Artist Stories
Below is an overview of artists previously featured in the Gallery @ The Jupiter Hotel.
March / April 2013 : Braeden Cox “ARTIFACTS AND RIDDLES “
ARTIFACTS AND RIDDLES My drawings are fueled through emotions and feelings, driven by a sense of exploration. I want to translate this emotional energy and sense of discovery onto paper. Using abstract gestural marks, my drawings suggest geological and botanical forms. My digital images present surreal landscapes that challenge reality. These images contain dream-like rejections of physical laws and suggest mysteries of lost or hidden meaning. Underlying these images is the realization that things are no longer understood by known rules. My work is an exploration into the emotional and physical responses of life’s journey, the search for understanding, and the acceptance of questions that may have no answers.
BRAEDEN COX, artist
Braeden Cox is an artist working and living in Portland, Oregon. Born in Eugene, Oregon she also lived in Christchurch, New Zealand from 1997 through 2001 before moving to Knoxville, Tennessee. She studied at the University of Oregon in Eugene where she earned a dual major in Fine Art and Digital Art. Braeden went on to complete her BFA degree in Digital Art at the University of Oregon’s Portland campus. Braeden is currently living and working in Portland.
January / February 2013 : Sarah Mikenis “HAUNTED BY THESE AMERICAN DREAMS”
HAUNTED BY THESE AMERICAN DREAMSPaintings
I take immense pleasure in the materiality of paint: clumps of fur interspersed with sticky globs of ambiguous pink flesh; transparent orbs of bubbling fat next to red-pink meat; the silky, wet skin of a raw chicken melding into human hands; pig flesh turned hard, shiny and metallic; neon pink and green thick and heavy against fast, swirling line; lush red cosmetic smears bleed and drip onto a flat leopard print pattern.
Sarah Mikenis
Sarah Mikenis was born and raised in Portland, OR. She studied painting and art history at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and spent a semester at the Tyler School of Art in Rome, Italy. Following graduation she attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Boston, Massachusetts, where she received her Post-Baccalaureate Certificatein painting. This is her first solo exhibition.
November / December 2012 : Hickory Mertsching “DECAY, GROWTH & THE STILL LIFE”
These paintings are about illustrating and presenting unavoidable natural realities by utilizing mundane objects as symbols. The realities are simple, yet powerful enough to be beyond our control. The rise and fall of a garden in the span of summer offers sustenance but requires toil for any reward of consumption. Within this cycle all allegorical manners of life occur, crossing paths, pursuits of enlightenment, conflicts of survival, and the passing of time.I attempt to present this in a quiet traditional manner, creating paintings that are calm, balanced in composition, and contain soft palettes that are reflective of the subject matter. I am and can be guilty of influence from the following: the Dutch 17th century “vanitas” genre, post war pop art, Americana, nostalgia, romanticism, naturalism, music, contemporary painting, and good books, (which is subjective). I view drawing as the core root of my paintings in oil and currently render from observation/life by setting up each painting scene with actual objects when available. I involve myself in all aspects of the process, building canvases, researching props, and milling out custom frames.
October 2012 : Gina Hartmann “DEVOTION OF TIME”
Artist Statement
We are not made to think about our place in the world and are surely never pushed to think about who we are and where our responsibilities lie. The decision to fully take part in the act of living, and to choose to share from that personal knowledge is what truly makes up the human experience. This level of individual understanding is defined by our own intellectual and emotive capabilities.
