Nine Emerging Artists Explore Place at the Racine Art Museum

PRLog (Press Release) - May 17, 2011 - Feelings or memories about a place are formed by how a location (beach, forest, field, building) feels, not just by how it looks. Details are often minimized by overall thoughts and impressions-sounds, textures, light, and scents. Open May 22 through October 2, 2011, Field of Vision: Artists Explore Place http://www.ramart.org/exhibitions/280-field-of-vision.html features the work of nine emerging and established artists who create tangible responses to the intangible ideas evoked by a "place."

Approaches to representing place are as varied as the artists that create them-involving detailed observations, emotional responses, abstract elements and imaginings. Reactions to the environment-at-large are mediated through personal experiences as well as through social and cultural frameworks.

Artists represented in Field of Vision include Olga de Amaral (Colombia), Nicole Chesney (Rhode Island), Lauren Fensterstock (Maine), Mary Giles (Minnesota), Sarah Hood (Washington), Rebecca Hutchinson (Massachusetts), Jolynn Krystosek (New York), Harold O'Connor (Colorado), and Beverly Penn (Texas). Using a wide variety of media ­- including linen, wax, glass, paper, porcelain paper clay, paint, and metals - each artist creates a rich and varied composition inspired by landscape, light and space. These works are substantial without being directly representational. Conceptually, they depend upon and explore the relationship between human beings and the natural world.

These artists combine time consuming and laborious processes-such as, quilling and cutting paper into floral, plant, and decorative forms, carving wax flowers, or granulating gold-with both atmospheric and intimate views of the environment. The spaces these artists address are not always specified; they could be a seascape or cloud formation, a garden path or mountain horizon, a manicured yard or natural landscape.

Your Passport to a New World
This summer, the Racine Art Museum encourages visitors to embrace adventure, explore new destinations, connect to local culture and uncover cultural influences - all through art.

The travels begin closer to home with the exhibition, The Wright Stuff http://www.ramart.org/exhibitions/281-wright-stuff.html. RAM visitors are invited to celebrate the arrival of new works created by artists and authors inspired by the legacy of famous Wisconsin architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. These gifts, donated by Karen Johnson Boyd of Racine, establish an archive at RAM that showcases materials about the architect and emphasizes the extent to which he has been a major inspiration for other artists.

RAM journeys next with a Pocket Guide to New Zealand Jewelry http://www.ramart.org/exhibitions/282-pocket-guide.html, an engaging survey of contemporary jewelry made by artists intimately connected to a far away country that is both socially and culturally similar to and yet, significantly different from the United States.

This exhibition is made possible by Presenting Sponsors - Karen Johnson Boyd and William B. Boyd, RAM Society Members, Jay Price Ruffo, S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., The Hearst Foundation, Inc. and Windgate Charitable Foundation; Gold Sponsors - Helen Bader Foundation, Inc., National Endowment for the Arts, Racine Community Foundation, Inc., Racine United Arts Fund and Wisconsin Arts Board; Silver Sponsors - Cotsen Foundation for Academic Research, Osborne and Scekic Family Foundation, Real Racine and W.T. Walker Group, Inc.; Bronze Sponsors - Clifton Gunderson LLP, CNH America LLC, E.C. Styberg Foundation, Inc., Friends of Fiber Art International, In Sink Erator and Knight-Barry Title, Inc.

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The Racine Art Museum is one of North America's most significant contemporary craft museums. Its focus is on work from internationally recognized artists in ceramics, fibers, glass, metals and wood, as well as painting, sculpture and works on paper.