LEXINGTON, KY  − The University of Kentucky School of Art and Visual Studies throws open its doors to the public again this holiday season. The Bluegrass community is invited to come discover UK’s talented young artists at the popular Open Studio event. See what the university’s student and faculty artists have been creating and shop for one-of-a-kind items from 6 to 10 p.m. Friday, November 30, at Reynolds Building Number 1, located at 349 Scott St.

During the annual Open Studio, the public can visit UK student and faculty artists’ studios in the huge former tobacco warehouse. The event gives individuals an opportunity to see the various media of artwork created by UK’s undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty. Media on display will include metalwork, fiber, paintings, photographs, drawings, ceramics, plaster casts, printmaking and woodwork.

Open Studio also features the Carey Ellis Juried Student Art Exhibition, featuring nearly 100 pieces of art by graduate and undergraduate art students.  Guest curator for this year’s exhibition is Louis Zoellar Bickett II.

The awards program for winning art in the Carey Ellis Juried Student Show will be presented during the Open Studio event at approximately 8 p.m. in the facility’s Barnhart Gallery.

The School of Art and Visual Studies, at the UK College of Fine Arts, is an accredited member of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in the fields of art studio, art history and art education.

A donation of $5 to the UK Department of Art is suggested for entry to Open Studio. Proceeds go to various programs provided by the Department of Art. Free parking for individuals attending Open Studio can be found nearby on both Broadway and Scott Street. To find out more about Open Studio, contact Dmitry Strakovsky, assistant professor of new media, at (859) 257-2727.

LOUISVILLE, KY  - Brooklyn’s Residency Unlimited (RU) and IDEAS 40203 (International Dialogue and Engagement Art Space + Zip Code) are pleased to present their inaugural group exhibition “Alternate Painterly” on Friday November 2, 2012 (6pm-9pm) with works by Theo Edmonds (Kentucky), Tamas Veszi (New York) and Wojciech Gilewicz (Poland). The overarching concept of “Alternate Painterly” is to explore the act of painting in the 21st century through the diverging practices of 3 multimedia artists.  The exhibition is curated by New York based University of Louisville alumn, Boshko Boskovic.

This new non-profit presentation space is located in the Old Louisville Chamber of Commerce at 1217 South 4th Street, Louisville, KY.  At 7pm there will be a special presentation by Residency Unlimited co-founder Nathalie Anglès outlining additional plans for this unique collaboration.
www.residencyunlimited.org

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
With the site specific installation “Q: Neuro-Architecture, Pop-Mythology & Unreal Truths”, Kentucky based artist Theo Edmonds’ expanded 3-D paintings unleash a powerful, symbolic imagination. Exploring the intersection of neuroscience, mythology and shamanism, Edmonds pieces together a myriad of canvases and painted tree branches that create quilt-like architectural forms whose expressive fusion reveal a semi autobiographical narrative exploring the contemporary outsider’s experience in the American south.

Wojciech Gilewicz videotapes himself in various social, political and cultural backgrounds to test if art can ever catch up with what is going on. Posturing the traditional painter in “Painterʼs Painting”, the viewer can never discern what is actually being painted on the canvas. Gilewicz refers to this work as a global journey through cultural stereotypes and clichés in which he examines the resistance of art to reality and its capacity to depict reality. “Intrude” depicts another action by Gilewicz where he places trompe lʼoeil urban based paintings in perfect imitation of their immediate surroundings in the cityscape – in this case Shanghai. By repeating these same actions in diffferent locations all over the world, they acquire an ethnographic dimension and reveal fractures in the urban tissue.

“Repetition Of The Self” is a series of 9 self portraits by the New York based artist Tamas Veszi that investigate the duality between our image as a constant and the change that occurs daily as an abstract progress in time. Neither figurative nor abstract, Veszi’s paintings reflect the impossibility of seeing oneself impartially; their hybrid nature is created by the meeting of organic elements and synthetic objects and lead the viewer into “ a not yet identified space” as coined by the artist.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Theo Edmonds is a transdisciplinary artist who will complete his MFA at the University of Kentucky School of Art and Visual Studies in 2013. His work has been exhibited at Clamp Art, New York, Residency Unlimited, Brooklyn, Radiator Art, Long Island City, Land of Tomorrow, Louisville, EBC Gallery, Paris, France and Tuska Center for Contemporary Art, Lexington. He is currently collaborating on a new work of experimental theater with internationally acclaimed writer, performance artist and cultural icon of the New York Underground, Penny Arcade.
www.theoedmonds.com/

