Myth & Mirth
Curated by Jesse Potts
Artists:
Andrew Brehm
Ryan Kelly
Peter Morgan
Leslie Rogers
Exhibition dates: August 26 – November 8, 2019
Public Reception: Thursday, September 12, 2019: 5-7pm, Free and open to the public
Gallery talk with curator Jesse Potts: Friday, November 8th at 5:30pm, (in conjunction with First Gen Arts Night), Free and open to the public.
Myth and Mirth is an exhibition of four artists whose methods combine playful uses of humor, material, and storytelling to create works filled with mythical and historical elements and quasi-cultural artifacts. This collection of sculptural works is filled with absurd visual representations of creatures and cultural references, puns and pseudo-recognizable objects whose combined effect reveals the curious, the bizarre, unforetold narratives and future myths.
Andrew Brehm’s Skin #3 combines a Dr. Seuss inspired beast pelt with a shag bathmat, creating an object that feels eerily familiar to one’s inner child, but is void of a specific time and place. In Mummy Bag, Leslie Rogers mixes traditional quilting techniques with historical modes of mummification. She states, “The domestic interior, in all of its comfort and nostalgia, is haunted with obscured, overlooked, or un-favored narratives and explanations.” She hopes that “these quilt works will embody the ethnographies of their traditional form.”
Ryan Kelly blends cultural references and conflates language in his paper-mache Self-portrait as Bearskin Rug. For Kelly, “this piece is also a self-portrait; an object; the likeness of the flayed outer skin that I wear, that other people regard me through. It is my comical step back to examine myself as a hairy gay man, a “bear” in the queer community.”
Peter Morgan’s ceramic sculptures, such as Killer M(orca)roni and Cheese, present humorous mashups of food, landscape and animals, including those extinct and imagined, that illustrate absurd scenarios and mixed metaphors. Morgan states that, “these ceramic sculptures transform everyday food items into vast landscapes, while conversely shifting massive objects into toy-sized replicas. Through its macro/micro shift, this series seeks to morph the familiar into the grandiose, while bringing into question the viewer’s position within the universe.”
Andrew was born in Pennsylvania where he initially studied furniture making and later received his MFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University. He currently manages the fine art workshops at Columbia University and has sculpture studio in Beacon NY.
Ryan was hired in fall 2016 by Western Washington University to head their Ceramics program. Previously he was a Visiting Professor at The Ohio State University in Ceramics and Foundations. Prior to that he lived and worked in Philadelphia, where he was a resident artist at The Clay Studio; a recipient of an Independence Foundation Fellowship, and a co-curator at Practice Gallery. His collaborations in dance and theater include credits in the Green Porno series by Isabella Rossellini.
Currently Peter practices in his home studio, and recently was a resident artist at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia for four years, and was the 2012 Evelyn Shapiro Foundation Fellowship recipient. In 2016 Peter was selected as one of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Emerging Artist awardees and recipient of the 2016 Victor Spinski Award. He is a founding member of an artist run space in Philadelphia called Practice, which focuses on performance, participation, and experimentation.
Peter has taught at California State University: Long Beach, Gettysburg College, and Temple University. He has exhibited across the United States and Europe. His work is found notable collections including the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum, the Toki Collection, and a public work for the Philadelphia Pet Hotels and Villas. When Peter is not working in the studio, he is an avid bird watcher and runs ultramarathons
She has shown or performed at The Hammer Museum and Human Resources in LA, Threewalls, Links Hall, and ACRE TV in Chicago, The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit as part of ESPTV, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, as well as out of her van over a 9000 mile ‘Merikan Merkintile tour with musician Nelly Kate. Also in Philadelphia, she curated exhibits as a member of the Little Berlin and touring performance with Puppet Uprising, was a founding member of PuppeTyranny performance collective, and has shown or performed at Fjord, Practice Gallery, Vox Populi, AUX, AWFUL Wrestling, International House, Bodega, Little Berlin, and others. In Detroit, she has shown at Cave Gallery and Wasserman Projects.
She has been awarded artist residencies at ACRE, AS220, Art Farm Nebraska, Mildred’s Lane, the University Musical Society at the University of Michigan, and a postdoctoral fellowship from the Michigan Society of Fellows at the University of Michigan.
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