Gallery 19

Gallery19 in partnership with Pilsen Arts and Community house is excited to announce that artist Raul Sisniega had finished his hand embellished prints that will be available for purchase on Friday May 28th, stop by and pick up on of these unique pieces. 

Gallery19 is excited to start introducing our applicants for our fourth annual juried competition, Meed4: The Power of Identity. A call for entries was put out, and a wave of applicants answered our call! We’d like to thank all that have answered us so far.

Now introducing Dora Duan

Dora Duan is a fine art photographer, who focuses on narrative portrait and abstract landscape. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Duan started her career in California as a software engineer, however her passion for photography traces back to her childhood, which led her to start a photography studio in 2012. Duan now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

(work pictured: The Rock)

With a fertile mind, Duan’s fine art photography emphasizes the emotional content within her heart and creates photographs that share her personal experience on a psychological level. Her work evokes emotional connections with her viewers by using minimal visual elements, aesthetic aspects, and dramatic lighting.

Memories oftentimes are collective moments which remain with us like a shadow, even though they are intangible. Over the past few years I have been thinking about imperfection and unworthiness. This body of work investigates some restless moments in my earlier life as a way of returning to some episodes that I want to understand further. The emphasis is not only on expressing my personal voice, but also embracing these memories of solitude and isolation from my experience.

Gallery19 is excited to start introducing our applicants for our fourth annual juried competition, Meed4: The Power of Identity. A call for entries was put out, and a wave of applicants answered our call! We’d like to thank all that have answered us so far.

Now introducing Pamela Toll

Pam Toll, associate professor at UNCW, received a BA Studio Art and English Literature from the University of NC at Chapel Hill and an MFA in Painting from East Carolina University. Her studio is located at Acme Art Studios which she co-founded as a work and exhibition space for artists.

After a profound painting experience at a painting colony in former monastery, St. Joakim Osogovoski, Macedonia, Toll and two partners established the No Boundaries International Art Colony whose mission is to lay aside national boundaries in favor of cross cultural exchange. Since then, over 200 artists from Europe, Africa, South America, Australia, Asia and North America have participated.

(work pictured: Song Catcher)

Toll, who has been drawing since childhood, sees drawing as a physical way of thinking fundamental to her work. Her process is circular both physically in the act of drawing and in the cyclical nature of what fascinates and provokes another round of making.

Toll's work is represented in various collections including Bljarica Art Collection in Petrvac, Montenegro; Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, NC; Bald Head Limited Corporation, NC; Karatay University, Konya, Turkey; Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey; Cromarty Arts Trust, Scotland; Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Naples, Italy; Art Pointe Gumno and St. Joakim Osgovoski, both in Macedonia; Simposio Internacional de Artistas en Noja, Spain.

(work pictured: Flight from the Well house)

Gallery19 is excited to start introducing our applicants for our fourth annual juried competition, Meed4: The Power of Identity. A call for entries was put out, and a wave of applicants answered our call! We’d like to thank all that have answered us so far.

Now introducing Ethan McVay

Ethan James McVay is a visual artist from Memphis, Tennessee, whose interdisciplinary work consists of live performance and experimental ceramics. They are currently pursuing a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of Memphis. Their work explores touch, time, movement, and queer identity. Their work has been exhibited in "Best of Memphis" (2019), "37th Annual Juried Student Exhibition" at the Art Museum of the University of Memphis (2020), and "In Consideration" (2020) at Crosstown Arts 430 gallery.

(work pictured: Tower)

I am a multidisciplinary artist, whose work is primarily in conversation with gender theory and identity. Art asks questions that challenge ideological constraints and foster inclusivity, teaching me to be more discerning and responsive in ways I never knew were so applicable to my own situation. I learned to question the unsettling feeling in my gut when expected to adhere to the gender binary; navigating alternate gender identities and the anomaly of human variation has become a major theme in my work. We live in a society in which there is intolerance and fear of anyone deemed “other”. Respect for gender variation is enacted through discourse about the topic. Art serves as a platform for discourse in a language that has no need for direct translation. It can communicate profound ideas without saying a word.

