Installation for September’s exhibition Symbiosis has begun!
Opens September 1, 2006 from 7-10pm

INTERNSHIPS & VOLUNTEERS

1708 Gallery is looking for interns and volunteers!

Interns commit to a regular schedule and receive hands-on experience in all aspects of the Gallery's operations, including:
-Gallery openings and receptions
-Fundraising, grant research
-Press, publications, design, and marketing
-Archiving records and resources
-Databasing
-Installation/Deinstallation
-Non-profit gallery administration

We are also looking for volunteers interested in helping with:
-First Friday's and preview receptions
-Silent Night - Small Works Silent Auction Event
-Annual Art Auction in March
-Wearable Art 9
-Exhibition Installation/Deinstallation
-Institutional Archive Project

Please email us to tell us your interests and availability. We'd love to meet with you to talk to you more about the opportunities and needs here!
Contact:
Maria Dubon, Gallery Coordinator, mdubon@1708gallery.org
or
Aimee Koch, Gallery Administrator, akoch@1708gallery.org

1708 Theresa Pollak Prize Award Winners

Alyssa Salomon and Starr Foster, current 1708 Board members, have been awarded the 2006 Theresa Pollak Awards for Photography and Dance. Congratulations to you both!










Myron Helfgott, sculptor and professor emeritus at VCU and one of the original 1708'ers was honored with a Pollak Prize this year. Cheers, Myron...

Congratulations also to Ashley Kistler, curator at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond and long-time 1708 Gallery friend and supporter, on her 2006 Pollak Prize.

Shhhhh...

Sorry it's been so quiet in here, I was all over the place doing art stuff.
But don't be deceived, this quiet is the calm before the storm. 1708 Gallery's opening of the Paula Owen and Sue Papa show will be this Friday, all the 1708 Board committees are getting geared up and we have all kinds of good things planned for this fall. Some up-coming events are Teacher's Night Out, the Forum (an invitational event for Virginia's grad and undergrad fine arts students), Wearable Art, and, of course, great shows (see the season calendar on the sidebar, please).
See you all on Friday night for the First Friday openings...

Are you interested in 1708 Artist Board Membership?

Would you like to be an Artist Board member of 1708 Gallery?

1708 is one of the oldest artist run galleries in the USA. We are a board driven organization in that we have a small staff and most all of our exhibitions and events are organized and run by 1708 board members and volunteers. Its the kind of place where you will meet and socialize with many different kinds of artists and art professionals, have fun and be a part of an organization that makes things happen.

1708 has survived close to thirty years of political trends and local politics by partnering with professionals in our local community as board members, by demanding a level of excellence in our exhibition program and by creating events which spark our culture's interest in contemporary art. In addition to serving on event and exhibition committees each board member takes a turn bartending at openings, gallery sitting and pledges to pay annual dues of $300. a year. Some artists choose to pay their dues in one lump sum, others pay it monthly and still others have it deducted from their commission when they sell artwork at our annual art auction.

Artists interested in serving on 1708's Artist Board membership are asked to mail the Artist Matters Committee a proposal to be considered for membership. The proposal should include a CD of 20 images of recent art work, a slide list which includes titles, size, media and year, an artist statement, a resume that includes your website and an introductory letter
stating your interest in becoming an artist member of 1708. Please note that 1708's Artist Board strives to maintain a membership that reflects a contemporary approach to art making, curatorial issues and a knowledge of current art world trends.

Thank you again for your interest in 1708. I look forward to meeting you at our next opening! Please feel free to contact the gallery if you have questions about 1708 Artist Membership.

Hey Artists...

This is for all artists/curators/geniuses out there.
Send 1708 your show proposals and make Brad's mind boggle with excitement. He is a little too relaxed these days.

1708 Gallery invites artists, collaborative groups, & curators interested in proposing exhibitions at 1708 Gallery to do so at this time. 1708 is a cutting-edge, non-profit art gallery interested in all genres and contemporary approaches to art making.

Proposals are due for our next bi-annual review session at the gallery by 5pm, Monday October 2, 2006 for consideration during this fall’s proposal review session.

Proposals are now being considered for the 2007/2008 season.

Proposal Guidelines are on the 1708 web site: www.1708gallery.org under Exhibitions/Proposals.

1708 Gallery's September Exhibition

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Aimee Koch, Gallery Administrator, akoch@1708gallery.org


EXHIBITION: Symbiosis: Sue Papa & Paula Owen September 1-29, 2006
OPENING: Friday, September 1, 2006 from 7-10pm

Artists Paula Owen and Sue Papa please, provoke, confuse and challenge the viewer’s visceral connection to their work. The work draws viewers into a deeper, questioning relationship with texture, beauty, mystery and meaning.