Wojciech Gilewicz lives and works between Warsaw and New York. He works with painting, video, photography and installations. His practice extends to site-specific projects as well as performative actions. Gilewicz has exhibited at institutions including Foksal Gallery, Warsaw; SculptureCenter, New York; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; National Museum of Contemporary Art / Changdong Art Studio, Seoul and Aspen Art Museum amongst others. His video works have been screened in venues such as Centre Pompidou, Paris; Reina Sophia National Museum, Madrid; HKW, Berlin and Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
www.gilewicz.net/

Tamas Veszi is a New York multi media artist, whose work includes painting, drawing, video and installation.  His pieces have been shown at the TINA B. Contemporary Art Festival in Prague, The Center of Photography and Moving Image in New York, the Allan Nederpelt Gallery in Brooklyn, Schmidt Gallery, Budapest, Glow Video Art, Berlin, Frederico Seve Gallery, New York, Perseverance, London, Galerie Thomas Henry Ross, Montreal among others.
www.veszi.com/

ABOUT IDEAS 40203
Located in the Old Louisville Chamber of Commerce, IDEAS 40203 is a new non profit presentation space.  This joint initiative is conceived by Kentucky and New York creative practitioners whose aim is to build lasting connections between Kentucky, New York and international contemporary artists and the broader arts community. IDEAS 40203 will feature a year long rolling exhibition program of Kentucky, New York and international emerging and mid-career artists.  Additionally, plans outlining opportunities for Kentucky-based universities and colleges will be announced at the launch event.

ABOUT RESIDENCY UNLIMITED
Residency Unlimited (RU) is a New York based non profit arts organization that reshapes the notion and purpose of artists in the 21st century by developing customised residencies and strategic partnerships with collaborating institutions; RU departs from the traditional studio program model and explores a more expansive approach to innovative action across multiple platforms.
www.residencyunlimited.org

Toutant repurposes handmade quilts into fabric sculptures and embroidered two-dimensional works that examine contemporary systems of communication.

For Toutant, quilts serve as artifacts of collective identities. In many cultures, quilt making was a communal activity, and the product of a quilting bee’s labor was a tangible relic of their interactions with one another. Contemporary relationships also produce artifacts, but these are increasingly of a digital, easily replicable nature.

Toutant has printed a series of photographs gleaned from social media—the intangible artifacts of modern relationships—and stitched cloth from found quilts over top of them into patterns that recall traditional quilt designs, and also reference the facial recognition software used by Facebook. The faces in the photographs are obscured by the quilted fabric, creating unsettling images that question the impact of social media on the formation of our personal and collective identities.

This exhibition also includes several found, handmade quilts Toutant has deconstructed and re-stitched into large-scale works that complicate the division between what is considered craft and what is considered fine art. Displayed beside her altered social media images, these textured, tactile pieces underscore the changes in physical culture brought on by changing technology.

Toutant was born in Cincinnati, OH. She received her BFA from the University of Cincinnati, and will graduate in 2013 with an MFA from the University of Kentucky. This summer she completed a Byrdcliffe Artist Residency in Woodstock, NY.

With the site specific installation “Q: Neuro-Architecture, Pop-Mythology & Unreal Truths”, Kentucky based artist Theo Edmonds’ expanded 3-D paintings unleash a powerful, symbolic imagination. Exploring the intersection of neuroscience, mythology and shamanism, Edmonds pieces together a myriad of canvases and painted tree branches that create quilt-like architectural forms whose expressive fusion reveal a semi autobiographical narrative exploring the contemporary outsider’s experience in the American south.

“Repetition Of The Self” is a series of 9 self portraits by the New York based artist Tamas Veszi that investigate the duality between our image as a constant and the change that occurs daily as an abstract progress in time. Neither figurative nor abstract, Veszi’s paintings reflect the impossibility of seeing oneself impartially; their hybrid nature is created by the meeting of organic elements and synthetic objects and lead the viewer into “ a not yet identified space” as coined by the artist.

