhibition 1969 that reflects on that pivotal year by displaying works made in 1969 from the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection. Along with significant works from mid-century artists, PS1 invited a number of contemporary artists to respond to the work of this era through the creation of new works. Stephanie Syjuco’s “Borrowed Beuys” recreates a Joseph Beuys’ installation that MOMA could not risk exposing to the exhibition spaces at PS1 (which are not climate controlled). Syjuco enlisted the help of friends and acquaintances through e-mail, facebook and other networking tool, inviting others to give her specific elements to recreate the Beuys piece. In lieu of Beuys’ famous grey felt blankets, two of Travis Meinolf’s blankets have been used.

Maidens of the Cosmic Body Running

Maidens of the Cosmic Body Running is a collaboration between Denise Burge and Lisa Siders that explores states of melancholy and ecstasy, referencing archaic and contemporary forms of ritual trance. Although begun by the two artists, Maidens has evolved as a project to include other collaborators for specific artworks, making its identity fluid, capable of expanding and contracting to respond to their undertakings. The work seeks to reflect and personify the constant state of ecstasy (metamorphosis, decay, birth) that is the natural world.

In December 2009, the Maidens are traveling to Germany to use the legendary Black Forest, about which many of our familiar fairy tales have been written, as a setting for video and photographic works. Their presentation at U.turn will include some of these brand new projects.

Denise Burge holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and works as a Professor of Art at University of Cincinnati. She works in a variety of media, including drawing, film, and quiltmaking. Her quilt work has been widely commissioned and collected, and was included in two Quilt National exhibitions. For this work she has been awarded multiple Ohio Arts Council grants, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation award. In 2006 she formed a collaborative animation group called "The Dozens.” Their work premiered at the Fringe Festival in Edinborough, Scotland, and has been in several national and international film festivals. Lisa Siders holds an MFA from University of Cincinnati and teaches at Northern Kentucky University and University of Cincinnati. She has also worked as a freelance artist and designer. She has a wide range of media practices, including fibers, sculpture, and film. Exhibitions include national and international venues; her work has been featured in the Houston International Quilt Festival, and the National Civil Rights Museum (Memphis, TN), as well as various venues in Ohio, and national magazines. As a member of "The Dozens" collaborative animation group, she has exhibited nationally and internationally. For more information about the collaborative visit their website.

Adam Longbonz

Adam Longbonz is one of the artists whose work will be featured in our upcoming exhibit, COLONY. As a graduate of the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design with a BFA in Photography Longbonz has participated in numerous exhibitions and has been awarded Best of Photography and Best of College Photography in the pages of Photographer’s Forum.

Longbonz will be exhibiting a series of large-scaled digital prints collectively titled “Half Breed.” These stark portraits show distinctly Caucasian young adults costumed in wigs and accessories that hearken more from Wild West interpretations of Native American cultures than from factual archeology/anthropology. The pale skin, fair hair and intensely blue eyes of the subjects are startling as these features are seen beneath their exaggerated garb. Longbonz currently lives and works in Wisconsin. For more information, visit Longbonz’s website.

From Longbonz’s personal statement: “When making images I am constantly trying to survey the places in which I find myself. I create scenes that represent the past, present, and future coalescing into something representative of the world in which we exist; not the physical world—but the feelings and memories collected in the mind."

The new year is nearly upon us with that in mind we over here at U.turn would like to announce COLONY, our January exhibition.

COLONY to open on January 2nd at U · turn

January 2-30th, 2010
Opening reception: Saturday, January 2nd, 7:00-10:00 pm

U · turn begins the new year with COLONY, a group exhibit featuring the work of Adam Longbonz, Travis Meinolf, and two collaborative groups - Maidens of the Cosmic Body Running and Tenthaus. Maidens is an ongoing collaborative project initiated by Cincinnati base artists Denise Burge and Lisa Siders. Tenthaus is a performance art duo comprised of Abby Cornelius and Wyatt Niehaus.

COLONY looks at how cultural identity is revised, stereotyped and mythologized. Mining their own personal and societal histories, the exhibiting artists construct art practices that exchange summarized accounts of America, western expansion and the dynamics of community for abstractions, conflations and sly fantasies. Along with reaching for a "complete" account of who we are, where we came from and what we should be doing, the exhibition as a whole suggests that multiple fictions can lend a hand to "truly" knowing ourselves as a culture. This project itself and how these different practitioners come together in the space is an exercise in fluid identity.

