On display in the 1100 Florence Gallery windows, new works by artists Kate Berry Brown & Vanessa Filley. The works will be on display thru June 19, all works are for sale, and can be viewed through the windows.
Artist Statement and Price List by Kate Berry Brown
@kateberrybrownart on Instagram
As Americans today we are filled to the brim emotionally and physically. We are juggling the effects of a global pandemic and reeling from the murders of countless black people at the hands of police, George Floyd being the most recent. There are protests in the streets as we try to social distance. The world is heavy with raw emotion. There is an electric current in the air, and it is sparking the beginnings of true transformation. And this, as Toni Morrison says “is precisely the time when artists go to work.”
I am a mother raising three white children in Evanston, a community that is teaching me to listen and ask questions, to be humble and keep up the fight for equity. I am grateful to be able to surround myself with people who want to do the hard work to dismantle systems of oppression. As I read the news each morning, my children wake up with inexhaustible energy; they are full of curiosity, full of need, overflowing with “mama.Mom.MOM!!” They squeeze, squish, hug, tap and bump my body constantly. At home I am surrounded by love. I am lucky. I am blessed. I am tired. I am crowded.
I process all of this - the barrage of everyday life - when I sit down to make work. The blue to me describes vastness. Sky, water, night, spirituality. Those things that make us feel small, those things so big that we feel either overwhelmed or enveloped. Or both. Using only a fountain pen and ink, I make thousands of tiny lines.
Crosshatching is both a tedious and meditative process that allows me to find peace and perspective. The work itself is dense, as life itself is full, often too full. Abstract shapes seem to undulate like fleshy rolls. In such an unsettling time and in such a wildly overwhelming world, we are only human after all.
Price List
Large Prussian blue/indigo pieces: 1) Anchor, $1,400
Large cobalt blue pieces: Abundance & Gratitude 1 & 2, $1,400/each
Small indigo pieces: 1) Show Off, 2) Pile, $420/each
Vanessa Filley Statements and Prices
Remnants, After Anne Ryan, $375.00
When material things break down and fall apart we have a tendency to cast them off, to allow for their failure. I have always loved the act of gathering what has been discarded and mending it, repairing it, reconfiguring it into something new. This new thing imbued with the history of each part carries time in its crevices, old bits reborn into a new story of becoming. This gathering of remnants is made from my husband's jeans, worn stair treads, old dish towels, my great-grandfather’s threadbare shirts, used parchment paper, upholstery scrap , strips of cyanotype and handmade papers.
Shelter in Place #3, from the Presence of Absence, $1700.00
This piece was made in the early days of the pandemic when we were forced still. The sudden quiet felt both like an obscenity and an oasis. As the death toll across the world rose the anxiety and heartbreak swelled and questing for balance felt necessary; and so with the privilege of home came a chance to dig into what felt infinite within these limitations, a chance to find the life in what might be sorrow, ache and loss, to touch the quiet and be beyond grateful to those on the front lines for everything they do. Given the expanse of time before me the act of puncturing paper with a needle and pulling threads became a steadying in the face of destabilization, a search for the more. This piece is double sided revealing what is on the inside and what is on the outside, the back with its knots and swollen perforation reveal a possible swelling. The shapes within the piece are made from the template of the same basic shape repeated in different formations and scaled or cut-up in different places.
Transparency Series
Transparency: The quality of allowing light to pass through so that objects behind can be distinctly seen; having thoughts, feelings and motives that are easily perceived.
This projects aims to explore the balance between privacy and exposure, what it means to be seen and to control what is seen. In a time when privacy, for many purposes, has disappeared we seem to relish and celebrate being exposed, but perhaps our vulnerability, our messiness, this is not so readily seen or shared. Are we transparent? If not, why not? If so, how come?
These images are mined from a cache of my own photos from the past few years. I have taken blue window transparency, the kind used to create the veneer of privacy without disrupting sight and layered it upon prints and then rephotographed them. These layers feel like a building up, a gathering of the residue, of what remains from moving through the world, the dust gathered, the dirt caked on. In some way I want to building up all that is unseen, make it obvious and not at all, marry the many incongruous pieces and particles into some semblance of cohesion. In photography when shooting with artificial lights there is a blue gel which allows you to correct the balance and tone of the artificial light, the blue here perhaps then corrects for what is not seen and lays claim to what else might be being said in any one of these images.
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1100 Florence Gallery is an artist-run contemporary art space dedicated to showcasing artists in Evanston and the world. Learn more at 1100florence.com or reach out to Lisa at 1100florencegallery@gmail.com