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Weekly Blog

Welcome to Venison's Weekly Blog! Here you will find advice, show reviews, thoughts and short articles by the Venison Team. We welcome your input comments and thoughts in return! 
​Thanks for reading Venison Magazine!

Quarterly

Gathering: Artist Bernie Lubell

7/23/2017

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Abrams Claghorn Gallery
1251 Solano Ave, Albany, California 94706

​​Showing July 5 - August 31, 2017
Recption: Saturday July 15, 5 - 7 pm 
Artist Talk: Saturday August 12, 5 - 7pm





​www.bernielubell.com
Bernie Lubell's interactive artworks were first introduced to us in 2015. We were looking back on the year, sharing our favorite works. While he's lived in San Francisco for a number of years, his work has been shown locally and internationally, and has received varying number of awards, including the Guggenheim Artists Fellowship in 2011. We're delighted he has joined us for Gathering: A Venison Magazine Retrospective!
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Just in Case // pine and music wire // 7" x 6" x 2.5"
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Just in Case // pine and music wire // 7" x 6" x 2.5"

Artist Statement:

I make interactive installations that focus on the intersection of science and the arts -- but my work is adamantly low -tech. These installations use no computers or video or motors and are entirely powered by visitors to the show. As visitors work together to animate the mechanisms they create a theatre for themselves and each other. By requiring participation, touch and manipulation I get the audience to engage their bodies as well as their minds. As they play, participants tap into the vast reservoir of knowledge stored in each of their own bodies and they become active partners in constructing an understanding. The way that pieces move and feel and sound as you rock them, pedal, crank, press against and listen applies the kinesthetic comprehension's of childhood to the tasks of philosophy. 
 
The use of wood and ancient technologies to examine 21st century issues adds a disarming historical perspective to my enterprise. The pieces are funny, friendly and personal even as they tackle serious issues such as the nature of conscoiusness or the origins of life. The malleable woods I use are ill suited to be machines and yet they do work. Hovering at the line between working and not gives the mechanisms that tenuous yet tenacious character which mirrors control issues in our daily lives. And their very unlikeliness allows each installation to comment on itself. 
 
My work resembles three dimensional Medieval diagrams, mapping questions about our place in the universe. But these are maps of the incompleteness of our knowledge that call for participation and they are diagrams you may literally inhabit.

See the work!

gathering: a venison magazine retrospective
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Metafictions at State

2/16/2017

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“Metafiction” is form of writing in which the reader is made aware - either through the text or the character’s actions and interactions - that the text itself is the product of imagination. Lemony Snicket, the “narrator” in Daniel Handler’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events” who comments on how the story develops or advances, exemplifies metafiction. Through this literary device, the author, and the audience by extension, questions the relationship of fiction and reality and requires readers to consider the nature of storytelling itself.
In the cerebral, multi-disciplinary work of San Francisco-based artist Jana Rumberger, the relationship of fiction and reality and notions of control are examined through two bodies of work not previously exhibited. Now on view at State, Metafictions is open until March 25th. ​

