ART TALK: WALKER'S POINT CENTER FOR THE ART INSPIRES “QUIET”
Twelve noon and time to take a lunch break from installing the new that recently arrived at Walker's Point Center for the Arts (WCPA). The two artists and curator for the WPCA exhibition “Quiet” graciously offer a few moments to relax and discuss the show before it opens on Gallery Night, July 29.
Curator Josie Osborne first envisioned the show last January that features Chicago's Melanie Pankau and Milwaukee's Kevin Giese, all sitting in the gallery, together with Tyler Meuninck who's work already hangs on the walls. The art center inquired if the Milwaukee artist Osborne would be interested in curating a show for the WPCA at the beginning of 2011. After all the events that unfolded in Madison over the winter, Osborne decided to plan for an exhibition that she states, “Would counteract all the upheaval in Wisconsin and respond by counterbalancing the confrontations.”
"I sensed an urgency for something meditative and healing,” Osborne continues after a moment's silence. The trio of artists were invited to respond to Osborne's chosen theme through three various medias: Giese's sculptural installations using natural materials; Meuninck's more traditional art paintings and graphite drawings; and finally, Pankau's abstract and expressive renderings on drafting vellum.
In the front gallery, Giese intently installs the two-story high reeds he constructs by meticulously piecing them together in four or five places. Already fixed in place, his carved wood river runs the length of a gallery wall, a horizontal tribute to nature that he will fill with tiny River Quartz nuggets he diligently picked out over time from the Mississippi River. Giese needs seven to eight pounds to fill the handmade riverbed, and 100 grains of sand equal approximately 5 quartz stones, although he immensely enjoys the painstaking task of distilling the quartz from the river's debris.
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Another artwork by Giese felts river algae into a handmade paper-like material that Giese invisibly stitches together to form a wall hanging. The algae in the wall hanging fade over time, so the fiber's color will slowly and subtly transform throughout the exhibition.
Pankau's artwork will be exhibited in the second gallery, a testament to the interplay between repetitious pattern placed against light and shadow. After joining three large sheets of drafting vellum covered with the soft, graphite forms Pankau invents, the artist suspends the sheets from the ceiling to create a sensual and translucent two-sided drawing.
Other walls in the gallery will display Pankau's acrylic paintings on curved masonite board with a color palette inspired by Wassily Kandinsky's color theory, which Pankau explains, "bridges bodily and metaphorical reactions.” The artist now resides in Chicago after completing her 2011 MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Immediately upon finishing this installation in the exhibition at WPCA, Pankau will begin working on a public art commission for installation in New Orleans.
Osborne expects as the summer winds to a close through the end of August that the exhibition might offer a healing environment for the city. Artwork displayed in a gallery that will create a respite from the political controversy and economic debates influencing the public's mindset. A magical relationship where art and observer connect in moments that temporarily transforms an emotional and physical surrounding to one of sanctuary. A relationship still in process and to be sublimely portrayed in the exhibition “Quiet.”
Walker's Point Center for the Art hosts an artist's reception Friday, July 29, 5:00-9:00 p.m.
