WALK THE LINE: Curated by Michelle Joan Wilkinson
School 33 Art Center is pleased to present Walk the Line, curated from our Annual Call for Artists by Michelle Joan Wilkinson, curator for the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture. The eight artists included in this juried exhibition work with line, loops, links, frames, containers, covers and other forms that define space and shape while suggesting a shared experience. Robert Frost wrote in his 1914 poem, “Mending Wall,” ”…we meet to walk the line and set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go.” This exhibit presents fences, borders and boundaries that are visual, physical and emotional and explores the ways artists engage these themes that are at once about distancing, divorcing and delineating and sometimes or oppositely about intimacy, connection and interchange.
Artists: Mary Anne Arntzen, Christina Barrera, Nancy Bruce, Michelle Carollo, Jeanne Heifetz, Artemis Herber, Erika Kim Milenkovic, Jordi Williams
Christian Parks: Recent Works
Upstairs Members Gallery
Christian Parks transcends the banality of simple, familiar objects such as easels, notebook paper and cinder blocks by manipulating their forms, experimenting with color and altering their scale and proportions. By visually isolating these forms from their original context and placing them within the white walls of the gallery, his brightly colored and playful sculptures and paintings transform the mundane and evoke a sense of humor and wonder.
Lauren Nikolaus and Becca Pad: A Captive Behavior
Artists Lauren Nikolaus and Becca Pad collaborate in this architectural installation that explores the manipulation of space and its influence on perceptions of reality. A staircase wraps around the perimeter of the room, implying a clear path to visitors. The structure ascends to its summit halfway; then leads back down to the entrance in a slow decline. Subtle changes in the rhythm of the stairs counteract the familiarity of this autonomous activity, forcing participants into a greater awareness of the discrepancies between their actions and anticipations. By altering and overtaking the architecture of the Project Space at School 33 Art Center both form and function alludes to the way constructed spaces affect the unconscious mind.
