February 10th ~ March 24th, 2018
Artists:
Leon Loucheur
A San Francisco based artist who specializes in murals and acrylic fine art painting. Leon’s compositions are visual allegories, populated by creatures of the wild in various phases of deconstruction and remix. The work combines elements of counterpoint, and touches on universal themes through the juxtaposition of two worlds: one wild, one manicured. It is the layering of these influences that forms the core of Leon’s work, the prose of imagery composed in a contemporary, proverbial narrative.
Criminy Johnson
“I’ve been making work in the last few years focusing primarily on the things that I carry with me through my life, the burdens of sadness and anxiety that accumulate over time, the losses and defeats and moments that slowly add up to large piles of emotional debris. I suppose you probably have your own pile of debris.
I like to use allegories and metaphors so that you can take what you need from my worries, without having to have precisely the same problems. I’m being vague and esoteric intentionally, so that you can hang your worries from the same tree. I’m navel gazing, I’m worrying a sore tooth, I’m sitting on a bench next to a forest fire with a rock in my shoe. I’m uncertain about everything.” ~ Criminy Johnson
Max Kauffman
“My work is a release – akin to meditation, a relief from the chaos of our day to day lives. I grew up going between the woods/quiet of South Bend, IN and the best city in the world, Chicago. This back and forth continues in my work with conscious, realized line work coupling with abstract mark making. That moment of potential, that feeling of the unknown, is the foundation of my work thanks to years of traveling – staying open to possibility while maintaining a plan, a dystopian harmony between what is and what could be.” ~ Max Kauffman
Damara Kaminecki
(aka DamaraK The Destroyer) is a fine artist, illustrator, and jack of all trades doing work for major ad campaigns to window displays at Barneys. She spent her formative years in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago, IL drawing in the margins of her notebook. In 2004 she received a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute in New York City in Drawing. She is currently based in Philadelphia and enjoys cycling, dogs, and traveling to warmer climates.
Kurt Kreissl
“Organic change is erratic in a fluid way. The variations of nature are continuous. While the whole of transformation is an unstoppable force, points in its continuum are able to be marked; observed; impressed; apprehended. These points are forms, perceivable and definable. Defining forms; naming them, calling them- opens the great occurrence of transformation. Our definitions abstract from the assembly of things moving together in time and space. It can be said that we stop what we articulate.
I call out and stop pieces of transformation. I look at the space between emergence and drift and choose moments to seize, develop, and relay. I reflect senses from the whole world of change and refract them into our own- light becoming breath; response becoming sensuality; lust becoming intimacy; physicality becoming spiritual ecstasy. I explore the properties of sensate life in mixed media: oil & acrylic paint, graphite, and digital. I celebrate the realm where what is moves to what may be.” ~ Kurt Kressi
Tom Haney
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1962, Tom Haney has always been fascinated by mechanical movement. Once at the age of 2, he became separated from his family in a museum while being transfixed by a mechanical diorama. In subsequent years, his fascination would manifest itself often – he regularly took apart household items, much to his parents’ disapproval. He took art classes in high school and attended college studying Industrial Design. Before becoming a full-time artist in 2000, his professional work consisted of making props, models and miniatures for television commercials, still photographers, and motion pictures.
Mike Egan
A Pittsburgh based artist who received a BFA at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 2000. He focused on printmaking at the time, which is where he learned about artists like Jose Guadalupe Posada and the German Expressionists like Kathe Kollwitz. After he finished school and returned home he did not have the necessary supplies to continue making prints, so he turned to painting so he could keep making art. While he wanted to be an artist, he felt having a day job that he found interesting was important. He had discovered that there was a mortuary school in Pittsburgh where he could get licensed as a funeral director/embalmer. Mike went to school for a year and followed that up with an internship for another year. He learned how to do removals, embalm, do restorations, dress and casket people, do the cosmetics and assist on funerals. He continued to paint and made a lot of bad art. He eventually got a job as an embalmer out in Reading, PA in 2005. The hard thing about being an embalmer is that you’re on call when someone dies, so he spent a lot of time alone in his apartment waiting for the phone to ring. This is where he learned to craft my paintings and style. He thought back to his printmaking days in 2000 and how he loved the bold line work he was doing. So he started to paint in that style and things started to click for him. He has been working with galleries all over the U.S., Canada and the UK ever since.
Ben Copperwheat
As a print designer/artist, Ben Copperwheat produces clothing, art, and interior pieces. In addition to creating textile collections for fashion designers like Gucci, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Peter Som, Edun, Pret A Surf, Victorinox Swiss Army, Stephen Burrows, 3.1 Phillip Lim, DKNY, and Daryl K, his work is commissioned by personalities and organizations like Beyoncé and Blue Ivy, Boy George, Susanne Bartsch, Liza Minelli, Patricia Field, Pat Cleveland, Isabella Blow, Rod Thomas and David Collins Studio.
Exploring fashion design, Ben established a menswear line, COPPERWHEAT, with his cousin Lee in 2009. Covered by publications like Dazed Digital, Vogue Italia, and Surface Magazine, and collaborating with brands like Palladium shoes, COPPERWHEAT quickly generated excitement with its unusual combination of Ben’s distinctive hand printed designs, and Lee’s tailoring. Together they produced five collections shown during New York Fashion Week, “London to New York,” “End of Empire,” “Brave New World,” “Urban Warrior,” and “Smash it Up.”
Ben is represented by iconic New York City stylist, Patricia Field. He recently showed as part of Field’s Art/Fashion collective for New York Fashion Week at Howl Happening gallery in the East Village and Berlin Alternative Fashion Week both September 2016, Art Basel Miami, December 2016, and was commissioned to create a mural for Luisa Via Roma luxury boutique in Florence Italy January 2017. Ben will be showcasing his art at SchimanskiClub in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in March 2017. Ben Copperwheat graduated with a MA Textiles from the Royal College of Art in 2001. He was a Fashion Textiles lecturer at the University of Northumbria. Currently residing in Brooklyn, he moved to New York City in 2003.