Saranac Art Projects

Installation Shots:

Entry to Space.  Gaylen Hansen, Man with Seven Fish
and Hardy Reel Collection.

Russell Chatham, Rain, Collection of John and Minette Broschofsky

Jeff Mishler, 6.5 Ft.

Gaylen Hansen, Fisherman Facing Fish.
Courtesy of Linda Hodges Gallery, Seattle, WA.

Installation Shot, Flyrods with Heidi Oberheides, Untitled.






Installation Shot, Heidi Oberheide's drawings with Gaylen Hansen Painting.






Russell Chatham, Lithographs.

Release: The Art of Angling in the American West

Gaylen Hansen, Man and Seven Fish, Oil on canvas.  Courtesy of Linda
Hodges Gallery, Seattle, WA

Saranac Art Projects is pleased to announce the opening of Release:  The Art of angling in the American West on September 17th, 2008.  The exhibition will run from September 17th through October 25th, 2008.  The exhibition looks at the tradition of art and angling in the West. 

The works of art include paintings by Russell Chatham, Gaylen Hansen, and Heidi Oberheide.  Each artist utilizes their relationship to the land, water, and environment to create works that both reflect their experience and the inherent beauty of the land.  The exhibition also includes photographs by Jeff Mishler, a veteran Oregon Steelhead Guide, who has photographed and fished in Scotland, Ireland, Russia, B.C, and Oregon.  His photographs have been published in various fly fishing magazines for the past fifteen years.

The exhibition also has a collection of antique Hardy Fly Reels, dating from 1850 through 1930.  Each reel shows beautiful craftsmanship while having a practical application.  Hand crafted fly rods by C.F. Burkheimer Rod Company of Washougal Washington and Sweetgrass Rod Company of Twin Bridges Montana, are included in the exhibition.  Each company is considered to be the best in hand build fly rods by craftsman who are a disappearing work force. 

 A sound installation, Upstream, has been provided by Charles Lindsay photographer of the Upstream Book.   Upstream was collaboration between Charles Lindsay and Thomas Mcguane to combine the power of text with the images of fishing to create awareness around the beauty of angling along with the tradition of it.  The sound piece is of Thomas McGuane reading the text from Upstream with layers of the sounds of rivers, eagles, bears, grass, and wind over laid into the work.

Saranac Art Projects is a non-profit gallery open and free to the public to establish, explore, and support contemporary visual art and culture.  Join us the first Friday of every month for first Friday or visit us Wednesday through Saturday eleven-thirty to five-thirty.  Saranac Art Projects is located at 25 W. Main Street, Spokane, Washington.  99201. 

New Exhibit: Release, The Art of Angling in the American West

Abandon: The Work of Jim Hodges and Storm Tharp

Installation Shots:

Entry to Saranac Art Projects

Jim Hodges sculpture and Storm Tharp untitled work on paper in front room

Jim Hodges, Lucky, C Print and Children's Study Guides

Storm Tharp Bather II and Silent Movie drawings with Jim Hodges Nothing.

Storm Tharp Bather II (Courtesy of PDX Contemporary Art)  and Jim Hodges Nothing. (Courtesy of Greg Kucera and Larry Yocum)

Storm Tharp, Silent Movie I and IV.  (Courtesy of PDX Contemporary Art)

Jim Hodges, Untitled, (For Creative Time) print.  (Courtesy of Jundt Art Museum)

Jim Hodges, Love (Wall) and Really, print in memory of Felix Gonzales Torres. (Double sided print on table.)

Jim Hodges, Untitled, (Love) C Print. 

Heidi Arbogast, Digtal Print.

Heidi Arbogast, Digtal Prints.

Heidi Arbogast, Digital Prints.

Heidi Arbogast, Vintage Paper, wood, and paint.

I'd Go East: by Jen Graves

 For The Stranger:  Saturday, July 19th, 2008

It is entirely our luck that the artist Jim Hodges was born in Spokane (in 1957). It means that his work keeps finding its way back here to Washington. Last summer, he was the anchor of the Tacoma Art Museum group show Sparkle Then Fade. That exhibition included his intense, simple Coming Through (seen above), which I wrote about at the time.

Jim Hodges’s 1999 Coming Through is the beating heart of the show. It’s a grid of naked lightbulbs of all types, struggling not to burn out as the exhibition wears on. They generate a cloud of heat along with the various colors of light—golden, cold marble, orange coil. Coming Through might refer to something otherworldly, or maybe it’s simply the longing sensation of hoping not to be disappointed.

So it was with great joy that I got a press release today announcing a Hodges-Storm Tharp show this summer in Spokane, of all places. Seems that last fall, a new nonprofit contemporary art gallery opened in Spokane called Saranac Art Projects. It’s run by Megan Murphy, an accomplished abstractionist whose work has grabbed me every time I’ve seen it (I think the last time was at Maryhill Museum!).

Here’s the skinny:

Abandon: The Work of Jim Hodges and Storm Tharp

Saranac Art Projects is pleased to announce the opening of Abandon: The Work of Jim Hodges and Storm Tharp on Wednesday, July 16th. The exhibition will run from July 16th through September 6th, 2008. The exhibition highlights the relationship between two artists who have abandoned traditional means of making art to find their own process in the loss of tradition.

Tharp isn’t a connection I would have made with Hodges, but the more I think of it, the more interesting I think it might be. Also, as an adjunct to this main exhibition is a series of works by

Heidi Arbogast, an art educator at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane who studied with Felix Gonzalez-Torres. (FG-T and Hodges were close friends.) It all sounds worthwhile to me. I leave you with a Tharp (The Dalles, ink on paper from 2006).