I work with experimental uses of clay, performance, and installation, as well as traditional ceramics and painting. Working with raw, unfired clay has opened up new possibilities to examine movement, temporality, and tactile response. Juxtaposing the human body with grandiose structures, I equate the figure to seemingly established fabrications, posing questions of solidified disposition and governing identities. Drawing preformative inspiration from the likes of Cassils and Kim Jones, I conduct my artmaking in a continuous, explorative, and interdisciplinary fashion. I am interested in the properties of movement and site specificity, and the capacity to which they can relate to the body.

(work pictured: Scene from Clayfield #1)

Gallery19 is excited to start introducing our applicants for our fourth annual juried competition, Meed4: The Power of Identity. A call for entries was put out, and a wave of applicants answered our call! We’d like to thank all that have answered us so far.

Now introducing Lilia Ziamou

We experience the world through fragments that together make up our reality… a fragmented biography…

Timeline fragments

Intrigued by what it means to be human in a world where technology blurs our perceptions of “reality” ….. My work is about: the body, technology, fragmentation ….. Born in Greece, raised in Zurich, Thessaloniki, and Paris ….. Background in economics, technology and design ….. Researched the impact of emerging technologies ….. Graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (2011-2013) ….. Residency at the Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY (2014) ….. Fashion studies at Central Saint Martins, Univ. of the Arts, London ….. Work funded by the Fulbright Foundation, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the Museum of Arts and Design, the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, 3D Systems ..… Living / working in New York

(work pictured: Staged #1)

Fragments of my creative process

I merge traditional materials and techniques with innovative technologies ….. Three-dimensional works: I combine digital fabrication and smart materials with traditional art-making processes such as stone carving, modeling in clay and casting in plaster and cement, draping, and patternmaking ….. Digital compositions: I photograph fragments of my three-dimensional works; manipulate and combine them in new ways to further explore ideas related to fragmentation.

(work pictured: Staged #3)

Gallery19 is excited to start introducing our applicants for our fourth annual juried competition, Meed4: The Power of Identity. A call for entries was put out, and a wave of applicants answered our call! We’d like to thank all that have answered us so far.

Now introducing Mei Fung Elizabeth Chan

Mei Fung Elizabeth Chan is a multidiscipline artist who is currently based in Long Island, New York. She was born and raised in Kowloon, Hong Kong in 1988. Her family is from Fujian. She received her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2017, and her BA from Bridgewater State University in 2014.

(work pictured: Local Anesthesia)

Portraiture allows me to express each character, emotions and personalities. I mainly use self-portrait to create complex narratives related to contemporary society. Plants, animals and objects have their own symbolic meanings. It is something so close to us that we did not even recognize them.

(work pictured: Self Portrait)

My work is based on psychological observations that represent my inner voice. I make prints to describe my emotions from my life as a diary.

Gallery19 is excited to start introducing our applicants for our fourth annual juried competition, Meed4: The Power of Identity. A call for entries was put out, and a wave of applicants answered our call! We’d like to thank all that have answered us so far.

Now introducing Patricia Constantine

Patricia Constantine is a Florida native and grew up not far from where the Barnum and Bailey Circus wintered. As such, her childhood imagination was inspired by the 1950s aesthetic of the circus and the “Freak Show,” an entertainment spectacle that endures in popular culture. The recollection of this genre, of spectacle and hyperbole, illusion and truth, of the exploitation of others deemed “abnormal” is represented by such characters as the Dog Face Boy, the Pinhead, Spidora, the Blockhead, the Mermaid Girl, and the Mentalist. Many of these performers possessed genetic conditions that led to their appearance while others played their roles through illusion and daunting physical feats. To the spectator however, all was real, a mix of fantasy and reality, of the impossible appearing within the mundane world. The non-conformity of the performers, physically and/or socially, made them outsiders to the audiences who came to observe them. In today’s critical discourse, this dichotomy is referenced as “the Other,” of identifying and diminishing those outside of the dominant social group.

