NY2CA Email List Artist Reception
5-7pm Sunday, August 13, 2023
Reception is open to everyone on our list. Sign up to join us.
No host bar, light snacks, and live music!

Live Music:
Violist, Katrina Wreede

Artist Bio:
Like most people, I spend much of my life desiring this or that. Wanting a community. Wanting solitude. Wanting a relationship. Wanting to travel. Wanting to be home. Wanting adventure. Wanting comfort. Wanting success. Wanting to be “cool”.

This yearning ~ I think ~ is the driving force behind my art-making.

I want to make cool stuff. I want to make things that fascinate or evoke emotions. I want to bring things into the world that are new. I want to make art that pulls at you. I yearn for these things.

The studio is the place in my life where I truly feel free, competent, and comfortable. At peace. Or in turmoil! I am 100% in charge. I make all the decisions, I take all the responsibility. I can give it my all. I yearn for more time in my studio.

In my studio, I can take the energy from my many yearnings and transfer it into a mental and physical process and a physical product as an end result. This is a sort of alchemy: lead into gold. Anxiety is the raw material; a sense of wonder is the product.

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There are many bodies of work in the show:

Timeline Panels: A series of seven paintings/drawings on board, detailing my personal reactions to the events of the fall of 2020 through the summer of 2021; the pandemic, the election, the insurrection, the vaccinations, and the lifting of mask requirements.

Nepal Paintings: A group of four acrylic paintings based on my photos in Nepal in October of 2022. We completed a twelve-day trek to Annapurna Base Camp. We traveled to the major cities, visited temples and shrines, and also to the tropical forest in the south at Chitwan. It was a life-changing experience for me.

WWII Airplane Series: A group of small acrylic paintings of WWII-era aircraft with abstract elements in the background. Thinking about our struggles with fascism.

Leonardo Studies: A large group of drawings on wood panels, or paper collaged onto panels. As an homage to the master’s notebooks, I began presenting a few of my ideas, sketches, and studies for sculptures and instruments as finished work.

Portraits: Various paintings. While in college, I supported myself during the summers by traveling and doing portraits on the street. I still continue making portraits of myself and others.

Prismacolor drawings: Small Prismacolor drawings on black paper, abstractions or images of flowers. These are quick color studies or snapshots of my emotional states.

Kinetic Sculptures: Small sculptures that move, made from bamboo, hot glue, found and recycled objects, motors and wires. Celebrating the pathos of the mechanical.

Sound Sculptures: Amplified sculptures that create sound using piezo contact microphones.

Instruments: Invented instruments intended for use in performance, incorporating piezo contact microphones ~ some can be shown as sound sculptures.

Hanging sculptures: Birds and airplanes made from bamboo, acrylic-coated tissue paper, and hot glue. Some are scale models for bigger bamboo pieces, one inch to one foot.