Accessiblity2007: Sustainability
Project Directors
Mark Mcleod, Curator: Invitational Recycled Art Project
“I am a sculptor who uses props and performance to create work which is then documented through digital photography. In May 2006, I graduated with a Masters of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Syracuse University. The ideologies behind various movements such as Fluxus, Happenings, and Performance Art, along with a considerable interest in perception and reality, have come to form the major influences of my work. Although much of what I do is a conceptual endeavor, humor is employed to allow for viewing pleasure by all. Enjoy.”
www.markmcleod.org
Adrienne Antonson, Curator: The Green Revival Collection
With an educational background in Sculpture and Painting, Adrienne Antonson pursued a career in clothing and business. As owner and designer of Spinster clothing company, she spends her days scavenging, sewing and marketing. Lately she is consumed with painting small pictures, gardening and curating the Green Revival Collection. Born in Gainesville, FL, Adrienne graduated from the College of Charleston. She currently calls Charleston home.
www.spinsterclothing.com
Participating Artists
Christina Bowdler
“The basis of my work is my investigation of material. I gravitate toward common, everyday materials (paper towels, latex paints, apple skins), not the traditional materials of sculpture. I am interested in the process of discovering a material's unique identity and challenging its assumed limitations and functions. The humor in my work derives from the application of language. I play with definition and expectation when I unite material and form. I create opportunities to reconsider everyday materials, removing them from their mainstream destinies.”
Jonathan Brilliant
Jonathan David Brilliant is best described as a “Southern has-been” and a “British wanna-be.” He was born in 1976 in Charleston, South Carolina. Brilliant received his B.A. in Studio Art from the College of Charleston in 2002 and his M.F.A. in Spatial Arts from San Jose State University in 2007. He has shown his work in numerous group and solo exhibitions. In 2006, he was the artist in residence at the Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, South Carolina, and in 2007 he will be attending the Vermont Studio Center on a full fellowship. His work is a synthesis of the craft-based approach to object making, merged with the British method of art making and promotion. In describing his working method, Brilliant states that, “My work expresses a genuine interest in the inherent qualities of a material and the extent to which I can exploit it for making art. Rather than relying on intuitive approaches to art making, I have a set of systems that I apply to the materials at hand. These systems include but are not limited to weaving, welding, stacking, arranging, mold-making and creating compositional elements.”
He currently lives and works on Sullivan’s Island South Carolina with his fiancée, Brooke and their cat, Zero.
www.jonathanbrilliant.com
Leah Brown
Leah Brown is a Sculpture and Installation Artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Originally from Asheville, NC, Leah received her B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI. She spent 2006-2007 as one of the four inaugural Artists-in-Residence for the HUB-BUB residency program in Spartanburg, SC. While in residence, she worked in collaboration with the Spartanburg Area Conservancy and Brian Hitselberger to co-create the Scarecrow Wedding installation along the Cottonwood Trail, and with Wofford College in conjunction with the New York Public Theater, to create a transforming installation/stage-set to be used for the nation-wide production of the 365 Days/Plays project as written by playwright, Suzan-Lori Parks. Her artwork has recently been included in many media outlets, including the Wooster Collective, ETV, and Canned Culture. She is represented by the Dangenart Gallery in Nashville, TN. Upcoming exhibits include shows in NY, NE, PA and SC. Of her work, Leah writes "My intention is to alter people’s perceptions of their surroundings, taking them out of their ordinary frames of mind and giving them the experience of being transported into another world. When a person questions their own reality for even a moment, the experience becomes unforgettable, and I have accomplished something much greater than a mere combination of materials."
Benjamin Entner
Benjamin Entner creates works that are the result of conceptual play and material experimentation. Entner’s work actively engages a viewer to intimately react and interact through the use of humor, wonder, and large physical presence. Benjamin Entner is a recent graduate of Syracuse University's prestigious Sculpture Program. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree. His work has shown nationally and internationally, most recently at Syracuse’s Everson Museum, the Lawndale Arts Center in Houston, and Minneapolis’ Alfie’s Art Garage. He is a Taurus and enjoys longs walks with his dog, Taz.
Lisa Iglesias
Lisa Iglesias was born and raised in The Queens, New York. Prior to her return to New York City earlier this year, she lived upstate and in Providence, Denmark, and Florida. She is currently on the road in a 1978 Dodge van. Iglesias was in residence this fall at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, and in the spring in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She mourns for a bike named Golden Boy and lives with a tiny dog named Friedrich.
April Karlovit
April Karlovit helped create the Koonseberry Puppet Company which toured in Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa. After the dissolution of Koonseberry Puppets, Ms. Karlovit acted as artist-in-residence for schools ranging from elementary through high school, while also teaching marionette making for Access Arts in Columbia, Missouri. She has been apprenticed to puppet maker Ken Vogel and completed a “puppetry intensive” with Sandglass Puppet Theater in Vermont. Currently, Ms. Karlovit lives in Columbia, Missouri, and works in the outreach department at Daniel Boone Regional Library where she organizes the youth outreach program and drives the bookmobile.
