Hot and Sweaty 2020 Virtual Exhibition

Britteny Akines | Dave Armbrüster | Alyssa Barber | Jennifer Battaglia | Jacqueline Blanco | Danny Bolton | Ashley Brogan | Emily Broussard | Michael Bullock | Daniel Cervantes | Alexandra Constantinou | Christopher Paul Dean | David Dennis | Julie England | Laura Elia | Nikita Ephanov | Aunna Escobedo | Thomas Flynn II | Anna Galluzzi | Stephanie Gerhart | Beronica Gonzales | Ian Grieve | Anna Guillory | Madeline Hernandez | Jane Hickie | Heather Leigh Hoskins | Kyung Hee Im | Cosmo Jones | Claire Kennedy | Ryan Kerr | Mary Klesse | NikosMine Lampropoulos | Jamison LeBlanc | Nan Martin | Leslie Mauldin | Dale McFarland | Troy Medinis | Chloe Scout Nix | Zachariah Mickler-Sandoval | Joshua Moran | Alison Nokes | Andrew Oh | Alicia Parham | Tippi Polo | Mary Post | Max Raign | Cat Rigdon | Katie H. Ritchie | Alli Rogers-Andreen | Conner Simmons | Erika Suarez | Jennifer Thompson | Lexis Thompson | Julia Trinh | Bernardo Vallarino | Megan Van Groll | Doris Vasek | Jim Wilson

**Artists shown in alphabetical order by last name**

To purchase an artwork, please email the500xgallery@gmail.com.

Britteny Akines

Britteny Akines’ artist statement: This series is focused on finding the beauty in waste. The colors, textures, and outlines of these pieces are marks left behind from previous creations. The drop cloths are layered to display opaqueness and translucency that creates a beautiful play on depth. The plastic tarps once used as a cover to protect the wall have turned into something more important than what it once protected.

Website : www.brittenyakines.com

Instagram: @Bon_voyage_britteny

Dave Armbrüster

Dave Armbrüster’s artist statement: I work primarily in spray paint on reclaimed wood surfaces. Starting from digitally edited photos and collages, I produce multiple intricate paper stencils that I hand cut to produce the layered colors of my artwork. Through my experience in graphic design and illustration I attempt to incorporate imagery that reflects themes of fame, infamy, and the symbiosis of science and metaphysical theory.

Website: https://davepgarmbrusterart.weebly.com/

Instagram: @afraiddave

Alyssa Barber

Alyssa Barber’s artist statement: Abstraction of self and space gives me some sense of control and stability, while allowing me to visually reclaim my experiences of disassociation and detachment. Even in perfectly safe situations, my awareness can seem to dissolve from my body and reappear in the corner of a room as I watch myself try to reconnect. In more tense circumstances, this process can take hours or days. My body becomes something that is not mine. Or is it my mind that no longer belongs to me? In my paintings, the figure is a symbol of futility, perception, and identity that can be as sensual as it is amusing or frustrating. My paintings always include parts of my own body or my loved ones. I paint them with empathy and desire, I paint them out of fear, I paint them looking for truth in contradictions. Violence is intimate, beauty is withholding, and humor emerges in the most chaotic and tragic moments.

Website: www.alyssacbarber.com

Instagram: @alyssabarber

Jennifer Battaglia

Jennifer Battaglia’s artist statement: Jennifer Battaglia utilizes both traditional and digital mediums—collage and assemblage, and digital video and photography—to curate connections between the subconscious mind and day-to-day experiences associated with advancements in technology, changes in family values and social norms, and current events. Each experience is heightened by the anxious mind to form an alternative reality that is hyper nostalgic yet unfamiliar.

Website: https://jenniferbattaglia.myportfolio.com/projects

Instagram: @jenniferbattaglia

Jacqueline Blanco

Jacqueline Blanco’s artist statement: As an artist, my goal is to make the viewer uncomfortable through abstraction and the inclusion of the human figure within paintings and installations. Throughout my work, I have abstracted the heads of the figures to allow the viewers to imagine themselves as the subject matter. Recently, the abstracted heads have been made up of dried acrylic pour that represent feelings and emotions within the pieces. With the newest inclusion of text, my current work explores derogatory terms. The main intent behind making the Pose Series is to have the viewers understand that words hurt. When carelessly or in a spiteful manner, they can psychologically affect the person that they are used against.

Website: www.jacquelineblanco.com

Instagram: @jacquelineblanco.art

Danny Bolton

Danny Bolton’s artist statement: Hinging upon experimentation of material usage and implementation of successful experiments, my body of work is in a formal flux. This complicates coming about an idea of what the future may hold in regards to a piece’s visual package. As a non-objective painter, I know only the tools and materials to use when I create. Beyond that, the amalgamation of visual studies and a lifetime of experiences are the guides towards an end product. Deliberation and contemplation come in to play towards the later portions of a work’s fruition to make compositionally sound art. However, in the end, traversing the unknown and infinite possibilities beginning from a single moment recorded upon a surface simultaneously enthralls and frightens me.

Website: www.danny-bolton.squarespace.com

Instagram: @dannybolton.artist

Ashley Brogan

Ashley Brogan’s artist statement: I like to make visually interesting abstract art that tries to make the viewer put together what the story behind the piece is.

Instagram: ashbro_art

Emily Broussard

Emily Broussard’s artist statement: The use of familiar objects from everyday life are used in these paintings as a surrogate for our experiences as human beings. Although these paintings are all still life paintings, they are choreographed, lit, and animated to mimic human body language. Simultaneously, the different subject matters were chosen to specifically echo a current event which, we as a society, have been inescapably immersed in; from the isolation and survival panic of the pandemic to the shock and anger of the loss of life due to racism, these paintings serve to not only report on our current condition as a whole,, but also to question how we, individually, are altered by them.