The notion of the Other is central to Constantine’s art and is explored through her reference to the design aesthetic of 1950s era circus posters and the characters that historically populated them. In her imagery, the “freaks” appear as villains and heroes, sympathetic victims or perpetrators of injustice. Within these roles we see both a redemption of the historic sideshow character, of a need to accept and embrace the “Other” — as seen in Electra, where the Bride of Frankenstein is a self-portrait celebrating the power a fearless woman has over those that seek to alienate or control her — and simultaneously an embrace of the need to make monstrous those with whom we do not identify with — present in the hateful faces of President Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos of Sineater. The themes of Sineater are further complicated by the self-portrait of the artist as professor, an expression of her remorse for the debt many students accumulate in seeking an education. The concept of a sin-eater, of a person that consumes the sins of others, appears in a variety of cultures, in Constantine’s work she specially refers to an 18th and 19th century Scottish tradition, where a person was paid to eat the sins (through a symbolic meal) of a dying person to absolve their soul for the afterlife. Is she consuming the sins of the educational system or those of the politicians? Spidora likewise spins an uncertain narrative, replacing the male spider of Howitt’s classic poem with the sideshow character Spidora — an act where a woman’s face slowly emerged on a spider’s — and the female fly ultimately doomed in the poem by its vanity swapped with a fly bearing Trump’s visage. Who cries out for help?

(work pictured: Eeka)

Constantine’s art continues a legacy of spectacle and the grotesque, turning a feminist eye to how we “Other” those with whom we do not identify and revealing a contemporary social and political discourse as hyperbolic as the sideshow tradition she emulates.

Art Martin

Muskegon Museum of Art

Gallery19 is excited to start introducing our applicants for our fourth annual juried competition, Meed4: The Power of Identity. A call for entries was put out, and a wave of applicants answered our call! We’d like to thank all that have answered us so far.

Now introducing Trisha Hall

Trisha Hall is a Seattle-based fine artist. She graduated in 2018 with her BFA in Fine Arts focused in oil painting, photography, and watercolors.

(work pictured: Tortoise & the Hare: A Self Portrait)

Addressing themes of identity and sense of self, Trisha Hall’s recent body of work is a fresh take on self portraiture and the human condition. She urges her viewers to see themselves in her paintings. This body of work documents the artist’s personal and relatable journey in pursuit of fundamental truths, acceptance, and self-discovery.

Gallery19 is excited to start introducing our applicants for our fourth annual juried competition, Meed4: The Power of Identity. A call for entries was put out, and a wave of applicants answered our call! We’d like to thank all that have answered us so far.

Now introducing Katie Minyard

Katie L Minyard explores the complexities of female sexuality, pleasure, and fantasy that comes through from a material exploration of paint and light reflective materials, such as glitter and sequins. Through combining a hyper feminine aesthetic influenced by her own matriarchal lineage, kitsch love hotels and Valentines with the idea of fantastical ideas pleasure, she is able to visually express through her work a high sensory ideal of female pleasure.

(work pictured: Oh Yes Girl!)

Katie is a recent MFA graduate in Studio Art Practices- Painting and Drawing at the University of Colorado Boulder and holds a BFA in Studio Art-Painting from Louisiana Tech University School of Design. She is a recipient of the King Award Scholarship and has recently completed her residency at Breck Create in Breckenridge, CO.

In my paintings and installations shiny, reflective materials allude to queer identity, sexuality, and fantasy. Enticement, yearning, and romance are portrayed in realistically painted images. As an artist, I tell a story of desire and self-actualization through a radically nurturing relationship to my body and my being. My aesthetic is inspired by my matriarchal lineage, kitsch expressions of love, stolen glances at Dad’s hidden porno magazines and the representation of the sexualized female body in historical European figure painting.

(work pictured: Object of My Desire )

Gallery19 is excited to start introducing our applicants for our fourth annual juried competition, Meed4: The Power of Identity. A call for entries was put out, and a wave of applicants answered our call! We’d like to thank all that have answered us so far.