Stay tuned to the blog for updates including posts about the artists involved in this upcoming show!

Run run as fast as you can....To U.turn...

Wow! It has been a whirlwind month over here at U·turn. Just a reminder that this Saturday is your last chance to see Jessie Bowie's show, Don't Be Scared Be Prepared. Gallery Hours are Noon to 4:00 PM.

Also, don't forget next Saturday, December 5 (7-10 PM) we will be filling the gallery with tempting, saccharine things to eat and look at. The month of December provides us with an opportunity to do something a little different, the gallery will be having a one night exhibit, It's Been a Rough Year For Ginger. During this evening we will display, discuss, appreciate and in some cases consume art or art-adjacent projects that employ gingerbread as its primary medium. We are excited to receive traditional gingerbread houses, along with contemporary art projects that use foodstuffs in objects and installations.

We would love for you to stop by!

- Molly

U turns into a newsletter

We’ve not even been open a month and U·turn is already lined up with all kinds of exhibitions, related events, parties and projects that those of us that run the space have going on with our own art. At the risk of running long in our tales regaled, this e-mail will have extensive information about a lot of our news, from our upcoming Halloween party and next exhibition to an opportunity for pretty much anyone to exhibit in our December project. So please read on to the bottom about opportunities YOU HAVE to be a part of upcoming U·turn exhibitions and publications. We would be so pleased if you could meet up with us at any or all of these events. Come, chill, appreciate the view. Thank you thank you thank you for all of your support as we’ve been getting things started. We hope it was a good enough time to come back for more!

Best,

U·turn Art Space

**GENERAL INFORMATION**

U·turn Art Space is located at 2159 Central Avenue in Brighton.

Gallery is free and open to the public, with street parking in front of the space and on nearby streets.

Regular gallery hours are on Saturdays, 12-4 pm, and by appointment.

Mission Statement: U·turn Art Space is a collective-run alternative arts space that was initiated in fall 2009. The U·turn Art Space collective is comprised of five Cincinnati-based artists: Molly Donnermeyer, Matt Morris, Patricia Murphy, Zach Rawe and Eric Ruschman. Each month U·turn delivers fresh, compelling exhibitions of emerging and established artists. The gallery has a special interest in new developments in sculpture and object making, but is excited to represent the contemporary landscape of art as broadly as possible. Its goal is to bring shows into Cincinnati that are relevant; that provide an opportunity for discourse, ideas, and play to be forced together, awkwardly or elegantly, and offer itself to a viewing audience. Along with art exhibitions, U·turn hosts a range of accompanying readings, performances and events that raise probing questions and plural perspectives. U·turn’s efforts are intended for audiences in the surrounding Brighton district, Cincinnati at large and the whole of the Midwest.

Brought To You By has a couple more Saturdays left to go. The gallery hours from 12-4 on Saturdays synch up with semantics gallery down the street from us. So for one short trip over to Brighton, you can see our inaugural group exhibition as well as Paul Coors’ solo project Before I Start Singing at semantics (1107 Harrison Avenue). We’ve been genuinely please with the turn out for the past two weekends. Many pleasant conversations about the art, the neighborhood and aesthetics have ensued. Stop on by this weekend!

Eric Ruschman

If Anything Happens You Are My Constant

The Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center

1028 Scott Blvd.

Covington, KY 41011

Opening Reception

Friday, October 30, 2009

6:00 - 9:00 pm

Opening Reception Admission: $8.00

Students / Seniors: $5.00

Free for Carnegie members and children under 12

Our own Eric Ruschman will be opening a solo exhibition at the Carnegie in Covington next Friday!

His new body of work entitled If Anything Happens You Are My Constant is constructed from a regimen of exercises in painting, installation and combinations of the two. Delicate renderings in oil paint of animal characters continue to make occasional appearances in a vocabulary of color, shapes and found objects that have broadened considerably since Ruschman’s previous exhibitions. Substitutions have been made, so that stickers, stenciling or the charm of the high-gloss monochrome are interspersed with his painted narratives; the saccharine visual experience that Ruschman masters now has some resistance built in. Rather than resemble the simply summarized life lessons represented in anthropomorphic Fables, a single take around the room involves paintings (hung alone, in groups, or occasionally leaned at the bottom of the wall), objects and cluttered shelves—a game of chutes and ladders through the artist’s recollections and daydreams.

