Megan O’Connell: “…are as the poles asunder”
APRIL 2011
April 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PORTLAND, MAINE
Gallery 37A is pleased to present Megan O’Connell’s “…are as the poles asunder” an exhibition of O’Connell’s tablets and text works crafted from hand-cast, dyed and carved Dead Skin Press Paper suspended in fine Italian beeswax. O’Connell’s tablets are imbued with a melancholy reverence for craft.
“…are as the poles asunder” is open from April 1– April 29, Opening Reception First Friday April 1st 6–10pm.
Megan O’Connell centers her practice around language and its visible forms. Under The Dead Skin Press imprint, she has generated installations /events /printed matter /discrete objects. The output of the press is archived in major libraries and collections in the US and Europe. ”…are as the poles asunder” will focus on O’Connell’s divination of the word/object.
ARTIST BIO
Megan O’Connell has been active in printmaking and bookmaking for three decades. She has founded two independent presses, The Dead Skin Press which generates cross-disciplinary work, including installations /events /printed matter and discrete objects. The output of the press is archived in major libraries and collections in the US and Europe, including MoMA. Walker Art Center, and the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete & Visual Poetry. In 2006 she created The Bracket[t] Press expressly for collaborative ventures. Through the two initiatives, she has worked with Alison Knowles, Dexter Sinister, Joan Retallack, Grand Duchy, The Maine Arts Commission, Creative Material Group, and a range of other individuals and organizations.
Throughout her career, O’Connell has focused on the press as an interdisciplinary vehicle, innovating courses at each venue she has taught at. For more than a decade, she served as the Director of the Typography Lab at University of Oregon and led intensive summer courses in bookmaking and printmaking at Skidmore College and at Mildred’s Lane, Beach Lake, Pennsylvania. She has presented on the use of the press as an agent for critical thinking and change at international conferences including TypeCon and The Fourth International Conference on the Book. O’Connell has taught First Year Involve/Infuse/Inspire, Critical Approaches to Contemporary Art and Graphic Design History and Theory at Maine College of Art.
O’Connell’s work is included Live from Detroit at Fred Torres Projects, New York, New York and the G.R. N’Namdi Gallery, Detroit, Michigan. Other recent exhibitions include: Renovating Walden, Tufts University Gallery; Vivaria Particula, ICA at MECA; and Interrobang, SPACE Gallery, Portland, Maine.
“…are as the poles asunder”
Megan O’Connell, Portland, Maine 2011
Excerpted from “Orlando”, Virginia Woolf’s heartfelt tribute to Vita Sackville-West, the exhibition’s title stands to remind us of the difficulties inherent in reconciling planes of experience. The sentence, in its entirety, reads: ‘[t]hought and life are as the poles asunder .’
I chose this claim as a starting point to trace the dimensions of framing and producing text-/and diagram-based responses across a vast terrain of concerns and imperatives. I can, only now, conclude:
-Engineered logic met with the unpredictability of the hand reforms the message
-Once a voice is calibrated to the pitch of material processes, it is heard anew
-A meshing of history and direction {where to aim next?} pervades the site
-Opposing forces are everywhere; water flows through everything
Materials: Hand-cast, dyed, and carved Dead Skin Press Paper; Davy board; PVA, archival adhesive; Witches Brew ink; magnesium; hardwood; Belgian airplane linen; Italian beeswax; and Maine slate. Sources include: Saint Augustine, Thomas Nashe, Henry David Thoreau, Joseph Cornell, Virginia Woolf, J. Morgan Puett, Rob Fitterman, Matvei Yankelevich, Leon Johnson, and anonymous others.
Funded in part by a grant from the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agancy supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. My gratitude to Daniel Pepice; Brook DeLorme; Christina Bechstein; Donna McNeil; Luc Collette & Collette Monuments; Jan Reaves; and Leon, Marlowe & Leander Johnson. “As we read, so shall we make.” −MO’C
"Once Orlando, the eponymous protagonist of Virginia Woolf’s novel, awakens from a seven-day slumber to find that he is, in fact, a woman, Woolf sends her into gypsy country. Here, Orlando milks goats, pilfers hen’s eggs, and generally relishes the reprieve from the strictures of Englishness. After some gypsy rituals, Woolf sets her alone on an embankment, where during a long and glorious passage we witness Orlando alone and enraptured by nature, awake at last in the full scope of her imagination."
— Review: Megan O’Connell writes on the walls of Gallery 37-A - Museum And Gallery
STANLEY ATWATER
yeah no, AN INSTALLATION
Gallery 37-A is pleased to present Karen Gelardi ”In the Outside” an installation that configures and re-combines Gelardi’s work across a variety of media. Gelardi’s practice includes drawing, painting, printmaking and the adoption of entrepreneurial and industrial practices to originate and distribute new works. Gelardi is recognized for her collaborative practice, most notably as a key contributor to Andrea Zittel’s “Smockshop”.
“In the Outside” is open from February 4 – February 27
Opening Reception First Friday February 4th 6-10pm.
About Karen Gelardi
Karen Gelardi lives and works in South Portland, Maine. She studied painting at Rhode Island School of Design and has been influenced by the design and manufacturing processes of her family’s plastics factory in Biddeford, Maine. She has exhibited widely throughout Maine and recently had her first show in New York City at Coleman Burke Gallery. Karen is a “Smocker” in Andrea Zittel’s internationally exhibitedSmockshop, and a “Panelist” in Zittel’s newest artist enterprise Group Formerly Known as Smockshop.
Collaging together her customized raw materials and components with a handmade, cut and sew approach, Karen Gelardi’s fabric, ink, papier maché constructions, and oil paintings explore ideas about resiliency, adaptation, and a re-invented nature.
Karen Gelardi on IN THE OUTSIDE
“Man-made structures and plants share territory. I am interested in the visual forms of their conflicting natures and the areas where they meet. Exploring in an abstracted way the notion of city blocks being transformed into farmland, weeds pushing through concrete, potted plants sitting on a front stoop—how these areas mix organic and architectural structures, and the emotions and psychology associated with this back and forth between the two.” —Karen Gelardi
