Courtesy of King Street Gallery.Artist Talk: Thursday, March 9 from 1:15pm to 2:15pm
The King Street Gallery at Montgomery College presents A Pair of Pairs, an exhibition of works by Michael Kellner, Alexandra Robinson, Dave Kube, and Janet Olney. The exhibition will run from Feb 20 – April 7, 2023. An artist talk will be held via zoom on Thurs, March 9 from 1:15 – 2:15 EST. For details on how to attend the artist talk, visit https://www.montgomerycollege.edu/special-programs/arts-institute/index.html.
This exhibition explores artistic partnerships by presenting a pair of artists working in pairs. Checks and Balances is an ongoing, mail art project by Alexandra Robinson (Austin, TX), and Michael Kellner (Columbus, OH) that began in 2015. Both Robinson and Kellner are academics, married to people outside academia and the art world, and parents. The project developed as a way to address the multiple roles each play in their respective lives, and as a commitment to keep artmaking an active part of their identity.
The mailed works are on paper, each 8.5 inches x 11 inches. One side of the paper is a drawing, while the other, a letter. The drawings address a wide variety of subject matter from abstract minimalism to realistic representations of Barbie dolls. The letters are often personal in nature, addressing the way their different identities cannot be neatly compartmentalized. At times, the works reflect this too, as the drawing bleeds through to the letter side, or the paper is perforated.
Dave Kube (Lancaster, PA) and Janet Olney (Baltimore, MD) met in 2017 at the Vermont Studio Center, and realized interesting visual and conceptual connections between their work. Rupture is the working title for a collaborative exhibition that explores the potential of disruption to create an opening or surge in their creative practices. Viewing rupture through the lens of experimentation, Kube and Olney break from previous ways of making and allow disruption to be a space for innovation. It allows them to work in a way that feels reflective of a time indicative of continual ruptures in the works; a practice that connects to the collective trauma and renegotiation to which we have all become accustomed. They will be engaging in conversations that inspire connections, shared visions, and adaptations in their individual bodies of work to create a visual dialog in the gallery.
About the Artists
Alexandra Robinson is a visual artist who uses language and symbols in her creative practice. She grew up in the military with her immediate family (an intersection of Mexican and Jewish heritage) and has lived all over the world; because of the semi-transient nature of moving every two years she has a longing for place and identity and explores these themes in her work. Through the use of Morse code, flag semaphore and the flag form Robinson appropriates symbols of American exceptionalism informed by her upbringing and familiarity with military family life, American ideals and an attraction to language and meaning. The work conjures ideas of nation, place, power, and identity and her own interest in what it means to be a Mexican-American woman without language that is directly reflective of how generations of her family internalized what it means to be American.
She earned a BA at the University of Saint Mary in Sociology and an MFA in 2D studies from the University of Cincinnati. She has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions, some recent selections include Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City; Salina Art Center, Salina; Lawndale Arts Center, Houston; The Contemporary, Austin and Women and Their Work, Austin. Robinson is a Professor of Art at St. Edward’s University in Austin where she lives with her husband and two daughters.
Michael Kellner makes drawings and sound pieces by pulling apart the written scores of J.S. Bach and then putting them back together in systematic ways. He is inspired by iterative practices, graphic notation, and contemporary pop and avant-garde music. Additionally, he researches in the areas of care ethics, perception, and creativity, striving to not only think about what it means to bring something new into the world but under what conditions the new is allowed to flourish. Finally, he also maintains a collaborative mail art project with Alexandra Robinson (Austin, TX) called Checks and Balances. He lives with his wife and two children in Columbus, Ohio, and is the Director of the CORE First Year program at the Columbus College of Art & Design.
Dave Kube is a visual artist, professor, and scholar who has spent over 15 years researching and creating work based around structures of power, marginalized populations, sexuality, and gender. Kube has participated in numerous panels and talks relating to LGBTQA+ identities, histories, and visual arts. He has juried and curated numerous exhibitions related to sexuality and identity. His visual research has been shown in numerous exhibitions aligned with social justice and queer themes throughout the country including Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Chicago, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, California, and Florida. Kube has received various awards and grants including best in show at the William Way Community Center in Philadelphia and a fellowship grant at the Vermont Studio Center residency. He earned his MFA degree in Photography from Tyler School of Art. Kube is an Associate Professor of Photography at Bloomsburg University.
Originally from Boston, MA, Janet Olney received her BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and her MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting (MICA). She is the recipient of an MSAC Individual Grant, the Henry Walters Traveling Fellowship, and a Marcella Brenner Grant for Faculty Research. She was a resident at the Vermont Studio Center and the Digital Foundation Residency. Her recent projects include an installation at 355 Pod Space, VisArts in Rockville, MD and a solo exhibition at Martha Spak Gallery in Washington, DC. She has created immersive installations for the Facebook AIR program in Washington DC, and the MICA Juried Faulty Exhibition curated by John Ros. Currently, her work is included in “Abstraction,” a four-person exhibition at C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore, MD. She lives and works in Baltimore and teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
About the King Street Gallery
The King Street Gallery’s exhibitions compliment the academic programs of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Montgomery College Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus. The gallery is on the ground floor of The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Arts Center on the west side of the Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus. The center is located off Georgia Avenue at 930 King Street. Parking is available in the West Campus Garage, located immediately behind the center. For more information, visit http://cms.montgomerycollege.edu/arts-tpss/exhibitions/.
Gallery hours are
- Monday – Friday: 8am to 5pm
Admission is free and open to the public.
The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Arts Center is located at 930 King Street, Silver Spring, MD.