The work has moved from the personal to the universal within the exploration of my individual vision. There is a consistent theme found within it: a conviction to convey our relationships to ourselves, each other, and to the world. In essence, the human condition. Despite diversities in cultures we all feel, breathe and search for that which will ultimately provide us sustenance. There is a need to share with others that heightened awareness; our humanity, if just for one moment. These works are about healing and searching, not just outside of ourselves but within as well. The new series started with feverishly working on several weavings. The layers began to build and abstract. I have often incorporated weaving in my work but now it has become metaphor: weaving as symbol for life. All that we are, the complexities of our being form an intricate pattern of experiences, people and places. Our lives we build and strengthen through time, but with just a touch it can be unraveled. This woven life, a tapestry, are layers to peel away and discover. The warp and the weft a
GINA HARTMANN, artist
Gina Hartmann creates sepia-toned multimedia works which often incorporate text, plants and other elements from the natural world. The work is rooted in assemblage, presenting an open-ended narrative both universal and personal, resembling weavings in both physical and metaphorical ways. Hartmann earned her BFA at the Art Academy in Cincinnati, Ohio and has exhibited her work since 1990. Hartman has shown nationally including at the Sculpture Center in Cleveland, Ohio and the Laundry Art Space of Queens, New York.
September 2012 : Holly Senn “Inhabit”
Artist Statement
INHABIT
“Inhabit” is an installation that is site-responsive to the Jupiter Hotel. I am responding to structures that take hold temporarily in nature and ideas that temporarily inhabit the mind. Viewers are invited to explore the making of a temporary home–a place of shelter to live and be present in, to make one’s own temporary space. Ideas engage the mind in a similar way; some are temporary, others are more permanent and all are related in networks of connection. The temporal nature of my installation considers the permanence and impermanence of ideas dwelling in the mind, as well as the temporary
nature of being physically situated in the world. My work explores the lifecycle of ideas, how ideas are generated, dispersed, remembered or forgotten. Because I look at permanence and impermanence, forms of plants and other organisms that have visible regeneration cycles are interpreted in my art. An underlying tension in my work is that the discipline and practice of librarianship, from which I draw upon, is often romantically imagined to be aligned with print while contemporary practice is driven by patron desire for digital access. I transform books–recognizable symbols of recorded and
shared information–and their pages into new forms, using the iconic materials to consider the recursive nature of ideas.
HOLLY A. SENN, sculpter
Holly A. Senn is known for her botanically inspired sculptures and installations created from discarded library books. In these labor-intensive works she explores the life cycle of ideas—how ideas are generated, dispersed, referenced or forgotten. Senn has exhibited in venues including the Brooklyn Public Library, 23 Sandy Gallery in Portland, Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, and spaces in Tacoma including Spaceworks Tacoma, Tacoma Contemporary’s Woolworth Windows, Fulcrum Gallery, Kittredge Gallery, and Collins Memorial Library. Born in California, Senn earned a Master of Library and Information Studies from University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. from Mills College. She works as a librarian at Pacific Lutheran University. Since 2001 she has lived and worked in Tacoma, Washington.
August 2012 : Carol Basch “Some Are Torn…Some Are Not”
Artist Statement
I like paint
I like color
I like shape and form
I like playing hide and seek with color, shape and form
My starting point for many paintings has been old black and white family photographs in Brooklyn, NY. I love the formal composition and static quality of the people and then I become absorbed with another reality, no longer referring to the photo. Recently I have been reinventing my old monoprints by the rip and tear method where the figure plays hide and seek with other figures and added textures.
I have always loved the figure and forms from nature. I enjoy the exploration of these forms on canvas, how the contour or edge disappears and then reappears is a brushstroke thrill, with colors getting pulled in from a somewhat realistic realm.
CAROL BASCH, painter
Carol Basch has been a painter her whole life. She did both undergraduate and graduate work in Fine Arts, Queens College, New York, before moving to Portland, Oregon in 1971. Once in Portland she received her teaching credentials in art at PSU and subsequently studied art therapy, Marylhurst College. Carol taught art full time at the middle school level for twenty years at many Oregon and Washington schools. She guided students in executing large-scale school murals, one being “From Hood to Coast” at Kellogg Middle School in SE Portland, an outstanding 68 feet exterior wall. Her work with these young artists through the years has kept her own art expression fresh. She is now painting and reinventing her old monoprints by the rip and tear method.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