Review by Roula Seikaly

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Walking into the gallery, the first piece I encountered is Home Sale Prices By Year 1971-2015, Median San Francisco, CA, Median California, Median United States (2017), which represents the series Data, Rumberger’s latest undertaking. Strung between a supporting column and the gallery’s eastern wall, the commissioned piece visualizes a data set using gray, gold, and yellow thread. Color choices are important to the artist, who noted in our email exchange that gold and yellow used in this piece reference popular and positive notions – “the golden state” and “gold rush” – commonly associated with California. Sourcing data points – average sale prices of homes in this instance – from various online sites as the raw material for her sculpture, Rumberger’s delicate creation portrays the indelicate reality that owning a home in the Bay Area is simply out of reach for all but the very rich. As an artist who was priced out of her studio space, the cool or impartial statistics with which she works are all too familiar. Further into the gallery, additional data visualizations such as Rape/Sexual Assault Against Intimate Female Partners in the US 1992-2013 publicly portray the personal horrors through which far too many women suffer privately.
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Directly opposite Rumberger’s threaded creation are four wall-based sculptures which, at first glance, suggest dioramas or mock schemes for potential installations, but they are not. The fantastical views, all representing the artist’s long term series Metafictions, are discrete objects. Home Sale Prices… is mirrored in the tiny display, its physicality perfectly matching the gallery layout. The artist emphatically asserts that the miniatures – and this applies across the spectrum of her practice – are works unto themselves, and that the overarching “metafiction” assignation is realized when the miniature and full-scale versions of the work are completed. Using metafiction as a grounding point, our attention is drawn to the objects on view, how they relate to and depart from one another in form and content, and ultimately the impermanence or fiction of exhibitions. ​
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Seeing Rumberger’s large and small pieces exhibited together satisfies a kind of desire, perhaps one akin to starting and completing a project. In this way, she neatly ties up what would otherwise be nagging experiential loose ends. But meeting desire’s needs is not guaranteed. After seeing small representations from her beautiful/chilling series The March Hare, I sought out – perhaps subconsciously – the piece’s larger pendant image. Hung at a distance from their tiny counterparts, these nearly life-sized paintings juxtapose popular notions of rabbits – fertility, sexuality, life – and death, here represented in eyes drawn from photographs of Civil War militia men. In this instance, my desire was satisfied. Conversely, what reads as incomplete, when either full-size or miniature versions of her data series installation or pieces from other painted series - Santa/President and Modernist Alchemy – are not accompanied by their complementary piece, a palpable cognitive lack is felt. ​
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Metafictions reveals the breadth and depth of artist Jana Rumberger’s creative practice, as well as the layers of philosophical and critical theory that inform her work. Moreover, the installation of activates desire and notions of control; specifically, a viewer’s want to see all of what springs from the artist’s fecund mind, and Rumberger’s insistence in controlling which portions of her work are seen and in what arrangement. It’s not the easiest exhibition around which to wrap our minds, but when we do, the payoff is absolutely worth the effort. ​
Metafictions 
State
1295 Alabama Street
San Francisco CA 94110​
Exhibition dates | February 11 – March 25, 2017
​Gallery hours | Tues - Sat 12 - 5pm
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Bestiario/Menagerie

1/16/2017

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San Francisco-based curator A.R. Vazquez-Concepcion untangles threads of history, knowledge production, and colonialism in Bestiario/Menagerie, a vibrant, 10-person group exhibition on view at Adobe Books Back Gallery through January 28.

Bestiario or “bestiary”, roughly translated, describes a compendium of animals – imaginary and real – that was bound in book or illuminated manuscript form. Dating to second century Greece, bestiaries reflected a desire to understand the natural and spiritual worlds through collecting, categorization, and comparison.

Review by Roula Seikaly

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Abdiel Segarra Rios // No hay colonia como la mia (There is no colony like mine) Me equivoque pero lo hice con amor (I made a mistake but I did it with love) // 2016
​Centuries on, cabinets of curiosities were amassed as Enlightenment thinking and imperialist expansion brought western Europeans into contact with worldwide civilizations. Through dedicated study of physical artifacts, it was believed, a civilization’s value could be assessed. The sinister footnote to that ambitious effort is, of course, that colonized societies were treated as foreign, as the other, and in need of “civilizing” through paternalistic intervention.
The artifacts that were assembled in personal and later, public curio collections, were regarded as representations of the unfamiliar, and knowledge derived from observation was passed generationally as authoritative. In Bestiario/Menagerie, the objects and the artistic practices that produce them reject containment and the purported “authority” of knowledge through provocative juxtaposition.

