MARCH: Taylor Hansen
I Will Be the Wind
(2021) photographic print on fabric, bed sheets, thread, and canvas
Over the course of the last year the nature of my relationship with my sister has changed drastically. We are living roughly 90 minutes away from each other and it feels much further as we distance ourselves due to the pandemic. When we were children, my sister and I would talk about everything and ask each other really important questions about life and death. We once made a promise that someday when one of us passes away we will send the other signs. I promised that I would be the wind. While my sister and I are both healthy, we are experiencing a separation from one another. I was thinking of ways that I could send her signs while I am still on earth with her. This banner is my sign to her. She lives and works in Iowa City passing this banner daily. The line crossing the banner is the map from my house to hers, and the text “I will be the wind” is translucent like a memory or the future as my destiny to become the wind.
Video and intermedia artist, Taylor Hansen currently lives and works in Cedar Falls, Iowa. She recently earned her BFA in Performance Art from the University of Northern Iowa and presented her thesis exhibition All The Things Youve Seen Before. Her work has been exhibited and performed in the Waterloo Center for the Arts, Public Space One and the University of Northern Iowa Gallery. She aims to navigate the relationship between physical spaces and a world that is becoming increasingly digital with current works and an ongoing website project www.loudestsound.com
FEBRUARY: Cicelia Ross-Gotta
We’ve Been Trying To Reach You
(2021) Felt, oilcloth, thread and glue.
Technology, especially in the COVID age, can bring us together in beautiful ways. Many of us depend on our phones for maintaining connection with each other. But technology can also push us apart. Who wants you to look at your phone? When you look, what are you missing? And what is missing you? We’ve Been Trying To Reach You is an illustration of the frustration and gratitude I have with technology. Grateful for what connection it does provide, yet acknowledging my longing for a more “felt,” tangible connection that cannot be replicated digitally.
Recently relocating from Seattle, Ross-Gotta earned her BFA in Sculpture from Colorado State University 2015, and her MFA in 3D4M (sculpture) from the University of Washington in 2017. That year she also became a mother.Her work has been exhibited throughout Seattle including, The Henry Gallery, Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park, Gallery 4Culture and Bainbridge Gallery of Art and Crafts. Her work has also been featured in Surface Design Journal’s 2017 International Exhibition in Print. She has been awarded grants from Artist Trust, 4Culture and the Surface Design Association. Forthcoming exhibitions include her solo exhibition Feel Just Like Home, at the Holland Project Space in Reno, NV, this January and a group exhibition with her collective about textiles and technology at Artworks Center for Contemporary Art in Loveland, CO June 2021.
DECEMBER 2020: Julia J. Wolfe
A Thought for Your Walk!
acrylic on fabric, 66 in. x 108 in., 2020
This painting is site-specific to the porch at Public Space One in Iowa City. Constructed of fabric and acrylic paint, it has been painted, cut, sewn back together, and painted again. While the original painting has been jumbled around through the cutting and re-sewing, portions of it are still visible. The imagery presents a whimsical aesthetic, while commenting on particular habits of our society – here, the subject of unnecessary food waste. For the month of December, those passing by the house on Gilbert can see this burst of color and a PSA about an apple a day.
Julia J. Wolfe is a multidisciplinary artist based in Iowa City, IA. She holds a M.A./M.F.A. from the University of Iowa and a B.A. from Rhodes College, and she received a certificate from Brandeis University. Her work has been exhibited nationally in numerous solo and group shows, including the Every Woman Biennial 2019 in New York City, "I'm Happy to Sit Here Beside You" at Western Illinois University, "I’d Rather Count Bricks on a Wall" at Public Space One in Iowa City, and "Repurpose" at Core New Art Space in Denver, CO. She has completed residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Public Space One in Iowa City, New Pacific Studios in Vallejo, CA, and Burren College of Art in County Clare, Ireland. Her work has been published in Studio Visit Magazine Vol. 42 and New American Paintings MFA Annual Issue #141. For more information, please visit juliajwolfe.com.
JANUARY: Kelly Clare
A MODERN APPROACH WILL NOT ONLY PROVIDE DECOYS BUT BREADCRUMBS ALSO
The phrase “A MODERN APPROACH WILL NOT ONLY PROVIDE DECOYS BUT BREADCRUMBS ALSO” is an odd piece of language from an article that’s stuck with me for years now. Like a funny piece of plastic, a headline or a snippet. Something I can push against, rub my thumb on. Decoys are meant to deceive, to keep safe, to distract—to stand out boldly in the snow and pretend to be something. Neither good nor bad, a decoy might be how you avoid capture or teach a body about illness. A decoy itself is harmless, hollow, sometimes even friendly.
On the flipside, breadcrumbs are how you find your way around. Small pieces of sustenance, barely discernable from the proverbial forest floor. Breadcrumbs are how we might lead one another through a snowy wilderness, and the trail will lead you to the truth, possibly, or at least somewhere else. Breadcrumbs are what’s left over, a puzzle, a small bit of the whole.
This phrase implies, for me, a current strategy. How might we trick a season, an era? How can use decoys to learn, to deceive? How might we breadcrumb ourselves through this time? I offer this text on a glowing pile of oranges, the antithesis of snow.
Kelly Clare is a multidisciplinary artist and poet currently based in Iowa City, Iowa. Currently an MFA candidate in Sculpture at the University of Iowa, she is the recipient of the Eve Drewelowe and Paula Patton Grahame Scholarships, and a Summer MFA Fellowship supporting her research in hybrid and variable installation. Her recent solo shows, Eating the Cloud (Public Space One, Iowa City) and ur local decoys (CSPS Hall, Cedar Rapids), explore the muddy confluence of digital, linguistic, and physical space. Her work “Bread/Net” was selected Jurors Choice in the MFA Online Exhibition. Her written work can be found in Tagvverk, APARTMENT, pulpmouth and Hobart. She was a resident at the Vermont Studio Center in 2019.