Wojciech Gilewicz videotapes himself in various social, political and cultural backgrounds to test if art can ever catch up with what is going on. Posturing the traditional painter in “Painterʼs Painting”, the viewer can never discern what is actually being painted on the canvas. Gilewicz refers to this work as a global journey through cultural stereotypes and clichés in which he examines the resistance of art to reality and its capacity to depict reality. “Intrude” depicts another action by Gilewicz where he places trompe lʼoeil urban based paintings in perfect imitation of their immediate surroundings in the cityscape – in this case Shanghai. By repeating these same actions in diffferent locations all over the world, they acquire an ethnographic dimension and reveal fractures in the urban tissue.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Theo Edmonds is a transdisciplinary artist who will complete his MFA at the University of Kentucky School of Art and Visual Studies in 2013. His work has been exhibited at Clamp Art, New York, Residency Unlimited, Brooklyn, Radiator Art, Long Island City, Land of Tomorrow, Louisville, EBC Gallery, Paris, France and Tuska Center for Contemporary Art, Lexington. He is currently collaborating on a new work of experimental theater with internationally acclaimed writer, performance artist and cultural icon of the New York Underground, Penny Arcade.
  www.theoedmonds.com/

Wojciech Gilewicz lives and works between Warsaw and New York. He works with painting, video, photography and installations. His practice extends to site-specific projects as well as performative actions. Gilewicz has exhibited at institutions including Foksal Gallery, Warsaw; SculptureCenter, New York; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; National Museum of Contemporary Art / Changdong Art Studio, Seoul and Aspen Art Museum amongst others. His video works have been screened in venues such as Centre Pompidou, Paris; Reina Sophia National Museum, Madrid; HKW, Berlin and Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
  www.gilewicz.net/

Tamas Veszi is a New York multi media artist, whose work includes painting, drawing, video and installation.  His pieces have been shown at the TINA B. Contemporary Art Festival in Prague, The Center of Photography and Moving Image in New York, the Allan Nederpelt Gallery in Brooklyn, Schmidt Gallery, Budapest, Glow Video Art, Berlin, Frederico Seve Gallery, New York, Perseverance, London, Galerie Thomas Henry Ross, Montreal among others.
  www.veszi.com/

ABOUT IDEAS 40203

Located in the Old Louisville Chamber of Commerce IDEAS 40203 is a new non profit presentation space.  This joint initiative is conceived by Kentucky and New York creative practitioners whose aim is to build lasting connections between US based and international contemporary artists and the broader arts community.  IDEAS 40203 will feature a year long rolling exhibition program of Kentucky, New York and international emerging and mid-career artists.  The programming of IDEAS 40203 is directed by Kentucky based artist Theo Edmonds and Residency Unlimited in New York.

ABOUT RESIDENCY UNLIMITED

(RU)
Residency Unlimited (RU) is a New York based non profit arts organization that reshapes the notion and purpose of artists in the 21st century by developing customised residencies and strategic partnerships with collaborating institutions; RU departs from the traditional studio program model and explores a more expansive approach to innovative action across multiple platforms.

www.residencyunlimited.org

Curated by Lisa Dent, this exhibition of the University of Kentucky Fine Arts faculty artists includes Ruth Adams, Sarah Ammerman Van Meter, Garry Bibbs, Roger Boulay, Jeremy Colbert, Rob Dickes, Beth Ettensohn, Gerald Ferstman, Valerie Fuchs, Rae Goodwin, Sharon Lee Hart, Marty Henton, Marty, Hui Chi Lee, Doreen Maloney, Matt Page, Ebony Patterson, Arturo Alonzo Sandoval, Bobby Scroggins, Robert Shay, Brandon Smith, Hunter Stamps, Dima Strakovsky, Lynn Sweet, George Szekely, Sarah Wylie A. VanMeter, and James Wade.

Image Credit: ARTURO ALONZO SANDOVAL, Circling Back Series # 12, iInterlaced and machine stitching, repurposed UK HealthCare construction wall digital vinyl images, multi-color threads, museum mattes, museum acrylic, and painted wood frames

More info: http://www.uky.edu/ArtMuseum/

Internationally known street artists Hera and Akut – together known as Herakut (http://www.herakut.de/) will be in Lexington from September 11-September 16.

Stop by to see them as they create a large mural at 156 Market Street (just north of the downtown farmers’ market) and a smaller mural on the corner of Sixth and North Limestone (on the building of the old Spalding’s Bakery). They will paint for 6 days and give Lexington two new murals, artworks that people will travel from other cities to see.