Vazquez-Concepcion makes the most of Adobe Books’ intimate gallery, spacing each object to hold its own and, when considered relationally, deliver a deeper and decidedly more troubling understanding when viewed together. ​​​​
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Lionel Cruet // Scatter Sky // 2013/17
Marcela Pardo Ariza’s “Dissident” (2016), in which a humorously unruly pencil line interrupts the banal familiarity of a Post-It note, is both funnier and more frightening next to Fernando Pintado’s “Non Nobis Domine Non Nobis” (Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us) (2016). Its title excerpted from a short Latin hymn that expresses humility and thanks for spiritual blessings, this four-panel charcoal and paint piece portrays crusading Knights Templar who waged multiple wars to reclaim Jerusalem from Muslim invaders. In this pairing, notions of rebellion expand and align an innocuous graphite mark and state-sanctioned terrorists bent on delivering apocalyptic violence in the name of Christianity.
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Fernando Pintado // Non Nobis Domine Non Nobis // 2016
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Marcela Pardo Ariza // Dissident // 2016
Stretching diagonally across the gallery, Santiago Insignares’ colorful biomorphic sculptures “Restriction”, “Implication”, and “Posthumous” (2016) address traumatic experiences and how memory enforces such events as mile markers in our lives. Without knowing that the meat of Insignares’ inspiration includes systematic massacre, displays of tortured bodies, and domestic violence, these sculptures might earn little more than a passing glance. Insignares interrogates authority’s unchecked abuses, and how knowledge is obscured to mask the gravest offenses.
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Mya Pagan_ // Monstrixt // 2017
Maria Guzman-Capron’s “El Tigre y Yo” (The Tiger and I) (2017), and Mya Pagan’s “Monstrix” (2017) recall the first bestiaries and later cabinets of curiosities as embodied versions of fantastical hybrid beasts, but with a subversive twist. Working with discounted fabrics, Guzman-Capron fashions a half-tiger, half-human sculpture that lounges atop a low plinth as though enjoying celebrity status. Mya Pagan offers a playful Pan-like creature revealed by a drawn curtain – again half human and half animal – covered in luxurious fur and crowned with flowers and horns. Engaging objects both, especially because their inclusion within this exhibitionary context points to the wholescale degradation colonized people – women in particular – faced as they were enslaved, displayed like circus attractions for lurid consumer satisfaction, and civilized (read: stripped of their individuality and autonomy) for their own good.
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Maria Guzman // Capron_El Tigre y Yo // 2017
The motley assemblage that is Bestiario/Menagerie demonstrates both the best and worst of human inclinations: curiosity is an evolutionary gift. Building knowledge through collecting, comparing, and analyzing has helped the human species amass a compendium more comprehensive than any bestiary or curio cabinet could contain. When knowledge, or presumed knowledge, is used to subjugate others, we lose our humanity. Through these objects and the juxtapositions they activate, the knots of history, knowledge production, and the ever-present danger of using it to exploit others begin to unravel.
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Paula Morales // Arqueologia Digital // 2017
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Maria Guzman-Capron // Black Sandals // 2015
Adobe Books
​Back Gallery


3130 24th Street
San Francisco CA 94110
​

Exhibition dates | Jan 7th - 28th 2017

Closing Reception | Jan 28th 6 - 9pm
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Weekly Listens

12/26/2015

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Listen Type: Podcast
Episode: Year End Round Up
Show: Congratulations Pine Tree

Listen
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We've got a new blog topic: what to listen to while you work in the studio. We've got some suggestions if you're looking and we welcome you, our loyal reader, to offer up suggestions of your own in the comments. Be it music, podcasts, or even a good Netflix series in the background, we want some good ear-worms to keep our brains creating.

I want to share with you a blog of podcasts out of our very own 'Bay Area' by Kate Rhoades and Maysoun Wazwaz. I couldn't believe I hadn't heard of them until now and I'm overwhelmed with the excitement to share their podcast. If you like to investigate art and culture with a light hearted and humorous nature and you have ears/speak English, I recommend giving this station a listen. They just won a grant from Southern Exposures and was voted the #1 arts and culture podcast in the Bay Area; feel like you've been missing out yet? Well you should!

Enjoy
 and let us know your thoughts in the comments!
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Holiday Spotlight: Amber Imrie-Situnayake & Adriana Villagran

12/12/2015

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In light of the Holiday Season, a time for friends and family to come together, we thought it was important for our readers to get to know who we are. Over the next few weeks, we'll be introducing to you the creators and contributors of Venison Magazine: the art publication run by artists for artists.

