July 25 - August 13 2014

Katrina del Mar | Maura Jasper | Pat Place | David Chick | James Forren | Laura Wulf | Jennifer Moller

Opening Reception: Friday, July 25th, 6-9 pm.

Tough Girls & Lucid Dreamers III: Readings & performance with Eileen Myles, Katrina del Mar, Karyn Kuhl, Sarah Greenwood and Thalia Zedek on Saturday, July 26, 6-9 pm.

Readings & discussion with Urvashi Vaid, Amy Hoffman and Suzanna Walters on Wednesday, July 30, 7 pm.

Hot, Deep & Connected: A conversation with Felice Newman and Constance Clare-Newman on Saturday, August 2, 4 pm.

Readings by Michael Cunningham, Billy Hough and a special appearance by Penny Arcade on Saturday, August 9, 6:30 pm.

An evening of sounds with Peter Donnelly, Roxanne Layton and Kathy Phipps on Sunday, August 10, 6 pm.

Katrina del Mar

Summer Sang in Me

Summer Sang In Me is a compilation of Katrina del Mar's intimate photographic and video portraits of lovers, ex lovers, close friends and beautiful strangers. Entwined with self-portraits and elemental landscapes, these images map out the semi-fictional road trip of her life. In no particular order Del Mar is an artist, photographer, human being, lover. Her style is realistic /romantic; messy at times, tactile, beautiful, and gritty. Her pictures are foremost captured with a taste and passion for life in general, and for women in all their individuality of beauty and power in particular.

Reading like an unbound, semi-fictive yet very personal journal, the images, video clips and ‘zines make up a story of restlessness, a study in fascination verging on obsession. The insistent drive to hold onto remnants of people so as not to lose their memory results in a type of souvenir collecting of a most personal nature, and a longer temporal narrative emerges which sees participants striding in and out of the story sometimes once, sometimes many times. This exhibition serves up a softer, more romantic side of del Mar’s work, although the tough girl aesthetic clearly shines on in a series of images of planned bruises and fight-club aftermath, where tough girls proudly display evidence of their damage alongside evidence of unbridled lust.

“Katrina Del Mar has been active in underground film, photography and erotic fiction for two decades, and her vision is as transcendent as it is transgressive.” - Carlo McCormick, Photograph Magazine

“Any effort to map Katrina Del Mar’s cross-genre oeuvre within the contemporary art or film worlds would run the risk of missing its epic nature.” - Jenifer P Borum

Katrina del Mar is a New York-based photographer, video artist and award-winning film director. Her work has been described as “beautiful” exuding an “intimate chemistry” and also as “filth of the highest quality.” Katrina herself has been described as a “major league cutie,” “a wild woman,” “the Lesbian Russ Meyer,” and “apparently, the lesbian stepchild of Kenneth Anger.” Her solo exhibition GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS was presented in January 2013 at Participant Inc. in New York, and in June 2013 at AMP Gallery in Provincetown. Her solo exhibition, Gangs of New York was presented in 2010 at Wrong Weather Gallery in Porto, Portugal. Invited to teach at the University of the Arts in Bremen, Germany, she conducted the first ever “Queer Trash Feminist Film Workshop,” also in 2010. In 2012, she presented a series of films and photographs from the Golden Age of Performance Art (1988-2000) with Dona Ann McAdams, On the Edge of Society: Moments in Live Art, at Warehouse 9, Copenhagen, Denmark. Her work has shown at Deitch Projects, NY; Museum for Contemporary Art (CAPC), Bordeaux, France; American Fine Arts Company, NY; Binz 39, Zurich, Switzerland; Bass Museum of Art, Miami; Miami Light Project; P.S.122, NY; FabLab, Berlin; and the University of Cardiff, Wales.

Her first film, Gang Girls 2000, shot entirely on super 8mm film, received a four and a half star review in Film Threat magazine, among other glowing reviews, inviting comparisons to the legendary Kenneth Anger. The follow up, Surf Gang, about a gang of women surfers from Rockaway Beach, landed del Mar a fellowship in video from the New York Foundation for the Arts, “Best Experimental Film” from the Planet Out Short Movie Awards announced at the Sundance Film Festival 2006, and was screened at the Museum for Contemporary Art (CAPC), Bordeaux, France.

Her latest film project, Hell on Wheels Gang Girls Forever, completes the Girl Gang Trilogy and was the recipient of the 2010 Accolade Award of Merit. Recent screenings include Girl Gang Trilogy, Nightingale Cinema, co-presented by Chicago Underground Film Festival, 2012, and at the Provincetown International Film Festival at AMP Gallery, 2013; Super 8 Film Portraits, curated by Stephanie Gray, Millennium Film Workshop, NY, 2012; Surf Gang (excerpt), Sound & Light, and winner of Juried Competition, Schoolhouse Gallery, Provincetown, MA, 2012; Girl Gang Trilogy, Fringe Film Festival, London, UK, 2012; and Girl Gang Trilogy, Bio Paradis, Reykjavik, Iceland, 2012. Website.