Now introducing Suzanne Cross

Artist Biography 7/21/2020

Suzanne L. Cross, PhD, ACSW, LMSW, LLC Citizen of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Mt. Pleasant, MI Artist/Associate Professor Emeritus Bio http:nativeamericanshawlsetc.com [email protected] 

As a traditional dancer and artist who creates beaded medallion & earring sets, dressing of dolls in traditional regalia, and creating shawls and ribbon skirts.  Most recently her work was shown at the 30th Annual Hoop Dance Competition at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ Feb. 2020.   Also, the Healing Through Culture & Art Collection booklet became an addition to the Heard Museum Library and Archives Collection and online reference.  Feb. 13, 2020.  In addition, her work has been on exhibit at the 58th Greater Michigan Art Exhibition in Midland, MI.   Sept. 28- Nov. 3, 2019, Participated in the “In the Spirit” Market, Tacoma, WA 2018 * 2019.   August 10, 2019, and The New Day Shawl was presented to Congresswoman Deb Haaland at the Ziibiwing Culture Center on the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Reservation.  July 27, 2019.   Her work her work has shown at Arizona State University, Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, Fine Arts Collection of 2019, The Husky Shawl was purchased by the Burke Museum - University of Washington campus, Seattle.  June 29, 2018, and she was commissioned to create Beacon Program Shawl for the Chicago Indian Center. 

(work pictured: Strong and Feminine)

Her work has been shown in several other locations since 1999. Her work has shown at Arizona State University, selected for Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, Fine Arts Collection of 2019, the Husky Shawl was acquired by the Burke Museum - University of Washington campus, Seattle.  June 29, 2018, and she was commissioned to create the Beacon Program Shawl for the Chicago Indian Center (a program to assist trafficked teens). Her work has been shown in several other locations since 1999. 

(work pictured: White Buffalos and Eagles)

Gallery19 is excited to start introducing our applicants for our fourth annual juried competition, Meed4: The Power of Identity. A call for entries was put out, and a wave of applicants answered our call! We’d like to thank all that have answered us so far.

Now introducing Tony Halstead

Tony Halstead was born and raised in California.

He graduated from the prestigious Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles, California.

During many years as an art director / creative director, spending his time in large LA & San Francisco ad agencies, Tony took classes to learn how to work in leaded glass. After learning the craft, he opened his glass studio in an old high ceiling brick loft in downtown Hermosa Beach, CA.

Tony took a sabbatical from the advertising world and began designing and building leaded glass art statements. The art is framed in 5 inch deep hardwood light boxes that bathe a room in amazing color.

(work pictured: Gene Pool Drawing)

Today, Tony is creating new work in a very different medium and he finds the new approach is truly similar in expression. His use of line, color and texture are very related. The selection of subject matter and tongue & cheek attitude is present in all of his work.

On paper Tony creates line drawings better known as “doodles”. They are created in conference room meetings, bars and many other places. Some drawings are more complex than others.

The drawings are highly influenced by his environment and lifestyle. Some negative and some positive moments captured in time. He selects past doodles or newly created doodles as the base to kick- start each of his creations. He scans the line drawing into his Mac and embellishes it with color, more line and sometimes photography to create his work.

Tony is a true a Fantasist. Creating colorful analogies to life experiences and findings.

Doodling. Visual notes.

“I am called to the conference room to join in on a meeting with anywhere from a few to a roomful

of my colleagues and clients gathered to solve a problem or exchange ideas. The room is a mixture of smart and not so smart executives with good and not so good ideas. Politics is always present, sometimes light and sometimes heavy. In this environment of the meeting place, I start to doodle on a note pad or any piece of paper I might have on hand. I have absolutely nothing in mind about what I’m drawing on paper or where it’s headed. No previous concept or plan that I know of. I am watching, listening and even giving my verbal opinions as my doodling continues. It is like my senses collecting the input and my hand produces the visual or the interpretation of the meeting. Of course, always from my personal point of view.”

It is between Tony’s brain and his hand. Add the draftsman skills he’s learned over the years and the doodle becomes a more sophisticated sketch. By definition: a doodle is an aimless or casual scribble, design or sketch. Also: referred to as a minor work.

