Vignette: Steve Heine

“Sonnet” by Steve Heine, random text, laser-cut steel, small-diameter magnets, primer, poplar, 30x30x2in, 2019, $3900

Interdisciplinary is a word that has dominated art conversations for the past ten years or more. Aside from the more obvious mash up of mediums and disciplines, a more subtle result is the occasional work that conjures rich associations with other forms. Steve Heine creates commissioned architectural glass for homes and corporate clients, and in “Sonnet” has shifted from purely abstract forms to the use of letters to pull our attention into the composition. We demand that it be readable, we search for words among the endlessly overlapping letterforms, and the title leads us to expect nothing less than the words of William Shakespeare.

But Heine has a trickier premise for this work: “The ‘infinite monkey theorem’ states that a monkey striking keys at random on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time will almost certainly type out the complete works of William Shakespeare. With this new piece, I’m interested in the iteration and abstraction of randomly generated text to create a visual spell of line, light and shadow.”

Heina has work throughout the region, including the Marriott AC NuLu Hotel, Decca Restaurant, Jewish Hospital Medical Center South, Owensboro Health Regional Hospital, Sacred Heart Schools’ Ursuline Arts Center, KMAC and Faulkner Real Estate.

“I see my artwork as small-scale architecture—the process of making and an emphasis on materials are vital for me. My current work is primarily explorations via low-relief mixed media: I’m concerned with the thoughtful manipulation of surface and the modulation of light, color and shadow. I’m drawn to Minimalism and to spare yet potent built architecture [where I see it in the world]. I’m interested in creating work that is “quiet”, balanced and resolved, and distilled to its essential elements.”

“Honeycomb Clouds” by Steve Heine, laser-cut and folded steel, maple, integral LED panel, 48x48x4in each, 2018, NFS

“Cloud Panels” is a permanent installation at the Marriott AC NuLu Hotel on E. Market Street in Louisville, and was accomplished in collaboration with Louisville Visual Art. “Although I usually envision these panels in blues or violets, the color can be changed at any time via a small, hand-held, wireless remote control. The range of available colors is virtually unlimited. The hotel currently has ‘Honeycomb Clouds’ programmed to continually shift through a wide range of colors.”  

Recent recognition includes:

•2018: "Beetle", a small hollow-core vessel cast several years ago from recycled light bulbs, was selected for "Celebrating American Craft—Southern Style", survey of contemporary craft across the American South, at Vanderbilt University.
•2018: A permanent installation at the Marriott AC NuLu Hotel was featured in LEO Weekly.  

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: BS, Architecture, University of Kentucky
Website: craniumglass.squarespace.com
Instagram: instagram.com/craniumglass/

Scroll down for more images

“Cloud Extrusion” by Steve Heine, laser-cut and folded steel, primer, poplar, integral LED panel, 30x30x3in, 2018, $3900

“Cloud Extrusion” (multiple images) by Steve Heine, laser-cut and folded steel, primer, poplar, integral LED panel, 30x30x3in, 2018, $3900

---

Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved. In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.

Are you interested in being on Artebella? Click here to learn more.

Vignette: Monica Stewart

On February 1, multi-media artist Monica Stewart will be recognized at the LVA Honors Luncheon as Emerging Artist of the Year.

'“Hansel and Gretel” by Monica Stewart, Cut paper, 9 ½ x 11 ½ inches, 2018

Among the foundations of moral education in western society, the fairy tale has fallen somewhat into neglect. Post-modern revisionism is the lens through which we have looked back at this storytelling genre, but Monica Stewart has picked up the thread in ways that both honor the narrative tradition and deliver a fresh take on moral fables.

“In my recent work, I draw on abject imagery from fairy tales to allude to transformation, hybridity, female agency, and dysfunctional familial relationships as well as the magical and grotesque. The quick pace and supernatural imagery of fairy tales create a language that is rife with metaphors and allegories for the ways we experience everyday life. Fairy tales are also particularly strange spaces for women.  While often moralizing or, conversely, toppling patriarchal structures, fairy tales repeatedly feature women and girls who exist in liminal places; as both princess and monster, both lucky and unlucky, both free and bound.”

