This
exhibition showcases the generous gift of contemporary lithographs,
silkscreen prints and etchings donated to Eastern Michigan's
permanent collection by Albert Scaglione, CEO, Park West
Gallery. Park West's gift stresses the importance of funding
art and the role it plays in a student's intellectual and
cultural experience on campus.
Original
works of art not accessioned into the permanent collection
will be available for purchase. These include works by such
internationally renowned artists as Itzchak Tarkay, Jean-Claude
Picot, ahd Faunch Ledan. Prints by stone lithographer Emil
Weddige will also be for sale at special reduced prices. Proceeds
from the sale of works by Weddige fund art and music scholarships
at Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan.
The Emil and Juanita Weddige Scholarships are awarded yearly
to upper-level students who have demonstrated excellence in
their major art/music interests. The success of last years
Gift of Giving sale enabled Eastern Michigan to offer a record
number of scholarships for the 2008-09 school year. Sales
of works by other artists will benefit various fine art programs
at Eastern Michigan University.
The gallery
is open Monday and Thursday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; Tuesday
and Wednesday, 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.; Friday 10:00 a.m.
to 2:00 p.m. For more information about this or other exhibitions,
contact Larry Newhouse, Gallery Programs Director at (734)
487-4065 or larry.newhouse@emich.edu. Ford Gallery is barrier-free,
free and open to the public.
Monday,
January 12, from 4 - 6pm
gallery
talk at 5pm
Born
to Win, an installation/exhibition by David Borawski
Born to
Win, created especially for Ford Gallery, incorporates sculpture,
painting and video in an stimulating gallery installation
that comments on presidential electioneering, corporate imperiousness,
auto racing and their emotional and financial effects and
affects on our culture and society as a whole. Visually challenging
and cogent, the separate works interface and debate each other
both optically and conceptually, with recognizable elements,
materials, and titles forming a framework to decipher and
interpret the work.
According to Borawski, his works begin "with materials
(Celotex insulation, traffic safety cones, highway signs,
sheet metal, tar paper, fluorescent lights, etc.)," which
he "brings together in highly suggestive arrangements.
The resultant site-specific/site-adaptive works place emphasis
on conflicting and contrasting surface textures and colors,"
while bringing the materials' original functions into question.
Borawski's installations make reference to advertising, politics,
prisons, shooting ranges, the military, death, highway construction
sites, and the American flag, while also mocking traditional
modernist art. His works often deal with signs and symbols
that have specific cultural significances but also suggest
universal meanings. These signifiers are subtly manipulated
and combined with other imagery to create at times enigmatic,
at times contradictory meanings. Titles, often drawn from
movies, pop song lyrics, clichés, double entendres,
abbreviations and palindromes, further enhance the allusive
power of his works.
David Borawski lives and works in Connecticut and has exhibited
his work in galleries, museums and universities in the United
States and Europe. He received his BFA from the Hartford Art
School of the University of Hartford.
For more information or a press photo, contact Larry Newhouse,
gallery program director, at 734-487-1268, 734-487-1077 or
larry.newhouse@emich.edu. For directions to the gallery, go
to http://www.emich.edu/fordgallery/map/html.
From
January 12 to February 20, 2009
Current
Show
Muse:
A Project of the Telegraph Art Collective
The University
Art Gallery is in the EMU Student Center on Oakwood St. in
Ypsilanti. The opening reception will be held on Tues. Oct.
14 from 5:00-7:00 p.m., with a gallery talk by the Telegraph
artists at 5:00 p.m. The exhibition and opening are free,
open to the public and a EMU-LBC (Learning Beyond the Classroom)
Event.
Comprised of seven members with diverse disciplinary backgrounds,
TELEGRAPH is an artist collective that originated in Detroit,
Michigan. The name Telegraph describes both the group's long-distance
method of collaboration (the members are now scattered across
the country) and pays homage to Telegraph Road, the ubiquitous
Detroit thoroughfare. The collective functions as a running
conversation, typically conducted at long range. Occasionally
the group comes together in one location to collaborate on
projects and exhibitions. Telegraph made its debut at the
Art Chicago Stray Show in May 2004 and has since showed in
Toronto, Kansas City and Detroit. The artists of Telegraph
continue to exhibit individually at galleries and museums
both nationally and abroad.
