Released: August 21, 2019
Photo: Jen Watson, One Bar, 11″x14″ screenprint
SFCC Visual Arts Gallery presents “Odd Nature”
Exhibit opens 5 to 7 p.m. Sept. 13, continues through October 10
Santa Fe Community College’s Visual Arts Gallery presents the exhibition, “Odd Nature,” which opens with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 13. The show continues through Oct. 10.
Karina Hean, Visual Arts Chair and full-time instructor at the New Mexico School for the Arts based in Santa Fe, has curated the exhibit. She is part of a collaborative team with members from the U.S. and Europe. The team features two designers, a musician and nine visual artists representing practices that include painting, drawing, printmaking, letterpress, book arts, video, performance art and installation work.
The artists have collaborated on projects for the past ten years. The group, along with select students from Brigham Young University, is participating in an artists’ residency through Aug. 25 in Iceland. According to Hean, the artists “will interact and create in response to the theme of ‘Odd Nature’ – a phrase that spontaneously and mistakenly arrived while several members of the group were sharing a studio visit and conversation. Our initial responses generally explore the relationships we have with humanity and the natural world, and the impact both seem to have upon one another.”
Participants in the exhibition include Nuala Clarke, Melinda Ostraff, Joe Ostraff, Joanna Kidney,
Karina Hean, Claudine Bigelow, Melanie Mowinski, Jeffery Hampshire, Gary Barton, Sally Weaver, Michelle Rowley, Jen Watson, Mercedes Ng and Linda Reynolds.
The work is made possible through the generous support of The Ballinglen Arts Foundation and Brigham Young University.
SFCC’s Visual Arts Gallery on the campus of Santa Fe Community College, 6401 Richards Ave., is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more information, contact Gallery Director Linda Cassel at 505-428-1501, linda.cassel@sfcc.edu.
Please see below the brief biographies that the artists submitted:
Joe Ostraff
Joseph Ostraff received an MFA from the University of Washington and teaches primarily painting, drawing, and advanced studio courses at Brigham Young University (BYU). He has directed/ co-directed multiple collaborative projects between BYU and programs such as Wirral Met, Liverpool, UK; Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi, NZ; MCLA, North Adams, MA; and Limerick School of Art and Design, IRE. These partnerships have involved hundreds of students and faculty resulting in over thirty international, national and regional exhibitions. Joseph’s work has been exhibited in a variety of national and international venues including: Cape Cod Museum of Art, MA; Attleboro Arts Museum, MA; WoCA Projects, Fort Worth, TX; K12 Gallery/TEJAS Gallery Space, Dayton, OH; Minneapolis Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis, MN; Spectrum Project Space at Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia; and Sheffield Institute of Arts Gallery, UK. Most recently, he was awarded an international fellowship, which included a two-month artist residency in Ballinglen, Ireland.
Melinda Ostraff
Melinda Ostraff is educated in the discipline of ethnobotany, which is the study of interactions between people and plants. Her husband is an artist and they have been collaborating for most of their married life in a variety of ways. He collaborated as her field assistant and she as a participant in many of his international artistic collaborations. Through the years, this has allowed her to explore many different art forms and techniques. This interaction has inspired and fascinated her. She said, “This way of thinking, looking at and interacting with the natural world has motivated me to look at the world in new ways. I look at patterns, forms, colors and textures.”
Nuala Clarke
Nuala Clarke, a visual artist, was born in Dublin. Received a B.A. in Fine Art Painting from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin in 1993. Afterwards she moved to New York City. She showed with Thomas Werner Gallery, Chelsea and Boltax Gallery, Shelter Island, NY. In September 2007, she received a fellowship to the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Mayo and began returning to Ireland from NY to work every year. In 2013, she moved full time to the West of Ireland.
She is represented by Sara Nightingale in Sag Harbor, NY. Her work is held in many private and corporate collections worldwide. Recent shows include, “Amid a Space Between: Irish Artists in America” at the SFMoMa Artists Gallery, San Francisco, (2012); “to Tremble into Stillness,” a WB Yeats related show at Hamilton Gallery, Sligo (2013); The National Museum Of Ireland, Country life in Mayo an installation called, “The Mariners Laundry” at On Sight (2015). Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin Annual show in ’17, ’18 and ‘19, “As above so below”, Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar, Co. Mayo; “From Nature”, Ballinglen Gallery, Mayo (2017) OU TOPOS, Claremorris Gallery, (2018), “Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours”, Custom House, Westport, Co Mayo, (2019).