Website: www.emilybroussardfineart.com

Instagram: @660broussard

Michael Bullock

Michael Bullock’s artist statement: Michael A. Bullock’s images are a reaction to modern life spent living in large cities. His scenes invoke serenity and stillness in otherwise hectic environments, moments to reflect and recharge before continuing onward. The images often feel surreal, giving the work a dreamlike quality as if they are a fading memory from a dream. A self-trained artist, Michael grew up in New York with artistic parents, who exposed him to artists such as Edward Hopper, David Hockney, Mark Rothko, and Rene Magritte. His father is a painter, and much of Michael’s inspiration derives from modern and contemporary painters.

Website: www.michaelabullock.com

Instagram: @mistahmb

Daniel Cervantes

Daniel Cervantes’ artist statement: Artist. Brother. Friend. Son. Student. Human. Daniel Cervantes. I feel that a good portion of my work is comprised of loose, ambiguous narratives. I’m heavily influenced by films and comic books, so whenever I work with any subject, I love taking a storyboard approach or work with multiple panels to emphasize my ideas. Typically, the narratives I create revolve around allusions to violence, legacy and the passage of time. I work with these particular subjects because of how they resonate with me, along humanity as a whole. I feel that violence, seen or unseen, can up tension and drama for narratives, making for an engaging and compelling experience for the viewer. Further, there is also a need to react to it, examine it, and document it as it occurs in our world. In regards to legacy and the passage of time, I try to make these themes go hand in hand. When exploring these themes, I enjoy incorporating parents and children in my work, because they embody what I want to portray and share. I feel they greatly help to better connect the work and the audience, which is exactly what I would like to continue to do: create a connection, relatability, and vulnerability. Whatever that may be.

Instagram: @accidentallydanny

Alexandra Constantinou

Alexandra Constantinou’s artist statement: Alexandra Constantinou includes themes of science, technology and space exploration in her art to dissect the impact of these new discoveries on humankind.

Website: www.alexandraconstantinou.com

Instagram: @maniacalstar

Christopher Paul Dean

Christopher Paul Dean’s artist statement: Inspiration for my work is two-fold. On one side, I am interested in formal qualities such as colour, pattern, scale, texture and the presentation/experiencing of these elements. And on the other side, I am interested in the potential of readymade, everyday familiar items being utilised as or for Art. The introduction of the readymade is crucial because not only does it encourage me to observe objects and scenarios in which the aforementioned formal qualities exist in our everyday lives, it also introduces the subject of Ontology - the philosophical study of being, becoming, or existence - into my practice. Over the last few years, I have gravitated towards universally utilised symbols associated with standardised accident prevention. With a focus on appropriating the visual lexicon of safety markers, including caution stripes and barricade patterns, I engage in varying degrees of material manipulation to create work that utilises reconfiguration as a device to disrupt and expand upon pre-existing modes of existence. The deconstructive/reconstructive nature of my work not only results in a disruption of formal qualities - such as texture, colour, material, and scale - this approach also disturbs body-to-object interactions by altering the intended function of each readymade. In turn, both these elements provide a platform in which the consideration of past, current, and future interactions with the familiar comes into focus.

Website: www.cpdeanart.com

Instagram: @cpdean

David Dennis

David Dennis’ artist statement: Thought-provoking imagery presented in a mix of graphic and expressionist styles, observed and imagined.

Website: www.davidpatrickdennis.com

Instagram: @david.patrick.dennis

Laura Elia

Laura Elia’s artist statement: My current works resulted from the month quarantine and investigate the ideas of consumerism and modern urban life during a global pandemic. This series explores the acceptance of things beyond our control and the beauty in the discarded. During long family walks and bike rides, I noticed piles of Amazon packaging materials in neighbor’s recycling and the excess cardboard struck me as really wasteful. Why hadn’t a global pandemic with disastrous economic fallout slowed our consumerism? And then I realized, online shopping became a crucial ritual for shaping and transforming the doldrums of day after day in quarantine.  My family and I were also guilty of passing the time and soothing our anxiety with online retail therapy. I had regular front door deliveries of wine, groceries, games, gadgets, resulting in piles of plastic and cardboard packaging.  I began to experiment with our own recycling, incorporating it in art and found a quiet, meditative peace turning trash into something beautiful. This collection uses palette runners as a canvas for layers of paint and pigmented beeswax. The corrugated cardboard creates texture and rhythm, and it represents our need as a culture to be constantly moving, reaching, attaining.  The pigmented hot beeswax fills the crevices and undulating folds of the cardboard and represents the spread of the coronavirus, seemingly out of our control as it infiltrates and immobilizes every crevice of our modern culture. The end result blends sculpture and painting, in an attempt to find something beautiful and healing from the discarded.

Instagram: @lauraeliaart

Julie England

Julie England’s artist statement: We are spending a lot of time outdoors during COVID-19 shelter at home. My paintings are inspired by experiences of outdoor places. I was raised on a pine tree farm and trees beckoned to me as imaginary childhood friends. There is a comfort and freedom when surrounded by Nature. Natural, organic imagery is complemented with a focus on painting itself mark-making and color. My work includes organic forms and botanical gestures, using color as a vehicle to convey energy from nature and space in the landscape.

Website: www.julieenglandart.com

Instagram: @julieenglandart

Nikita Ephanov

Nikita Ephanov’s artist statement: I stare at technological involvement right at its extreme boundaries. By utilizing the camera and processing techniques as an immersion into a new reality, I experiment with the confines of the photographic form. Our everyday existence is becoming further untethered into a digital world. How can that be reflected through a lens?

