Dordt College student work in printmaking—Shelby Zomermaand: “Early Morning Rehoboth”

Early Morning Rehoboth
Shelby Zomermaand
4-color linocut on Hosho paper
9 x 12 inches

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Layered: curated by Sergio Gomez (33 Contemporay Gallery, Chicago)—David Versluis is one of the featured artists

David Versluis is recognized with this piece in the Layered international group exhibition at the 33 Contemporary Gallery, Chicago. “about to break apart”—title is from a line from a poem (see below), These Photos Now by Cynthia Nibbelink Worley. Medium: Digital Montage—Archival Pigment Print; Size: 18 x 27 inches. 2015. (gif animation indicates the Photoshop® layers used to comprise the image)
__________   

These Photos Now by Cynthia Nibbelink Worley

Looking at the photos now
They tell a different story –
The small frame house stands cold, alone
Its sagging porch, two elms I thought of once
as wondrous arms
seem weak – wasted limbs
about to break apart
My father’s work shed too, lonely – a patch
of winter’s snow
frozen on the roof
The barn, fat and warm inside I’m sure –
In these old sepia tones Phil sent upon Aunt Effie’s death, I
feel the great sadness, emptiness –
everything simple, flat, so plain
Without these pictures I idealize –
Fresh bread baking in my mother’s heavenly kitchen
The homemade Christmas tree glowing through a tiny window
Heat from a wood—burning stove –
The photos quiver with a certain reality
Wind howling through a hollow core
the heartache, precious pain
of that barren landscape
How hard we worked to make it seem more
than what it was

Cynthia (Cindy) Nibbelink Worley was born in northwestern, Iowa and is a graduate of Dordt College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Nibbelink Worley has authored two collections, Gypsies, Animals, and Wild Wild Roses. She has made New York City home for over thirty years.

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Award-winning photographer René Clement to visit Dordt

Liberty ©2015 René Clement
Photomontage/collage

New York City-based and award-winning freelance photographer René Clement is giving a presentation and showcasing some of his work in the Ribbens Academic Complex Classroom Building  at Dordt College this semester. The public is invited to attend the presentation on Wednesday, September 28, at 3:30 p.m. in SB 1641 in the Science Building.

One of Clement’s current fine art photographic projects is called “Seasoned”, which is making complex montages of trees and the atmosphere created from in NYC environs. Another intricate and highly imaginative montage/collage project are called “Timescapes” and “4Sight”. Recent editorial photographic projects feature Egypt, Guantanamo Bay Prison, and Syrian refugees at the Health Care Center of Amel Association in Tyre, South Lebanon.

His honors include Zilveren Camera awards for Foreign Documentary and News Pictures, and publication in Time Magazine’s Pictures of the Year in 2003. He has published seven books of photography including Promising Land (Land vol Beloften in Dutch) about Dutch Americans living in Iowa.

Clement will be on campus as a visiting artist. The Dordt community is invited to view Rene Clement’s photographs before and after the public presentation. The photos will remain on display throughout the semester.

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Walker Art Center “Ordinary Pictures” Exhibition: Amanda Ross-Ho

Amanda Ross-Ho (American, b. 1975)
OMEGA 2012
aluminum, steel, wood, high-density foam, extruded rubber,
enamel paint, cast urethane, glass
Courtesy the artist; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; and Mitchell-lnnes & Nash, New York

Color Calibration Card (Artifact from THE CHARACTER AND SHAPE OF ILLUMINATED THINGS) 2013
exterior MDF, aluminum, UV print on Sintra, latex paint
Courtesy the artist; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; Mitchell-lnnes & Nash, New York; and The Approach, London

The following is from the Walker Art Center label:

Amanda Ross-Ho’s sculptural works often begin by identifying the potential of cast-off objects and personal ephemera, combining them with the residue of past projects. For example, OMEGA-a giant replica of a darkroom photo enlarger-applies the magnifying function of the device to itself. At the same time, this particular enlarger carries a personal history: it is a painstaking re-fabrication of an actual object given to a young Ross-Ho by her photographer-parents.

Similarly, for a recent outdoor installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Ross-Ho produced a giant replica of a color-calibration card, a professional photographer's tool for color correction and exposure settings. In both works on view here, the re-creation of these photographic apparatuses as massive sculptures calls attention to the fundamental tools of traditional image-making and production

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Walker Art Center “Ordinary Pictures” Exhibition: The Sturtevant Wall Installation—the notions about authorship

Sturtevant (American, 1924-2014)
[wall installation piece, center portion pictured] photograph by versluis 2016.

Warhol Flowers 1966
synthetic polymer screen print on canvas
Collection Bill Arning. Houston

Warhol Flowers 1971
synthetic polymer screen print on canvas
Collection Klaus Ottmann and Leslie Tonkonow,
New York

Beuys La rivoluzione siamo noi
(We Are the Revolution) 1988
screen print on paper; ed. 50/60
Photo: Arpad Dobriban
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2011

Serpentine Owl Wallpaper 2013
digitally printed vinyl wallpaper
Estate Sturtevant, Paris
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris-Salzburg

The following is from the Walker Art Center label:

Beginning in 1964, Sturtevant (born Elaine Sturtevant)began to “repeat” the artwork of others in an attempt to expose the function of the artwork as commodity and question established notions of authorship. Creating from memory artworks by Jasper Johns. Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and others, she issued a striking critique of the art system's faith in originality.