2012 some are torn…some are not, Gallery @ the Jupiter, Portland, OR
2012 New Work, 12x16gallery, Portland, OR
2009 Nudes in Downtown Astoria, OR
2004 Wall Mural, Circle Healthcare, Portland, OR
2001 Graystone Gallery, Portland, OR
1997 Cassidy’s Restaurant, Portland, OR.
June and July 2012 : Louis Delegato “The Practice of Loss”
Artist Statement
Starting is easy. I use a tool of marking and make a mark. Undoubtedly, the mark is out of balance relative to the unmarked. The process now becomes an attempt to bring everything back into balance. The fresh, blank surface was in complete balance yet the information I can derive from such a “painting” is vague at best. It is like the most general statement in the world, concluding the most general thing and offering the broadest possible reflection. Profound? Yes. Worth looking at? No. So I make a mark. Suddenly the calm is thrust into chaos and only I can bring it back. I make more marks to balance out the first, yet my mark-making is dirty and inconsistent relative to the purity of the original void. Each alteration leads to a need for more and more alterations. Each mark requires three more marks to prevent the whole thing from jettisoning off into disharmony. Throughout this undertaking, I discover aspects that offer clear direction and balanced composition. I fight both consciously and unconsciously to hold onto these aspects in an effort to justify. Often I find myself clutching tightly to many different aspects that do not work together. But which ones to keep and which ones to lose? If I choose incorrectly, the whole process could be a bust: I could end up flailing through hours and hours of emotional struggle just to find myself with a pounding headache standing in front of an incoherent tantrum. But what my ideological agenda can’t seem to incorporate is that every mark and misstep, every try and retry, every epic failure leads precisely to where I find myself and this “position” is the entire point of painting. I paint to represent my position. This undertaking requires loss. The loss of harmony. The loss of pride. Loss of specific parts in pursuit of the whole. The loss of identity. The loss of control. Not to mention the loss of time, materials and energy.
Not only must I experience this loss in pursuit of conscious self-expression, I must also practice it. And so I do, whether I like it or not.
Artist Bio
Louis Delegato is a Portland born painter and sculptor. He has been making artworks all his life and doing it professionally for the last few years. He says making a painting is much more an emotional expression than creating sculpture because of the instantaneous nature of mark-making. His sculpture tends to be a highly planned and laborious process of an intellectual expression while his paintings are records of action with very little boundary or rule. Both endeavors though, focus on a balance of elements and strong relationships between the “foreground” and “background” representing the dualistic nature of reality and the relationship of such. Louis believes the same compositional elements and activities that define “art” exist everywhere and his work is an effort to distill that notion.
May 2012 : Paul Solevad “Layeradium”
Artist Statement
“Layeradium” is a group of paintings which function as a whole, developed over the years from numerous drawing studies, all evoking the idea of a continuum. Socio/ political and metaphysical themes are manifested through inorganic and organic shapes, flowing continuously. I sought to create an expanse of imagery that spoke on many topics, yet felt overall united as one larger work.
I work on multiple pieces at the same time, creating paintings in layers. Color palettes form the groundwork for multiple overlay drawings, washed out and then built up again on one another. This notion of layers is constant, just as our reality, in a sense, is built in layers. So making images that evoke this idea became my driving inspiration.
Layers of systems, layers of spiritual continuity, layers of energy creating mass and form. All interwoven. All connected. Therefore, I entitled this body of work The “Layeradium” – some kind of simple yet illusive word that spurred my curiosity.
More recently I embarked on an evolution of this idea through a self assigned project of daily drawings. I thought: how entertaining would it be to begin this mythical year, 2012, by creating a small drawn painting for every day of the year, dated as such and followed through to December. So, here I am, drawings continue, and manifest numerous topics, thoughts and feelings. A visual journal if you will titled “365.”
