Collaborations

Saturday, August 4, 2018 10:00 AM 10:00
Saturday, September 8, 2018 5:00 PM 17:00

Google Calendar ICS

Artists Reception: Saturday August 18th, 6-8pm

Cumberland Gallery proudly presents “Collaborations”, a group show featuring ten artists duos, who came together and created new work for this occasion, along with a series by long time collaborators Billy Renkl and Greg Sand. On collaborating, Renkl and Sand say:

“In our own culture, at least, the practice of making art is often an exclusively self-referential activity. The popular model is for the artist to disappear into their attic of anguish, emerging eventually with a personal, insular, self-referential triumph. Or, often, not.”

Indeed, artists do not work in a vacuum. On the contrary, art is a direct reflection of what exists in a society and is therefore often also self-referential. Hence, it is no surprise that collaborations between artists are documented throughout history and are still relevant in many ways. The practice of collaborating can for one be freeing and eye-opening, for it functions as a vehicle to break away from the personal established vocabulary. It is also a sociable happening in which artists escape work in solitude and openly share concerns. For others, collaboration is confrontation when work is closely scrutinized and manipulated by the co-collaborator. Or it can be a practicality, especially for young emerging artists, to share space, materials and to feed off of each other ideas.

Either way, collaborations are more than the accumulation of forces. When two artists work together, directing and combining their unique sets of skills, knowledge, talent and experience, towards a common goal - an original idea is created. It is the Aristotelian principle of ‘The whole is more than the sum of its parts’ or the concept of ‘Synergy’, etymologically meaning ‘working together’. When viewing collaborative art there is the immediate temptation to separate the individual artist hand and to trace back the original idea to a single source. While this context is a key introduction to engage viewers, each artist is equally indispensable to the process. The true value of these creations lays in their unique collection of ideas and the concept of two distinct voices merging into one unprecedented formal language.

The participating artists duos are:

Kell Black + Barry Jones

David French + Del Webber

Warren Greene + Trey Vaughn

Mark Hosford + Jason Lascu

Ray Kleinlein + Hadas Tal

Bob Nugent + Mark Perlman

Andrew Saftel + Shane Darwent

Suzanne Stryk + Ann Ropp

Terry Thacker + Kristi Hargrove

Caroline Waite + Catherine Cornelius

Collaborations Others

Kell Black & Barry Jones

Variations on A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (2013-2018)

Digital film | $1500

Artists Statement: Black&Jones view the last 100 years of film, photography, literature, music and recorded sound as the raw materials for new works of art. Influenced by the Dadaist sound poetry of Kurt Schwitters, the Oblique Strategies of Brian Eno, and the beat splicing of contemporary hip-hop, the duo reimagines the opening pages of James Joyce’s seminal novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a series of variations on a theme on half-remembered words from childhood.

David French & Dell Webber

Station (2018)

Mixed media on carved wood with cane and bamboo | 28 x 7 x 6 inches | SOLD

Artists Statement: Our mutual sensibilities, an admiration of each other’s work, and a friendship that has lasted well over a decade provided fertile ground for a collaboration. We began by discussing how we could unite two visions into a single work. We decided that we’d each start one of the pieces and then trade them for the other to finish. The effort made to work our way into each other’s piece was a welcomed and inspiring challenge.

David French & Del Webber

Untitled (2018)

Mixed media on carved wood with cane and bamboo | 14 x 8 1/2 x 7 inches | $1800

Warren Greene & Trey Vaughn

Cleave (2018)

Oil and acrylic on panel | 26 x 31 inches | SOLD

Artists Statement: The work contains the outcome of two competing approaches to analogous language: one that privileges surface and pattern, the other that utilizes form and color relationships. Both interlocutors employ similar processes of scraping, sanding, and layering. The resulting synthesis depicts disparate forces of the world that collide, collude, and conspire to reveal a kind of seeing and knowing that extends beyond the painting.

Warren Greene & trey Vaughn

Penna (2018)

Acrylic on panel | 31 x 24 inches | $1800

Ray Kleinlein & Hadas Tal

Marco Antonio Rubio (1971–) and Nicholas Paul Dworet (2000-2018) (2018)

Oil on canvas and oil on board | 18 x 28 inches | $1700

Artists Statement: This piece consists of representations of high school yearbook photographs of two young men at age 17. Ray Kleinlein painted Marco Antonio Rubio. He was born May 28, 1971 in Miami, Florida. He attended South Miami High School and graduated in 1989. Hadas Tal painted Nicholas Paul Dworet. He was born March 24, 2000 in Coral Springs, Florida. He attended Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. He never graduated. Nicholas was shot and killed on February 14, 2018, along with 16 others, while at school. He was 17. Marco Rubio is now 47. He has a wife and four children. He was elected twice to the US Senate with the help of over $3,300,000 from the National Rifle Association. All artist proceeds from this work will be donated to the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas student activist organization Never Again MSD.

Bob Nugent & Mark Perlman

Between Seasons (2018)

Acrylic, conte, oil on panel | 10 x 20 inches | SOLD

Artists Statement: “These paintings are the result of the first time we have ever collaborated. We have known each other for thirty years and taught together at Sonoma State University for twenty years. In other words we are very familiar with each other's painting efforts for many years. Although there are some connections in our visual dialog, we both have developed our own very separate vocabularies over the years. Bob’s fascination with Brazil and the plants from the jungles is quite different from where Mark finds his inspirations in aged parchments and walls and the dualities of the contrasts of living in a complex world and attempting to find solace in inward introspection. We were both surprised by and confident in the end results. In working together on these pieces, Bob started the process by presenting images similar to his paintings. Mark in turn brought his encaustic background to the process and covered up approximately one half of the paintings turning the images into something not easily recognized in our natural surrounding world. Bob then worked on the pieces one more time. The combination of our styles has created a hybrid that rests somewhere in the middle of each of our intentions.” Bob adds: “From my perspective, the only thing I would add is that Mark forced me to work outside the box. That was important for me to experience and may change my thought process for future work. I thank him for that.”