Serpentine Owl Wallpaper is a wall covering that repeats an image the artist found on a stock photo website. It serves as the backdrop for two examples of her Warhol Flowers paintings, a series she initiated in 1964. At that time, Sturtevant borrowed Andy Warhol’s generic screen-printed image-one he originally sourced from the pages of Modern Photography magazine-performing a two-fold act of appropriation.

For her version of Joseph Beuys’s 1972 print La rivoluzione siamo noi (We are the Revolution), Sturtevant cast herself in Beuys’s role, donning his trademark vest and hat. Here she suggests that originality is best understood as a function of artistic persona and not as a quality of an artwork itself. When compared to their models, Sturtevant’s works offer up a number of subtle differences that allow them to be simultaneously familiar and singular.

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Walker Art Center “Ordinary Pictures” Exhibition: Steven Baldi’s “Branded Light” photographs

Steven Baldi (American, b. 1983)
Branded Light (Canon) 2014 (second piece in the series)
gelatin silver print; ed. 2/3 + 2 AP
Courtesy the artist and Thomas Duncan Gallery, Los Angeles
photoraph by versluis 2016
From the Walker Art Center exhibition: Ordinary Pictures is on view until October 9, 2016.

The following is taken from the label that accompanies this piece:

Steven Baldi’s series of Branded Light photographs reveal the familiar yet distorted logos of camera manufacturers and imaging corporations such as Fuji, Kodak, Canon, and Sony. Though his fractured compositions may suggest digital manipulation, the artist creates his pictures entirely in-camera. Abstract as they may seem, the images nevertheless trigger our recognition of these ever-present global brands.

Baldi’s works often address the materials and systems that support both art and imaging. This series in particular draws attention to ways that corporate conglomerates exert invisible control over the images we make and consume. Baldi reminds us of the branded character of the medium's most fundamental aspects: the materials-film and a camera-required to produce an image.

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David Versluis’s Biblical Character, “Leah” — after Elizabeth Catlett’s “Glory”

Leah 2016 

Archival pigment print. 24 x 18 inches.
After Elizabeth Catlett (American 1915-2012)
Glory (Glory Van Scott, b. 1941, producer, performer, educator, and civic activist)
Cast bronze, life-size, 1981

This is a special effects/enhanced photograph by David Versluis of an Elizabeth Catlett life-size cast bronze sculpture titled Glory (1981). Catlett’s piece is in the permanent collection of the Muskegon Museum of Art. Versluis’s recreated portrait is intended to convey a powerful dignity, serenity, justice and hope that suggests aspects of the biblical character, Leah.

This artwork is part of an exhibition of visual work/poetry that responds to the theme of Leah in the book of Genesis. This exhibition is a wonderful collaborative fine arts event organized by Northwestern College’s art, English and music departments. The show opened February 15 and runs until the 26th in Northwestern’s Te Paske Gallery in Orange City, Iowa.

The main event is a reception on Monday evening, February 22, at 7 p.m. in the college’s Te Paske Gallery. In addition to the artwork there will be writings and music performed by community members.

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David Versluis’s: These Photos Now: “about to break apart”

©David M. Versluis
These Photos Now: About to Break Apart 
Montage, Archival Pigment Print 2015
18"W x 27"H

The University of South Dakota Art Galleries is currently showing, New Union / Re Union, in Gallery 110, located in the Warren M. Lee Center for Fine Arts. This exhibition features 50 artists, “who know Vermillion and/or the area intimately well,” interpreting lines from the poetry of Cynthia Nibbelink Worley, Harlem, NYC. The exhibition runs to February 15, 2016.

Versluis’s Artist Statement
Invited artists were asked to develop an image based on a single line in the poem by Nibbelink Worley a Dordt College alumna, class of 1966. I was assigned the line “About to Break Apart” from the poem titled, “These Photos Now.” The house façade, in the montage, is a photograph I took of the ca. 1900 farm homestead in Heritage Village in Sioux Center, Iowa.

These Photos Now ©Cynthia Hibbelink Worley

Looking at the photos now
They tell a different story-
The small frame house stands cold, alone
Its sagging porch, two elms I thought of once
as wondrous arms
seem weak- wasted limbs
about to break apart
My father's work shed too, lonely- a patch
of winter's snow
frozen on the roof
The barn, fat and warm inside I'm sure-
In these old sepia tones Phil sent upon Aunt Effie's death, I
feel the great sadness, emptiness—
everything simple, flat, so plain
Without these pictures I idealize-
Fresh bread baking in my mother's heavenly kitchen
The homemade Christmas tree glowing through a tiny window
Heat from a wood-burning stove-
The photos quiver with a certain reality
Wind howling through a hollow core
the heartache, precious pain
of that barren landscape
How hard we worked to make it seem more
than what it was

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Speed and motion: a Piet Zwart photograph

Piet (Pieter) Zwart (Dutch, 1885-1977)
Locomotie, 1928
Gelatin silver print

This is just one of the wonderful photographic prints in the 100+ photography exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. The show is one of the events which commemorates the 100th anniversary of the MIA this year.

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