July 10th—31st, 2010
Opening reception: Saturday, July 10th, 7:00 – 10:00 pm
Cincinnati, OH—Summertime is, for us, characterized by those lazy evenings where a handful of casually produced suggestions is cause enough for a balmy nighttime adventure. One can’t really figure out how everyone at an impromptu backyard party even learned that it was going on, but you end up seeing a dozen friends that it’s been forever since you were able to catch up with. You and everyone you know are possessed with effortless savoir faire.
Summer Some Aren’t, U·turn Art Space’s July exhibition, is compelled by similar impulses. It is a reason to gather some local and distant friends together to see new or previously unseen works. Artists in Summer Some Aren’t include Krista Gregory, Hollis Hammonds, Terence Hammonds, the creative project called Moxie and Avril Thurman. We’ve set out some structure and we’ve laid out some plans, but we thoroughly expect the unexpected, and like a summer party tends to, we look forward to other artists popping up in the curatorial process late in the game to be added to this exhibition as a playful addition to visual discourse. Also, we’ll keep you updated for various activities and sudden excuses for drinking in sunlight and expressing our own happy sense of community.
The opening of this exhibition will coincide with a solo exhibition at semantics gallery of new concrete and resin works by Josh Rectenwald, along with the rest of the Brighton Art Walk. PLEASE NOTE that our July exhibition will open a week later than in other months due to Independence Day (so will all of the other galleries on our street). We would love to visit with you at the opening or at any number of gallery hours or events during the rest of the month.
Artist Bios
Krista Gregory holds an MFA from the University of Cincinnati and is one of the two curatorial forces behind the inimitable Aisle Gallery in the West End. Gregory is trained as a printmaker, but the works she makes often traverses printing techniques and enter into a drawing practice from unexpected angles. Drawing from compelling, pared down imagery, Gregory internalizes topics and images from her environment and reintroduces them with a bend of personal narrative. For U·turn’s July exhibition, Gregory has been working on new drawings that make use of memories from her running path through our local Spring Grove Cemetery. The picaresque and only vaguely morbid setting of a graveyard for an exercise regime is infused with humor and whimsy as tombstones and graves are animated as bodily forms and narrative devices.
Hollis Hammonds, a former Cincinnati resident, currently lives and works in Austin, TX. Hammonds received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Cincinnati in 2001. During her years in Cincinnati she taught at the University of Cincinnati, the Art Academy of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky University. She was director of the Artery from 1999-2004, and was gallery director at the Art Academy of Cincinnati from 2005-2007. Currently she is Area Coordinator and Assistant Professor of Art, and the Director of the Fine Arts Exhibit Program at St. Edward’s University in Austin, TX. She has exhibited her work throughout the U.S. including shows at Indiana State University, the Arts + Literature Laboratory, Eastern Oregon University, & Atlantic Center for the Arts. Hammonds' work deals with multiples, repetition, collections and documentation through drawing.
Hammonds writes about her Empty Vessels work: These invented drawings of ideal bowls and vases are created with marker on vinyl fabric. In these drawings I am exploring the metaphor of the empty container as a vessel waiting to be filled or having the potential to be filled, or fulfilled. Throughout history and literature the idea of the empty vessel appears as theme based on the human condition, and often refers to the human potential to be filled with knowledge, nourishment, or spirituality. For me, the empty vessel simply signifies the intrinsic framework of possibility, and these stacks and rows of bowls show the vast number of vessels waiting to be filled.
Terence Hammonds (no direct relation to Hollis Hammonds, also presented in the exhibition) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He grew up on Main Street in Over-the-Rhine and attended the School for Creative and Performing Arts. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and received his BFA in association with Tufts University. Hammonds has shown extensively in and around Cincinnati and Boston. His notable local projects include solo exhibitions at the Weston Art Gallery and Clay Street Press, along with a recent two-person exhibition at Aisle Gallery with Mark Patsfall. As a printmaker, Hammonds appropriates imagery from various movements in Civil Rights history and combines them with decorative motifs and patterns that adorn, memorialize and abstract histories of racial identity in America. For the U·turn exhibition, Hammonds has produced a number of new drawings. While his prints are well known for their densely patterned surfaces and combined imagery, Hammonds’ drawings are stark and reduced, using texts from this and previous eras as their subjects. While the artist’s hand is evident in the work, there is a stillness and a contained fury in the way these drawings present themselves.
Moxie is a team love affair who focuses their art in urban spaces. Their playful pieces are meant to make the urban viewer stop, smile and appreciate the juxtaposition of decay and beauty. Most pieces are placed in downtown and areas of decay and desolation in the city. A little more information here.
Avril Thurman is set to enter her senior year at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Earlier this year, Thurman was awarded the opportunity to study in a residency in New York City as part of her undergraduate education. That many of Thurman’s visual art projects relate to text speaks of her dual role as a poet and writer, as well as a practicing studio artist. Thurman has, for a number of years, been the student editor of the Art Academy’s poetry journal, The Incliner. Her poetry and visual objects share a sensitive, heartfelt tone in their texts. Thurman will be exhibiting works that were made during her time in New York City.
For more information, please contact the gallery by e-mail: u.turn.artspace@gmail.com
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