Amy Wike, Portrait of 2015, 2016, 32″h x 33″w x 4″d (between 5-9″ each), Yarn. Courtesy of VisArts..
Opening Reception and Artist Talk: Friday, October 28 from 7pm to 9pm
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Amy Wike, My name is, 2015, yarn, graph paper, 32 x 12 inchesThis work comprises the phrase “My name is” translated into
Morse code in the 50 most spoken languages, where
one stitch = one beat and one vertical row = one language. Courtesy of VisArts.
Amy Wike
This is a sentence
Common Ground Gallery, VisArts
Opening Reception and Artist Talk: Friday, October 28 from 7pm to 9pm
Amy Wike’s work plays with the ideas of translation, interpretation, and the complexities of language. In this body of work, Wike takes small nuances of speech—turns of phrase, words that have multiple meanings, and the varying ways we interpret them—and abstracts them beyond recognition by translating them into Morse code and knitting the transcription row by row with yarn. The resulting amorphous shapes act as visual representations of the intricacies of communication. No matter your language of origin, the viewing experience is equal.
Wike aims to create a space where visitors are challenged to think about language in a way they aren’t used to experiencing it; visually, but also tactilely—by using the knit and purl stitches to represent sounded and silent beats respectively in Morse code, the works are given a braille-like surface.
About the Artist: Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and raised in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, Wike earned her degree in Marketing and Entrepreneurship Management at the University of South Carolina, with a minor in Art History. She moved to Washington, D.C. to pursue a career in the arts, which led to her current position in the communications department at a museum in Washington, D.C. Wike’s current artwork explores visual representations of the intricacies of communication. https://www.wpadc.org/artist/amy-wike
Lillian Bayley Hoover, Ostend, 2016, oil on panel, 12 x 36 inches Courtesy of Goya Contemporary Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland. Courtesy of VisArts.Lillian Bayley Hoover
For the Moment
Gibbs Street Gallery, VisArts
Opening Reception and Artist Talk: Friday, October 28 from 7pm to 9pm
Lillian Bayley Hoover’s recent paintings are compelling glimpses of ordinary, overlooked, and awkward places. Pieces of sky and architecture wedge up against one another. The air seems magically suspended in a state of absolute stillness and quiet. The world in Hoover’s compositions is represented and abstracted, on the brink of change, but strangely static. The paintings bear the histories of singular moments. They are evidence of slow, careful looking at anything, anywhere, anytime.
About the Artist: Lillian Bayley Hoover’s paintings explore the banal, awkward, overlooked, and imperfect elements of our material environment. Recent solo exhibitions include Edges and Allowances at Honfleur Gallery (2016), Rapport at Goya Contemporary (2015), and Borders at Loyola University (2014). Her work has appeared in group exhibitions at venues such as School 33 and Creative Alliance (Baltimore, Maryland), the Delaware Art Museum (Wilmington, Delaware), and the Keisho Art Association (Aichi, Japan). In 2015, Hoover was awarded a full fellowship to participate in a residency at Vermont Studio Center, and she won the Bethesda Urban Partnership’s Trawick Award in 2012. She has been selected as a semifinalist for Baltimore’s Sondheim Prize on five occasions. Hoover has received many other honors, including the Bethesda Young Artist Painting Award, three Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, and a grant from Philadelphia’s Center for Emerging Visual Artists, which allowed her to conduct research and photograph in Istanbul, Turkey. Her work has twice appeared in New American Paintings and was selected for the cover of the 69th issue. Hoover earned her BFA from the University of North Carolina, Asheville and her M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She currently teaches drawing and painting courses at the Maryland Institute College of Art, University of Maryland, and Towson University.
Michael Sastre, The White Horse, oil on canvas, 14 x 36 inches. Courtesy of VisArts.Michael Sastre
Collision/Collusion: A Personal Underground
Kaplan Gallery, VisArts
Opening Reception and Artist Talk: Friday, October 28 from 7pm to 9pm
Michael Sastre’s paintings capture the tense duality of the landscape as a sublime natural phenomenon and as a remote, inaccessible site for illicit activities. Paradise-like marshes and riverways set the scene for nefarious characters who arrive and depart from astonishingly beautiful, natural areas. His recent paintings reference a parallel economy where ordinary life collides and colludes with a subculture of smuggling activities. Research for the artist’s work involves a great deal of archeological exploration through found imagery, metal scraps, and observation. The paintings operate in a strange liminal state between fact and fiction. Sastre’s work delves into the tension and beauty of remote, inaccessible areas. He offers an extraordinarily satisfying, humorous, and lush visual path through this contested territory.
About the artist: Michael Sastre has broadly exhibited across the United States including 22 solo exhibitions. His works are included in both private and public collections. He is the recipient of a State Arts Council Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts award. He currently divides his time between Derwood, Maryland and Miami, Florida. Sastre’s studio is located in the Annex building of Washington ArtWorks in Rockville, Maryland.
VisArts Gallery Hours:
- Wednesday & Thursday: 12 – 4pm
- Friday: 12 – 8pm
- Saturday & Sunday: 12 – 4pm
Exhibitions are always free and open to the public.
VisArts at Rockville is located three blocks from the Rockville Metro station at 155 Gibbs Street, Rockville, MD. For information, please visit www.visartscenter.org or contact Susan Main at (301) 315-8200 ext. 110 or [email protected].
