A place of refuge or safety; an oasis, retreat, and safe haven; a consecrated place – a sanctuary can serve all of these functions. Seen as a place of safekeeping and as a space where transformation can take place, the idea of “sanctuary” has long provided artists with the inspiration to create. Curated by Smith Center for Healing and the Arts’ executive director Shanti Norris, and in collaboration with the Washington Sculptors Group comes Sanctuary, exploring the concept of how space can create refuge.

Sanctuary features the work of Salamah Arden, Alan Binstock, Gloria Chapa, Jeff Chyatte, Joel D’Orazio, Alonzo Davis, Annie Farrar, Pattie Porter Firestone, Tom Greaves, Artemis Herber, Liz Lescault, Ruth Lozner, Claire McArdle, Rima Schulkind, Mike Shaffer, Lynda Smith-Bugge, Marcos Smyth, Paul Steinkoenig, Garrett Strang, Isabelle Truchon, Pat Wasserboehr, Janet Wheeler, and Millicent Young.

Featuring indoor and outdoor installations as well as small and large-scale sculptures, Sanctuary challenges our assumptions about art as it extends into our personal spaces and how it can serve as a sacred space.

Sanctuary will be open from June 12 – August 15, 2015. Join us at the Opening Reception on Friday, June 12th from 7-9pm. And join us on Saturday, July 18th at 3:30pm for a rare chance to meet the featured artists and curator Shanti Norris, as they discuss the processes and inspirations behind their works at the Sanctuary Curator & Artists’ Talk.

All artwork will be available for sale during the exhibition, with proceeds supporting the artists, ArtWorks for Freedom, and Smith Center’s cancer support programs.

Image: Millicent Young, Liminal

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This November, Decorative Arts curator and recognized fiber artist, Jennifer Lindsay, invites emerging and established local artists to envision the gallery as a home (and as a work of art). Taking inspiration from a continuum of modern movements in art and architecture, Lindsay revives the spirit of early twentieth-century artists, architects, and designers who believed that the artful home – a balancing of aesthetics, function, and social purpose – could transform the individual, the community, and ultimately, the city itself. 

Urban Bungalow features new work, one-of-a-kind objects, site-specific installations, and limited productions by Shawn Arlauckas, Joseph Corcoran, Art Drauglis, Yoshi Fujii, Sylvia Gottwald, Matthew Hyleck, Gretchen Klimoski, David Knopp, Tamara Laird, Laurel Lukaszewski, Peter Malinoski, Yoko Sekino-Bovè, Vicco von Voss, and Caleb Woodard.  Furniture, glass, ceramics, textiles, jewelry, electric guitars, and skateboards handmade for the twenty-first century showcase diverse and individual approaches to working with both traditional and new materials.

In line with the art historical concept of a “total work of art,,” Lindsay thoughtfully selects works that seamlessly relate to, and engage viewers with the gallery’s contemporary architectural and design details.  The collection intermixes lively, organic forms, with natural and richly decorative surfaces to echo the space’s biomorphic ceiling ‘clouds,’ undulating, mirrored mosaic, and cascades of handmade paper cranes.  Elemental form language, freshly imagined and interpreted for our time by a new generation of artists, recalls the more radical movements in art and architecture – Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, Expressionism, Surrealism – and references the durable influence of global cultures and traditions that continue to shape American modernism and contemporary art and craft today.

Above all, the works in Urban Bungalow are extensions of the taste, skill, personality, aesthetic interests, questions and problems, and the humor and insight of the artists who make them. They work with various natural materials – reclaimed, repurposed and selected out of concern for the environment or for their historical or cultural significance. The artists use new or compound materials for their tensile strength and sculptural properties. Whether with wood grain, hot glass, wet clay, or even hand-built electronics layered to produce a custom sound, these artists work at the very limits of what is possible to achieve a synergy of form, function, and expressive power in each object on view.

Urban Bungalow challenges our assumptions about the art we use and live with and where and how it is made. It initiates us into the privilege of experiencing exceptional objects created by local artists whom we can also come to know.  The art and functional objects – sensuous, sculptural, tactile, imaginative – are pleasurable to have, hold, use, and pass on to future generations; they promise to alter our quotidian routines into rituals we anticipate and savor, and to connect us to the continuum of human creativity.