Ruschman has been occupied with issues in the maturation process throughout his young career. What may seem like a logical set of steps from childhood to adulthood to some is called into question, deconstructed and reassembled into abstractions of life plans by Ruschman and his team of black kittens, unicorns, voles and other critters. Throughout the past year, he has been a collector of visceral experiences and unassuming bits of wisdom from his everyday life. Paintings make offhand or straightforward references to a day trip to an alpaca farm, evenings immersed in Cincinnati’s local music scene, tender moments with house pets and careful appropriations from pop culture, such as the empowered “Toonces the Driving Cat” of Saturday Night Live and Youtube fame. Ruschman has gravitated to these scenes because of specific humanizing elements and has drawn connections between disparate source materials in order to populate a situation in which playful, innocent characters find themselves caught in dilemmas of aesthetics, displacement and the challenges of adulthood.

Eric Ruschman earned his Bachelors in Fine Arts from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 2007. He has an established exhibition record in the Cincinnati area, having shown at the Art Academy’s Pearlman and Chidlaw Galleries, ArtWorks Gallery, semantics gallery, Krafthaus, Synthetica Gallery and the Cincinnati Visual Fringe Festival. This is his second solo exhibition. His work recently graced the cover of the first volume of the online zine Sparklezilla.is HIs Ruschman is also a curator and collective member of semantics gallery and U·turn Art Space, two alternative gallery spaces in the Brighton district of Cincinnati.

-Matt Morris
colleague, artist, freelance curator + art critic

For more about Eric Ruschman’s work, please visit: www.ericruschman.com

U Turns Halloween: Whatever Costumes Go On Must Come Off

Saturday, October 31, 2009, 8—12 p

Our first exhibition will be wrapped up, and things will be coming off the walls. an empty gallery like that needs to be HAUNTED for one evening. think a balloon forest for the sleek creative set of cincinnati to hunt in.

-participate in a 'best costume' contest. the winner will be presented with a ghost trophy made by our own zach rawe.

-spook or snog to a playlist blasting from that dark corner.

-candy for trick or treating.

-potluck it. the more people who bring food and drinks along with them to share, the more there will be at the party.

Rumors on the underground are that Brighton and the surrounding area will have a number of parties going on that night. Add U·turn to your stops as your trick or treat for the evening.

Jessie Bowie

Don’t Be Scared Be Prepared

November 7—28^th, 2009

Opening reception: Saturday, November 7^th, 7:00 – 10:00 pm

U · turn is proud to present Don’t Be Scared Be Prepared, which features the work of Miami, Florida based artist Jessie Bowie. Bowie received her BFA from Ringling College and has recently participated in a residency in New York City. In her first solo exhibition in the Midwest, Bowie will be presenting a body of work comprised of both pen and ink drawings and site-specific wall paintings. The former are dense with detail and exude an impulsive, paranoid approach to the ideation and creative processes. Painting, in contrast, is a markedly populist activity as Bowie uses it. Her wall paintings call the training of her hand into question, instead celebrating a sloppiness that may be more conventional for hand painted signs than for traditional, high art techniques. Served together, her intricate drawings function as contained hypothetical realities in contrast to the maximalist aesthetics at work in her installations and site-specific wall works.

Bowie draws in absolute liberation. The defined, hatched mark making with which she realizes absurd or nightmarish scenarios are reminiscent of cartoon illustration or film storyboarding. Bowie is like a child who refuses to go into the ocean after seeing Jaws for the first time, and her artmaking reflects that worrisome outlook. Her drawings depict everyday folk located in the midst of critical plot twists and dénouements for narratives that Bowie has constructed only for the duration of the artwork; missing explanations for surrealistic elements in play and uncertain conclusions to these dramas confirm the works as mental flashes in a mind drunk off of pop cultural imagery and concerned about the implications of just about everything.