Website: www.geographicnostalgia.com

Instagram: @nephanov

Aunna Escobedo

Aunna Escobedo’s artist statement: My current work investigates visual meditations on water and its connection to the human experience. Through observation and reflection, my process allows me to make associative connections with water’s powerful metaphorical qualities. Water’s multiplicity of meaning is vast. It is a complex force of nature that begs to be explored through various modes of thinking. Working between drawing and printmaking, I create imagery that weaves between mimicry and abstraction as a contemplation of our human relationship and natural forces. Mindfulness, an act of bare attention, combined with the act of discovery and adaptation allows the imagery to evolve organically. I utilize the combination of fixed and unfixed matrices as methods of “drawing” my imagery, while integrating adaptation and spontaneity within the process. I build my compositions by repeating numerous layered impressions and responding to the position of patterns. Successive layers of ink create a surface quality that differs from the conventional print, where fewer impressions are designed for compositional efficiency. Overlapping colors, shapes, textures, and marks create movement which leads the eye through a space and place. This flux parallels the constant physical evolution of natural elements and the transformative influence of my imposed mindset. My studio practice becomes ritualistic, meditative, contemplative, and freeing. The sources and inspiration for my artwork come from my own interactions and memory of water. It comes from an inner dialogue after meditation and gaining mental clarity. My creative process is a tool for discovery and personal growth. It comes from solitude suspended from mysticism, experientialism, and perception. The artwork is an extension of those beliefs. Maurice Merleau-Ponty explains, “the sensing body is not a programmed machine but an active and open form, continually improvising its relation to things and the world.” Water serves as a vessel to clarify the mind; it brings mindfulness to our senses without conscious thought. These visual meditations on water are my navigations of perception and awareness.

Website: www.aunnaescobedo.com

Thomas Flynn II

Thomas Flynn II’s artist statement: Flynn focuses on color, pattern, and the figure in acrylic. Often utilizing found fabric and commercially available patterns as a backdrop, color is inverted and distorted by the presence of entities grasping and interacting in this flattened world. Layered in optically saturated color, these painted shapes modify their environments, transforming the unseen into seen. These layers of folding transformation grasp for connection to each other, and are made of the shadows of hands conglomerated into an amorphous entity. Figures enter this world and ground it in reality, giving a point of departure to the exaggerated color and altered shapes.

Website: www.thomasflynnii.com

Instagram: @thomasflynnii

Anna Galluzzi

Anna Galluzzi’s artist statement: Painting is a meditative practice for me; an act that temporarily clears the anxiety that clouds my mind. Existing during a global pandemic and an international cry for social justice is, at minimum, anxiety provoking. I connect the work to current social issues by including iconography, such as face-mask patterns and gas masks. Repeating and layering shapes creates entirely new ones, while also enhancing the original pattern in a new way. The process forces me to meditate on a single issue at a time while also helping to combat anxious thoughts. I enhance visual interest by creating contrast between the bright colored background and dark muted foreground, which also functions conceptually. The shape of the mask is keeping the dark ink from infringing on certain areas of color, which is similar to how face-masks are meant to keep out virus’ and gas-masks to keep out smoke. The areas in which the ink has dripped in spite of the mask, alludes to its imperfections and shortcomings.

Website: www.agalluzziart.com

Instagram: @annagalluzzi

Stephanie Gerhart

Stephanie Gerhart’s artist statement: With this work, I investigate the mental and physical toll of the past and the dissonance that often occurs as we age through the use of experimental cameraless techniques. By placing photographic materials directly against my skin during performative acts of self-care, I document my body as I reflect on the damage it suffered as a result of my childhood as a competitive gymnast, which is being exacerbated by the effects of age and time. The resulting photographs are a poetic self-reflection on my physical form that embodies my struggle to understand and accept my deteriorating body.

Website: www.stephanielisagerhart.com

Instagram: @shteph_shtuff

Beronica Gonzales

Beronica Gonzales’ artist statement: My work centers around themes of self representation, focusing in on moments, objects, and environments which elicit visceral personal connections and embodying them in a way which manifests my complicated relationships with what they depict. Part of this connection is communicated through material choice and the inherent implications of a given material. Throughout my body of work, I address general themes of comfort and discomfort in various ways and capacities, typically juxtaposing the two ideas within a single piece. Often I utilize the material elements of my piece to contrast with the thematic or representational aspects, using objects of comfort to represent scenes of distress, or vice versa. In doing so, I strive to create in my work a unique sense of isolation, detachment, and uncertainty that is a reflection of my own personal experience.

Instagram: @beronicamg

Ian Grieve

Ian Grieve’s artist statement: I am drawn by things that are off the beaten path: the broken, strange, imperfect, and disregarded. Many die while still in search of the perfect. It does not exist. Through painting, printmaking, and collage, my work looks for meaning in the dark corners of our world. These areas are often intentionally overlooked but affect us all. I want to bring viewers to a place that questions their ideas of life and beauty. I am looking beneath the layers, behind the facade we present to the public, to see what is hidden. This is us at our core – honest, imperfect, and vulnerable. This is where the beauty lies. It is also crucial for me to remain responsive to my materials. An errant mark or unexpected mixing of brushstrokes can shift the direction of a piece. By being sensitive to my materials and process, I acknowledge and embrace the allure of the imperfect and overlooked.