Joanna Kidney
Through drawing, painting and installation, Joanna Kidney’s work reflects on ideas of temporality and the interrelationship between living matter. It seeks to make some sense of this existence – how complex, all-encompassing yet tiny and vulnerable our lives are in the vastness of the universe. Solo exhibitions include List Gallery, Swarthmore College, Philadelphia (upcoming 2021), The LAB, Dublin (upcoming, 2020), Wexford Arts Centre (2018), West Cork Arts Centre, Uillinn (2018), Galway Arts Centre (2017), Mermaid Arts Centre, Co. Wicklow (2015), RHA Atrium, Dublin (2013) and The Drawing Project, Co. Dublin (2012). She has exhibited widely in group shows in Ireland, France, Germany and the U.S. She is the recipient of Arts Council and Wicklow County Council funding, an RHA Studio Award, a Ballinglen Arts Foundation Fellowship and a DIT Award of Excellence. Residencies include: Swarthmore College, Philadelphia (upcoming); Brigham Young University, Utah; Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Co. Mayo; The Guesthouse, Cork with the Tellurometer Project Collective. She is a founding member of Outpost Studios, Co. Wicklow, a member of the Drawing Suite and the Tellurometer Project Collective. Her work is included in the collections of AIB, The Central Bank, OPW, UCD and Dept. of Environment, Northern Ireland.
Karina Hean
Karina Nöel Hean lives in the Galisteo Basin between Cerrillos and Galisteo, N.M. on the San Marcos arroyo, where the light and land provide daily inspiration. A life-long art educator, Hean now serves as Chair of Visual Arts at the New Mexico School for the Arts. She has served on the faculty of the University of Montana, Santa Fe University of Art and Design, Fort Lewis College, and New Mexico State University. She holds a B.A. from St. John’s College, a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from Studio Art Centers International, and MFA from New Mexico State University. Karina was the Associate Sales & Gallery Director at Selby Fleetwood Gallery, has worked with SITE Santa Fe in exhibitions and education, and Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts as the Visual Arts Coordinator. Her artwork is grounded in drawing and printmaking and explores responses to landscape. She has received an American Artist Fellowship at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ireland and has completed many artist-in-residence opportunities in the U.S., several at national parks. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in museums, galleries, art centers, and universities throughout the U.S., including exhibits and visiting artist talks at the Gerald and Stanlee Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, UTEP in El Paso, TX; Haydon Art Center, NE; University of Nebraska, Omaha, NE; Furman University, SC; Western State Colorado University, CO; Sam Houston State University, TX; Krause Gallery, RI; Western Oregon University, OR; McDaniel College, MD; Zane Bennett Contemporary Art; Santa Fe, NM, Gallery Shoal Creek in Austin, TX, and Zia Gallery in Winetka, IL; is included in the Drawing Center’s Viewing Program. Karina Hean was born and raised in Mayo, MD on the Chesapeake Bay’s western shore.
Claudine Bigelow, Ph.D.
Claudine Bigelow, Ph.D. is Professor of Viola at the Brigham Young University School of Music and a member of the Deseret String Quartet. Solo recital and string quartet appearances have taken her around the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Claudine has played with the viola sections of the National and Utah Symphonies, Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, and the National Chamber Orchestra. Every summer she performs with the Grand Teton Music Festival. In 2012, Bigelow was invited to be a Fulbright Senior Scholar, where she served as artist-in-residence at the Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music in Wellington.
In recent years, Bigelow has expanded her work to participate in interdisciplinary collaborations with dancers and visual artists. Through these collaborations, she has been challenged to discover the possibilities of expressing herself through the visual and textile arts. She has a long love of knitting and has been exploring quilting, drawing and painting. She uses piecing, painting and top sewing in her quilts to express political, environmental and historical concepts. Her explorations in the visual arts have been juried into shows in the Springville Art Museum, Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum, Gallery 51 at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and the William Paterson University Gallery in New Jersey.
Melanie Mowinski
Mowinski balances hyper control & very specific rules with experimental investigations in her letterpress and book artwork, often gravitating towards one-of-a-kind books housed in unusual and traditional enclosures. Her books under the imprint PRESS • 29 PRESS are in private and public collections including Williams College, Yale University, Colorado College, Denison University Library, Lafayette College, The Newark Museum, Baylor University, The University of Iowa, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Ohio University, The Free Library of Philadelphia, The Ruth Hughes Collection at Oberlin College, Tate Modern Museum of Art in London, Simon Fraser University, Cornell University, UCLA, USC, Emory University, Lafayette College, Library of Congress, Smithsonian American Art & Portrait Gallery Library and University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
In 2016 she was a visiting artist at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City. In 2017 she completed The 50 Card Project: a year of letterpress cards printed every week from Inauguration Day to the end of 2017. This project was directly inspired by the statement liberty and justice for all.
