Friday, June 16, 2017

Summer group show


LVL3 presents Fantastic Facade, a three-person group show featuring Katie Bell, Hannah Carr and Jenn Smith. Bell scavenges detritus and castoffs in search of new materials to build and influence her sculptural paintings. Carr explores how physical objects can be transformed to reference a digital age. Smith’s paintings offer commentary on evangelical Christian beliefs with a light-hearted and sometimes sly humor. Fantastic Facade looks at the ways we create windows of exploration that uncover the past and ground our thinking.
Opening reception
Saturday 29 July 2017
6-10pm

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Garmentory Feature


With so much talent out there, it is truly exciting when you discover an artist whose work makes your jaw drop and your mind race. Well, that was our exact reaction when we came across the two artists featured below: Katie Bell and Andrea Bergart. With each a distinct aesthetic of their own, these artists are creating captivating art that goes way beyond your typical understanding of art. Their manipulation of everyday materials and objects is straight up beautiful. One of these talented women can takes garbage scraps and turns them into a 9 ft tall sculptural painting and the other transforms working cement trucks into moving public murals. So, without further ado, let your artist crushes begin.


The moment we caught sight of Katie Bell’s large-scale paintings we couldn’t look away. Her art goes above and beyond, outwards and upwards, literally. Katie creates her pieces with found materials that she herself went digging for. From ceiling tiles to hot tub fragments, she turns so-called garbage into unreal art. Her color composition, structural thought and innate attention to placement detail will blow your mind. Not to mention, this bad-ass woman can haul bounds of material and somehow get them all on a wall.

TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF. 
My name is Katie Bell and I am originally from Rockford, Illinois. I have been living and working in Brooklyn, NY for the past six years. I make large sculptural paintings out of found material.

HAS ART BEEN A PART OF YOUR LIFE SINCE YOU WERE LITTLE? 
I have a twin brother who is also an artist, and I think growing up we fostered that creative interest in each other.  We were always making drawings, games, costumes, piƱatas, plays, forts, obstacle courses, etc.  We were collaborators on all kinds of things and our parents were always encouraging us to make things. I began making paintings in college and started making still-lives to paint from.  The still-lives eventually grew larger and larger and turned into the work I am making now. I have always come to art from an interest in painting.


ALL YOUR SCULPTURAL PAINTINGS ARE MADE FROM FOUND MATERIALS. WHAT’S YOUR PROCESS OF SOURCING LIKE?
 I am constantly looking for materials and try to find one thing everyday to bring back to the studio. I am mostly finding things on the street, in dumpsters, and at construction sites. My studio acts as a catch-all for all my finds. Things will be rolling around the studio a while before I figure out what to do with them.

HAS YOUR HUNT FOR MATERIAL BECOME EASIER AS YOU’VE GROWN AS AN ARTIST? DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE / GO-TO SOURCE? 
The hunt is different every time, but it is always a very physical task. As my work has grown I have gotten more specific, so I am looking for particular things now. My favorite part of gathering materials is the looking. I have so many places that I go to regularly to find materials, but one of the best spots is Bartos Pools and Spas. I have made friends with the owner and she saves old hot tubs for me to cut apart.

WHAT’S THE WEIRDEST THING YOU’VE EVER FOUND? THE BEST THING? 
Weirdest: A three-foot tall rawhide bone. Best: A faux blue geode bookend.


Group Show in Baltimore




Opening Reception: Saturday, June 10 7-10pm
Show open: June 10 - July 1, 2017

Whether temporary, permanent or in this context imagined, humankind has been making structures as long as we’ve existed. These structures mark time, history and memories, sometimes functional and others monumental.

The artists in Deconstructed all employ their individual aesthetic in making their own “structures”. Borrowing likeness from household items, architecture, formalism, symbols, and found materials, these artists deconstruct preconceived elements of structure to create distinct visual languages. At times combining the familiar with the unfamiliar and juxtaposing abstraction with representation while deconstructing defined uses of material, scale and imagery. 

Degges alters quick snapshots of his labored paintings by zooming in and blurring them, he then prints them on canvas. Distancing the photographs and himself from the original paintings he deconstructs his own process to create fresh imagery.

Delosh combines hieroglyphs, symbols, and her own studio sketches to create an imagined structure that provokes the viewer to contemplate both the importance and humor of a monument.

Jensen boldly tops a wooden Dutch stool with a hand made ceramic “dunce cap” evoking caution and humor but also drawing into question the function of a stool to that of a pedestal. 

Commemorating fragments of material that each found surprisingly beautiful and poetic, Bell and Hein surround found wood and linoleum with odd shaped structures of foam and Plexiglas.

Evoking household items and architecture, Baron and Salas eliminate color to highlight minimalist structures. A mailbox, a birdhouse, a doorway; these familiar objects are deconstructed and re-imagined as abstract forms calling into question the relationship of the body to the work.

While Mikhailovskaia’s work also uses a monochrome palette, her work deconstructs preexisting notions of scale by shrinking somewhat formalist sculptures to coffee table size pieces, calling to mind the all white works of predecessor Cy Twombly but with a more playful tone. 

King explores, mixes and deconstructs the intellectual structures of the mind, using imagery from the depths of the subconscious and combining them to create abstract visual landscapes of the mind.