Website: www.iangrieveart.com

Instagram: @eyegrieve

Anna Guillory

Anna Guillory’s artist statement: My process is drawn largely from an effort to protect and highlight that part of life that reminds us we are always in a constant state of growth, as individuals, and collectively. Often using the natural world as a metaphor towards the human condition, current social climates, and as an offering of overlooked aesthetics and happenings arranged in a new way, I hope what is poured out of me sits with the systems, patterns, and orders of the world in an attempt to understand ourselves better, and be reminded of experiences in this life we all encounter collectively, as well as the quiet, collaterally moving relationships we make everyday with the things and people around us, that have great power in our own transformation and meaning making.

Instagram:@annaguillory_

Madeline Hernandez

Madeline Hernandez’s artist statement: As a queer individual and one who has observed numerous feminist text and artists, this work originally stems from the complexity and discourse surrounding sexual objectification. Invented figures I've created are put on display performing sexual acts unto themselves and each other forcing the viewer into a voyeuristic, interruptive point of view onto those invented forms. It becomes difficult discerning choice and their relationship's with their own bodies.

Instagram: @sadistsloth

Jane Hickie

Jane Hickie’s artist statement: These large paintings on paper have enough physicality to stand in virtual spaces. They were made with collaged scarps of older work, staples, tape, various mediums, acrylic paint. They might be nailed, one on top of another, or splayed across the back yard. They should reflect the energy of both heat and sweat used to make them.

Heather Leigh Hoskins

Heather Leigh Hoskins’ artist statement: I am an interdisciplinary artist whose work bridges mental health, body dysmorphia, and the visual arts together through sculptures, paintings, performances, and large installations. I work with traditional and nontraditional materials through a manual and digital process to physically represent my realities of living with body dysmorphic disorder. I use padding, paper, and other fibrous objects as metaphors for the flesh and manipulate these materials in numerous ways to create exaggerations of the body.

Website: www.heatherleighhoskins.com

Instagram: @Heather_Leigh_art

Kyung Hee Im

Kyung Hee Im’s artist statement: My artwork speaks about social and physical isolation and the many ways we maintain connections remotely. The isolation of the figurative elements in my work is as important as the connection and fragile threads that bind them together. One of the main components of my works is threads which represent connecting things. When they break or cut, the threads can be re-connected by tying. The nature of fibers tend to stick together and be entangled, and I find similarities in human relationships. To think about these connections, my ritual has become wrapping thread around works. Through the repetition of circular movement, I am in a loop of spiraling and continuously repeating until the thread meets the edge. The spiral resembles the timeline of a tree’s growth which also represents how my time is embedded in my piece. Wrapping threads around pieces becomes my meditation.

Website: www.kyungheeim.com

Instagram: @kat.kyunghee.im

Cosmo Jones

Cosmo Jones’ artist statement: Painting allows my intuition and unconscious the freedom necessary to work problems and ideas that the conscious mind has trouble dealing with without undue attachment. “Attachment” is not used accidentally. “Art” and “painting” has its own ego in the same way that we do, and in the same way that ours is, its ego is illusory. “Illusory” is not to say that it is any less real than the rest of our experience, which is equally illusory. I’m not saying that reality or art is somehow “fake,” rather that it is illusion generated by experience that comprises both art and reality. What I’m saying is, painting has an Atman that it is imperative to work toward, same as we all do. If this doesn’t sound like mysticism, I’m being unclear. Making a painting is an act meant to bring about change in the artist, the viewer, consensus reality, or all three. It’s an attempt to transmit phenomenological experience from one mind to another using a symbolic sensory construction. How is this different from a voodoo doll, sigil, or spell? I’m investigate the connection between art/artmaking, magic/mysticism, psychology, and everyday experience. People may dismiss sigils, spells, or rituals as superstition, but few look askance at the idea of taking a walk to clear one’s head. What is the walk in this instance but a magic ritual that works? I guess that makes me some kind of magician or mystic. An artist’s job, as far as everyone else is concerned, is to access parts of reality or ways of seeing that are not normally accessible and bring back something of that special reality for everyone else to see and, ideally, to benefit from. I already use these paintings as sigils and trance-inducers to shape my own reality for the better. Can I get to a point where what I bring back can help ease the pain of others?

Website: www.cosmojones.org

Instagram: @doctoracula

Claire Kennedy

Claire Kennedy’s artist statement: In my work, I create relationships between haphazard objects in space in order to create unexpected dynamics. This body of work is a personal method of creating or reclaiming physical space. I aim to break away from taught boundaries in regards to physical space and expectations of familiar materials. I am creating my own language by mediating found and fabricated objects, then placing them strategically to converse with each other and the viewer. Using wood, duct tape, glue, paint, paper, plaster, and other materials, I construct compositions that formally speak to painting. The moving parts within each composition are fragmented, much like spaces between words in a sentence. In this way, I am creating my own visual language that is specific to my hand. I am challenging assumptions about utilitarian materials by stripping them of utility and subverting the idea of decoration as something comfortable. While I believe my use of bright, and often hyper saccharine colors invites the viewer into the work, the transformation of materials also asks open-ended questions. I hope that the work’s relationship to the viewer is one of curiosity, catching their eye with bold color, and holding it through material and compositional investigation.

Website: www.clairekennedyart.com

Instagram: @clairekenn6

Ryan Kerr

Ryan Kerr’s artist statement: My paintings aim at a poetic interpretation of the world around me. Subjects are close friends, views from the apartment window, a street scene from a walk, or well used items fashioned into a still life. They typically start from direct observation and continue as studio paintings when the subject or light is not immediately available. I use tools like mirrors, binoculars, or photos to distance and recall what initially excited me about the scene. For example, desaturated or black and white photos let my mind recall color more freely. Color takes a very important place in the paintings. It functions as the crux of memory and leads the interpretation.

