Showing posts with label Jan Parker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jan Parker. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

July 2012 Exhibitions at ARC

Join us for our Opening Reception

Friday, June 29 from 6-9 pm 


ARC invites you to view new works from artists Ruti Modlin, Jan Parker and Betsy Williamson. Please join us for three exciting exhibits that suggest the various influences that have inspired these contemporary artists.


Exhibition dates: June 27 through July 21, 2012  
Gallery hours: Wed to Sat 12-6 pm, and Sun. 12-4 pm

Ruti Modlin

Flux refers to a philosophical state of constant change in which all things exist in non-linear time.

The paintings in Ruti Modlin's exhibit  Flux expose how dream, reality and emotion coexist on the canvas. The work emanates from a mix of life drawing, photography, familiar objects and people into an expressive pictorial landscape. Modlin strives to convey a state of mind in her personal exploration of a life, changing and evolving.

 

Jan Parker

Since 2010 Jan Parker has been collecting and working with hair as one of the mediums in her art.  Initially interested in how we respond to hair and the aesthetic dichotomy of growing hair vs. dead hair, she later became intrigued by the power hair has, both personally and metaphorically, as an extension of our DNA.

In this installation, Beneath the Skin...an extension of my DNA, Parker makes references to the loss of identity by using her hair along with the hair of hundreds of anonymous men and women, family, and friends. Coupled with the hair is a personal, intimate, and universal object. Both the hair and the stripped bed are saturated with meaning and together they convey a narrative of loss and removed identity. 

Betsy Williamson

Betsy Williamson's exhibit, Mining the Textbooks of Art History, is comprised of four projects that work together to explore the ways art is presented and understood through the textbook. The works from A History of Painting consider research that has been done on the connections between painting and photography. Textbook Typology shows the viewer what work of art is most often reproduced in textbooks to highlight a specific movement, culture or time period. Rethinking Art History specifically mines Artforms textbook to create juxtapositions that give a new way of looking at and understanding the depicted works of art. Lastly, the video project In the Round explores the pitfall of using a single photograph to depict a three-dimensional object.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Jan Parker Spins a Good Yarn



Today kicks off Ooh-La-La Chicago, ARC’s annual members show! Throughout the month, ARC blog will be giving you a sneak peak at the work of each of the members and affiliates showcased in the exhibition!

First up is recent member and multi-media artist Jan Parker whose evocative installation is elegant in its simplicity but demanding of contemplation for all of its tangled complexity. Prefabricated Happiness: A Self Portrait is a 7 lb 8 oz ball of blood-red yarn, cradled between a smooth swath of the same yarn and a shiny, new rocking chair. The piece plays with notions of motherhood and manufacturing and perhaps teases out the parallels embedded in our conception of both. The image, both gentle and jarring, contains a psychological heaviness. Even the word, “yarn” is redolent of a yearning. The fabric from certain angles appears like a pregnant belly and is indeed pregnant with the viewer’s own projections of domestic bliss - acquired, avoided or sadly lost.

Ooh-La-La opening reception is Sunday, October 9th

By Rachel Brown