2001 Painting
Dennis Evans
Dennis Evans is widely known and recognized for his ambitious and comprehensive visual presentations and installations addressing issues of philosophy and religion, symbolism, and the origin and history of knowledge and language. Evans states that over the last 25 years he has "examined and questioned Man’s unquenchable curiosity about his universe and His passionate desire to give order and hierarchy to his observations."
Mark Takamichi Miller - 2001 Fellowship Recipient
Mark Takamichi Miller has developed a body of work described as raw, honest and singularly his own, a series of abstract paintings that deliver a passion that travels from painter to viewer in the form of an emotional charge. "I constantly test the viewer’s true affection by applying harsh elements subsumed in a sensual pleasure of paint. At the core, my work involves a pushing away of the viewer, while running towards them with open arms. Thus, I seek to find the viewers who will prove their commitment to stay with the work to unlock a slow tingle of visual pleasure."
Ken Kelly
Kelly sees painting as a special kind of language, one that forms bonds of communication between people in ways that are more intuitive and unconscious than that which we achieve with ordinary language. Kelly writes, "My work can reveal surprising links and connections between us as humans, and between the things around us."
Robert Yoder
Using remnants of highway signs, industrial debris and commercial advertisements, Robert Yoder cuts and re-joins these bits to formally compose sumptuously beautiful surfaces. "I investigate landscape as subject matter," says Yoder. "I assemble interpretations of cities and fields based on inspiration from overhead views, maps, city planning and architectural drawings. My paintings allude to places rather than describe them explicitly. Actual locations are secondary in my utopia; an optimistic landscape and the sense of place that it offers are what interest me."
2001 Sculpture
Cris Bruch - 2001 Fellowship Recipient
Cris Bruch produces sculpture that challenges ideas and social consciousness. He states, "In making art, I focus on the meanings within materials, processes, forms, and contexts. Repetitive processes are employed to arrive at forms that mark the passage of time. Particularly, I am interested in simple, unconscious, repetitive actions that accumulate and become significant in shaping space, altering our bodies, and forming our lives."
Pam Gazale
Over the last ten years, Pam Gazale has made sculpture using the mysterious, translucent white medium known as salt, the kind that is used for cow licks and found in common feed stores. Gazale is able to refine and smooth these blocks into elegant, pristine forms. She became intrigued with the importance of salt as an important commodity in researching her Middle Eastern roots and tracing trade roots through the Nile Valley. The result is a body of work that is realistic and figurative, a visual and conceptual means to distill the essential in life.
Doug Jeck
"Human Object" is the term that Doug Jeck prefers when defining his work. This term describes the "uncanny presence of the [artwork] and also refers to the focus of its content." Jeck’s figures explore the imperfect human experience. His figures are believable, but roughly balanced on the edge of viewer discomfort. But Jeck’s figures reveal the vulnerability, fragmentation and broken-ness of the human body and psyche, while simultaneously celebrating resilience, the power to adapt, and most of all—optimism and hope for healing. Viewers are often moved in quiet contemplation of the human condition.