MEDIA RELEASE Photos and interviews available
Contact: Amy Jorgensen, Co-Director
Mobile: 619.977.0770
Exhibitions:
Wednesday, Feb 8, 2017 – Friday, May 12, 2017
Reception: Friday, Feb 10, 2017, 6-8pm
Fourth Grade Project
Judy Gelles
Main Gallery
Difficult Truths
Kate Kretz
Upper Gallery
Shattered
Wendy Wischer
CCA Christensen Gallery
Granary Art Center hours: Wed – Sat 12 - 5 pm
Location: 86 N. Main St. Ephraim, UT 84627
Granary Art Center is pleased to present three new exhibitions: Fourth Grade Project; Difficult Truths; and Shattered.
Fourth Grade Project
Judy Gelles
Fourth Grade Project began in 2008 when Judy Gelles volunteered in a fourth grade classroom at an elementary school in South Philadelphia. Over the course of eight years Gelles interviewed and photographed over 300 students from China, India, South Korea, England, Italy, St Lucia, South Africa, Nicaragua, and multiple regions of the United States. She asked all of the students the same three questions: Who do you live with? What do you wish for? and What do you worry about? Told in the students’ own words, these stories speak to the shared human experience across cultural and geographic boundaries.
Difficult Truths
Kate Kretz
One of the functions of art is to strip us bare, reminding us of the fragility common to every human being across continents and centuries. Often, I will meet someone, and the visible weight of his or her life becomes almost unbearable to me, it rips me open. The objects that I make are an attempt to articulate this feeling. I give birth to the tactile as I am swallowed by the virtual. I obsess over craft as our world becomes disposable. I wield emotion in its messiness because it's uncool. I work until my hands shake, because the world does not care. I am banging my head against the wall, but the stain is beautiful.
Making art is how I process information, to try and make sense of the world around me. This selection of work comes from a number of different series, but all are reactions to the experiences I have had, whether navigating family relationships, romantic partnerships, or the world at large. I am interested in the dynamics of psychology, power structures, and telling difficult truths through the most relevant and potent medium.
Shattered
Wendy Wischer
Shattered makes reference to the fragility of the natural world. This sculpture is a continuation of a series of sculptures covered with mirror tiles that use a single object to fill an entire space through the use of light. The moment of shatter is frozen in time while we are allowed to wander among the fragments and contemplate our relationship with them. Our reflections are visible in the mirrored surfaces, allowing us to see ourselves within the context of the work.
The two dimensional drawings of light on the flat surfaces of the architecture combine with the three dimensional forms on the floor and are activated by the performative properties of the light waves, and the migration of the viewers. The shape of the mirror and the resulting reflections suggest a suspended action and narrative that defies space and time as we typically experience it, and serves as an exploration of symbolic artworks that address our current climate crisis.
Exhibitions are generously supported in part by Ephraim City and Utah Arts & Museums, with funding from the State of Utah and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Attached images
1. PostCard: Fourth Grade Project, Judy Gelles
2. PostCard: Difficult Truths, Kate Kretz
3. PostCard: Shattered, Wendy Wischer
4. Judy Gelles, Grade Teacher, St. Lucia: Public School
5. Kate Kretz, Feral
6. Wendy Wischer, Shattered, detail
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