Instagram: @ryankerrart

Mary Klesse

Mary Klesse’s artist statement: After years of creative activity in many mediums culminating in a narrowed passion for graphite portraiture and acrylic on canvas painting, I realized that no matter how exacting my images, I could not convey every emotion in my work that it was attempting to reveal. I began exploring different sensory approaches to art. I began an exploration using my background in Philosophy, Literature and Human reaction to trauma in Patient Care to research how we analyze our experiences and from this research I developed a new medium called "Excrypted Art". Excrypted Art is an exploration of the art piece where the artist shares ideas from each of the five senses so that the observer can partake of the experience from a closer identification with the sensations in the artist’s mind.To aid in better transferring the entire Artist's experience to the consumer, the use of inferences or signals from the five senses of vision, smell, taste, touch and sound are supplied.

Website: https://meklesse-designs.weebly.com

NikosMine Lampropoulos

NikosMine Lampropoulos’ artist statement: I was born in Athens, Greece, I love every type of Art and I have always had a creative spirit and lots of imagination. Being a self-taught artist and currently residing in Dallas, Texas, I subconsciously bring the colors of my country with me, driven with my passion. My Artwork is abstract based on rich color and texture combinations which is a universal language in which I feel comfortable. To me, texture adds an element of depth to art that color alone cannot express. Every time you view my work, you explore your own imagination through emotions, reactions and individual perspective. My compositions use mixed elements and are unique, full of my energy and my strong emotions. Through my work, I hope to open a window for you to explore your secret dreams and feelings. In my work, you can see slowly the painting unravel a bit more. Numerous layers over layers of paint, incorporating layers of reality, My new series that I am currently working on, has the name ‘FTHORA’, a Greek word that means Wearing Down. In our modern world, everybody fights against Time, in an effort to win it and make themselves look younger. Everybody loves the New. That’s why I have decided to create new paintings which look old and worn down. When you can’t wait for years, you have to create your own Time Lapse, ‘Sorry Time, I’m the winner’. My new paintings are extensive fields of color which have sometimes been likened to caves or vast bysses momentarily illuminated by crackling flares of light. Getting lost in them is inevitable.

Website: www.nikosmine.com

Instagram: @nikosmine

Jamison LeBlanc

Jamison LeBlanc’s artist statement: My work, at it’s best, is an elegy of energy. They are an homage to memories and moments that were once felt so that others may experience them, if not myself, another time. While much of my work is conceptually driven, the essence of what I’m doing as a creator is heavily formal and a constant grasping for what comes next. All while self-reflecting the type of attitude I direct into the work and unhinging a glimpse into subconsciousness. Finding a relationship between intuitive and formal decisions at a given moment is an approach I’ve become familiar with, which has given my visual language a whole new feeling for me. I tend to balance the exploration of color with the mark of the hand, playing with spatial ground, and investigating how shapes, silhouettes, patterns, and movements can resonate. Subsequently, memories and stories can resurface in these forms, yet the entities that surface are rarely predetermined when I begin a painting. They are but visiting strangers that hold an idiosyncratic relationship with the viewer.

Website: www.jamisonleblanc.com

Instagram: @j_l_leblanc

Nan Martin

Nan Martin’s artist statement: My journey through anxiety, fear and self doubt.

Website: https://exposedparts.com/

Instagram: @nan__martin

Leslie Mauldin

Leslie Mauldin’s artist statement: As an artist, I represent my voice through means of otherworldliness and science-fiction. In my recent video series created throughout the months of March and April, 2020, “Dystopia: The Humanity of a Modern Pandemic”, I am examining my moods, feelings, thoughts, and takeaways from being in isolation due to COVID19. Each day and each week present a different dystopian feeling, correlating to specific stages. The first stage is the feeling of denial, surrealness, and fear. In the first video “Day after day after day after day”, the sound is designed to represent how the idea of a new spreading virus, and the many occurrences that go along with it, is so surreal. I continued to feel this surrealness as each day blurred into the next. After listening to construction noises from sun-up to sun-down for days on end, I then decided to record and incorporate these sounds into the video “When man reaches deep space.” as a way of releasing my frustration. In the next stage, I experienced anxiety, depression, and complete lack of motivation. This is represented through the videos “Mornings” and “Drowning”. In the final stage, I begin to feel immense anger towards the American government. This is presented in the videos “Working Backwards”, “Dangling by a political thread.”, and “1200: My worth to my government”, where a hammer hits a paper sculpture 1200 times. The American government has failed me. The American government has failed its people. I wish this were all a dystopia, because then it wouldn’t be real.

Dale McFarland

Dale McFarland’s artist statement: Dale McFarland, Native Texan born in San Antonio, 1951. Bachelor of Arts from University of Iowa, 1973. First gallery show was at 500X, 1984.

Troy Medinis

Troy Medinis’ artist statement: I’m exploring human relationships with non-human infrastructure and how their functions connect and disconnect people. I primarily create paintings, books and videos that fall on a spectrum between cold documentative photography to more expressive abstract painting. Throughout the work I rely on coded languages of symbols used primarily in surveying and cartography. I am concerned with being accurate in my use of specific symbols so before beginning a project I engage in an intensive research phase. My artwork is reliant on the use of rigid processes to create images. This ranges from setting specific parameters for the artwork to using materials that have natural boundaries to push against. Moments of isolation throughout my work contrast the interest in how we are connected.