Maura Jasper

In Like a Lion

"Working primarily in video and performance, most of my work involves or is inspired by the lives of regular people, and the ways in which we define ourselves. Works range from large scale participatory projects (Punk Rock Aerobics, Weather You Remember) to studies of people and place inspired by existing historical documents (Wish You Were Here, The Gates, Without Words). Oftentimes my work functions as a bridge between art and non-art experiences, inviting participation and bringing people back into the process of cultural production. By taking on the trappings of mass media forms not normally considered art –such as, karaoke, aerobics instruction, or weather reports, these forms become vehicles for empowerment, ones that function as backdrops in which each individual’s stories, dreams, and expectations can unfold.

In Like a Lion is an ongoing video collaboration with my mother, whose eyewitness accounts of seasonal change are recorded daily on video. There are currently two installments of this work, Spring: March 2008, and Summer: June 2012. To produce this work she learned to operate a professional camcorder, microphone and lights, all of which were installed in her kitchen for the duration of each month. She also learned to use a point and shoot camera and an iPhone to document from direct observation the world beyond her condominium. As the each month progresses, her observations become entryways into revealing personal narratives that are intimate, humorous, and always “camera ready”. While her personal storytelling is at the foundation for the work, it is primarily a portrait of her, our relationship, and a comment on mortality. The next installment of this work will take place in the fall of 2016."

Maura Jasper is a conceptual multi-media artist whose work investigates how pop cultures and histories shape and inform identity. She has exhibited and screened work widely in the United States and overseas, at venues such as Artist's Space, Threadwaxing Space, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the Centre for Contemporary Images in Geneva. She is probably best known for her work as a co-founder of Punk Rock Aerobics, the DIY workout and her album art for Dinosaur Jr. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Electronic Media at Ball State University, where she teaches video with an emphasis on time based intermedia practices. Website.

Pat Place

Skies: 2008-2014

Pat Place’s body of work is comprised of groupings from a personal archive of thousands of iPhone photographs of the sky. The colored lines and forms of both the clouds and sky are used in the same manner as expressionist brushstrokes, creating flow and movement within the grid-like patterns of the work. In a sense, there is a thoughtful meeting of both design and natural anti-design. Themes of impermanence and time within the pieces are made visible, while the compositions echo the sky’s constant change. When entering a space filled with Place's Skies, the walls seem to become lucent leaving you inside/out in elemental world of air and possibility.

Pat Place, primarily known for her contributions to music and the New York No Wave scene, graduated from Northern Illinois University, IL with a BFA in Painting & Sculpture. Place moved to New York in 1975 and was a founding member and guitarist of The Contortions and Bush Tetras, whom she continues to tour with. Place has been showing her visual art in New York galleries since 1977.

Place’s work has been included in recent group exhibitions at AI Earthling Gallery, Woodstock, New York (2013), Harper’s Bookstore, East Hampton, New York (2012), Julie Keyes Art Projects, New York (2011), and ILLE Arts, Amagansett, New York (2012). Her last one-person exhibition of photographs “The End, 1981 - Infinity” (2008) was at Jane Kim/Thrust Projects, NY.

Place, who was born in Chicago in 1953, currently resides in New York and continues to work on her art and music.

David Chick

Andy Warhol's Last Superstar, Holly Woodlawn

"I first saw Holly in Andy Warhol's film Trash in NY when I was about 20 years old. I fell in love with her character...A scruffy low-life, fast talking, full of charm, NYC survivor...and probably identified with her character right away, as one who makes a living picking and selling garbage! I later got to know Holly, and to know Holly is to love her, though in doing so I'm certain the experience has taken several years off my life. That said, she has the biggest heart and the most determined spirit, and is one of the most creative and intelligent persons I have ever met in my life."

The photo(s) exhibited in this exhibition are of Andy Warhol Superstar Holly Woodlawn, made famous in popular culture by the Lou Reed song: Walk on the Wild Side.

"Holly came from Miami Fla, Hitch-hiked her way across the USA, Plucked her eyebrows along the way, and then shaved her legs and then he was a she, She said hey babe, Take a walk on the wild side ..." - Lou Reed

David Chick is an artist, photographer and has worked as an art director, stylist and costumer. Originally from Boston, has made his home (in NY) and in Hollywood. He has attended Montserrat College of Visual Art, Parsons School of Design, NY, New England School of Photography, studied painting at The Florence Academy of Art, Florence Italy, and at UCLA. He is a member of the Motion Pictures Costume Designers Guild.

Chick has been fortunate enough to work with many of his artistic inspirations, including Motown's First Lady Diana Ross, America's Favorite Garage Band Aerosmith, Pop artist Peter Max, photographer Greg Gorman, and Surrealist painter Dorothea Tanning.

"I enjoy detail and creating technically proficient drawings and photographs, but other times, I enjoy exploring and capturing the blur of motion and feel that at times I relax into the motion of a modern fast passed life, at least visually. For me, utilizing blur in my photography, I feel, instantly gives the viewer 'a feeling' to hold onto, it is almost like recalling memories, or to follow along in a dream. It is important for me to tap into this 'feeling' and not to force it when creating.