“Hans My Hedgehog” by Monica Stewart,, Cut paper, 11 ½ x 15 ½ inches, 2018

“While personal experiences and observations of these kinds of liminal spaces often provide the impetus for my work, I find uncanny relationships between real life and fiction more often than not. In my search for a place where the complications and trouble of life are addressed, I turned to fairy tales. Fairy tales, like life, are places where families fall apart, fortunes are made and lost, impossible tasks achieved, power dynamics shift, and the unthinkable and the inconceivable occur regularly. As the writer, Rebecca Solnit so succinctly states in The Faraway Nearby, “Fairy tales are about trouble, about getting into and out of it, and trouble seems to be a necessary stage on the route to becoming.”[1]”

Thus the rich and prolific imagery and ideas of fairy tales have become part of the visual language I employ in my work to address my own understanding of identity, life, and society. My reliance on paper to achieve this change is in large part due to the familiarity, malleability, and relationship to text that paper has. It may be manipulated in a hundred different ways, it may be made and unmade, as well as utterly transformed. A material that is both simultaneously fragile and strong holds the possibility for endless iterations, endless presentations and tellings of the tale. Papercutting itself also has a relationship with women’s work, leisure activities, and creative labor. Toy-like, tenuous, and tedious, papercutting and paper itself are processes and materials that ally themselves both to the anonymous nature of fairytales, silhouettes, environments that begin to border on the theatrical.”

The imagery and composition in Stewart’s work enchant the viewer by conjuring associations with our own childhood relationships to fairy tales. The use of cut paper emphasizes the clarity and innocence of the tropes even while she frames our understanding of the stories in different ways. The physical presentation exploits the dimensionality of the technique and extends the work into fully sculptural forms.

Stewart will be included in an upcoming show at Swanson Contemporary which is being co-curated by Nicholas Cook and KCJ Szwedzinski, and will be on exhibit February 22nd to March 30th.

Hometown: Louisville Kentucky
Education: BFA, Painting, Murray State University; MFA candidate at the University of Louisville.
Website: www.monica-stewart.com

[1] Solnit, Rebecca. (2014). The Faraway Nearby. London: Granta Books, 13.

Scroll down for more images

“The Six Swans” by Monica Stewart,, Cut paper 15 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches, 2017

“Fabled Fragments” by Monica Stewart, Cut paper, 35 x 40 inches, 2018, For Suspend Louisville’s 2018 productions of “Fabled Fragments.” This large piece contains six individual smaller papercuts used for playbills and promotional materials.

Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved. In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.

Why Aren’t YOU on Artebella? Click here to submit.

Vignette: Laurie Fader

“Vestal Virgin and the Truckrat” by Laurie Fader, Oil on canvas, 64x56in, 2018

​For centuries, artists have looked to ancient forms and motifs to develop their skills, and more than a few have brought such iconography into their own contemporary work, with all of the associations of the past tagging along for the ride. So what Laurie Fader has been up to may not be surprising on an academic level, yet her choice of motif and the relationships she builds to current events feels unique.

While a Visiting Scholar at The American Academy in Rome, (funded by Great Meadows Foundation) Fader connected to the history of the pre-Christian Vestal Virgins, six priestesses, representing the daughters of the royal house, who tended the state cult of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth. Their lives as living symbols of the state were extraordinarily privileged, circumscribed, and brutally shortened in the event of impropriety. 

“Vestal Virgin and the Hurricane” by Laurie Fader, Oil on canvas, 64x56in, 2018

Fader writes, "My Vestal Virgin... evolved on large canvases as a kind of heroic figure embarking on odysseys relating to loss of freedom, uncontrollable climate change, and fear. Current events resonate and subliminally determine epic journeys, such as traveling with immigrants across a desert in a ‘rat truck’, or racing through a hurricane. A previously lighter, slightly humorous and self-effacing painting of a crying child turned darker when it was reported that children were being irreparably separated from their parents at the Mexican/US border.”

As the crisis on the United States/Mexico border escalates, and the American character struggles with its own inherent sense of privilege, Fader’s use of the Vestal Virgins casts the dialogue in an oblique framework that allows a more removed perspective. Is such privilege earned or assumed? 

Laurie Fader has been the recipient of many honors and awards, including a Pollock-Krasner Award, an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Emergency Assistance Grant, and the Helen W. Winternitz Award for excellence in painting from Yale University. She has attended residencies in Italy, France, Haiti, Hungary, and Italy. Fader lived in New York City for 25 years where she taught at Pratt Institute, then lived in Baltimore where she taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She came to Louisville in 2011 to launch The Kentucky School of Art (now KyCAD), where she was Chair of Academic Affairs and Associate Professor. She is now a full-time practicing artist.

Garner Narrative welcomes Laurie Fader for her first solo show with the gallery, Odysseys. It runs December 7 through January 11, 2019 with an opening reception Friday December 7, 6 - 9 pm, and a closing reception Friday January 4, 6 - 9 pm.