Website: www.troymedinis.com

Instagram: @troymedinis

Zachariah Mickler-Sandoval

Zachariah Mickler-Sandoval’s artist statement: My work explores the relationship between body horror and pop culture through drawing. I draw influence from artists such as Jean Giraud, Katsuhiro Otomo, Geof Darrow and the movies of David Cronenburg. I create new insights from both constructed and discovered organic structures. My drawings are an investigation into representations of mundanity in pop culture and the underlying horror that lies just on its fringes. Peeling back the layers, I like to create a new identity based on my interests in body horror for my chosen subjects. I often refers to pop and mass culture because I view it as ripe for criticism. Using a visual language of the grotesque I portray the absurdity of everyday life and contrast it with imagined horrors.

Website: http://zachariah.ink/

Instagram: @zachariah.art

Joshua Moran

Joshua Moran’s artist statement: Contemporary artist working out of DFW, creating work based around mental health and now with world in pandemic these pressing issues have increased as well.

Website: https://joshuamichaelmoran.wixsite.com/artpage

Instagram: @joshuamichaelmoran

Chloe Scout Nix

Chloe Scout Nix’s artist statement: My current body of work is inspired by western wear, the body, and gender within photography. I am very interested in the ways gender typically is shown/taught in the history of photography, and in turn very interested in breaking those molds and tropes you often see within the medium. I am creating my own clothing and props for my models, as well as creating these masks that cover each subjects face. These masks act as a way to flip and play with the gender of my models, whilst also adding a strangeness to otherwise campy scenes. The yellow photographs belong to a series titled "boyCow".

Website: www.chloescoutnix.com

Instagram: @cscout

Alison Nokes

Alison Nokes’ artist statement: My artistic explorations focus on abstracted imagery that is derived from my everyday life. Through my studio practice, I reflect on what it is like for me to ‘be here now.’ The courses I teach to students, camping trips I take, the positions my cat assumes while sleeping, the state of my mental health, and more all come into play. My work commemorates my ordinary - it demonstrates that my everyday life is enough inspiration for a multifaceted and thriving practice. In my practice I take photos often - then I sketch miniature compositions as I look through these images. I intuitively allow myself to abstract shapes, forms, and textures from these images as I draw. The small sketches I like best become the basis for larger paintings. By the time I begin painting, the energy from the original moment is still present, but the imagery is almost completely abstracted. My compositions often appear playful and childlike - however I make decisions in a deliberate way. I am self-conscious about my use of bright colors, bold shapes, and mixed textures. I am working mainly with quick drying acrylic paint. My process includes the use of brushes, squeegees, crackle paste, molding paste, and some vinyl paint. I keep energized by playing with a variety of application techniques, surface substrates, and manipulations. My end goal is a final work that has a sense of exuberant energy and offers the viewer an experience of wonder and possibility.

Website: www.alisonpilonnokes.com

Instagram: @alisonpilonnokesart

Andrew Oh

Andrew Oh’s artist statement: I am a writer, filmmaker, and recently turned comics illustrator. My work is rooted in metamodernism, expressing a bittersweet but ultimately optimistic sentiment against a cynical and dour worldview. In my comics, I'm drawn to capturing mundane moments and encounters to showcase their unspoken universality. The past few months of shared isolation have provided no shortage of such occurrences.

Website: www.andrew-oh.com/day-and-age

Instagram: @dayandagecomic

Alicia Parham

Alicia Parham’s artist statement: Alicia Parham is a graphic designer and multimedia artist creating art that addresses transparency around eating disorder recovery, moments in coming of age and the pursuit of gender equality with an oftentimes satirical outlook.

Website: www.akeparham.com

Instagram: @akeparham

Tippi Polo

Tippi Polo’s artist statement: The Weird series consists of absurd, surreal vignettes and figurative studies. The characters and narratives typically reference popular culture and favorite works of fiction. However, the original archetypes are infused with the prevailing perspectives of my formative years. The works focus primarily on the paradoxical nature of humanity when confronted with discomfort, frustration and fear.

Mary Post

Mary Post’s artist statement: I create self-portraits. Previously, I thought this exploration would show that I am excessively self-centered. However, by exploring and documenting the markings and forms of my outer self, I show the deeper composition of the journey through my years and the contents of my heart and soul. I travel over the topography of my skin documenting the numerous freckles, flakes, spider capillaries, and spots showing age, trauma, pre-cancer, moles, and blisters. In some places, wrinkles add to the area, whereas in other places the skin stays taut. Next, I trek through the hair. In some self-portraits, I imagine my hair luxuriously long and rippling with thick locks and in others, I render the heartbreak of alopecia. I burn my self-portraits onto wood, whose rings symbolize the passing of time. In some pieces the wood and burned images intermingle, breaking boundaries into my blurred recall of memories. In others, the knots in the wood indicate abrupt cessation of time. Moreover, the cracks in the wood veneer serve as metaphors for weathering or brokenness. Where I repair cracks with gold leaf, the joining makes my art piece better than before. I combine views of myself with wood to invoke my unique modes of managing ageing. Sometimes I show humor in how the image interacts with wood grains and stains. In others, I combine flaws of self and wood to indicate the gut-wrenching reality of being less beautiful. I use color following the paths of the wood grain when I burn myself with others to show the love and joy that I feel with my daughter, grandchild, or grand-dog. This essence is my beauty now. My artistic intent is to give the viewer glimpses of my process of aging through burnt self-images into the grains of wood, even though I see the evidence of time passing on the outside of my body, my more remarkable transformations are happening in my heart and soul. I share my deep love and joy made possible through the passing of time.