“It is not in the monumental buildings, but in the home, in the living and working place, and in [our] contact with even the smallest objects [we] use and with which [we] live, that a valid art form is created.” − Eliel Saarinen, Cranbrook Academy of Art, 1932

Urban Bungalow will be open from October 31 – December 20, 2014. There will be an Opening Reception on Friday, November 7th, 7-9pm, as well as the Curator and Artists’ Talk & Holiday Gift Sale on Saturday, November 22 at 3:30pm.

Urban Bungalow will also feature two hands-on fiber workshops, open to all levels, led by the show’s curator and recognized fiber artist, Jennifer Lindsay.

Introduction to Sashiko Embroidery: Embellish It! — Put New Life Into Old Clothes

Saturday, December 6, 11am-3pm.

Try out this relaxing and meditative form of embroidery in a beginner workshop. Sashiko, which originated in Japan for patching, mending and re-purposing old garments and household textiles, has become a decorative art form in its own right, and is experiencing a huge revival in fashion and home decor. Use stencils and traditional Sashiko threads to make an old garment look exciting and wearable again. Bring your own garment, all other materials will be provided. Registration is required to attend this workshop (Material Fee: $25).

Introduction to Hand Spinning: Spin It! — Make Your Own Yarn

Wednesday, December 10 from 6-7:30pm

Get in on the newest DIY trend – make your own drop spindle and learn how to hand spin your own yarn with Jennifer Lindsay, fiber artist and arts educator. Then choose from an assortment of fibers provided and learn to spin. You may not be able to learn to make yarn in just one session, but you’ll get everything you need to get started. Registration is required to attend this workshop (Material Fee: $10).

Please note: The gallery will be closed on 11/27 – 11/29 for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Images:

(top) Caleb Woodard, Maelstrom cabinet, solid American black walnut

(bottom) Joseph Corcoran, Language, mirrored blown glass

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Guest curator and renowned artist Martha Jackson Jarvis unites the provocative works of emerging artists Shaunté Gates and Njena Surae Jarvis as they explore the body as metaphor, challenging the torpid qualities of painting and sculpture with a sense of didactic theater and enigmatic forms. Their works command and redefine space with mysterious pairings of disparate forms and malign compositions. There is a non-static reconfiguration, reconstruction and reinvention that occurs simultaneously that both disturbs and stimulates.

Both artists in their practice engages multiple forms of media; performance, video, and numerous materials to create socio-dynamic environments frozen in time and space. Each artist evokes the feeling and connotation of a sagacious still from a futuristic movie set or film clip. These young energetic artists, Njena Surae Jarvis and Shaunté Gates, provide us a non-linear transfixing glimpse of immortality and intrinsic momento mori.

We, as viewers, are made part of this ever-changing matrix that remains haunting, unknowable, and in a state of flux. We are never given entirety or convenient answers; rather, we are forced to discern, to distill, and, diverge from orthodoxy and conventional expectations, to complete the imaginative narrative unfolding before us. Divergence presents a complex forum and exacting commentary on contemporary life, challenging us to expand our vision and courageously walk life’s knife-edge, to perceive and find meaning in the gaps and unexplored places that connect us one to another.

“…I’m thinking in this age of technology how we are becoming more connected in ways via internet, and media, that compromise our true connections with one another, both spiritual and physical.” – Shaunté Gates

“As an artist who works in a variety of media, I dispute the chasm between the realm of memory and the realm of experience. My work generates diverse meanings as a result, associations and meanings collide and intertwine. Space becomes time and language becomes image.” – Njena Surae Jarvis

Divergence will be open from September 6 – October 25th, 2014. There will be an Opening Reception on Friday, September 12th, 7-9pm, as well as the Curator and Artists’ Talk on Thursday, October 16th at 6:30pm.

Please note: The gallery will be closed on 10/10 and 10/11 for an on-site cancer retreat.

Special thanks to John Paradiso at 39th Street Gallery for the creative incubation of this artistic pairing and ongoing support of our work. Check out their September exhibition at http://www.39thStreetGallery.com.

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As visionary observers of our material world, artists employ masterful techniques – carving, sewing, photographing, and collaging – to alter what might otherwise be discarded fragments of our everyday lives into thought-provoking works of art. Used clothing is revitalized as an intricate textile. Crumpled valet tickets and a tattered animal cracker box take the form of a monoprint. Bobby pins transform into a precious triptych. Vintage oil cans reappear as the human form.

The same cultural articles that most of us pay little attention to and simply use as we go on with our daily lives hold a sublime allure over the featured artists. When asked where they “find” their unusual supplies the artists’ common response is that the materials seem to find them rather. Antique foundry patterns inspire Kim Boggs, rusty junkyard fragments enchant Lee Wheeler, and sidewalk debris captivates Brian Petro. Where most of us see only one identity or ego for these commonplace objects, the artists’ ingenious alterations elevate these objects into fine art and ultimately bestow new identities.

