JESSE ALBRECHT
My work is a vessel for information—emotional, historical, and physical. I think of my pieces as multiple Free Lectures. It can be a refuge from hidden agendas and affiliations, and a chance to hold a mirror to society, or maybe a tale of what is behind the curtain. Here are some questions to think about while looking at my work. Why are there non-profit organizations to help veterans? Why are people making billions of dollars off wars? What happened to courage? Why are poor people killing poor people? What is behind all the fear being sold? Why are so few doing all the fighting? Who was Smedley Butler? What did he expose? Why are we still doing this?
ROSE CLANCY
My biographical history is that of a child of a parent with untreated mental illness. My mother suffered with major depression, psychosis, anxiety disorder, and agoraphobic behavior – all of which worsened at an alarming rate as she aged.
As an artist I openly present my story for the benefit of others who have been affected by mental illness, and use my personal experience as a way of fostering conversation about social stigmas attached to mental illness. The stigma of being “mentally ill” suppressed my mother’s voice and disengaged her ability to act in defense against her illness. I feel that the time to tear down the walls around mental illness is long past due – its time to build bridges of understanding and compassion instead.
JENNIFER LING DATCHUK
My work explores my experiences with identity, with the sense of being in-between, an imposter, neither fully Chinese nor Caucasian. I have learned to live with the constant question about my appearance: “What are you?” I find people are rarely satisfied with my answer. I explore this conflict through porcelain, which nods to my Chinese heritage but also represents “pure” white – the white desire I find in both cultures. My focus is the emotive power of domestic objects and rituals that fix, organize, soothe, and beautify our lives. Bound by these conditions, I stitch together my individual nature, unravel the pressures of conformity, and forever experience pain in search of perfection.
EDWARD EBERLE
Regarding Man in a Lifeboat:
The structure is given – a bowl form and the inside round portion is delineated with a few, free form, light painting – the black band is applied which adds to the overall structure. In my type of painting the first figure emerges, is seen and the development of the painting proceeds. One line leads to another; a bird and a fish appear; the lifeboat is added (the bowl might have been called “Man in an Alive Boat”); a non-descript, faceless figure appears in the background; adding a sparse pattern inside of the banding completes the form.
No preconception, no intention is brought into the painting. No narrative is applied. The tone of the bowl is ‘light’ (as opposed to darkness); there is an awareness of surroundings; the principal figure is protector.
Painting for me is much like jazz, like free form dance, like imagistic poetry, like stream-of-consciousness writing; the experience of seeing the bowl with all of its elements is just that – experiential, defying a writing or a narrative. The piece is encouraging and mindful.
KAITLYN EVANS
I am overwhelmed with thoughts of the strange and unfamiliar containing forces that I will not be equipped to handle. Moving to unfamiliar city that appeared rough and its people unpredictable left me feeling vulnerable. It is difficult to articulate what I am ultimately afraid of, but I long for a sense of security and seek respite from emotions I do not fully understand. These insecurities have led me to make enameled handheld objects that contain my uneasy state. The unfamiliar becomes manageable in my hand, able to be contemplated, clutched, or tucked away.
LYN GODLEY
I have always made things.
I have studied art since I was a young girl. Upon graduation I got involved in making things that people used in daily life, things that required the user interact with the work. Art and design calls to my soul and I never feel closer to home than when I am creating. The need to make work that has some level of measureable interaction with a user drives the direction of my work.
My fiber optic work has merged much of my life; from my early training as a Fine Artist, through my 25+ year fascination with lighting, to my love of nature which I have enjoyed since I was a young girl. It was through my fascination with lighting that I found my way back to Fine Art, in the form of large-scale drawings lit with fiber optics. I found the inspiration for the imagery in nature. Walking through natural environments, watching birds fly, being on or near the water; imagery drawn from places and things that feed the soul.
Lighting has held deep meaning for me. My grandfather, an inventor, held over 90 patents on headlamp design and invented the automotive blinker. Lighting has bridged cultural myths and religion as symbolic of the energy that connects us all. In my work it reads as the connection between a constellation far above, and the soul’s energy deep within; as an aura that connects us to something beyond, something that gives hope. It represents a connection of extremes: heaven and earth, black and white, even the artistic mediums of digital printing and charcoal, the oldest medium known to man.
The work has also shown to have physiological effect on the audience. During a solo exhibit in Cologne, Germany we found viewers would sit down and stay in the gallery for up to three hours and returning multiple times to do the same. Research has shown that the particular wavelength of light we are using is the same as is used in light therapy, resulting in reduction of stress and actually calming the body. We are now experimenting with making the lighting in my work even more interactive with the audience.
I believe art and design has the responsibility to make this world a better place, to relieve suffering wherever we can. I think art has the power to transform. I believe that beauty is transformative.
I made things for the 15+ year run of my design company with Lloyd Schwan. I made things after his suicide and while I raised our three sons. I continued to make things while teaching at a University. Things which are beautiful, that have a level of interactive capabilities for the user, things that incorporate the magic of light.
I make things. It is who I am.
JOAN IVERSEN GOSWELL
Regarding Depression:
There have been times when I have been depressed. I know what depression is like. The text of this book was written by Allie Brosh, creator of the online blog, Hyperbole and a Half. She knows what of she speaks. This is the truest description of depression that I have ever heard — at least in my experience. Please go to the address below and read her entire post. It is so true. It will, indeed, give you an insight into what goes on in a depressed person’s mind.