​Today, I'd like to introduce to you our Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Amber Imrie-Situnayake
​&
Lead Editor and Journalist, Adriana Villagran.

www.amberimrie.com, @amberimrie
​www.adrianavillagran.com, @adrimakesart


Amber Imrie-Situnayake

Amber grew up in the Ozark Mountains and it has undeniably had a significant influence on her work. She uses “historically craft based and domestically ripe materials,” such as wool, as mentioned in her artist statement, “to bring comfort to things that are in all honesty, not as pleasant as they initially seem.” Here, we touch basis with the artist and founder on her motivation for starting Venison Magazine.
​
What inspired you to launch Venison Magazine?
So this answer comes in a few parts. This is where I was coming from mentally: As a beginning artist, I had just left undergrad and I was finding it incredibly hard to "get out there and meet people." I was part of an art collective that I founded while still in school, but I was finding it difficult to meet new artists and bring more people on board. I just felt awkward and insincere in all my actions. I was intimidated by art openings. I grew up really poor and uncultured, so the gallery scene was about as far removed from a BBQ in Arkansas as you could get. Simply, I felt out of my element.
But then the Ah ha! moment: 
I was in the UK at a gallery space in Birmingham with my in-laws when I went into the gift shop area to find a magazine I could read on the plane home and I couldn't find anything that I was willing to buy. Most of the magazines were 70-90% advertising, and most of the work was outdated and safe. I couldn't find anything that was showing the kind of work that was even similar to the space I was standing in. So I thought, let’s start a magazine!
There are definitely some wonderful online magazines that are doing very similar things as Venison now, which is fantastic! I never started the company with dollar signs in my eyes, but I started it to build community and give a platform for emerging and pre-emerging artists who were making unusual, compelling, or risky work.
​"I never started the company with dollar signs in my eyes, but I started it to build community.."
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Amber in a piece from her Hum installation, 2015.
And then I thought, how does an artist dedicate themselves to their own work and the works of others? 
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​What kind of affect does writing about art have on your own creative processes?

This is such a great question, because it has a huge impact on my own work. It connects me with larger dialog about art, themes, and movements. Writing about art has made my work more relatable to others and less (directly) personal. Since I work as a scout for the magazine. I look at A LOT of artist websites, so my own site has vastly improved and become more user friendly. It's also given me a whole new perspective on the jurying process which has made my own rejections easier to swallow. The writing and editing aspect has improved my own writing. If you told my high school english teacher that I was working as an editor--she would bark with laughter. After I dropped out of high school, I asked her for a letter of recommendation for a job at McDonalds, she said "I'll have to tell them that you are bad at writing." Her opinion of me was astoundingly low. 
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Amber Imrie-Situnayake working on Nature Suit in her Studio. Photo Credit: Dave McHale
As a self-promoter, I like having the magazine; it relaxes the situation and allows us to have a real connection. Some of the relationships I've developed have grown into shows of my own work, while others haven't, but I have good relationships with a lot of spaces which is most important. ​I've also gained great interpersonal skills. Gallery openings and meeting curators and directors has become fun. Instead of freezing up and having no idea what to say, I have a million questions and am able to show the genuine interest I’ve always had. Now people don't assume I'm just another artist out to promote myself. Instead, I can be a person of press who is interested in what the organization is doing. That way there isn't so much pressure to promote myself. I also find that if I introduce myself as both an editor and artist, it puts the curator or gallery owner at ease. You can sense them tense up when they think they are being hunted down by an artist interested in their space. 

As a fiber and installation artist, you create large scaled, interactive works. Your most recent project, “Nature Suit” falls within that realm but brings new light to installation art. What were your driving forces for this project?

The Nature Suit is about how nature is sold to us as an idolized holy experience we must prepare for through products and technology.
​
So, I grew up off-the-grid in Newton County Arkansas. We lived over an hour's drive from the closest town. I didn't go to school, we didn't have much money, and I spent most my time in the woods by myself. Bugs and bug bites were a normal everyday aspect of life. I have large scars on both my knees from skinning them, and countless "marks of adventure" across my body. I never thought that my life was in anyway "cool" but rather, I was made fun of for being tomboyish and dirty. Now, I live in the Bay Area, where it is trendy to go hiking and be outdoors. Here, Hipsters & Yippies take hikes in their 200 dollar boots and Northface pants holding their hiking poles. 
They walk along groomed trails that wind through groves not 30 yards from civilization. Marine county, one of the wealthiest places, is also leading in outdoor living. The products marketed to them: sweat wicking ultra-light weight jackets, hiking poles, 'Fresh' scent bug sprays,  1,000 dollars a night "rustic glamping trip."