Abandon: The Work of Jim Hodges and Storm Tharp

For Immediate Release

Abandon: The Work of Jim Hodges and Storm Tharp

Adjunct Exhibition: Heidi Arbogast

Saranac Art Projects is pleased to announce the opening of Abandon: The Work of Jim Hodges and Storm Tharp on Wednesday, July 16th. The exhibition will run from July 16th through September 6th, 2008. The exhibition highlights the relationship between two artists who have abandoned traditional means of making art to find their own process in the loss of tradition. Each artist finds meaning in their subject through their material choices. Through a rigorous process of material selection and the use of imagery or non-imagery, each artist finds a new way of conveying meaning and beauty.

Jim Hodges’, a Spokane native who lives and works in New York City, works hold a preponderance of innovation in the wide array of materials and processes that he engages. Often times such common-place materials as silk flowers or photographs are transformed by repetitive and thoughtful processes that lead to a poetic but accessible understanding of the more ephemeral moments of personal experience and the emotive powers imbedded in materials through memory and association.

Storm Tharp, a Portland based artist, utilizes materials from ceramics, to pen and ink drawings, to paintings. Storm finds that his work “work can be distilled in two distinctive points of interest. One would be the tradition of the hand made object and its inherent ability to reflect nature. This is often a technical aspect that imbues its own meaning and beauty into the subject. The subject is almost always ripped from pop culture, and reflects various attributes of contemporary and historical life.”

Heidi Arbogast, Art Educator at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture and artist, studied with Felix Gonzalez Torres, while living in New York. Mr. Torres was one of Jim Hodges best friends and fellow artists who changed contemporary art until his untimely death in 1996. Ms. Arbogast’s work at Saranac explores the beauty of everyday objects that are transformed through the digital process.

Saranac Art Projects is a non-profit gallery open and free to the public to establish, explore, and support contemporary visual art and culture. Join us the first Friday of every month for first Friday or visit us Wednesday through Saturday eleven to five-thirty. Saranac Art Projects is located at 25 W. Main Street, Spokane, Washington. 99201.

Abandon: The Work of Jim Hodges and Storm Tharp

Friday is day to see Don Fels!

 

What is a Trade? Don Fels and the Signpainters of India

Fels’ conceptual starting point for this exhibition was Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama’s 1498 voyage to Malabar, India, in search of a direct sea route for the spice trade. This exhibition explores the historic and modern-day legacy of that expedition more than 500 years later. What Is a Trade? Donald Fels and Signboard Painters of South India will be on view at Tacoma Art Museum September 13, 2008 through January 18, 2009. Organized by Rock Hushka, Curator of Contemporary and Northwest Art at Tacoma Art Museum, the exhibition opens May 2 at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture and Saranac Art Projects in Spokane and travels to the Hoffman Gallery at Lewis and Clark College in Portland January 21 through March 18, 2010.
In 2004 and 2005, Fels traveled to Kerala (formerly Malabar), India, as a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar, to work with local commercial signboard painters on a body of work that examines globalization in India and traces its roots to Vasco’s voyage. Most of the signboard painters had formerly worked as billboard painters—until recently, all billboards in India were hand-painted, but cheaper and more efficient inkjet printers are making the painters obsolete. In light of this trend, Fels and his collaborators created work in the style of traditional hand-painted billboards and Bollywood advertising. The bright colors and strong graphic narratives make visually arresting statements about the historic and contemporary effects of trade and globalization.
“Donald Fels has been creating complex bodies of work around the link between trade and culture for nearly two decades,” said Stephanie Stebich, Director at Tacoma Art Museum. “The collaborative and improvisational nature of the project challenges traditional understandings of artistic production and provides a forum for cultural exchange. His work is not about easy answers, but invokes multiple perspectives to investigate how global trade has evolved over the centuries to involve all nations and cultures.”
 “History is problematic precisely because it sits statically on the page,” Donald Fels says. “It is always more difficult to come by out on the street, but almost always more authentic and meaningful.”
    Fels earned a Bachelor’s in Art and American Studies from Wesleyan University, and a Masters of Arts in Education with Highest Honors from City University of Seattle where he was the Board of Governor’s Presidential Scholar. He also studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and the University of Washington. He has been a Fulbright Fellow in Italy and twice received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a grant recipient of the Jack Straw Foundation, Humanities Washington, the Ferguson Foundation, and Artist Trust. Over the past fifteen years, he has received multiple grants from the Washington State Arts Commission, the Seattle Arts Commission (now the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs), and the King County Arts Commission (now 4Culture).
    Fels has lived and worked in Fall City, Washington, since 1974, but he travels extensively doing research for his art. His work has been shown at galleries and museums around the world, including the Penang Museum in Malaysia, Bologna’s Museum of Modern Art, Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art, Seattle Art Museum, Bellevue Arts Museum, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle’s Center on Contemporary Art, Bank of America Gallery, and University of Puget Sound. The Washington State Arts Commission purchased a series of paintings he completed in South India for permanent installation at University of Washington in Tacoma. He is represented by Davidson Contemporary in Seattle.
What Is a Trade? Donald Fels and Signboard Painters of South India is accompanied by an illustrated eighty-page full-color catalogue of the same name, featuring essays by the artist; Greg Bell, Curator and Collection Coordinator for 4Culture in Seattle, and former curator at Tacoma Art Museum; and Samuel K. Parker, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at University of Washington Tacoma.