Ellen Kochansky
Ellen Kochansky owns and designs for EKO. In rural South Carolina, she has made quilts and textile art for over 20 years. She has served as an American Canvas panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and as a trustee of the American Crafts Council. Her works are in many public and private institutions including the Museum of Art + Design in NY, and the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC.
www.Ekochansky.com
Heather Koonse
Heather grew up making puppets with her puppeteer mother, April Karlovit. Her creative upbringing led Koonse to study design at Stephens College, where she received a bachelor’s degree in Fashion Design/Product Development. Upon graduation Koonse moved to Charleston, SC to work for Gianna Costas, a local handbag designer. She quickly made the transition from bags to clothing and started working with Adrienne Antonson for Spinster clothing company. At Spinster, Heather reconnected with a resourceful approach to making garments. She may never be the same…
www.spinsterclothing.com
Leigh Magar
Leigh Magar was born and raised in South Carolina. After exploring expressions in painting and sculpture she moved to New York City to study Millinery at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
In 1994 she opened her own company, MAGAR HATWORKS. In September 2001, she followed this with a storefront retail shop & studio at 557 1/2 King Street, Charleston, South Carolina. Items available at the shop are hand-made & one-of-a-kind.
Magar's hats are available at Barneys New York; Isetan, Japan; The Hat Shop in Soho; The Sanctuary atKiawah Island; Pompadour in Michigan and the Parrot Cay Hotel in the British West Indies. She also takes custom orders and commissions. Celebrity clients have included Gregory Hines, Sandra Bullock, Christina Aguilera, Dwana Smallwood (Alvin Ailey Dance Theater), Bill Taft & Michael Stipe.
www.magarhatworks.com
Janet Orselli
Janet Orselli is an installation artist who creates site-specific installations as well as sculpture and drawings. She received an MFA degree from Clemson University in 2001. Her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the United States. In 2005, she was awarded a $20,000 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, and also designed her largest, most ambitious installation, Encircling Spaces, for the Rotunda galleries at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC. In 2007 she had a solo installation exhibition at O.K. Harris Works of Art in New York City. She currently works as a full-time artist in Columbia, SC.
Blaine Siegel
Blaine Siegel was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His early passion for comics led him to pursue illustration...which led him to pursue photography...which led him to create sets to photograph. This in turn led to a rejection of traditional photography, forsaking control for the spontaneity of the Polaroid camera. In his Polaroid works Blaine juxtaposed similar or disparate images. This exploration has led him toward additive art and an era that his mother refers to as “The Sponge Period.” He began to create large fantastic sculptures composed entirely from kitchen sponges.
His experiments in three dimensional art focused on using quotidian materials. Working with these materials led to a decision to attend graduate school. Blaine graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with an MFA in 2006. While completing his degree, his interest turned from pure 3D art to large scale installation, video and kinetic art. He continues to explore all of these forms in Philadelphia, PA where he lives with his modern dancer wife, two cats and a bunny named Ed.
Holly Streekstra
Born in Randolph, WI, Holly Streekstra received her BFA in sculptural ceramics from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in 2000. She participated in the Wadastick Artist and Scholar in Residence program in Jalisco, Mexico in 2001 and attended Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, where she received an MFA in Sculpture in 2006. In July, she was artist-in-residence at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA. Her work has been exhibited at numerous institutions, including the Minnesota Museum of American Art in St. Paul; Woman Made Gallery, Chicago; The Rogue Buddha Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, The Shaw Center for the Arts, Baton Rouge, LA; Morehead State University, Morehead, KY; and the Phipps Center for the Arts in Hudson, WI. She currently lives in Baton Rouge and teaches at Louisiana State University. Her work is concerned with the increasing assimilation of media into our everyday lives and its impact on cultures. This history is explored in her work through the mediums of collage and assemblage, using found objects, video and audio.
http://www.mnartists.org/artistHome.do?rid=11560
Amylynn Warfield
“I've always felt as though I was born in the wrong time period. Even as a little girl I knew I wanted to be an artist. Growing up in rural Indiana I was not exposed to much in the way of fine art. However, I explored my world on my own, creating natural installations in the woods, making collages and always journaling my thoughts and dreams. Every summer I visited my grandparents and would reconnect to my Appalachian heritage. This seemed to bring me into the time period I felt I should have been born. Sewing with my grandmother and covering myself in beautiful handmade quilts made by my great grandmother exposed me to the wonders of color and texture. My work today is a representation of my life and a reflection of my heritage. As I moved forward in my exploration of textiles and color I feel the comfort and inspiration of my ancestry.”
Jennifer Wightman
“I am a formally trained biologist living in upstate New York. I consider Warhol's 200 cans, Dürer's Adam and Eve, and Pollock's action paintings to be fundamentally of the earth, and therefore environmental art -- an expression of our relation to the environment whether it is capitalism, religion or the definition of beauty. In this way, I consider my work to be 21st century verism -- I like real things to represent them selves. I like scientific graphs as observation-tabulated number paintings and I like biological organisms to paint with their synthesized pigments. But sometimes I get lost and I don't know when a thing begins and when it ends. Logic is beautiful because it only happens sometimes. I fundamentally know that the only difference between myself and a wool blanket, is time. I am an embedded reporter specializing in the transformations of carbon molecules for a wink in geologic time. My fundamental question of inquiry: why are we not ecologically rational? Ultimately, I am interested in the co-evolution of culture and ecosystems.”
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