​It's so ridiculous how idolized an "authentic" interaction with nature has become and how far from "authentic" these trips and products make us from the reality of actually being in nature. 
So, that is the Nature Suit----the next step to making a product substitute for the "authentic adventure." A way to look like you've had adventures in nature without the hassle of going outdoors. It also highlights the aspects of being in nature that people try to avoid through buying all these products. As if bug bites and scars are the cool factor in our outdoor living trend. ​​
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Nature Suit ad Campaign, 2015


Adriana Villagran

Adriana, currently based in San Francisco, CA, is a visual artist who creates images that are very inviting and dare I say, delicious? Don't mistake me though, her works are not to be taken lightly. As you read on, you'll see why.
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Sweet Tooth, Oil on panel, 2014
My initial question is often, why and do you enjoy it? When I asked Adriana this, she mentioned she loved being introduced to artists. Artists she may not have been able to meet if it weren't for the Venison connection--or community---being built. She stated, "The most exciting part is finding artists across the globe struggling with the same existential questions that I am. It's very comforting, and quite an inspiration to keep moving forward. "

As Lead editor, I can imagine you’ve reviewed a ton of art! What do you find most important when it comes to interacting with fellow artists?
I would say the mode of dialogue is most important. That is, how I am interacting with the artist: is it a digital or face-to-face conversation. The personal in-studio conversations are joyfully awkward and ultimately richer than a digital conversation.
That is of course to be expected. You tend to get more of a grasp of what the artist's work is about because you can see it and smell it and you can ask questions right on the spot. Most of the interactions I have through Venison are digital though. We live in digital world now, that is the reality.

What's great about these type of interactions is that the artist has the time to reflect and put their best foot forward. They can take a breath and not stress out about saying the right thing at the right moment. It gives them an opportunity to really reflect and see things through another artist's eyes. I think that is a good moment for them, a moment for growth. So ultimately the mode of conversation decides the kind of interaction I have with each artist.

​I think podcasts are going to be a thing in the near future which is a whole other beast. I'm excited to see how that turns out
"... It gives them an opportunity to really reflect and see things through another artist's eyes." 
Both your paintings and sculptures entail great detail to depict a heavy message revolving around how women are perceived. When did you realize this was a subject to cover in your art?
It's actually a very clear moment that I started focusing on this subject matter. It was in late 2013 that I started working in a not-so-nice part of San Francisco that I really started to feel the burden of being a women in an urban environment. Burden is really not the right word for it. It is a much more complicated feeling than a single word can describe. But at that moment in my life, which was (and is) smack in the middle of my young naive adulthood, burden is the best word to describe what I was feeling. Here I was 23 years old and I became aware that a lot of my identity as a women had been force-fed to me by an overwhelmingly male perspective. This realization started to permeate into my art because it seemed like it was the only thing I had going that was really worth investigating. Two years later and my work is barely scratching the surface on such complex perceptions  
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Sticky Bun, Oil on panel, 2015
of women. Recently I have begun to really delve into women's magazines as a source of inspiration as they are so brilliantly laid out to manipulate the reader. They are jewels of inspiration for my work, the question now is how do I manipulate the imagery to say something more meaningful and bite back a bit. That is the really difficult part.
 "...the question now is how do I manipulate the imagery to say something more meaningful and bite back a bit."
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Under the Rose, colored pencil and pan pastel on paper, 2015
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Shroud, colored pencil on paper, 2015
The goals of Venison Magazine are apparent: to build a foundation where artists can meet, discuss and expose themselves to one another. Stop by next week to read about more of the artists contributing to Venison!
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Iconic Visions- Felicia Gabaldon @Campfire gallery

6/7/2015

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By Danielle Schlunegger

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While working as a panel and stretcher-bar maker at Faultline Artspace, I run into Felicia Gabaldon pretty often. I've been noticing her in the studio more often gearing up for her upcoming 2 person show, Blue Skies, opening June 13th at Campfire Gallery.  Gabaldon's work draws from the imagination, both a mythical and mystic part of human experience in the natural world. Her work is experienced through cultural and folkloric content, expressing the wonders of nature realized through iconic symbols and tradition. 
"Iconic Visions" is a series of paintings that call to mind a nostalgic illustration of the natural beauty and patterns of the American Southwest. These paintings narrate Felicia Gabaldon's story of her identity as an American Indian with both Spanish and Mexican heritage. Informed by utopian visions and typical representations of her homeland, Gabaldon's work represents a distant reverence of self-discovery, culture, and historical elements through romanticized desert landscapes and mythic figures.

