Release & Capture, curated by Fionn Meade, on Display at Kirkland Arts Center

Media Contact:
Kirkland Arts Center
425-822-7161
www.kirklandartscenter.org

KIRKLAND, Wash.-Curated by Fionn Meade, Release & Capture presents contemporary works on paper by seven Seattle-area artists. Works on paper are often seen as drafts, plans, sketches and studies–steps toward a more complete composition. Release & Capture expands the notion of paperworks beyond primi pensieri or "first thoughts," asking how "can paper, with its direct, expectant nature, be renewed time and again as an enchanted and far-reaching medium?"

In Release & Capture, contemporary artists use paper in unique ways essential to their practice. The exhibit includes new work from each artist that explores paper as an innovative, informed, and diverse medium. A Kirkland Arts Center publication featuring artists’ work and a curatorial essay accompanies the exhibition.

Artists presented in Release & Capture are Saul Becker, Gretchen Bennett, Dawn Cerny, Claire Cowie, Marc Dombrosky, Perri Lynch, and Mary Simpson.

Fionn Meade is a writer and independent curator. He received his MFA from Columbia University and has curated several exhibitions, including Lost & Found: Media Archeology, a multi-disciplinary series this past October at the Northwest Film Forum. His writing has recently appeared in Bomb Magazine, NY Times Book Review and SF Chronicle among other publications. He is a contributing writer and editor of SOIL: Artist-Run Gallery, 1995-2005, a catalog documenting Seattle’s oldest artist cooperative, to be published in September 2005. Meade will also be co-curating (with composer Rob Millis) a sound art exhibition at Seattle’s Bumbershoot 2005 arts festival.

Saul Becker is a painter and printmaker currently seeking his MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University. Becker's work has been recently exhibited at Howard House, CoCA and the Tacoma Art Museum. His work was recently featured in New American Paintings (Issue #49) and he received a Bemis Center for the Arts Residency in 2005. For this exhibit, Becker abstracts the primary colors of logos and emblems, offsetting them with faint cloudbursts and wave patterns.

Gretchen Bennett’s drawings and collages are built from pop culture stickers and adhered paper scavenged from urban neighborhoods. Bennett reconfigures this source material to create organic branch-like networks. For Release & Capture, Bennett offers part of a new body of work that transposes landscapes using contact paper and artist-designed limited edition wallpaper. Bennett has recently exhibited her work at the Bronx Museum, PS122 Gallery, and Smack Mellon Studios in NYC and at SOIL Art Gallery in Seattle (Topography of Home). She has recently been awarded residencies at Centrum and the Yaddo Foundation.

In Dawn Cerny’s idiosyncratic drawings and installations she seems to collaborate with herself in multiple guises, creating her own dialogue with everything from U.S. presidential history to celebrity gossip, and animal taxonomy. She has recently shown her drawings and installation work at Crawl Space, The Vera Project, SOIL Art Gallery, and Fisher Gallery among other venues. Cerny was Artist-in-Residency at Cornish College of the Arts in 2001. She is the co-founder of SS Marie Antoinette Press, and artist book press and letterpress studio (2004).

Claire Cowie’s work with watercolors, collage works, and sculpture creates a multi-faceted otherworld. Represented James Harris Gallery, Cowie’s recent shows include an exhibition of sculpture at Cherry de los Reyes Gallery in Los Angeles, a residency and exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery, and a solo show of recent collage works at James Harris Gallery reviewed in Art Forum. Cowie was also recently awarded the Neddy Arts Fellowship from the Behnke Foundation.

Marc Dombrosky’s recent body of work takes discarded notes from anonymous donors – shopping lists or doodles- and transforms them using embroidery, overwriting, collage and other techniques. Memos and receipts gain the status of a collector’s find, asking to be handled with care and reverence. He has taught internationally and was recently a Visiting Professor at Cornish College of the Arts. Dombrosky is represented by Solomon Fine Art.

Perri Lynch is dedicated to making place-based work with a regional focus. The synthesis of digital imaging, sound and paper through installation is at the center of her studio practice. Through this interdisciplinary approach, she explores many attributes of a place simultaneously. Her work has recently been shown in the New Wight Biennial, The Cranbrook Art Museum, and on commission from Lemberg Gallery where she designed and installed a billboard on the outskirts of Detroit. Perri is also an emerging public artist, currently designing sculptural forms and a waterpath for Lake City's Albert Davis Park in Seattle.

Mary Simpson here reappraises historic dramas, returning to iconic images from past eras and beautifully distorting them into spare, isolate and concise etchings. Simpson recently received a Centrum Creative Residency and has exhibited recent work at Hugo House Gallery, Phinney Center Gallery and the Tacoma Tollbooth Gallery. Her upcoming projects include a solo show at 4Culture Gallery in Seattle and a new member’s exhibit at SOIL Art Gallery.

The Kirkland Arts Center Gallery is located at 620 Market Street at the corner of 7th and Market in the historic Peter Kirk Building. The KAC Gallery is open 11 am to 6 pm and on Saturdays from 11 am to 5 pm. For more information about Kirkland Arts Center and the Gallery, please visit our website at www.kirklandartscenter.org

The Kirkland Arts Center is located at the corner of 7th Avenue and Market Street in Kirkland, Washington. Hours for exhibits in the Peter Kirk Gallery are Monday through Friday, 11am to 6pm, Saturdays, 11am to 5pm, and second Thursdays until 8pm. The Gallery is free and open to the public. Donations are welcome. The Arts Center offers quarterly classes in the visual arts for students of all ages and levels. The Kirkland Arts Center hosts Summerfest, an annual arts festival in downtown Kirkland, which attracts artists from throughout the region. For more information, please call 425-822-7161 or visit the Kirkland Arts Center web site at www.kirklandartscenter.org

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