“Do I have opinions about what is going down on the paper? I must. Is there a beginning and an end- ing to the doodle? I think there is a beginning but, maybe not an ending unless I just stop working on it.

When the meeting is over. The doodle is finished.

(work pictured: Gene Pool)

Tony’s new series is created on the idea that the doodle is the beginning of organizing thoughts, or releasing a visual message. He suspects a very personal time and very personal observation of what’s going on around him. “Let’s call it a snapshot or recording of a certain period of time related to the doodler only. This of course is what all artists do.”

“When I took an advanced class in psychology at UCLA with a well known psychologist that I admired a lot, instead of writing notes the traditional way, I decided to do a drawing or doodle during every session. There were about a dozen drawings at the end of the series of classes. Looking through my drawings, with a huge smile, the psychologist, said, “you are truly nuts.” Somehow I felt okay about that. I recorded his entire lecture series in visual notes. Strictly my interpretation of his words.”

One of Tony’s doodles from the class has become the base drawing for one of his new finished cre- ations called Gene Pool. Gene pool is about the family / DNA make-up of every person alive. Generations of family talking to you about what is right and wrong. Ways of the family. Directing you how to act, how to deal with God, your ego issues, how to stand and pose, how you feel and act about violence & passiveness. In- structing you to live a certain way. Lots and lots of advice.

“I don’t really need a conference room today and as you’d guess, I produce doodles just about any- where I happen to be. Also I can use my digital camera to capture slices of life I want to work with.” Tony has created 30 digital paintings since 2006. In 2007 he exhibited five leaded glass statements along with five of his digital paintings at the Kaos Gallery in Florida.

Gallery19 is excited to start introducing our applicants for our fourth annual juried competition, Meed4: The Power of Identity. A call for entries was put out, and a wave of applicants answered our call! We’d like to thank all that have answered us so far.

Now introducing Beatriz Ledesma

I am a Latin-American artist, immigrant from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

I am a magic realist and colorist painter using strong, bold, vibrant colors as expression of my Latin American roots and to denote emotions.

(work pictured: Harvest)

I hold a MFA and MAAT from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1988) and a doctoral degree in clinical social work (2009) with focus in the practical application of psychoanalysis and art-making for healing in the clinical treatment of adults. My work is inspired by emotional, spiritual, and social issues. Through it I take a closer look at the emotional and psychological impact of displacement and I examine its manifestation in symbolic language.

(work pictured: Entrapment)

Using symbols — realistic and primitive tribal imagery placed in a dreamlike composition with heavily saturated colors —I seek to paint and to recreate the spiritual world of our ancestors and the emotional reality of a marginalized world.

www.beatrizledesmastudio.com

www.linkedin.com/in/beatrizledesma

Gallery19 is excited to start introducing our applicants for our fourth annual juried competition, Meed4: The Power of Identity. A call for entries was put out, and a wave of applicants answered our call! We’d like to thank all that have answered us so far.

Now introducing Nathan Budoff

Nathan Budoff was born and raised in Massachusetts where he earned his BFA at the University of Massachusetts. He has also lived in New York and Chicago, where he earned an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He received a Fulbright Fellowship and spent a year in Bogotá. For over twenty years he has lived in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Budoff created a 42-foot diameter mosaic on the ceiling of the Martínez Nadal Station of the San Juan metro. He has developed murals with students from the Escuela de Bellas Arte de Antioquía in Medellín, Colombia, the Youth Development Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico and the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan. Artist residencies include the Ucross Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, the American Academy in Rome and the Faculty Resource Network at New York University.

(work pictured: Friends Walking)

His artwork has been exhibited in San Juan, Medellin, New York, Chicago, Minnesota, Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Orlando. He has translated books and texts from Spanish to English. He has taught at several universities in Puerto Rico, as well as Minnesota, Colombia and New Mexico.