Andrew Saftel & Shane Darwent

Time to Cross (2018)

Archival pigment print mounted to museum board, vellum, various woods, paper, Gum Bichromate photograph, clock parts, collage, paint | 40 x 30 x 6 inches | $4500

Artists Statement: Castillos, or Mexican firework displays, are castles of wooden lattice work armed with gunpowder and spinning, sparking wheels. The fuse running through these brilliant, if uncanny constructions, reads like an epic odyssey, igniting a series of explosions while winding its way through an architecture of obstacles. Andrew Saftel took the iconic Mexican castillo as inspiration for the the collaborative work Time to Cross. In response, Shane Darwent created an arched framework for the piece, faced in a photograph of a blue sky set beyond the barrier of a chain link fence. The iconic arch shape is ubiquitous in Mexico, serving as a functional form in colonial architecture, and a spiritual form in the country’s dominant practice of Catholicism. The arched frame is a stained glass window, a religious niche, a portal through which we can read the many layered stages of ascension - from fuse to fireworks, from border to border and from life to death.

Suzanne Stryk & Ann Ropp

Untitled #22 (2017)

Mixed media on yupo | 12 x 9 inches | $400

Artists Statement: Our collaborations are a suggestive dialogue between abstraction and realism. We know we’re investigating something, we just haven’t figured out what it is yet.

Suzanne Stryk & Ann Ropp

Untitled #25 (2016)

Mixed media on yupo | 9 x 12 inches | $400

Artists Statement: Our collaborations are a suggestive dialogue between abstraction and realism. We know we’re investigating something, we just haven’t figured out what it is yet.

Suzanne Stryk & Ann Ropp

Untitled (with feather) (2017)

Mixed media on yupo | 12 x 9 inches | $400

Artists Statement: Our collaborations are a suggestive dialogue between abstraction and realism. We know we’re investigating something, we just haven’t figured out what it is yet.

Terry Thacker & Kristi Hargrove

Artists Statement: Kristi Hargrove and Terry Thacker have been colleagues and friends since meeting a dozen years ago at Watkins College of Art, where they both teach. A little over a year ago Kristi came into possession of an unusual scrapbook made by her “Aunt” Shirley who passed away this past spring. Shirley Johnson’s scrapbook is an eccentric history, like a story from Kafka or Borges suggesting a place not overdetermined, not instrumentalized: a gritty, transcendent place: funny, scary, playful and fiercely particular, in other words real. All humans, since being driven from “The Garden” bare a degree of neurosis. It is rare to find distinct forms, like Shirley’s picture book, that mediate and navigate the spidery, dissonant relationships that construct a person and a culture.

Terry Thacker and Kristi Hargrove interpretations of Shirley’s scrapbook are exhibited in a collaborative installation. Please contact the gallery for more information on the individual pieces.

Top: Kristi Hargrove | Graphite and colored pencil drawings | 17 x 12 inches | $600

Middle: Shirley Johnson | cut and torn photos, crayon on vintage paper | 7 x 10 inches | NFS

Bottom: Terry Thacker | oil and collage on linen mounted on wood | 18 x 24 inches | $1000

Caroline Waite & Catherine Cornelius

Beauty and Constraint (2018)

Forged steel frame, ceramic, ceramic decals, hand painted portraits, calipers, masonic silver emblems,parts of ceramic bird figurines | 26 x 31 x 2 inches | SOLD

Artists Statement: ‘Beauty and Constraint’ was originally conceived during a discussion about perceptions of female beauty and the altering of the body historically through corsetry, compression, exaggeration, and confinement. We have both recently made work which concentrated on female accouterments: Catherine looking at the constraints of domesticity, Caroline, at conventional, historic portraiture with all its accompanying symbolism. We focused on the bird image for a variety of reasons- that of confinement, entrapment, the clipping of wings as opposed to flight and freedom. In addition, we talked about the fact that “Bird” was, and still is, a somewhat derogatory term used for women in Britain; a term which is now frowned upon. This piece was a true collaboration, both visually and conceptually. Our geographical distance put more emphasis on the need for good communication. We communicated regularly though phone calls, texts, photos, mailed templates etc. Perhaps the biggest challenge was integrating our respective, chosen media. Catherine’s use of ceramic and ceramic decals and Caroline’s use of forged steel and painted portraits. What integrated our work ultimately was the use of common imagery (birds and women) and the employment of a similar aesthetic.

Mark Hosford

The Scout (2018)

Screenprint on panel | 20 x 20 inches | POR

Furthermore, a selection of collaborative work by Billy Renkl and Greg Sand will be showcased in the lower gallery. This duo, both based in Clarksville and associated with Austin Peay State University, have been collaborating since 2013. Even though Renkl (collage artist) and Sand (photographer) have different approaches, both centralize the found image in their art-making. Sand is known for the repurposing of cyanotypes and antique photographs, exploring the metaphysical issues of existence, time and death while observing the inherent properties of the medium. Similar concepts are found within the work of Billy Renkl. Inspired by the revolutionary ideas of the early twentieth century, Renkl creates collages with found paper, and enhances them with mark making and various printing techniques. This combination of collage and manipulated found photographs, to which one artist adds and the other deducts, resulted in subtle evocative imagery.

Collaborations Renkl+Sand