amy hamblin

diem chau

jennifer mayeda

margie livingston

michael ottersen

robert campbell

sean johnson

susan zoccola

tim brown

victoria haven

and a work on loan by vija celmins

the three-dimensional line

Kirkland Arts Center, Kirkland, Washington, Opening reception: Friday 145 April, 2011, 6-8:30pm. Exhibit runs 16 April - 28 MAy, 2011

"I did have a strong gut feeling from the beginning ... and that was wanting to be able to make sculpture that didn't have an inside."

Fred Sandback

The Three-Dimensional Line presents eight artists who conjure volume, dimension, scale, emotion and illusion with line, either on a page or in the gallery space. The exhibit explores the creation of three-dimensional form in the space of a room or in the mind of a viewer.

In an effort to make sense of the world, the eye and the mind navigate between two and three dimensions, using what are sometimes the barest visual clues. And the humor and mischievous play apparent in this work exemplifies the power that artists can harness to compel and confound the viewer. A perceptual game ensues; we feel our neurons firing.

The show's concept was inspired by the work of Fred Sandback, whose work evoked place or volume in its full materiality without occupying or obscuring it. He spoke of "wanting to be able to make sculpture that didn't have an inside," to "play with something both existing and not existing at the same time".

Artists exhibiting are Amy Hamblin, Diem Chau, Jean Lullie, Margie Livingston, Michael Ottersen, Robert Campbell, Sean Johnson, Susan Zoccola, Timothy Brown, Victoria Haven and a work on loan by Vija Celmins.

This exhibit is curated by Ellen Ziegler

Some artists amplify a single vision and improvise upon a single voice. Others explore many directions at once, reinventing, cannibalizing, cross-fertilizing. Freeman, Lullie and Ziegler find themselves in the second group. § These three artists each work in two or more media at the same time, using one direction to enrich and inform others. § Freeman works simultaneously on painting and two forms of collage; Lullie transforms found objects back and forth between sculpture and photographic image; Ziegler begins with two-sided drawings, flattens them, converts them to mirrors, and uses the insights gained to make more drawings. § Each artist will show two to three works in each medium, chosen to reflect the dynamic process that informs them.

* Averted vision: a technique used by astronomers for viewing faint objects visually. It involves not looking directly at the object, but looking a little off to the side, while continuing to concentrate on the object. It is claimed this technique is very useful for viewing large but faint nebulae and star clusters. By developing the technique, some observers report a gain of up to three or four magnitudes (15:1 to 40:1). Others report no appreciable improvement.

Crud

{ embodiment, pollution, infestation, decay, metamorphosis, and the transformations of time }

Nola Avienne, Claire Putney, Timea Tihanyi, Ellen Ziegler and Susan Zoccola

Exhibit runs June 7 - July 1 , 2007
Gallery hours: Thursday - Sunday 12 - 5 pm

SOIL Gallery 112 3rd Avenue South, Seattle
206 264 8061

Reviews

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"Dead squirrel in bird feeder. Thought of you."

Email from a friend to artist Susan Zoccola

CRUD assembles work that reaches its formal and emotional power through an evocation of change, decay, infestation, pollution, metamorphosis and the transformations of time. It presents artists who go beyond the seductiveness of material or the mere manipulation of emotions to integrated and powerful work. Often that work references the body and its processes, as the body can be the source of our most intimate ambivalence.

Nola Avienne’s captivating, peculiar and puzzling work has deep emotional content and literal attraction, due to its use of rare earth magnets and iron filings. The internal workings of blood and circulation portrayed in Timea Tihanyi's Andreas' Tree are precariously held together by thousands of little threads, stitches and connections, reminiscent of the complex structures of tissues in the body. Drawings of nascent beings from Ellen Ziegler's Chemistry is the Emotion of Matter series are seared into and from the paper, leaving surfaces that could be decay, disease or erosion.

Susan Zoccola voyages through the nervous system with her webs of ambiguous materials, magnifying the microscopic so we can peer into our neurons. And the hair drawings of Claire Putney epitomize the discomfort and fascination engendered by finding parts of the body in unexpected, perhaps inappropriate places.

As in Joseph Beuys’ use of fat and felt, the hair sculpture of Petah Coyne and Wenda Gu, Kiki Smith’s body meditations, the dropping sunflower seeds of Anselm Kiefer's paintings, and Tim Hawkinson's giant digestive system, these works exemplify (sometimes literally) a visceral engagement with ideas, emotion and materials characterized by attraction and revulsion, beauty and creepiness.

Nola Avienne and Claire Putney both graduate from the University of Washington's MFA program this June. Originally trained as a doctor in Hungary, Timea Tihanyi now teaches in the Art Department at the U.W. Her most recent solo show was at Bellevue Community College's new gallery. Susan Zoccola balances her studio work with a continued involvement in private and public art commissions, currently at the new Seattle Aquarium. Ellen Ziegler, the show's curator, is focusing on a year-long series of drawings, Chemistry is the Emotion of Matter, and is showing this month at LIMN Gallery in San Francisco.