Jessie Bowie is a jester whose special talent is to look at our world’s past and present without actually looking at it, as if staring at a Gorgon’s reflection in a mirror, so as not to be turned to stone. Rather than confront her stimuli head on, Bowie is an experienced escapist who retreats into realms of astounding intricacy and unexpected, obscure metaphor. To call her work ‘gut wrenching’ is not to over-dramatize the point, but to identify a place of violent extremes that she frequently suggests. Sci-fi monsters, cowboys, and menageries of extinct behemoths, exotic zoo animals and frizzy house pets populate her dreamlike alternative dimensions. Beget by Surrealist Leonora Carrington’s penchant for suspense and ambiguity and Hieronymus Bosch’s fey wit and sense of action, Bowie represents a startlingly contemporary fantasy on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Tales left inchoate frame mysterious problems rather than presenting concrete solutions. When real world events, celebrities and global epidemics do make cameo appearances, they are jarring additions to the scenery. A bounty of associations and appropriations subvert singular readings, and our attempts to formulate such prove daunting. This exhibition is built from flagrant attempts and failures to cope by means both distracted and determined in a world out of control.

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Opening the SAME EVENING as Bowie’s exhibition at U·turn is our own Matt Morris’ solo exhibition at Aisle Gallery.

Matt Morris
PAIRS WELL WITH
Objects and Installations

Aisle Gallery

424 Findlay Street 3^rd Floor
Cincinnati, OH 45214

M-F 1-4 p or by appointment 513.241.3403

November 7 – December 20, 2009, 5-8 p
November 7: opening reception, 7-10 p

November 21: artist talk, 1-3 p

Pairs Well With is a solo exhibition by artist and writer Matt Morris, a multimedia exhibition that has been conceived and installed in direct response to the nature and idiosyncrasies of Aisle’s newly expanded gallery space.

And now for the chance for you and everyone you know to be a part of one of the earliest exhibitions to be held at U·turn. Read on!

IT’S BEEN A ROUGH YEAR FOR GINGER:
U·TURN’S OPEN CALL GINGERBREAD EXHIBITION

Deadline for intent to exhibit: November 26, 2009

One night exhibition: Saturday, December 6, 2009, 7-10 p

As part of our mission as a gallery venue, U·turn aims to engage a community around the space through structured art exhibitions and a range of social events. December provides us with an opportunity to do a little of both with a one evening engagements where we will display, discuss, appreciate and in some cases consume art or art-adjacent projects that employ gingerbread as its primary medium. We will be excited to receive traditional gingerbread houses, along with contemporary art projects that use foodstuffs in objects and installations. Also, this gingerbread project allows us to expand the terrain for the creative act and enthusiastically involve individuals that have not before considered themselves artists. Bakers, amateur cooks, students, established artists seeking a momentary outlet for a different form of artwork, ALL ARE WELCOME.

Along with the restriction of gingerbread constituting the majority of the artwork, we request that each piece be no bigger than 2 feet in any direction. With so few limitations, these projects could be playful, totally edible and whimsical, or else downright conceptual.

In order to prepare as best as possible for what could be a wildly tempting, extravagant exhibition, we ask that if you plan to participate, please contact us by e-mail or through facebook before Thanksgiving, November 26, 2009. If possible, send us a description of your planned artwork, or images and sketches as you have them. No work will be for sale that evening. The show is just for our communal enjoyment. Please pass on the word to anyone you think will be interested!

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS TO VOLUME II OF BRIGHTON APPROACH

U·turn Art Space periodically releases a printed publication in conjunction with its monthly exhibitions in the hopes of encouraging a dialogue between literary and aesthetic sensibilities. U·turn collective will be issuing its SECOND zine under the title Brighton Approach Vol. II. Although the first issue had a theme, we've left this one open ended. Entries may be submitted in many forms: poetry, drawings/collages, photographs, snapshots, short stories, thank you letters, recipes/ instructions, quotations, etc. 

We are accepting submissions now until Saturday, December 26. Final copies will be printed in black and white on 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper folded once, so please format submissions no greater than 5 inches wide and 8 inches tall. 

Please email to u.turn.artspace@gmail.com, pmurphy@artacademy.edu, mail to U-turn Art Space 2159 Central Avenue Cincinnati OH, or drop it off in the mail slot at 2159. Brighton Approach will be distributed on and after January 2.

Okay, if you made it this far, than not only are you a super trooper (circa Abba), you are also one of the most informed participants in Cincinnati’s burgeoning arts community. We hope to see you around sometime soon at one of these many opportunities. We look forward to getting to know you, sharing in rich discussion about art and community. We look forward to everything ahead.

Best,

U·turn Art Space