Website: maryannpost.weebly.com

Instagram: @MaryGlacier

Max Raign

Max Raign’s artist statement: My art focuses on themes of home and how the places you live affects your world views. Because I’ve spent my whole life in Denton, I’ve consistently seen the same buildings and signs, which has left me with both feelings of comfort and familiarity, but also a sense of melancholy. I try to capture the fun lil’ moments that happen between the comfort and melancholy. My paintings look at urban decay and the feelings associated with living in a small town, and the process of manufacturing a home that feels authentic and real. Despite having mild regret about living in one place my whole life, I’ve found a place that feels like home surrounded by people I love that make it worth exploring the same places twice. For me, every object and place has a history and story that can’t be removed, but that history can be changed by your own interactions. My current apartment was built in the 70’s and had its own history before me, but now that my roommates, and I live there it’s become our home and will forever have an impact on our lives. I think it’s important to try and understand the differences between a house and a home, but sometimes the differences are so nuanced that it doesn’t matter; everywhere is a home for someone. I try not to make art that is too serious because for me life honestly isn’t that serious and serious art can be a serious bummer.

Website: www.max-raign.com

Instagram: @maxothelioma

Cat Rigdon

Cat Rigdon’s artist statement: Cat Rigdon’s paintings and works on Dura-Lar are inspired by the vivid dreams she has had during this pandemic, along with the loss of a loved one.  Rigdon has designed spaces in the physical world for her dreams to live, creating her imagery from cyanotype-treated collages with intersecting architectural fragments and fossilized sea urchin shells.

Website: https://catrigdon.art

Instagram: @Catatonicdiscotits

Katie H. Ritchie

Katie H. Ritchie’s artist statement: Corn is an invention by man, created over 7000 years ago. Scientists believe the plant was developed from the combination of two Mexican grass called teosinte and maize. Corn does not exist naturally in the wild and its survival is dependent on humans to plant and cultivate it. As the inventions age, mature, and change, one can see the impact that they have on mankind. My artwork explores the product of corn and how it has taken over America in more ways than the supermarket. I aim to explore how this simple plant has been manipulated and advertised to encompass our daily life. Also, how the Government has constructed the plant into a money-maker which allows corn to be the biggest contributors to unhealthful food in the United States.  It will question which demographics are directly marketed and affected by the ramifications of eating processed foods. Our own understood realms are reinforced, broken and questioned, misaligned and transformed, through the use of the common and benign image of corn.

Website: katiehritchie.art

Instagram: @_katiehritchie

Alli Rogers Andreen

Alli Rogers Andreen’s artist statement: These paintings exist within a body of work called Confetti Meditations, an exploration of play and connection through collaborative installation. I use approachable materials and bright, effervescent color schemes to create playful interventions that participants are free to explore and manipulate. The paintings, created during the COVID-19 pandemic (a time during which interactive installations must be re-imagined), serve as guides for meditation inspired by confetti: free, flowing, ever-changing, celebratory, joyful, chaotic, and brief. Friends and strangers alike may meditate and celebrate together, engaging in the messy work of fun and community building through play, both alone in their houses and collectively from afar.

Website: www.alli-rogers.com

Instagram: @alliexplosion

Conner Simmons

Conner Simmons’ artist statement: I am primarily a composer/musician, but my artistic interests occasionally spill over into a visual practice, in which case the basic principles and interests behind my work remain mostly intact. My visual artwork centers around my relationship(s) to the many facets of the environments I find myself in. I am particularly interested in exploring the relationships between popular technology and how it influences my perception of the world around me, and the way I and those around me use everyday technology to experience, share, and, to some extent, replace various life experiences. I find a lot of inspiration in the imperfections of the technology we use to share and consume each other’s lives and the world around us, and the incompleteness inherent in experiencing something through the filter of an iPhone photo or Instagram post. I incorporate this “incompleteness” in a lot of my digital work, and try to portray a certain organic sentiment in my work in physical media that is unique to those pieces.

Website: www.connersimmons.com

Instagram: @conners_

Erika Suarez

Erika Suarez’s artist statement: In order to explore the ever-changing dynamic between individuals that are in complex and multi-layered relationships, Erika Suarez is focusing on those closest to her. She first began this project by studying her relationships with her parents, siblings, and grandmother, who visits when the weather changes. She executed these images by examining recognizable behaviors and traits that were of interest to her. As the project evolved, she soon began to notice through a severe lens, that she’d become estranged from her family. Each weekend trip to see them felt shorter and colder than the last. <br>By allowing the experience to dictate the perspective, Suarez found herself doing more self-exploration. In this ongoing body of work, Suarez continuously highlights themes that examine her point of view as a voyeur within her own family, endearment towards “found” family, and the spaces within the home that continue to serve as places of emotional attachment to her subjects.

Website: www.erikaninasuarez.com

Instagram: @erikaninasuarez

Jennifer Thompson

Jennifer Thompson’s artist statement: Life experience is what shapes my journey as an artist and designer. Exploring a creative practice of collaging images, printing, or designing is done within a narrative context. A story has been used for centuries to convey a message concept, lesson, or idea. Our lives are all intertwined through the fabric of life. A single thread, strand, or fiber is presented between elements, whether tangible or intangible. Found objects, textures, words, and images from magazines around the 1920s to the 1980s builds a sense of history, authenticity, and objectivity. This history has been placed before us through photos, billboards, magazines, colors, shapes, and symbols have become increasingly present, as part of the imbedded visual culture. Throughout most of the 20th century, depictions of food, clothing, customs, and every aspect of daily life were publicized in magazines providing a visual context of American culture. “Culture encompasses religion, food, what we wear, how we wear it, our language, marriage, music, what we believe is right or wrong, how we sit at the table, how we greet visitors, how we behave with loved ones, and a million other things,” said Cristina De Rossi, an anthropologist at Barnet and Southgate College in London. The arts have played an essential role through growth in American culture and bridge the gap between cultural differences to find common ground where words have failed.