April 2012 : Alan Rose “Bemusement and Confusement”
March 2012 : Rebecca Merrill ”COAL”
Artist Statement
My work explores the relationship between emotional and physical states of being. This particular series is an autobiographical narrative about my experiences since I moved to Portland. Coal is a series of snap shots, taken through a lens made entirely of sensation, free of logic and linear plots. They are, in a sense, portraits of different emotional states.
My interest in emotional language stems from the idea that many emotions occur to us as actual physical sensations, which we apply simple labels to: sad, happy, jealous. But emotions are much more complex than language implies. If emotional states manifested themselves physically, their nuances would be visibly apparent. Furthermore, if emotions took a form we could relate to, such as human, how would it change our interactions with them? How would we lay them to rest?
This body of work explores these questions, with influences from Marquis de Sade, to Hans Bellmer, and Odd Nerdrum. These artists have been able to describe experiences through reconstructions of the human form. I hope to further this conversation by presenting my own ideas about the emotional state of the human condition.
Artist Bio
Rebecca Merrill was born and raised on the Central Coast of California. She studied figure drawing in San Francisco before moving to Atlanta, Georgia to study at the Atlanta College of Art. In 2006 she traveled through Europe, and spent two months in Lacoste, France. At Lacoste School of the Arts she was named curator for the anual Vernissage, and broke the school’s art sales record. She moved to Portland, Oregon in 2007 to finish her BFA at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. She enjoys seasonal work as a farmhand and is passionate about food, from cultivation to preparation. Rebecca currently lives and works in Portland.
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January / February 2012 : Christopher St. John, Artist
Artist Statement
I don’t usually write these things with work still in progress, less so when the work
seems to come from two very different directions. This work feels transitional to me, although it could be a return to home in disguise. Home is a good thing, although I realize that statement is probably meaningless to you, occasional reader. I am not the greatest spokesman for my work. Honestly, I never know as I try to be earnest about what I do. I live as much as I work, which is to say I really have no clue. In this work, patterns emerge, things fall apart, split, twist, become crumpled. Things bleed and smile and breed. Things become desperate to exit their skins. I need to break something with these images. I want to destroy something. Perhaps it is an ambient notion of beauty which only belongs on a vase in a museum; perhaps it is the monstrosity of the world around me. This is what I mean when I say the work comes from two different directions. Certainly this is why the title Gargantua occurred to me, something large and lumbering and composed mainly of appetites and destructive desires, an embodiment of both anguish and joy which renders it base, stupid, mutated. I have tried to use the body to make the glass shiver, but perhaps that can be the warmth that draws you, gentle viewer.
Artist Bio
I studied art at the University of Alaska, BFA in painting and printmaking. I was in the army for four years, worked as a mechanic. I studied music when I was younger and thought I would be a musician. I have a son who is fourteen, my wife spent 15 years in the army and was deployed to Iraq twice. I have lived in Hawaii, Colorado, California, Oklahoma, Alaska, T ennessee, Virginia, and Ohio. I have shown in Hawaii, New Mexico, Tennessee, all solo shows. I have work in the Museum of the North in Fairbanks, Alaska, and the Hawaii State Art Museum. (both were purchase awards). I also have shown in France and Bulgaria. I have a weird thing with cats and my other job if I couldn’t make art would be a mortician.
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December 2011 - Kelsey Bunker
Woman Lounging, by Artist Kelsey Bunker
Art begins with perception but perception is influenced by knowledge. Discovering the influence of knowledge on my perception of objects, relationships, even my life has been the goal of my artistic expressions. Learning that an arm is not “an arm” but rather a series of abstract shapes shaded in a wide variety of colors has led me to believe that most everything we have labeled is not really what the label names but it, being whatever it is, is a much deeper and richer experience. Our minds tend to shortcut the process of observation and inquiry by creating a generic label (based on knowledge) and when we rely on the labels we no longer see. Learning to draw what I see and not what I think was the first step in discovery of the laziness of relying on knowledge. I continue to look at common everyday objects (such as people) and see the connections, the relationships, the conversations going on within each.