Stripping the material’s original function, the featured artists challenge us to see new realities, beauty, and even the sublime in the unexpected objects all around us. Altered Ego brings together the provocative and reclaimed works of Gwendolyn Aqui-Brooks, Kim Boggs, Matt Hollis, Maria Karametou, Donna McCullough, Brian Petro, & Lee Wheeler. To hear the artists speak about their works, scroll down and view the video featuring images of Altered Ego works and interviews with the artists!

Altered Ego will be open from June 4 – August 23, 2014, with an opening reception on Friday, June 13th from 7-9pm. Join us on Saturday, July 19th at 3:30pm, for the Altered Ego Artists’ Talk — a rare chance to meet the featured artists as they discuss the processes and inspirations behind their altered works. A reception will follow the dialogue where visitors can chat with the artists. Scroll down to learn more about additional Altered Ego events!

Hear what the artists of Altered Ego have to say about their reclaimed works!

A special thanks to Shefa Nola Benoit for producing this video!

(Smith Center on Vimeo.)

Additional Altered Ego Events:

Mini Art Quilt Workshop with Altered Ego artist, Gwendolyn Aqui-Brooks

Thursday, July 10 6-8pm

Come out and enjoy a fun-filled, hands-on workshop with Altered Ego art quilt artist Gwendolyn Aqui-Brooks. Work with reclaimed materials, such as exotic fabrics, ribbons, netting, buttons, safety pins, sequins, etc. Registration is required to attend this event.

Cross-Pollinate Returns: Literary Art Tour

Saturday, August 9 at 3:30pm

Cross-Pollinate‘s poets have been experiencing the summer exhibition, Altered Ego, since its opening, and writing new literary works prompted by the artworks. Tour participants will be given a new experience to “see” the exhibition through the poet’s lens as the writers perform their literary works beside the artworks that inspired them. A short reception will follow the reading. Writers include: Genevieve Deleon, Melanie Figg, Steve Godwin, Whitney Gratton, Danielle Kuczynski, Chloe Yelena Miller, and Reuben Silberman.

Please note: The gallery will be closed on July 4th & 5th, 2014.

Opening Reception – Friday, January 17, 7-9pm

Opening January 10, 2014, the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery is pleased to present A Window into the Mind’s Eye.

A Window into the Mind’s Eye will run from January 10 thru March 15, 2014, with the Opening Reception on Friday, January 17, 7 to 9pm. Please also join us for the Artist’s Talk on Saturday, February 22 at 3:30pm, as the artists discuss the processes and inspirations behind their hand-drawn works, followed by a casual reception.

This January, in collaboration with ArtWorks for Freedom, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to use the power of art in the fight against modern slavery and human trafficking, we present Bought & Sold: Voices of Human Trafficking, featuring photography by Kay Chernush and an installation by Barbara Liotta. In this eye-opening exhibition we hope to transform public attitudes, inspire anti-trafficking action, and give voice to survivors. The aesthetic allure of Kay Chernush’s striking images draws the viewer in, pulling back layers that reveal survivors’ realities, while Barbara Liotta’s installation addresses translucent lives and razor boundaries.

Buy Art, Not People.

Bought & Sold: Voices of Human Trafficking will be open from January 9 – March 7, 2015. Join us at the Opening Reception on Friday, January 9th from 7-9pm.

Bought & Sold: Voices of Human Trafficking will also feature special events led by the show’s curator and featured artist, Kay Chernush.

Artists’ Talk — Saturday, February 7, 3:30pm

Join us for a rare chance to meet the featured artists, Kay Chernush & Barbara Liotta, as they discuss their process in creating work to impact the fight against human trafficking. A reception will follow the dialogue where visitors can engage the artists with their questions.

Suns are Suns – words, music, and movement by Dawn Saito– Thursday, February 19, 6:30pm

Actress, writer, Butoh dancer & choreographer Dawn Saito will perform an excerpt from her multidisciplinary theatre piece about a trafficked woman. Afterward, join our discussion about art and social change, with Dawn and ArtWorks for Freedom founder & director, Kay Chernush.

All artwork will be available for sale during the exhibition, with proceeds supporting the artists, ArtWorks for Freedom, and Smith Center‘s cancer support programs.

Supported by: