Saranac Art Projects

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