Jeffery Hampshire
Jeffery Hampshire is currently attending Brigham Young University. He is soon approaching his third year at BYU. While working towards receiving his BFA in Fine Arts, he primarily works in drawing, painting, and sculpture. Within this past year, he has had the opportunity to participate in and help curate group shows that have included other artist, professors, and students across Utah. These shows have ranged from home curated to nationally juried shows, such as “Under Pressure” and “2019 Works on Paper.” He has been energized by these collaborations and continues to seek opportunities to work with others.
Michelle Rowley
Michelle Rowley holds a B.A. in Fine Art from Liverpool John Moores University and recently received an M.A. in Site and Archive Intervention at the University of Central Lancashire. She teaches printmaking and constantly expanding studio practices on the B.A. Fine Art course at Wirral Met College in Wirral, UK. She is a founding member of ‘Hot Bed Press’, an open access printmaking studio based in Salford. Her practice and research respond to a long-held interest in place, our relationship to the natural world, and our psychological attachments and cultural values linked to landscapes and the built environment.
Her teaching career has prompted research into the production of artists’ books and small edition publishing, which since 2006 has led to specific and fruitful engagements with art audiences and the public at book fairs in the U.K. You can find Michelle’s books in the Tate Gallery artists’ book collection where she is proud to be found in the company of her students’ books.
It is through these activities that opportunities have arisen through international collaborations with Brigham Young University’s art faculty and students. These collaborative experiences have been pivotal in testing ideas and methodologies that challenge and extend how artists work, and how they work together.
This exchange of interests, experiences and differences, and these key opportunities to meet and work alongside others is what makes us grow as artists. Finding ways to explore boundaries between practices and critical contexts continues to bring new and challenging possibilities within reach. Projects which further demonstrate these relationships involved the Artlab Contemporary Print Studio at UCLan with the ‘Triple Echo’ in 2008 and ‘Global Echo’ in 2010 projects, and the Second Permanent Print Symposium 2015.
Sally Weaver (BYU Student)
Sally Weaver is a mature student undertaking study on the B.A. Fine Art Hons at Wirral Met College, embarking on my third year of study in September 2019. She said, “During my second year I have undertaken a number of group and solo activities designed to develop my professional experience enabling me to connect with networks through group meetings, studio visits and links to opportunities in the Liverpool arts community.” During the 2018 Liverpool Biennial, she enjoyed facilitating at the Independents section of the biennial, for a collective of artists who champion painting practice.
She said, “The Iceland project is a unique opportunity allowing me to concentrate on new approaches to research methodologies to support my developing practice into my final year of study on the B.A. Fine Art at Wirral Met College.”
Jen Watson
Jen Watson was born and raised out West, where she primarily makes works on paper. She received her MFA in Studio Art from The Ohio State University in 2014 and has since exhibited in a variety of national venues including: the Redline Contemporary Art Center, Denver, CO; TRAHC, Texarcana, TX; Torpedo Factory Art Center, Alexandria, VA; Urban Arts Space, Columbus, OH; The Rio Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT; and more. She is a proponent of creating opportunities for student artists, and is currently an assistant Professor of Art at Brigham Young University teaching printmaking and 2-D studio courses.
Gary Barton
Gary Barton received an MFA degree from the Ohio State University where he was the recipient of a University Fellowship. He has been a faculty member at Brigham Young University since 1994, and he currently serves as chair of the Department of Art where he also teaches printmaking and advanced studio courses. He has served as an associate dean for the College of Fine Arts and Communications at BYU and has been the director/co-director of numerous study abroad programs, collaborative projects between BYU and various national and international institutions, and other experiential learning programs for students. In his art, he works predominately in two-dimensional media including painting, printmaking, and mixed media. He has received numerous awards for his work including the 2001 Utah Arts Council Visual Arts Fellowship, and his work has been exhibited widely in national and international venues including the Contemporary Art Space Chester (CASC), England, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Spectrum Project Space in Perth, Australia, PR1 Gallery in Preston, England, CityScape Gallery in Vancouver, B.C., and Studio 61 in Florence, Italy.
Jeffery Hampshire
Jeffery Hampshire is currently attending Brigham Young University (BYU). He is approaching his third year at BYU. While working towards receiving his BFA in Fine Arts, he primarily works in drawing, painting, and sculpture. Within this past year, he has had the opportunity to participate in and help curate group shows which have included other artists, professors and students across Utah. These shows have ranged from home-curated to nationally juried shows, such as “Under Pressure” and “2019 Works on Paper.” He has been energized by these collaborations and continues to seek opportunities to work with others.
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