LAWRENCE BAKER

PERSONAL TERRITORIES | WEST GALLERY
FEBRUARY 16 - MARCH 25, 2017

Each time, I begin a painting, it’s not a straightforward idea that reveals itself in its entirety. Unlike tying one’s shoelaces, implying intent, there is no predictable outcome. It’s a bare-bone realization dependent on curiosity for its life support. Painting is a reflexive, mental process of synthesizing an idea; transforming the abstract into the visual realm of the concrete, going public, so to speak, communicating with others in the common-sense, intelligible world, where, the materialized concept, if it can sustain itself under scrutiny, attains meaning...

JACOB CULLERS

PERSONAL TERRITORIES | WEST GALLERY
FEBRUARY 16 - MARCH 25, 2017

It’s 0100 in Iraq. I awake to the sound of mortars and rockets landing, looking for people to be killed. Panic and survival mode sets in quickly as I try compose my soldier mentality. Where the fuck is my rifle? I haven’t gotten a decent night’s sleep since I was back in the states. I miss home. I’m at the runway of an airport waiting for my brother to arrive. I haven’t seen him since he left for his second deployment to Afghanistan. He is coming home early this time. The plane arrives. The back of the plane opens and out comes his casket draped with the American flag. I crumble. It’s 2:00 in the morning and I just painted over a painting. Construct, deconstruct, reconstruct. I am J.Cullers.

NANCY DAUBENSPECK

PERSONAL TERRITORIES | WEST GALLERY
FEBRUARY 16 - MARCH 25, 2017

In these paintings, I work with numerous extremely thin veils of color and marks on a pattern of gridded points. The grid is created by removing layers and retouching the points so they emerge from within. The marks are carefully nested between the veils of color. This allows me to play with patterns in three dimensions as well as two. While the work often appears to have depth, physically it has none. The paint is hand mixed from dry pigment and casein and brushed on muslin stretched over wooden panels. The work is meditative and intimate, and is very much an outgrowth of the medium and craft. The surface is dry and luminous. It is spare, not minimal and there is a desired object like quality to the paintings. While I am not a landscape painter, I live in a very solitary valley by a river in the Berkshires so nature is ever present for me and I study the construction of my world day and night. I am inspired by the fresco iconography interiors of small Greek byzantine chapels, Egyptian hieroglyphics and poetry, calligraphy and all types of hand-stitching and lacework. In reflection, I realize my work is about containment: how patterns both emerge from and frame a random field, how over laid patterns hold each other, and especially how color, illumination and surface harness each other. The work distilled is all about the relationship between the underpainting and the overpainting; how the surface relates to the underground. For me, the most provocative feature of the work is the middle ground where the containment of the vibrant glazed marks are covered by matte luminous layers like a vein beneath the skin. It is best if you set your display to maximum brightness to view this work.

JEANNE HEIFETZ

PERSONAL TERRITORIES | WEST GALLERY
FEBRUARY 16 - MARCH 25, 2017

In this series, I challenged myself to confront something that terrifies me. I have had death panics since I was eight years old. The minor ones often come just as I am falling asleep; after the initial surge of adrenaline, I manage to trip my internal denial switch and suppress the panic. Major waves seem to arrive every eight years: the denial switch stops functioning, and the resulting fear of death is paralyzing. Ironically, the only real estate I am ever likely to own is a parcel of eight cemetery plots I inherited from my grandfather, which seemed like the logical place to begin. And so each drawing in this series is based on the map of a different Jewish cemetery, including the ones where my own relatives are buried. (I am not religious, but the historical and familial connection was important: these are all places I could be buried, even though I remain completely unreconciled to the idea of my own death.) I can’t claim that drawing the maps allays my panic. Death remains entirely unknowable terrain: the map can never be the territory. And yet, stripped of identifying text, the cemeteries’ abstract forms are mysteriously compelling, grounding me in the universal human drive to create beauty and order and ritual in the face of our own mortality.

CHRISTOPHER E. MANNING

PERSONAL TERRITORIES | WEST GALLERY
FEBRUARY 16 - MARCH 25, 2017

Duality and storytelling are main aspects of my work. Through the mediums of sculpture, photography, drawing and collage, I convey a sense of contemplation and nostalgia, allowing the viewer to connect on both a personal and aesthetic level. Each work presents a teetering of truths and lies, light versus dark and all passages between life, death and rebirth. The cumulative narrative comes to represent a portrait of what shapes us, while embodying the deluge of all that was forgotten or surplus to existence. We exist in a state of flux. My work contemplates that balance.

AMBER MOON SCHLATTER

PERSONAL TERRITORIES | WEST GALLERY
FEBRUARY 16 - MARCH 25, 2017

My work is a way for me to grapple with uncertainty and accept not knowing. The “unknown” seems magical and full of possibility when it is applied to things like outer space or the paranormal, but when it is personal it can be scary. Because the risks we encounter everyday are many and real, it feels like potential threats are everywhere. Yet, deciphering the difference between beautiful and dangerous is not always easy or possible. This complex work of living ensures that we are always changing in ways that are often imperceptible, and sometimes shocking. I am fascinated by these changes and our perceptions of them. Our capacity to adapt to change and, conversely, our inability to weather it, is a source inspiration for my work. Making things out of clay guides my inquiry into the mystery of human development and adaptation. The medium demands vigilance and is responsive to every shift in the environment, or manipulation, forcing me to maintain focus on what is in front of me. Because things are always changing, I am creating evidence that this time occurred, that it was, and still is, important. Like so many times before, there are, at most, only semi-lucid recollections, foggy images, or a familiar smell to secure the past’s status in the history of what makes up our present. Although it is uncertain territory, I often begin work on a sculpture from one of these recollections, or a mental image of someone at a specific place and time. The people, places, and times that I have in mind when I work are those that have made it through the tight mesh of debris and seem to demand recognition. During the making process the piece grows as I attempt to “flesh out” the power in that moment. The process is slow and intuitive and often doesn’t end up representing the moment that inspired it in any concrete way. Instead, the resulting figure conjures up a new truth that stands adjacent to the past. This new truth is a strange form of documentation; like a blurry photo found after a flood, it is not a complete image and can only be interpreted based on the clues that remain clear. I use clay to form shapes and create space, choose colors, and layer textures to build figures. These elements combine to express each figure’s ephemeral inspiration and the inherent potential of inevitable change. I refer to them as figures although many are not figurative in the traditional sense. However, they are, like our recollections, alive, open to interpretation, and subject to our ever-shifting perspective.

AMY VENSEL

PERSONAL TERRITORIES | WEST GALLERY
FEBRUARY 16 - MARCH 25, 2017

In this body of work the timing of events is both the subject matter and the process. Though not painted directly from any single source, each piece contains elements derived from disparate images and ideas I encounter — from the wave signals of an echocardiogram to ads posted on social media. Using concrete trowels, large knives and rubber squeegees, I swirl, drag and scrape acrylic paint in taped-off sections on the canvas. Each section progresses at a different rate and accumulates its own particular history of marks and textures. And like events in life, these parts may relate to or interrupt each other. The resulting painting hints at the timing of external events while revealing the timeline of its own creation.

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