Be sure to catch Felicia at her two person show, Blue Skies, with Larissa Grant at Campfire Gallery this Month. 
The opening of the show with a reception for the artists will be held on Saturday, June 13, 7-10 pm and the show runs June 10th through July 5th. 

Gabaldon is from Santa Fe, NM. She currently resides in Berkeley, CA and is a resident artist at Faultline Artspace in Oakland, CA.

You can check out more about Felicia on her website
feliciagabaldon.com
and on instagram @feliciagabaldon

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Chasing the Moon & Falling to Earth

5/10/2015

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A studio visit with Bryan Kring 
by Danielle Schlunegger

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On Bryan Kring's desk lay multiple twigs with birds and clouds on them. A pile of yellow balloons lay close by, the next piece to be attached on Escape Plan. Paper dragonflies dot the wall of his Oakland studio, where he hands me his prototype for Lunae Secutor- "... a moveable book in the form of a caterpillar specimen. On the lid is a specimen label with the insect’s name and the location of its collection. Folded into the underside of the lid is a fictional scientific account of this particular caterpillar species’ inability to metamorphose into a butterfly. As a solace for this loss it develops an attraction to the moon, which it passionately follows. When the wooden handle is turned the caterpillar 'walks' toward a paper moon that is illuminated by a hidden light."

"I looked up the coordinates where it was 'found'...It's in a desert, in the middle of no where." he says while I cradle the box in my hand. Driven by tiny wooden cams, the caterpillar wriggled around in its box. I began to think of this little paper insect as a strange immortal being out of a grecian legend, fated to keep chasing its lunar love long past any of our lifetimes. 

I set the prototype aside and walk into the other room as Bryan carefully pulled out some of his finished pieces from a suitcase. One after another I am handed beautifully constructed books and boxes: the story of a man who falls in love with a bear (which I recognized from the door knob of his studio); a fold out book telling the story of a man making due on the bottom of the sea when a floating circus woman comes to him in a shipping container; a diorama book of a sea monster terrorizing a ship.  Then he hands me a box with a dragonfly that shuddered around inside, avoiding the many human hands with broomsticks that might thawk it. The letterpress text speaks to an early memory of the death of the dragonfly, and the regret of the broomstick-wielding humans. 

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A bit of darkness and mystery comes through in each book. Each short story is a wonderful and a strange little vignette with exceptionally executed illustrations and moving mechanics. I was sucked into each box and its story. Each had its own kind of sweet melancholic humor, like the spaceman of The Fall, plummeting towards earth -- who, had he packed a sandwich, would have had time to eat it.

Keep an eye out for my full interview with Bryan Kring in Venison's Summer issue where i'll ask him about making multiples, moving mechanisms, and more about those coordinates that lead to the middle of the desert. 
You can see more of Bryan work on
 KringDesign.com and  through his Instagram @bryankring
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Founding A Magazine; How it's informed and forwarded my art practice.

4/12/2015

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Thought's and Reflections by Amber Imrie-Situnayake


One of the many things my art professors said to me at UC Berkeley was, "go to shows!" This was probably some of the best advice that was given to me, and one of the hardest to put into practice. 

I was one of the lucky, the few who was able to keep up a healthy studio practice after leaving the womb that is 'University'. This wasn't for lack of extreme forward planning. I had spent 5 years between high school and my graduate studies working "dead end jobs" before returning to education. 

So it's safe to say, that I knew what lied ahead for someone with a BA even from a good University. My magic 8 ball would say "outlook was bleak." I had to put into place a system that could help me avoid dropping the art practice I loved. In my junior year I started an art collective with my friends and we began to book group shows at gallery spaces and book shops throughout the city. This started my community and kept my spirits up.

My first year out I spent working as an after-school art teacher. During the week, I would spend from 6am-2pm in the studio before heading off to work. Then, I generally spent either Saturdays or Sundays lesson planning or making work in my studio (aka my living room). I essentially pretended I was still in school, making up deadlines for myself to keep the work flowing and getting shows at the few places I could.