Paula Owen’s alluring, multi-panel pieces comment on the multiple realities of our time, corresponding with an incongruity that details a tumultuous world. The paintings reflect a keen awareness of the pieces and whole, navigating through disparate elements to create a full picture. The rich textures and detail acknowledge an exotic material beauty but allude to a mysterious inter-connectedness. Curator Deborah McLeod notes that Owen has “always been interested in the perceptions that awake and function in, and ultimately undermine, seductive material culture, that incongruous interface between a finely crafted thing of perfect form and convention and the confusing position of an interpretive belief or idea that resounds with some other kind of sensual or cerebral finish. In the construction of the dual planes of her paintings, Owen discloses something of this curious rising and falling correspondence.” Poet Naomi Shihab Nye asks viewers to consider “What if a mind could be as charged yet calm as the undulant shapes and textures Owen paints into Irresistible dialogue?”

Owen received a MFA in Painting and Printmaking from VCU and a MS in Art Education from Minnesota State University. Owen most recently exhibited her work at Joan Grona Gallery in San Antonio Texas and the McLean Project for the Arts. Owen is an active art professional, having served as Executive Director of the Visual Art Center of Richmond for eleven years. She currently lives in San Antonio, TX and serves as President and CEO of the Southwest School of Art and Craft.

Sue Papa’s ceramic sculptures are also both enticing and unnerving. An initial beauty provokes the viewer into a world of obscure meaning, blurring the lines between the familiar and the unknown. Papa creates alluring and sensual organic forms that feed off each other through tubes, cables, circus of energy that are intentionally mysterious and often nonsensical. Papa says “I like to think of them as little metaphors for human behavior. There is always a sexual undertone in my work, and again, though I find it a humorous one; the metaphor is the lovely yet clumsy nature of sex, our fumbling passion to make parts fit together.”

Papa is a former artist member of 1708 who now resides in East Hampton, NY. She holds a BA in Art History from Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio. Her work has been exhibited nationally including at the McLean Project for the Arts and the Peninsula Fine Arts Center, and is in public and private collections including those of Media General, Virginia Commonwealth University Special Collections & Archives, and Owens & Minor.

1708 Gallery is a non-profit exhibition and performance space committed to expanding the understanding, development, and appreciation of contemporary art. This exhibition has been generously sponsored by
Laura Leigh & Jake Savage and Cindy Neuschwander & Jay Barrows.
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1708 Artist Goings Ons - Travis Fullerton and Jeff Majer

Travis Fullerton has work in the 24th Annual Hampton Bay Days Juried Art Exhibit at Charles H. Taylor Art Center in Hampton and was also awarded the Hampton Arts Commision Award of Excellence for his photograph, "Covered Parking", shown above.
Travis has also been invited to participate in the 2006 Biennial at the Penninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News. The show in Hampton runs through mid-September and the Biennial opens in early September. Both shows are well worth the drive!



Also, Jeff Majer, an artist associate with 1708, will have a show,"Heaven" or"Heavenly" at the ADA Gallery that opens tonight, August 4, with a reception from 7-10 pm.

Hi...Lilinore is here.
I have learned the blog!

Charles Gick: Artist Insight

Charles Gick has returned from Rome and here is the interview I promised. The show Overflow will be on view at 1708 Gallery until August 19th.

Q. What most interests you?

A. Spatial negotiations and the intersections between human relationships and the landscape. With whom and how do we share our physical, psychological, intellectual, emotional, personal and political space? Much of life is about negotiating space. Two countries could be fighting over land and where the boundary lines may be. Someone may see a section of land as sacred and another as a great profit-making venture. A couple may be trying to establish psychological and physical space within their relationship and home. Someone else may be trying to figure out how much space they are going to let a spoken or written word occupy their own mind.

Q. Has your artwork ever caused a scandal that you did not anticipate? Did the experience change the way you perceived your art? Did it change the way you make art?

A. The closest I can come to addressing this question is with one of the pieces I included in the
Overflow exhibition, titled Flowers from the Mouth. This video installation was a source of conflict between curators for one group exhibition. One curator felt strongly about Flowers from the Mouth and another was repulsed by it and felt it had too strong a sexual undercurrent.
When I showed up for the opening, the piece appeared to be missing and a 2-page controversy was in its place. Later, I looked up and realized my piece was being projected in the space above the rest of the exhibition.
The experience didn't really change the way I make art but it made me more aware of how many different ways a work can be perceived depending on the community and experiences of the viewer engaging with the work.

Q. What has been your favorite reaction to your artwork?

A. Again it would also be with Flowers from the Mouth. I have shown this work in 5 different locations and each time it has had such split reactions. I showed the piece in Fort Collins, Colorado, at the Museum of Contemporary Art. There was a comment box at the show and after the exhibition ended they mailed me the comments that related to my work. They ranged from "It was the most beautiful and poetic work" to "if the museum ever showed a piece like this again they would never return." This range of reaction to Flowers initially surprised me. I have never really viewed it as controversial - it was just a piece I thought about for a long time and really needed to make.

Q. When you are speaking to young artists about their art practice, what do you most want them to learn from you?

A. To remember that art is both an intuitive and intellectual practice. Making art is a balancing act between following our gut instincts, thoughtfully considering what it is we are saying as artists and how our work exists in the world. Art is a conversation and can be used as a form of personal understanding and objectification, but it is also a necessary form of social engagement.