Open Studio Gallery Schedule

2011-2012

Erik Waterkotte: Invocation
February 24 – March 31, 2012
Opening Reception: Friday, February 24, 2012, 6:30 - 8:30 PM

Erik Waterkotte, Invocation of Demons, digitally printed transparent film in lightbox, 12” x 16", 2011.

Invocation is a word that connotes magic. It can be a prayer of entreaty or a formula for conjuring, or even a petition for help. Erik Waterkotte’s work is an exploration of popular culture, myth and fantasy as conveyed through print and mixed media. As an artist, he is continually drawn to ideas and events in Western, popular culture that blur the line between fantasy and reality, and finds that these ideas and related imagery act as illustrations for the cultural fragmentation of our contemporary society. Waterkotte’s recent work alludes to fantastic, magical, and mystical spaces. Juxtaposed and submerged in these prints and mixed media works are images from the films Woodstock and Gimme Shelter, heavy metal album art, the Mormon Tabernacle, alchemical symbolism and ancient ruins. Using appropriation, collage, mixed print media, digital applications, and video projection, Waterkotte creates layered imagery that appears to both elucidate and obscure. Working with collage and printmaking he creates images that reference architectural spaces and landscapes, that fluctuate in-and-out of being, layering imagery and media overtop of one another. Working in collage is an act of destruction, building, distortion, and reduction. Distortion and reduction are key to the artist’s process — he wants the viewer to experience imagery that is temporal, shifting, and could easily be peeled back apart. He is interested in creating works that reference the beauty and terror of the sublime, that walk the line between representation and abstraction, form and formless.  

Erik Waterkotte received his MFA from the University of Alberta in 2005 and his BFA from Illinois State University in 2001. While completing his BFA he studied printmaking for a semester at the University of Wolverhampton in Wolverhampton, England. Waterkotte has shown his prints in the United States and internationally. Some of his recent exhibitions include, THENOW Contemporary Prints/Historical Perspectives at the University of Minnesota as part of the 2010 Mid America Print Conference, the Hong Kong Graphic Arts Festival at the Hong Kong City Hall, (S)edition, Prints as Activism at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids Michigan, the 2009 China Sanbao International Printmaking Exhibition, and The Edmonton Print International at SNAP Gallery in Edmonton, AB. His most recent solo exhibitions were at Saltgrass Printmakers in Salt Lake City, Utah, the Printmakers Gallery at Arkansas State University, and the Hemingway Gallery at Boise State University, Idaho. His work is part of several university collections and he has participated in numerous national and international print portfolios. Erik is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at Minnesota State University Mankato teaching printmaking and drawing. He has also been a Visiting Assistant Professor in Printmaking at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Waterkotte has been a visiting artist at several universities throughout the United States, and has been the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Emerging Artist Initiative Grant. In addition he has recently been an editor for the MidAmerica Print Council Journal and has contributed his writing to CHOP published by Malaspina Printmakers in Vancouver, BC and Contemporary Impressions Print Journal published the American Print Alliance in Atlanta, Georgia.

Mark Franchino: Proof
April 12 – May 19, 2012
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 12, 2012, 6:30 - 8:30 PM

Proof: Untitled # 1 (Hercules Sees a Storm Coming), screenprint, 56 x 71 cm, 2009, $500. 

Mark Franchino's work explores our constructions of everyday environments and events, and the nature of human dynamics that evolve within, around, and through them. His work addresses seemingly mundane spaces and activities as physical constructions that reinforce and perpetuate implicit value systems. What are the rules? What purpose do they serve?

In the Proof series, "cloud" images were generated from of an organization of randomized patterns created by a computer program. Those images were then rendered in 3D software and moved through time. As in the youthful game of finding images in clouds, Franchino selected the ones in which he could "see" something and then printed the images in subtle shades of white and iridescent ink through halftone patterns. The clouds are at once present and absent. The images alluded to in their titles are fictions, as is the notion that they are anything more than random. 

Mark Franchino received a BFA in 1998 from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a MFA from the University of Delaware in 2002. In the last 10 years his works have been shown in more than fifty group and solo exhibitions in the US and internationally, including exhibitions at the Universität der Künste in Berlin, Germany; the Print Center in Philadelphia, PA; and the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art. He has received numerous awards including the H. Douglas Pickering Memorial Award and purchase prizes from Lessedra Gallery in Sophia, Bulgaria and the Amity Art Foundation in Connecticut. Recent visiting artists lectures have been given at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA. Currently, Franchino is an Associate Professor of Art in the Art Department at Clarion University of Pennsylvania. Previously he was an Assistant Curator and the Print Studio Coordinator at the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, ND where he organized an international artist residency program. Franchino, originally from Long Island, N.Y., now lives in Clarion, PA.

Visiting Artist Exhibition - Mark Crofton Bell & Catherine Lane
May 25 – June 23, 2012
Artist Talks: Friday, May 25, 2012, 6:00 - 7:00 PM
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 24, 2012, 7:00 - 9:00 PM

Visiting Artist Exhibition - Tom Ngo & Derek Sullivan
June 28 – July 28, 2012
Artist Talks: Thursday, June 28, 2012, 6:00 - 7:00 PM
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 28, 2012, 7:00 - 9:00 PM