It wasn't until a year and half after I left school that I started to go to shows. I started in the only manner I knew, to Saturday Stroll the First Friday galleries in Oakland. This was fun at first, but soon, I lost interest. I found the few galleries who showed compelling work and I was enjoying a good amount of what was being shown, but I needed more. While Saturday's calmer aspect let me talk to curators and owners, I was alone. I didn't have a stable exhibition buddy. And I'm not the artist to press my work on people. So I wasn't about to tell any of these curators that I was an artist and had them my card... and frankly I also knew my work wasn't strong enough yet. I needed to build my community and hope (aka work-my-ass-off so) the work followed suite. 

I needed to meet people but galleries and artists; the relationship is complicated. I feel like my professors were giving me powerful advice, "go to shows". But the advices was subtlety flawed.  The relationships between galleries and artists has changed. It wasn't too long ago that galleries and curators had portfolio days and now I'm told it's unprofessional to hand a gallery curator your card. But wait, it's a business card. Isn't that THE way you meet people professionally in any other career?

Well I've been told they prefer to see submissions online, but you and I know they are rarely seen for months or years if at all. A lot of galleries have bold texts on their websites saying NO ARTIST SUBMISSIONS. So tell me, what is the professional manner? Secondary introductions? Every curator is different and cold calling is no fun. Not for any party involved. It's not always fruitless, but 99% of the time you'll never hear back anyways.

So, nearly two years out of Uni, I decided to start Venison Magazine. Venison gave me a new way to talk and interact with the art community. To see, investigate, and talk with artist's about their own work. It gave me a way to approach people in a manner that wasn't awkward and self-serving. It allowed me to dig deeper and foster relationships. This started to push my art practice in exciting ways. Not only did my work improve but I started to learn from and become friends with artists I admired. This was emerging through an equal business endeavor, publicity. I had something to give and  in exchange I got answers to my questions.

I can't say I'm BFFs with every artist I interviewed, but I have made a many powerfully uplifting and encouraging friendships through this magazine. Some of which has lead to shows, meeting curators, collaborations and jumping barriers that I was hoping years of going to the saturday strolls might accomplish.  I have learned that going to shows can be great. But it's pretty fruitless unless you are plugging into the community involved. 

I don't really have any sound advice on how to get involved in that community, but from my experience, meeting other artist in my position has propelled me through years of painfully awkward gallery openings and countless wine-overs. It's also good to have someone to talk to while you loiter next to an artist or curator you're hoping to talk to!! You can view my work here. And follow my studio practice on Instagram: @amberimrie

Thanks Readers! 

Subscribe to get post alerts from Venison Magazine!!

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Time Peace &The Hustle (In Progress) - Studio Visit with Anja Ulfeldt

4/6/2015

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Studio Visit by: Danielle Schlunegger

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Public Reception: Saturday April 11th, 4-8pm
Lost & Foundry Oakland
305 Center Street, Oakland CA, half a block from West Oakland BART


Lost & Foundry Oakland will be unveiling new works by Artist in Residence, Anja Ulfeldt this upcoming Saturday. Time Peace is the culmination of a 5-week residency featuring a series of rotary devices that measure time and symbolize its passage. I wanted to visit her in the studio for a little sneak peek before the opening. Upon entering the metal door of The Lost and Foundry Gallery this past Wednesday, I was immediately confronted with two huge barrel-like structures, and several smaller versions lining the walls. Covered in mahogany and cherry veneer, the wall "tumblers" still had their plexiglass faces covered and tapped tight with blue painters tape, evocative of large faceless wall clocks. 

As part of the crowd funding campaign to build the work during her residency, contributors donated objects that they had felt an attachment to for one reason or another to be weathered down by these tumblers. In effect this transformation would lift the weight of the donor’s previous inability to let go of the objects, relieving them of their attachment through a mechanical weathering of the object. 

“You’ll be able to see through them,” says Ulfeldt, placing her fingers on the blue tape holding the industrial covering onto the plexiglass, gently spinning it on the wall.

“The tumblers are definitely a sound piece. They have these mahogany shelves inside like a dryer, that help lift/stir the contents and then drop them. It's supposed to be like a chorus of randomly timed falling sounds. The motors make a whirring/grumbling sound when they run. I kinda love it! I just got a donation of a pile of coins too which will probably sound great falling every couple of minutes." Across the room she pulls a cardboard box out from under a collapsible table and sits cross-legged on the floor, opening the flaps. Inside rests the collection of objects that have been donated for their eventual destruction. 