As a child, inspired by color and light, cartoons and the razzle-dazzle of old Hollywood films. I began painting and drawing and creating sets and costumes for all my toys to a soulful Motown soundtrack. I always felt that I wanted to fall into the movie... to be carried away by the story, and to this day, I want to make pictures and artworks that talk and tell stories to the viewer"

David is an adventurer at heart, has a through enjoyment of life and a passion for learning, and if the adventure sounds like 'fun' to him, a word he can't seem to drop from his vocabulary, he'll be there to do it! Albeit to that incredible Motown soundtrack.

James Forren

Writing With Light

"Light and geometry play a prominent role in James Forren’s work. While engaging the human body’s occupation of space, the work elevates our awareness of the use and application of materials, whether paint on canvas or glass and steel construction."

James Forren is an architect, artist and principal of Stilfragen Architecture, Art, and Design. His diverse projects range from paintings, sculpture, furniture, to the design of residential, commercial, and institutional buildings. His art has appeared in several venues around New England and he has led the design of numerous civic and institutional projects regionally and worldwide. He is currently a Full Time Lecturer in Architecture at Northeastern University.

Laura Wulf

Etched Color Photograms

"When photography was invented in the mid-1800's, it effectively freed painters from the responsibility of representation and paved the way for the modern exploration of painting materials and of the painting process. Photography today finds itself in a historically parallel moment, due to the development of digital photography. Some artists are currently investigating the fine line between fact and fiction, creating fictional "documentary" images, while others are exploring how photographic materials can be used, other than for strictly reproductive purposes.

This work reconciles the technology and the mediated experience of making a photograph with the tactility and the immediacy of making a drawing. First, in the darkroom, I expose the paper multiple times, as a photogram, without the use of a negative. Then, back in the studio, I scratch with a sharp tool or sandpaper directly into the emulsion of the paper.

I was involved with photography long before I began to draw, but when I encountered drawing I discovered a new kind of engagement with, and a deeper understanding of, the creative process. The compelling question for me became could I work more directly with photographic materials or would I have to start all over with a new medium? This body of work is the result of finding a question worth asking.

The work explores the color potential of chromogenic photo paper, serendipity in a completely dark room and mark-making on an unforgiving surface. Each piece is unique and expands the notion of what a photograph can be-not simply a reproduction of something that already exists but an object in and of itself, something completely new.

When I first started making this work in the late 1990s the pieces were a celebration of the processes that I encountered daily as a printer in a color darkroom. With the emergence of digital technologies, many color darkrooms have closed and this work has become more difficult to produce, adding a new layer of elegy to the work."

Laura Wulf’s first visit to Provincetown was in the summer of 1963, 3 months before she was born. She returned to the Cape as a teenager to work for a few summers and once she left New York and landed in Boston, the Outer Cape continued to draw her back. The sand and the sea and the stripers run in her blood stream.

She received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1996. Her work has been shown in Boston at the Green Street Gallery, the Barbara Krakow Gallery, the DeCordova Museum, Gallery Kayafas, the Hallway Gallery and 13Forest. In New York City she showed with the Foley Gallery. Website.

Jennifer Moller

Gretchen

"This animation work was made as I thought about the complex psychological relationship one has to oneself. It is also a face-to-face look at striving and an acknowledgment of personal and societal cultural conditioning toward competing.

I am an interdisciplinary artist working in both traditional and digital mediums. I especially like to make drawings and photographs and then animate them. My childhood love of drawing has continued to this day. While working as a professional photographer and later as a videographer, I have continued to pursue personal work and exhibit when possible. I created several video festivals including, installation, video projection, and public engagement. I exhibited an installation video work entitled seas in multiple solo shows including one at the Cynthia Reeves Gallery, Chelsea, NY in 2009, and most recently at AMP Gallery earlier this year. Currently seas is in the permanent collect of the Hood Museum at Dartmouth University.

After graduating from Maine College of Art in 2003 I started teaching as an adjunct professor in at the Art Institute of Boston. My own interdisciplinary nature allowed me to teach in three departments, illustration, animation, and foundations. In my role of art educator I have been able to share knowledge, including the creative use of digital tools and some of my interest in philosophy concepts that ground art. I continue to teach at various schools and universities today.

I have been fortunate in winning a few awards for my artwork including, an MCC grant in film and video in 2005. Other honors include an invitation to teach as an Artist In Residence for a semester at the Institute for American Indian Art, in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2010.

Born a twin, I continue to enjoy working in a collaborative framework and I have partnered with the sculptor and woodworker Beth Ireland. We have joined in on multiple adventures; with a special love for social art action projects. We co-founded, Turning Around America and have worked together to share our interest in hand making and our belief that art empowers people. This collaborative work has taken us to Guatemala and across the United States. We had a successful fundraising project in January of 2013 to raise money to build a mobile art studio. We built Sanctuary this summer and plan to finish it this fall. We hope to travel to art centers, museums, and to the places where people do not get exposure to art. Beth will be pulling my 2D studio, Sanctuary with her 3D studio van." Website.

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