Working collaboratively throughout the entire process, Herakut will make something that is magical, something that you want to see in the making!  Join Herakut for an artist talk and book signing on Wednesday evening, September 12 at the Farish Theater, Downtown Public Library, 7:00 pm.

Herakut is brought to Lexington through the effort and hard work of Kurt Gohde, Georgia Henkel, and Kremena Todorova, with the generous financial support of: Griffin Van Meter/Bullhorn Marketing, Lexair Foundation, PRHBTN, Morlan Gallery, Univ of Kentucky School of Art & Visual Studies, Morris Book Shop, Joseph Clay, Price & Kim Nichol, and Ellee Ven. Michael & Ann Lawyer donated the building on Market; Chad Needham donated the other.

You can also find the event on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/462825430424446/

Show Title: “Q“
Show Opens: Wednesday, September 26
6pm-9pm with Short Performance at 7pm
Show Viewing Continues September 27 and 28 from Noon-6pm w/ Artist on Site

Artist: Theo Edmonds / Installation Painting, Performance Poetry, New Media
Performance Includes Jacob Brashear (Kentucky Cellist and Boston University Film Student)

Show Location:
Residency Unlimited / www.residencyunlimited.org
360 Court Street
Brooklyn , NY 11231
Subway F/G Carroll Street / (President Street Exit)
Residency Unlimited is located in Caroll Gardens inside a de-consecrated church atrium.

Show Statement:
Some people get blown into bedazzled, hourglass lands.  Like Dorothy, they become stuck between two worlds.  Neither truly of their own making.

These in between places cultivate the ultimate combination of optimism and fear; of revolution and reverence;  of make believe and memory… it is called desire.  Desire is Q.  Art is Q.

Like the memory quilts that have been pieced together for almost 200 years by his Appalachian ancestors, Theo’s painted, constructed and layered “memory Quilts” navigate a semi auto-biographical narrative.  His performance poetry and video work unfold ideas beyond the specific and anecdotal limits of his own Q journey and encourage a broader dimension of meaning which encompasses the experience of many contemporary outsiders in ways that reach beyond easy labels and convenient classifications.

Q is a form of mystical technology that allows anyone to be a runaway Dorothy and inspire revolutionary action by finding home, not at the other end of a rainbow, but in one’s own skin and in exactly the place where they stand.

Artist Background:
Born in the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky to a Scotch-Irish-Cherokee family, Theo Edmonds began life as a champion clog dancer.  In his twenties, he earned his law degree and a Master’s of Healthcare Administration from Tulane University in New Orleans.  In his thirties, after years of corporate life, he ripped himself out of that world.

Today, he is an interdisciplinary artist whose work investigates the path of individual self-actualization within conformist-based societal norms. Outsider positioning within the dominant cultural narratives, “Q” politics and politics of representation are major themes in his work.  He will complete his MFA at the University of Kentucky School of Art and Visual Studies in 2013.

He is currently collaborating on a new work of experimental theater with internationally acclaimed writer, performance artist and cultural icon of the New York Underground, Penny Arcade.

Kingston Shottas is an upcoming documentary film that will tell the story of three remarkable artists from Jamaica who use photography as a medium for telling their stories of life in contemporary Kingston.

It is in this milieu that we meet three artists: O’Neil Lawrence, Ebony G. Patterson and Marvin Bartley – friends, all Jamaicans, all in their thirties, all graduates of Jamaica’s Edna Manley College of Art and successful within their own rights; and each one with a different story to tell of life in Jamrock.  Read full story on SAVANT Ltd blog here.

So, what is the Lexington connection to this new film?  Ebony G. Patterson is a professor at University of Kentucky School of Art & Visual Studies.  This Lexington-based artist has had an amazing summer!  Just a few of Ebony’s activities over the past few months include:

• travel to Denmark for discussions with peers at Karen Blixen Museum about contemporary discourses around Identity, Religion and Independent Politics in the Arts
• a second major NYC museum show at the Studio Museum in Harlem (Caribbean Crossroads Exhibit) complete with a great review in New York Times
•  a show in Canada
• a show in Holland
• a full project feature in Small Axe Magazine
• and, finally she was just chosen to receive a Musgrave Award which is one of Jamaica highest honors for achievements in the arts and sciences.

Big props to our friend and colleague!  We are proud of you!