“Growing up in what might have qualified as a hoarder house I have a close personal relationship to the question of what gives an object power over us emotionally? What makes us love an object of art for reasons we sometimes don’t understand? Often in art there is a focus on longevity. Some artworks are made of stone and can outlive the civilization that created them while others are intentionally ephemeral. But what about other items those individuals collect and keep in their lives and how does this relate to wealth accumulation and assignment of value on objects, material and art? I'm particularly interested in how we assign value to possessions beyond the obvious monetary value of the materials they contain.”  

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She shows me a sand dollar with -January 5th 2014 -Surfing for the first time- written in fat black marker on the back. Then pulls out a pair of glasses, some hearing aids, a softened and sad looking plaster cast of a child’s face, a little ceramic bird, and several other everyday objects from the box.
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“I know the story of some of these objects better than others,” she said holding the sand dollar out to me as we rummaged through the box together. I turned it over in my hand and knew this was the last time I would see these little objects that someone, somewhere, had cherished in their whole, un-mutilated state.  

She closed up the box and placed it back under the table, and humored my curiosity regarding the giant wheels in the center of the room.
I watched her step into one, and as it turned around and around with her steps it became evocative to a time in my childhood. For a moment I was back in a county fair funhouse, rolling about with a bunch of other squealing children in an oversized padded wheel. The sounds of those memories faded away and all was silent except for the loud whirring of the metal-framed wheel turning under the warm gallery lights.   
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 Ulfeldt steps out and explains The Hustle (working title),  “… Invites visitors to enter one of two walks of life: one a fast-moving hustle, the other a seductively soft resting place. These take the form of rotary drums sharing an axle and transmission. The gearing is designed so that the movement of the fast-paced climbers eventually destabilizes those lounging on the slow-moving side. The treadmill … speaks to the labor of love that is sculpture and the sculptors’ love of labor. The Treadmill represents the desire for purpose and the need to work toward that purpose.  If you can understand the idea of art for art’s sake then why not labor for labor’s sake.

"This piece is also inspired by the level of hustle required to survive as an artist in the Bay Area. While the love is the labor and the labor is the love there is still this feeling that if you stop to rest you may never make it back onto the wheel or that the fast paced world of money may just pass you by. The level of hustle required to be an artist in the Bay Area is increasing at a rapid rate and many people are leaving. So I pose the question: How much hustle can you sustain? Is it really worth it?”

Ulfeldt stairs up with tired eyes at the pair of wheels she has meticulously welded together and layered in plywood. I left her to her work at the Lost and Foundry studio. She seemed anxious to get back to it, probably with a grand to-do list looming in her head.

The question Ulfeldt had previously stated rang again and again in my head. At first this question in her statement threw me off.

“Is it worth it?”

As an artist, The Hustle speaks to me of the amount of work many Bay Area artists must endure to be able to sustain their practice: working 40 hours a week, producing art, maintaining the work load and personal relationships, and the attempt to grow an ever evolving network to forward my creative career. This is a task many artists face. It can be wholly overwhelming at times, and can feel utterly unsustainable. How do I keep my own momentum moving forward without overturning everything I’ve been working towards?

“Is it worth it?"

"Is it really worth it?”


You can Interact with The Hussle (working title) and join Anja Ulfeldt for a public reception of Time Piece this Saturday April 11th, 4-8pm at Lost & Foundry Oakland
305 Center Street, Oakland CA, half a block from West Oakland BART 

http://lostandfoundryoakland.com/
http://www.anjaulfeldt.com/
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Anja is the Co-Founder and Director of Basement Gallery Oakland (slated to reopen in May, 2015) as well as a founding member of the Artstead Boat Project, a floating venue for art and performance built from a converted potato barge. She is a recipient of the Visions from the New California Award in 2010, TSFF & SOMArts Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Award in 2013 and The AAF/Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts in 2014 resulting in a three-week fellowship at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, Austria. 


The daughter of a painter and an engineer, Anja grew up in Berkeley, CA, and earned her BFA from California College of the Arts in 2001 and her MFA from Stanford University in 2014. Her recent installations have become know as “performable objects” and are physical scenarios in which the participant becomes an impromptu performer. 

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