Blurring the lines between creation and curation: IGNITION!
Feb 17th, 2016 by Leslie LaMuro
The Crossman Gallery in the Greenhill Center of the Arts is ever changing and ever evolving. Each exhibit brings us new insights, different perspectives and creative outpourings that expand our experience and our minds. The newest experiment is IGNITION it takes over the Crossman Gallery from February 17-March 18 . The exhibit is organized by Arts Media Center Director Dale Kaminski who received sponsorship for this exhibit from the Visiting Artists Program. The Ignition Event, an exhibit featuring guest artists who created new work in during their residencies in the Crossman Gallery, will end its run with a closing reception on Wednesday afternoon, March 18. We will be featuring guest artist Max White that day and will be serving Chinese loose leaf tea and cookies during the reception.
See images from the exhibit on Instagram at #artatuww #crossmangallery #Ignition
This project evolved from last summer’s displacement of the Arts Media Center during the media center’s remodeling. The Media Center took up residence in the Crossman Gallery and moved the large scale digital printer to the gallery. Various faculty artists and visiting artists dropped by to create digital art which was then printed in large scale and hung up in the gallery. The gallery became an interactive studio, Dale was welcoming to all and would offer tea and conversation. Throughout the summer the students, summer campers and other visits and campus employees wandered in to find out what was happening and this blossomed into an idea that has come to full fruition now.
Ignition lights up with the first visiting artist, Rebecca Lessem, Wednesday, February 17. She is exploring “wrongness.” Lessem states, “To define this “wrongness” I point to that unsettling feeling we experience when something strikes us as oddly disturbing or uncomfortable in a way which is hard to define or explain, and we are left in confusion, wondering what is wrong and why it is upsetting to us.” Stop in and see what happens when artist are let loose to create in our space.”
On Thursday, February 18th we are joined by Nathanial Stern who is well regarded in the media arts world. He has exhibited in South Africa and recently at the Museum of Wisconsin Art. Stern is a Professor of Media Arts at UW-Milwaukee. Here is a TEDX Talk he did with his colleague Ilya Avdeev. Nathaniel will be joined by Wyatt Tinder, a graduate student in the Media Arts program at UWM.
All in all, over 20 different artists will come to work and collaborate during Ignition, producing large scale digital prints that will be displayed in the Bad Weather Gallery in the lower level of the Greenhill Center of the Arts. During this exhibit there will also be a series of music performances taking place in harmony with the artists work. Some artists are creating works specifically for this project others will bring existing images to be enlarged. Artists include: Derrick Buisch, Steve Burnham, Eddee Daniel, Anwar Floyd-Pruitt, Adrienne Foster, Bill Miller, Susan Messer, Meg Mitchell, Paul Mitchell, Chee Wang Ng, Hal Rammel, Nathaniel Stern, Fred Stonehouse, Wyatt Tinder, Max White and Koala Yip.
Come be a part of this creation project. Stop in, enjoy a cup of tea, watch the process, interact with the artists, engage in the process of creating! Ignite in you the power to create!