My recent self image is occupied by flora and fauna. It is about investigation, curiosity and a sense of appreciation and magic. In the service of these ends the paintings and drawings combine various media, raw and primed canvas—the making is built on the same hybridity that marks the imagery. There is a utopian urge in bringing together creatures that are seen as threatening, and also in the development of spaces of negotiation that feel vaguely possible and completely fantastic; this imagery combines action and presence, absence and memory. Working in the Caribbean for over two decades, this work is influenced by a playfulness, captured in Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation. Glissant proposes that “…each and every identity is extended through a relationship with the Other.” I appear as a silhouette, as a small figure in a mysterious context. There are no impenetrable boundaries, but a yearning toward communication.

Gallery19 is excited to start introducing our applicants for our fourth annual juried competition, Meed4: The Power of Identity. A call for entries was put out, and a wave of applicants answered our call! We’d like to thank all that have answered us so far.

Now introducing Elise Martin

Elise Marie Martin is an interdisciplinary artist based in Detroit, working in the areas of painting, video, sculpture and fiber arts. Her work stems from an interest in human interaction and the struggles to maintain empathy, intimacy and shared connection. Tapping into the rich vocabulary of visual language and handicraft, she aims to map out the often ineffable nuances of her every-day relationship dynamics which are so significant yet so frequently taken for granted. Her studio practice is complemented by her work in community arts and equal access art education.  

My work addresses themes of intimacy, connection, empathy and comfort. Recently, I have been looking at ways in which inanimate objects mediate or convolute different human to human relationships and I have been making sculptural art objects which tip-toe the line between passive object and active participant.

(work pictured:Self portrait chair )

I am interested in exploring how non-human actors influence human interactions and how we ourselves become objects in certain relationship dynamics. I’ve been looking at objects which act as a stand in for human touch, both historically and in contemporary societies, and I’ve been trying to push that concept to encompass other types of intimacy and human connection. I don’t know that any object or collection of objects could ever be a substitute for human to human engagement, but there is certainly something uncomfortable about the thought, and that unease is really interesting to me, particularly as modern relationships seem to become increasingly passive.

Gallery19 is excited to start introducing our applicants for our fourth annual juried competition, Meed4: The Power of Identity. A call for entries was put out, and a wave of applicants answered our call! We’d like to thank all that have answered us so far.

Now introducing Jim Stevens

"My work reflects my perception of the world. I am legally blind. What very little I see, I see in the empty spaces between realities. A multidisciplinary artist, my monofilament and abstract linear paintings explore one of my favorite subjects; the use of empty space in art. Based on the position of the viewer, these paintings seem to move, change; forcing the mind to impose sense on the influence of empty space between the lines and elements within the picture. Like captured shadows, the art continuously challenges the viewer's interpretation of the subject. My paintings cause the viewer to stop – examine both the reality and illusion – and then engage with the art."  

Gallery19 is excited to start introducing our applicants for our fourth annual juried competition, Meed4: The Power of Identity. A call for entries was put out, and a wave of applicants answered our call! We’d like to thank all that have answered us so far.

Now introducing Hedi Brueckner

Heidi Brueckner is a Professor of Art at West Valley College in Saratoga, California where she has taught painting, drawing, and design for 20 years.

A native Californian, Brueckner studied at the University of Heidelberg and The Goethe Institute in Germany in the late 1980s where she was heavily influenced artistically by 20th century German art.

Brueckner holds a BA in Fine Art and a BA in Art History from University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MFA in Painting from University of Kansas.

Professor Brueckner’s work has been shown at museums, galleries, colleges, and in publications nationally and internationally.

She currently lives and makes art in Oakland, California.

My work focuses mostly on cultural allegories & norms conveyed through a collage-like juxtaposition of figurative imagery, symbolism, & elaborate patterning. Often the figures personify the precarious, dark, grotesque, and sleazy side of human nature, subjects by which I am continually fascinated.

(work pictured: Self-Portrait with Respirator and Bug )

These topics seem to require, and in fact dictate, frontal, discomforting, and intrusive compositions. I revel in playing with bright color and pattern, tilted and flattened space, and distorted form in order to achieve this needed psychological expression and visual activity, but also to create an element of humor and fun.