Mid City Artists Open Studio | Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

ELLYN WEISS

Home

GessoHead - Blog

Mid City Artists Open Studio

June 1. 2010

Groover Cleveland's "caution"

Find the Groover

Before time gets totally away from me, I want to note the Mid City Artists’ Spring Open Studios on May 22 - 23. In this case,”Mid City” is a flexible concept, just fluid enough to encompass a shifting group of about 40 artists who live and/or work around Dupont and Logan Circles, with tentacles reaching to 14th St. and Shaw. They have come together to jointly promote their work and twice a year they open their studios to the public. It’s become quite the established event and on the appointed weekend it’s not hard to spot people walking down the streets studying the studio map in search of the next artist in his/her habitat. It makes me happy to see that. I’ve written about Mid-City before but I want to call out a few worthy new stops on the tour.

Dave and his Public

First there’s Groover Cleveland, the nom de plume of an artist whose work is graphically charged and politically engaged. (I know his real name but you could tickle me until I pee and I won’t tell.) My favorite pieces of his current work, both large canvases and silk screens, deal with the fear that every culture has of the undefined “other” and the resulting instinct to build walls.

artistic photo, huh?

Joren Lindholm

Then there’s the new artists’ hive on 14th Street where my friend Tom Drymon has assembled a group of four studios on the second floor of a townhouse. He works in one and rents the others. First up is Dave Peterson, who does a prodigious amount of creating in a tiny little space, doing graphic design, printmaking, illustration, photography and a line of truly droll t-shirts, all under the name Branddave. His graphic work never wastes a line and usually causes a smile, which is a pretty valuable talent to have.

Hannah Naomi Kim and her public

Next is Joren Lindholm, whose work covers a lot of ground, moving from the figurative to the abstract, including collage, painting and drawing. I particularly liked the richness of a recent painting that focuses so tightly on a still life detail as to become virtually completely abstract.

Kim's work

Chuck Baxter is a sick sick man

Finally, Drymon’s Hive contains a newcomer to town named Hannah Naomi Kim. One stream of her work constitutes a visually-arresting take on the story of displaced people, a story that has become heartbreakingly common in the globalized world. Kim removes and isolates images from sources such as newspapers, reduces them to a white silhouette and superimposes them onto landscapes that seem arbitrary and/or inappropriate. The theme is a familiar one but Kim’s work is impeccably made and quite powerful.

Chuck with the broken bottle piece i did take home

Sondra Arkin's new encaustics

I can’t leave this topic without mentioning Chuck Baxter, my favorite trashman, whose art was recycling before there was recycling. He only uses discarded material, everything from 10,000 mini-CDs (remember those things?) to plastic newspaper bags to cigarette lighters to bottle caps – I could go on and on. Chuck’s work keeps getting bigger and more audacious and, since retiring from his paying job, he is even more prolific. My very favorite thing that I saw all day was Chuck’s chiffon doll baby wall plaque and I could only keep from snatching it because I couldn’t figure out a way to get it in the house without alerting my husband (not to mention hanging it.) OMG – what a thing!

< Prev		Next >