Regarding The Conversation:
This is a true depiction of conversations and events that led up to my long time friend’s suicide. It was something I never suspected in all the time we were friends until I received the last two communications between us. It was then that I sensed that something was not right. Something was very wrong. My suspicions were confirmed by an email from someone who was a friend to both of us. She only mentioned that our friend had died, but I knew what happened — I just knew it. It was confirmed soon after.
Please read and view everything in this book and box.
Perhaps you know someone in the same circumstances — Someone who is throwing out the same hints. Take them seriously. You may be able to save them.
MEREDITH GRIMSLEY
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Where Watching God, she describes the altered state of a woman seeking resolution and solace in prayer:
“There is a basin in the mind where words float around a thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought”
Acknowledging a sense of loss and gratitude in daily life, I layer the surfaces of my pieces with patterns which suggest my choices, history and faith. Each object made reflects moments of meditation and a longing for grace. In pursuit of truth, my spiritual identity emerges. My soul’s yearning for a connection fuels my imagination. To my audience, I whisper about my search with the physical, indelible mark of the stitch.
Recently, I have begun to contemplate pivotal experiences which permanently alter a person’s life and path. Through both unsettling and alluring imagery, I reveal the psychological impact of family dysfunction. Each generation within a family inherits not only genetics but, patterns of behavior. Whatever physiological, emotional, psychological, or spiritual residue is imbedded by both constructive and destructive family models, this work discusses a balance between beauty and distortion and the endurance of the human spirit.
Foundress exists as the first in a new body of work titled Same Old Wounds. The nest seen at the bottom of this work is that of a Yellow Jacket. These colonies usually last only one season and die away during the harsh winter months. Every year the new nest is begun by a single queen known as the foundress. Her legacy perseveres to rekindle her hostile swarm. A yellow jacket can sting multiple times. The unfortunate person who encounters these wasps becomes increasingly sensitive to the sting. Correlating the nature of these creatures with thoughts of dysfunctional family legacies, I see that, within families, significant events, words and behaviors occur and are absorbed into our daily routine without examination. Some happen in a breath while others linger endlessly either corroding or correcting our core. Our minds and bodies are formed. We either languish with our habits or are reborn with a new perspective.
Meredith Grimsley is one of the exhibiting artists for Mindful: Exploring Mental Health through Art.
“SAME OLD WOUNDS: FAMILY LEGACY”
BY MEREDITH GRIMSLEY
Performed on Saturday, September 19, 2015 in conjunction with the opening weekend of “Mindful: Exploring Mental Health Through Art.”
MICHAEL JANIS
Human social interactions are complex behaviors. Often many are unaware of how they are acting, feeling and interacting with others. We live so often in a condition of being obscured from ourselves and others. The things that can isolate one can be social conventions, politeness; or it can be personal: timidity, self-fear or self-blindness, fatigue.
I used clear glass as a way of seeing through ones actions and intents. Each element of the glass works in Echoes depicts a pair of overlapped faces created in fused glass powder arranged so as to create a new, third face. The imagery suggests the struggle to balance the different worlds that collide together, of out of body experiences and of contrasting mixed state episodes.
I see the interaction of the non-aligned faces as a depiction of the fate of both the inner and outer worlds. I wanted to show a sense of connection between the worlds. One cannot change without leaning a little further into the shared world, and without recognizing that even in one’s solitude, one is always at some point touching someone else.
GRACE KUBILIUS
Clothing does not need to be pretty and it does not have to flatter the person wearing it. The body and the garment serve as architecture for ideas, memories, and personal histories. My work deals with gender, identity, trauma, self- image, ugliness and objectification. I approach new and found materials with a sense of play and disinhibition to make wearable objects. My process allows me to move with fluidity and urgency, to crudely cut and paste together and rip apart again, to create problems, and solve them. My motions are repetitive, responsive, and cathartic.
SOPHIA JUNG-AM PARK
The sculptural pieces are worn on the body in a gestural expression as a metaphor for human patterns of adaptation to difficulties in life. The idea for their appearance is derived from Bonsai trees, which are bound with wire during their growth, to create a particular configuration. These pieces constrain parts of the body in some way and impede its free movement. To further illustrate this concept, I have collaborated with professional dancers who wear these pieces while performing expressively, to support this concept.
ALISON SAAR
The sculptural pieces are worn on the body in a gestural expression as a metaphor for human patterns of adaptation to difficulties in life. The idea for their appearance is derived from Bonsai trees, which are bound with wire during their growth, to create a particular configuration. These pieces constrain parts of the body in some way and impede its free movement. To further illustrate this concept, I have collaborated with professional dancers who wear these pieces while performing expressively, to support this concept.
SWOON
I am a classically trained visual artist and printmaker, and for the last 13 years I have been exploring the relationship between people and their built environment. My first interventions in the urban landscape took the form of wheat-pasting portraits to the walls of cities around the world. More recently, I have been working collaboratively through my non-profit organization, the Heliotrope Foundation. Focusing on community revitalization in Braddock, Pennsylvania, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Haiti, these projects support artists’ place-based interventions that explore how creativity can positively impact communities in times of crisis and change.
IAN THOMAS
Intimately I have watched the struggles of mental illness and the years of trial and error finding the right concoction to stabilize this all consuming issue. The works included in this exhibition are an examination of the relationship between pharmaceutical drugs and their user. These pieces illustrate the daunting regulatory intake of medicines and the deep introspective view one might have contemplating their role in “normality” if indeed there is such a thing.
