2012 Painting
Gala Bent
I am deeply interested in the way that pictures and stories are used to transcend the physical into a world that is felt-more-than-seen, passed between us by means of sloppy but miraculous languages. In my most recent bodies of work, I have consciously let the personally intimate and the geologically massive collide, working from the idea of critical mass. I think about closed systems expressing their limits by explosions or expulsions...escape valves for built-up tension. Collapse can be a terrifying thing, but I also note the ecstatic nature of other expulsions--birth, for example. An emphasis on hybridity and mysterious borders presides. Mountains become sentient characters, heaving their masses into signs and tears--emotionally volcanic. Plants mold themselves into figurative suggestions, rocks slobber and pose."
Gala Bent is a drawing-centric painter, working most often on paper, but also on walls for site-specific projects, and in collaboration with other artists and musicians. Gala received a BFA in Painting from Bail STate University in 1997, and an MFA in Visual Art from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo in 1999. She has been the recipient of a variety of grants and awards, including the GAP grant through Artist Trust, CityARtist projects and the 4Culture indivudual Artist grant. Gala is currently represented by G. Gibson Gallery in Seattle.
Cynthia Camlin
"For several years, my work has reacted to icebergs, glaciers and remote environments, using painting, drawing, printmaking and video. Bridging landscape and abstraction, my work uses chance procedures and traditional painting techniques to imagine water, ice, and earth--from crystalline patterns at the microscopic level to the formation and destruction of immense landscapes. Interpreting weather, erosion, cracking, melting through visual metaphor, the work dramatizes the disintegration of a landscape as if it were a disturbing dream. Scenes of geological change in remote places become imbued with emotional weight."
Cynthia Camin studied painting as a post-baccalaureate student at Yale University and received her MFA in Painting and drawing from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000. Previously she received a BA from Duke University in English Literature and Art and an MA from the University of Virginia in Religious Studies. Camlin's work has been shown in numerous national and regional group and solo exhibitions. In 2003 she was nominated for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award. She is currently Assistant Professor of Painting at Western Washington University.
Jeremy Mangan
Jeremy Mangan's paintings begin somewhere, nowhere, in the American West. They are set in real places that don't exist. They operate in a landscape where myth must contain fact, where promise and beauty continually grapple with melancholy and isolation. And in this landscape people have found reason to be busy, the results of which are stages for our consideration. In his work, Mangan accesses a range of regional categories and clichés including vernacular architecture, Manifest Destiny, the outdoor lifestyle, legends of the Wild West, even ecological concerns--but always from the flank, and without verdict.
Jeremy Mangan is a painter who lives and works in Fife, Washington. He is represented by Linda Hodges Gallery in Seattle, and J Go Gallery in Park City, Utah. Mangan's honors include a Fulbright Fellowship, a Jacob Javits Fellowship, the Foundation of Art Award by the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, as well as a nomination by Artist Trust for the Arts Innovator Award.
Stacey Rozich - 2012 Fellowship Recipient
"My work has evolved into a visual exploration of myth and folklore as it relates to ones own personal narrative. Looking at a broad spectrum of cultural references, I build vignettes that explore different human conditions that speak to a large audience through striking and familiar imagery. In the spirit of many traditional folktales, I choose to depict figures that recall one's own relationship with the mortal realm and the natural world that can reveal the spiritual tension of existence--man's search for meaning in the face of an uncertain fate."
Stacey Rozich is a Seattle-based artist and illustrator. She studied illustration at California College of the Arts as well as Design at Seattle Central Creative Academy. Her work has shown in galleries in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Milwaukee and Berlin. Rozich recently debuted her artwork on film for the Fleet Foxes' stop-motion animated music video "The Shrine/An Argument." In addition to gallery shows, she has worked with Sub Pop Records, Random House Publishing, Williamette Weekly, The Stranger, K. Records, Southern Lord, and more.
2012 Open Medium
James Coupe
James Coupe is an installation artist who uses computers, video and networks to investigate the relationship between voyeurism and exhibitionism. His work is often automated, systematic and algorithmic, and derives narratives from a variety of sources, including surveillance, film, literature, Facebook and YouTube. He was the first PhD graduate of the Digital Art and Experimental Media program at the University of Washington, where he is now an Assistant Professor. His work has been exhibited throughout Europe and America, and he has received numerous awards and commissions, including from Creative Capital, Artist Trust and the Mellon Foundation.
Eirik Johnson - 2012 Fellowship Recipient
'My projects address the intersections of environmental, social and economic issues, reflecting a deep interest in the improvised connection between communities and the surrounding natural world. My work combines photography's capacity to create what Walker Evans called 'lyrical and transcendent documents' with various modes of visual storytelling from published books to experiential mixed media installations. Projects often involve collaborations with writer, scientists, musicians, and community-based organizations."
Eirik Johnson is a photographic artist based in Seattle, WA. His work has been exhibited at spaces including the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Institute of contemporary Art in Boston, and the Aperture Foundation in New York. He has received awards including a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in 2009, the Santa Fe Prize in 2005, and a William J. Fulbright Grant to Peru in 2000. Johnson's work is in the collections of institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Seattle Art Museum, and the George Eastman House. Johnson is represented in Seattle by G. Gibson Gallery and teaches photography at Cornish College of the Arts.
Lead Pencil Studio (Annie Han | Daniel Mihalyo)
Korean-born Annie Han and US-born Daniel Mihalyo have been collaborating as Lead Pencil Studio since 2002, working in the area of installation architecture and sculpture at the architectural scale. With a professional degree in architecture and training in ceramics, photography, sculpture and drawing, Han and Mihalyo explore spatial conditions in the build environment, construction/demolition and properties inherent in architecture that influence human behavior.
Their artwork and installations have been exhibited at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, MassArt Boston, the Henry Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Boise Art Museum, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Temple Gallery, Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design (BC), Exploratorium Museum, the American Academy in Rome, Center on Contemporary Art, and the Prague Quadrennial. They are recipients of the Founder's Rome Prize for Architecture 2007/2008, Architecture League of NY Emerging Voice 2006 and Van Alen Institute New York Prize 2010.
Susie Lee
"As 'digitalness' further underscores our lives, my sensualist approach in new media is a needed voice. Distinguishing from art that exalts technology, my work is intimate and relational. When I ask how we connect meaningfully, in terms of time, value and space, I do so, not by rejecting or negating technology, but by immersing to the point that we're swimming in it, so the medium itself disappears. I work by two guiding principles: one, that any technology is not a separate additional layer, but intyrinsic to the core experience of the work, and two, that the technology is used to amplify and reflect, not distract from, the subtle, continually changing and intimate relationships between people."
Shortly after completing her Master of Fine Arts at University of Washington, Lee was recognized by the Seattle Weekly as the "2006 Emerging Artist of the Year." Following her first solo exhibition at Lawrimore Project in 2007, Lee was named "An Artist to Watch" by the national publication Artnews. Lee's work has been exhibited nationally, including at the Denver Art Museum, Denver, and the Blanton Museum of Art, Auston, and internationally in Italy (Galleria Tiziana Di Caro, Salerno, and Artefiere Bologna, Bologna), and at the Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, Korea. She was the winner of the 2010 Stranger Visual Art Genius Award, and the recipient of Portland Art Museum's Northwest Contemporary Art Award in 2011. She is represented by Lawrimore Project, Galleria Tiziana Di Caro, and Myers Contemporary.