2006 Emergent Artists Exhibit opens 12/01/06

MAINSITE Contemporary Art is pleased to announce:

EMERGENT ARTISTS 2006
Kristen Vails
Jesse Armstrong
Jeff XVALA
Sarah Atlee
and including new work by Bill Boettcher

OPENING RECEPTION:
Friday, December 1, 2006- 6-10pm
December 1, 2006 through January 13, 2007

Jeff Xvala works in oil sticks, acrylic, serigraphy and collage on large stretched canvas to create expressionistic abstractions that are both innocent and wise.
Xvala prefers to call his work 'tabloid art', which defined is the
condensed or compressed product of modern experience.
In his Artist's statement, Xvala said this about his work:

When I look at Pop Art I see consumer society; when I look at Tabloid Art I see society consumed. Tabloid is documentary. It's all really happening, sort of.
I do Tabloid Art. I find the lowest common denominator and do that, doing things just as they are. For it to come off just right, it should be raw - imposing and mundane - and slightly provocative.
When I do Tabloid Art, I don't think about modern, post-modern, or conceptual things. I believe in reduction. I believe in tyrants, hustlers, heroes. I believe in conflict, compulsion, and calculation. I believe I am selling what is easy to buy.
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Sarah Atlee's work is tightly rendered but surreally abstract. Atlee uses themes of friendship, family and humanity to create her complex compositions.
Atlee works with paint and collage to create her color saturated images of figures portraying comfortably charged emotions.
Sarah Atlee recieved her Masters of Fine Arts from Rochester Institute of Technology and has exhibited work in New York, Arizona and Indiana.
In her artist's statement, Atlee said this about her work:
When I make a painting it is like cooking. I open up my cupboards and look around for what my eyes are craving. I mix up the ingredients let them stew and hopefully something tasty results. I often use collage as a sketching process combining and synthesizing imagery from disperate sources.
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Jesse Armstrong is a contemporary ceramic sculptor.
Using monochromatic glazes and unconventional molded shapes like baby doll heads bananas, Armstrong creates functional and nonfunctional ceramic work that juxtaposes reality with surreality.
In his artist's statement, Armstrong had this to say about his work:
My current body of work explores context. To elaborate further, what occurs when an object's context shifts and is paired with other objects of a different contextual frame. The results are often the creation of new forms that impose drastically different socio-political implications.
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Kristen Vails works with imagery primarily of natural horses in landscape environments with acrylics on canvas, but with a surreal twist.
Vails seemingly simple images of horses are carefully abstracted to allow the form of the horse to appear as though it is movement, alluding to a sense of memory and mystery.
In her artist's statement, Kristen Vails had this to say about her work:
Growing up in small town Piedmont, Oklahoma my mind was constantly focused on horses, drawing, and nature. As I could not stray from these passions I attended the University of Oklahoma to further my concentration in art, all along building relationships with God and others that will last a lifetime. I strive to create art that embodies the nature of truth and continue to follow where my art may take me. In my experience within the art world, I have learned that art is not life, but rather life is art. My art is a reflection of my life.
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Bill Boettcher uses reclaimed wood and stone to create intimate and sensual large works that explore the natural curves and colors of his chosen media. Upon retiring from teaching biological sciences, Boettcher began exploring sculpture.
more about Bill Boettcher's work coming....

Sarah Williams and Mateo Galvano

LANGUAGE
September 8th through November 18, 2006
OPENING RECEPTION:
Friday, September 8, 2006- 7-9pm
Mateo Galvano's work is inspired by his passion for language and his devotion to the personal feelings and emotions that are consistent with all humanity.
"When I work I become witness to a quiet and passionate sense of perception in which marks on the surface can travel or speak, and colors can conjure revelations. I expect to excite in the viewer a memory of soul, to tell without word or symbol an inchoate and benevolent language, a song. I paint to recall the future, to contribute to evolution by experiencing something discrete as a particle in the vast human sea."
Galvano's abstract paintings are atmospheric and bold, using colors that are both subdued and excited. Galvano works with the rich textures of oil paints and layers with delicate collaged papers and textures with drawn elements to create small, and larger, images that are detailed and masterfully produced.
"Painting is a path that is linked to devotion and to grieving. It is a way to honor all that is lost and a way to celebrate immeasurable or nearly hidden things. The current body of work is approached by looking through a veil, by observing mysterious nature to read the signs. Upon entering the seductive world of paint, canvas, paper, ink and brush and following slow paths of lines or drips, I invite storms resolved by tranquil atmospheres and the stillness of time and changing matter. "
This is Galvano's second exhibition at MAINSITE Contemporary Art. Mateo Galvano has exhibited his work in places including Santa Fe, New York City and Gordes France. Mateo Galvano lives and works in Columbus, Ohio.




TOPOLOGY COLLECTIVE
September 8th through November 18, 2006
OPENING RECEPTION:
Friday, September 8, 2006- 7-9pm


Sarah Williams work is inspired by science and her intense curiosity about the natural world.
Sarah Williams uses predictable mechanical photographic processes to print her images, but the real innovation of Williams's work comes in the creation of the negatives she uses. To make these negatives, Williams creates a detailed drawings on old cartography charts, graphing papers, and maps. Once the drawing is complete, Williams coats the paper with oil and bakes it in the oven, making it semi-transparent with an orange cast like that of a color negative. From these color paper negatives, she creates a photographic contact print and, as Williams explains, "utilizing a medium that is widely considered to represent reality, and abstracting it to communicate an outcome of mystery. Although I can control what colors will result in the final image, the variables of the drawings themselves, the paper types I use, and the length of time I bake each image creates subtle alchemical surprises in the final print. This element of controlled chaos serves as a constant reminder that science never will harness complete understanding of the natural or technological world."
In May of 2006, Sarah was selected as a recipient of a $2,000 Award of Excellence from the Oklahoma Visual Artist Coalition.
Sarah currently lives and works in Oklahoma City, OK. She received her BFA in Photography from the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico in 2001. Following her graduation from CSF, she lived in New York City for a brief period of time and returned to Oklahoma in 2002 to live and work as an artist.