The Evolve Urban Arts Project presents the second of two exhibitions exploring the intersection between visual arts, architecture and nature. Nature Transforms features the work of painter Jessica van Brakle, photographer Wess Brown and a site-specific installation by mixed-media artist Alex Zealand.
With a nod to print and television media (Life After People; The World Without Us), Nature Transforms will examine the unique ways in which three Washington, DC-based artists explore the oppositional forces of the natural world and manmade architecture. The exhibition provides, through several artistic mediums, a view of what the urban landscape might look like if nature reasserted itself and claimed predominance over the land.
Jessica van Brakle’s current body of paintings explores these opposing forces through slick use of geometric architectural patterns overlaid with a latticework of plant life and other natural materials. According to the artist, her work features, “the balancing of familiar opposites: feminine with masculine, strong with fragile, industrial with organic.” In this exhibition’s context, the paintings, replete with construction cranes intertwined with botanicals, provide a studied, yet slightly whimsical vision of how manmade objects and the natural world might interact absent human intervention. Van Brakle received a BFA from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in 2007.
Wess Brown gives us visual proof of these diametric forces at work in his documentary photographs of Washington, DC’s old McMillan reservoir site. For the majority of the twentieth century, the McMillan reservoir served as the District’s source of clean water. Shuttered in 1985, the concrete and brick structures have deteriorated, making way for grasses and trees to shape the landscape. Brown has a long-standing fascination with capturing architectural forms on film and here his black and white images capture the battle between forces of nature and manmade structures. Brown’s straightforward style implies that, left unmolested, nature will continue to “take over” the old reservoir site. Brown’s education in photography includes study at the Corcoran College of Art + Design and the Smithsonian Institution.
Alexandra Zealand’s work is a study in the trans-formational use of found materials into “natural” forms which seek to overrun traditional borders and infest the gallery space. Zealand uses a variety of trash objects (burnt matches, grapefruit piths, used coffee filters) bound together to create ethereal sculptures noteworthy for their visually repetitive shapes. For Nature Transforms, Zealand is creating a site-specific installation that will inhabit the Project’s main space and confront the viewer with an impression of what the Pierce school building would look like should it be left to battle nature on its own. Zealand received an MFA in sculpture from the Pratt Institute in 2003.
Nature Transforms will run through July 22. The Project space is located in the Pierce School Lofts at 1375 Maryland Avenue, NE, in the H Street Arts and Entertainment District. Hours for the Project are:
Gallery Hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday: 1-7pm, Tuesday and Thursday: 1-4pm and Saturdays: 11am -2pm For further information, visit https://art.evolvedc.com.
Capitol Hill Arts Workshop Hosts Hands of Time Exhibit by Leslie Schwing July 17 through August 9, 2010
| ART OPENINGS | Opening Reception: Saturday, July 17, 2010 from 5:00pm to 7:00pm The Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW) presents the exhibit Hands of Time by local artist Leslie Schwing opening on Saturday, July 17, 2010 from 5:00-7:00 p.m. The exhibit features watercolors, pastels, and etchings, from figurative urbanscapes...
Interactive H Street – A Pop-Up Public Art Project
| CALLS FOR ENTRY |DEADLINE: Monday, JULY 12, 2010 at 10AM+++++++++++++++++Note DCCAH website keeps changing the deadline time for Monday; It not states 10AM+++++++++++++++++EDITOR'S NOTE: East City Art just found out about this proposal as we went to publish. The DCCAH put this proposal out very quickly and has only...
Industry Gallery Presents Getting to Now- Pathways to 21st Century Design July 10 – August 7, 2010
| ART OPENINGS |Opening Reception: Saturday July 10th 6-8 pmIndustry Gallery will open "Getting to Now - Pathways to 21st Century Design", July 10, 2010, 6-8PM, with a dozen works by nine designers, including the Design Miami/Basel Designer of the Future Nacho Carbonell, and internationally renown designers Fernando and Humberto...
G Fine Art Presents: Karen Yasinsky I Choose Darkness July 10 – August 7, 2010
| ART OPENINGS |Preview and Q & A on Friday July 9 at 7pmOpening Reception: Saturday July 10th 6-8 pmI Choose Darkness realizes the possibilities of stop-motion animation and puppetry to gratify and reflect on social interaction, sexual repression, and the manipulation of narrative. The show, composed of three films,...
City Gallery First Annual Regional Juried Competition
| CALLS FOR ENTRY |Time is running out to submit for the First Annual City Gallery Regional Juried Competition. The show will be judged by noted Washington artist and gallerist, Jack Rasmussen. Rasmussen is currently Director and Curator of the American University Museum.Accepted work will be exhibited at City Gallery...
Conner Contemporary Presents ACADEMY 2010 10th Annual MFA/BFA Invitational July 10 – August 23, 2010
| ART OPENINGS |Opening reception: Saturday, July 10th: 6 to 8pm Conner Contemporary Art presents ACADEMY 2010, the ten year anniversary of their annual invitational survey of outstanding work by MFA/BFA students in the Washington/Baltimore area.Exhibition founder and curator, Jamie Smith, Ph.D. invited the following 15 artists to participate: Calder Brannock,...