Website: www.jennifergthompson.com

Instagram: @_jennifergthompson_

Lexis Thompson

Lexis Thompson’s artist statement: The work that I create embodies present reflections on memories of events that took place throughout my life, particularly my childhood. Most of my life has been impacted by both direct and indirect trauma, as well as the lives of many of those I spend most of my time with. It’s these interactions that have made me question what kind of impact trauma has, and how differently trauma manifests itself in those directly involved in it. Trauma is not restricted to one moment in time, as it brings about changes that develop and shift, just as any other experience does. It is in this realization that I’ve become motivated to acknowledge my trauma through my art, as a way to reflect on how my past and present experiences have shaped me and continue to influence my development over time. My work tends to take a quite domestic route in portraying my memories and feelings, largely in part to my home life being the most heavily influenced by abuse and disruption. I use specific materials and found objects in my work to create easily recognizable objects in order to communicate my narratives, and typically stay away from figurative work to establish a more personal but still impersonal atmosphere. I employ specific colors, usually white and sometimes red, to take these objects out of their expected context and force attention to the elements most important to me at the time. For example, I will add red color to an otherwise totally white piece to show where a violent act occurred, or to highlight the part of an object that I remember most vividly in times of crisis or danger. By forcing myself to consider how best to communicate my memories, I am in return put into a position to break down and understand what has had the largest influence on me as a person.

Website: https://lexisoptimist.wixsite.com/lexisannthompson

Instagram: @art.lexis.optimist

Julia Trinh

Julia Trinh’s artist statement: Nature has always been my muse, though most of my works are in abstract form. My work explores texture and its relationship between organic form and geometric line and shape. Although the geometric configuration of the lines and planes require careful calculation, the plasticity of the working process allows me to often work on it intuitively. I try to bring beauty and relevance to found used materials, such as outdated phone books and magazines, by recycling and reinventing them. I become fascinated with cutting the pages in various patterns, layering and rearranging them into new shapes and forms. As the meticulous repetitive patterns accumulate through several layers, the artwork become visually engaging and conceptually the element of transformation become important. Adding beeswax into some of my recent work has become fascinating to me.  I use wax for layering found objects such as string, bark, fabric and paper. I appreciate how layers of wax can be sculpted, scraped and gouged. Gouging down to reveal what is below creates an opportunity for the unexpected to reveal itself. I am mesmerized by how the heat from my torch can turn the solid wax surface into a liquefied state and in just a few minutes of cooling, it can go back to its solid state. I always attempt to approach my work with both a sense of playfulness and deliberation. Most of my work turns out totally different then when I started. I have found that my best work comes when I allow the beeswax to tell me what it wants to become. My working process can be effortless or challenging; either way, I am pulled along, fascinated by the process.

Bernardo Vallarino

Bernardo Vallarino’s artist statement: I am a mixed-media sculptor and installation artist exploring themes of human suffering, social injustice, and geopolitical conflicts, and correlating responses of apathetic indifference. With the aim of engaging the audience visually, but also morally and philosophically, I employ formal elements such as repetition, plurality, scale, and anonymity to address topics concerning violence and its resulting victims with the ultimate goals of paying tribute to those who are unfairly affected and of bringing awareness to their plight.

Website: www.bernardovallarinoart.com

Instagram: @bernardovallarinoart

Megan Van Groll

Megan Van Groll’s artist statement: Throughout my artistic practice I’ve painted women in a variety of contexts, from portraits to narrative figurative vignettes. In each lies a common motive: to investigate and reveal something essential or visceral about the female experience, and the emotional, psychological, and cultural forces that shape the lives of women. I’m particularly drawn to the manipulation of contrasts and contradictions -- exploring the point where beauty becomes indiscernible from ugliness, exploitation from agency, darkness from light, and rage from transcendence.

Website: www.meganvangroll.com

Instagram: @meganvangroll

Doris Vasek

Doris Vasek’s artist statement: My abstract works are about color and texture composition. The colors are made on the surface of panels or paper. Very little paint is ever mixed on my palette. Sometime, the most luscious colors appear in the tiniest areas. They can become inspiration for the whole piece. I love knowing that all of the colors I have ever applied will always be a part of each painting, even if they are deep down in the painting. I invite the viewer to enjoy each painting from a distance and then come closer to find the little jewels of color and texture in some of the smallest places. The viewer may find a color or shape that is one of a kind, never to be repeated.

Website: www.dorisvasek.com

Instagram: @dorisvasekart

Jim Wilson

Jim Wilson’s artist statement: I cut, glue, scrape, draw, and paint. I layer things on top of things, and I sand things off. I build, and the images and objects emerge. My work is layered and thick; it includes hazy memories from the past and glimpses into an indescribable future. I’m interested in the notion that, as wonderfully beautiful and multifaceted as it is, this life reveals only a fraction of what we can actually see. My work is an adventure, a journey. Rarely do I have a clear image in mind when I begin a new piece, and I am usually surprised by the final outcome. I let my process drive my work, packing it with the many things I think about and the things I’m interested in. I am fascinated with the amazing world we live in and the mysteries of life, and my work is an exploration into the astonishing complexity of it all. I frequently set up artificial rules in a piece, and then break them with delight. Juxtapositions of chaos and order, beauty and ugliness, seduction and repulsion, harmony and contradiction: these things fascinate me.

Website: www.jimtwilson.com

Instagram: @jim_t_wilson