EMU as Muse: Telegraph members will enthusiastically descend
upon Eastern Michigan University (EMU) where they will spend
three days creating site-specific work engaging built and
open spaces, as well as the detritus, the people and the resources
of EMU and vicinity. The artists will not bring finished works
to Ypsilanti, instead they will arrive with notes, sketches,
pieces, parts and their curiosity. EMU becomes the object
of Telegraph's artistic inquiry. All this will happen in the
72 hours before the opening and may continue throughout the
opening reception and until the artists depart for their homes
in Birmingham, Boston, Chicago, Fort Collins, Las Vegas and
Los Angeles.
The intention is to define an exhibition not as a collection
of prefabricated products, but rather as a body of work that
is immediate, growing and organically connected to its place
of origin. This approach to art-making emphasizes process,
response and participation over product as its raison d'être.
After the exhibition's run, the objects, wall paintings, drawings
and other interventions will be recycled or painted over,
becoming permanently integrated into the campus' collective
memory. This sustainable exhibition will blend and reflect
the various approaches, skills and sensibilities of the artists
involved. Get ready for some kick ass sculpture, craft, design,
architecture, performance, video, drawings, and kitchen sinks!
From
Oct. 14-Nov. 24, 2008
Current
Show
George
Legrady: Cell Tango,
which
will be held in Ford Gallery (in Ford Hall)
Created
by George Legrady, Professor of Interactive Media at UC, Santa
Barbara, Cell Tango is an animated, interactive installation
featuring a dynamically evolving array of images transmitted
from all over the globe by participants using cell phones.
The organization of the images/texts is based on data from
the point of origin: area code, carrier, time, date, and categories/descriptions
created by contributors. Visitors to the exhibition will be
able to add their own photos and interact with those of others
in real time. The work examines the most recent products of
popular culture, raising questions about technology's impact
on identify and society. It provides a new understanding of
the technologies that audience members use to navigate the
culture in which they live.
Legrady's Interactive Visualization Lab conducts "aesthetic
research through the implementation of complex technologies
for new forms of content, narratives, experiences and analysis"
<http://www.georgelegrady.com/>. It focuses on research
and experimental projects in the areas of data visualization,
algorithmic processes, computational photography, and interactive
installation. Projects are realized as interactive art installations
and digital publications, integrating data mapping and data
visualization through semantic categorization and self-organizing
algorithms.
Institutions throughout the United States and Canada and in
France, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands and the United Kingdom
have supported research & art projects of the Interactive
Visualization lab. Legrady has received a grant from the National
Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D.C. He is a co-principal
in the National Science Foundation IGERT Interactive Multimedia
Research Program.
EMU's showing of this exhibition is curated by BathHouse,
an interdisciplinary hypermedia journal. It is sponsored by
the Art and English departments and by EMU Student Government.
BathHouse is a twice-yearly publisher of language-focused
hybrid art that queries: What is writing? What is art? The
journal seeks to discover how the presentation choices and
processes of writing affect the content presented and how
these choices and processes affect the audience's interaction
with the work.
For more information, contact Larry Newhouse, gallery program
director, at larry.newhouse@emich.edu, 734-487-0465 or 734-487-1077
or Sarah Smarch, Editor-in-Chief, Bathhouse Hypermedia Journal,
at ssmarch@emich.edu or at http://www.BHJournal.com and click
on exhibition. Images are available on request.
from Oct.
21 to Nov. 24, 2008The gallery
is open Monday and Thursday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; Tuesday
and Wednesday, 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.; Friday 10:00 a.m. to
2:00 p.m. For more information about this or other exhibitions,
contact Larry Newhouse, Gallery Programs Director at (734) 487-4065
or larry.newhouse@emich.edu. Ford Gallery is barrier-free, free
and open to the public.