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: BS, Honors, New York University, NYC; MFA, Painting, Yale School of Art.
Website: https://www.lauriefader.com/

Scroll down for more images

“Cry Baby” by Laurie Fader, Oil on canvas, 48x52in, 2018

“Vestal Virgin” by Laurie Fader, Mixed media on inkjet, 9x7in, 2018

“Handmaid’s Story” by Laurie Fader, Mixed media on inkjet, 12x13in, 2018

Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved. In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.

Why Aren’t you On Artebella? Click HERE to Submit!

Vignette: Patricia Brock

“#6356” by Patricia Brock, Photography on Green Edge Acrylic, 20x20in, 2018, $550

The pastoral experience can play a role even in the formation of abstract art. In point of fact, it might be fair to say that most abstract work draws from nature. Photographer Patricia Brock describes a recent moment of inspiration:

“One morning this spring, after finishing some garden work, I sat in our swing on the deck to relax. Glancing around the yard I suddenly became hypnotized by the glass orb ornament slowly spinning at the edge of the garden. Sunlight fractured by the orb was scattering bright shards of reflected light and creating shadows within the orb. Bright vivid colors emerged from the glass shining through the prism the orb created. The longer I watched I began to see various shapes come alive.”

Inspired by this discovery Brock named her new photo series, Brightly Through the Glass.

“#6363” by Patricia Brock, Photography on Green Edge Acrylic, 20x20in, 2018, $550

Brock is a natural and available light photographer but she uses various materials such as archival photo paper, metallic papers, canvas, acrylic, and brushed aluminum to achieve her highly structured abstract images. The play of lights, shadows, and colors is organic, yet filtered through one artist’s sensibility.

“Naturally curious and observant,” is how the artist describes herself. “Consciously and subconsciously, my mind stays alert to discover images to photograph. Flickers of light and shadows, quick movements and intense colors catch my attention.”

Brock will be having a Solo Show at KORE Gallery in the Mellwood Art & Entertainment Center, December 2 through 30, 2018

Recent Exhibits: 

2018

Art Comes Alive, Purchase Award, Art Design Consultants, Cincinnati, OH,
Kentucky Visions at the Capitol Exhibit, Frankfort, KY 

2017
Artists in Our Midst, Kaviar Forge & Gallery, Louisville, KY,
Line, Form, Color, KORE Gallery, Solo Exhibit, Louisville, KY
Ways of Seeing Kentucky Arts Council Traveling Exhibition

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: BS,Education. Eastern Kentucky University; MA, Education, Eastern Kentucky University
Website: PatriciaBrockPhotography.com
Gallery Representation: KORE Gallery (Louisville)

Scroll down for more images

“#6349” by Patricia Brock, Photography on Green Edge Acrylic, 20x20in, 2018, $550

“#6373” by Patricia Brock, Photography on Green Edge Acrylic, 20x20in, 2018, $550

“#6297” by Patricia Brock, Photography on Green Edge Acrylic, 20x20in, 2018, $550

---

Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved. In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.

Are you interested in being on Artebella? Click here to learn more.

Vignette: Patricia Standard

“Explosive Volcano” by Patricia Standard, Acrylic on canvas, 11x14in, $45.00

“Rolling River” by Patricia Standard, Acrylic on canvas, 11x14in, $45.00

How an artist applies medium to a given substrate has grown over time to a state of freedom that allows virtually any approach – anything goes. Action Painting is, in fact, a rather old-fashioned method, “…a technique and style of abstract painting in which paint is randomly splashed, thrown, or poured on the canvas. It was made famous by Jackson Pollock, and formed part of the more general movement of abstract expressionism.”

Patricia Standard pours acrylic paint onto her canvas surfaces, and the control comes from color choice and a careful, tenuous manipulation of the canvas. It is a particularly intuitive process, and we can imagine no small amount of risk in the unexpected nature of this approach. Perhaps more importantly for Standard, there is a sense of discovery: “I never go into the studio with a plan, but respond to the spontaneous interaction with the colors.” 

“As I use acrylic paint on canvas, wood, or glass, I can create unplanned and fascinating colors on different material.” The naïve aspect of her practice can be received as a cross between a folk art aesthetic and a reconnection to the pure joy of making art as a child, before all of the roadblocks to creativity collectively known as adulthood get in the way.

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: Associate in Fashion Design from Academy of Arts University working towards BFA
Instagram: standardpatricia

Scroll down for more images

“Roaring River” by Patricia Standard, Acrylic on canvas, 14x18in, $55.00

“Creeping Willow” by Patricia Standard, Acrylic on canvas, 8x10in, $35.00

---

Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved. In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.

 Are you interested in being on Artebella? Click here to learn more.