Jay Dougan
Shannon Blakey
Ehren Tool
Kevin Tracy
Rasaan Burke
Herminia Ramirez
March 5-27, 2021
March 13, 10am – 12pm
Meet the Artists including Rasaan Burke and CWU art students
@ Gallery One
Exhibit Sponsor:
Birkin Owart DDS
Main Gallery:
Cups with a Conscience
juried by Beth Lo & Richard Notkin
GALLERY ONE VISUAL ARTS CENTER announces their seventh national juried exhibition. Entries in the category of drinking vessels were accepted from across the nation featuring a cross-section of cups/mugs/tumblers/tea bowls/vessels in varying mediums that go beyond merely being a container for a favorite beverage. The works draw attention to causes both personal, local and global and reflect on aspects of being human in today’s complicated world. Awards distributed will total $800. In addition, a ceramic tile, donated by Richard Notkin, will be given to the top three awards and a slideshow of accepted works posted on our website.
Congratulations to the award winners:
$300./Most Innovative Message: William Cravis
$200./Best Traditional Approach: Juan Barroso
$200./Best Non-traditional Approach: Crista Ames
$100./Award of Merit: Julie Kornblum
Juror’s Statement by Beth Lo:
Dear Artists, Gallery One, and viewers of this exhibition:
It was a great pleasure and honor to jury Gallery One’s 2021 Cups With a Conscience exhibition along with my colleague Richard Notkin. I feel that exhibitions like these are important opportunities to show the relationship of art to the state of the society.
I was excited to see the high quality and variety of the submissions, and so impressed with the level of creativity and thoroughness in your works. I also applaud the strong feelings on display in the interpretation of the theme, manifested through both intuitive and analytic thinking. Many of the pieces were exuberant and and humorous, others were more contemplative. Some pieces were outward-looking critiques of specific political issues or politicians, others were more subtle and personal in response. We tried to choose pieces that were outstanding in one or more of these categories : originality, thorough idea development, craftsmanship, strong evocative or thought-provoking qualities.
We are sorry we could not accept all the pieces that were submitted, and we encourage you all to keep on putting your work out there. We are just two jurors with two individual sensibilities.
Thank you for making good work that helps to change our world for the better.
Beth Lo
Artist, Professor of Art, University of Montana, retired
Jurors Statement by Richard Notkin:
The task of a juror is never an easy one. First, it is undertaken with the knowledge that this is, in large part, a subjective process, that it is impossible for an artist to completely separate him- or herself from deeply held aesthetic sensibilities. Had a different artist been chosen as juror – or a different team of artists – the final exhibition would certainly have been composed of another group of artworks. I always encourage artists who enter competitions to keep this in mind, and to realize that many good works are culled in the final winnowing process to fit the stated exhibition theme and to accommodate the numbers appropriate for the space of the gallery.
The remarkable variety of entries – in matters conceptual, aesthetic, and range of media – made “Cups With a Conscience” both a challenge and a pleasure to view. One of the great joys in jurying a national exhibition is discovering artists whose work is not widely known, and viewing artworks one has not seen before. There were several artists in this category whose work knocked my socks off, including young emerging artists whose work I hope will be seen more frequently in the future. Several of these artists were acknowledged with the exhibition awards as a result of the strength of their work.
It is too obvious to state that we live in precarious times, and I will let the works in the exhibition speak to the many serious issues the artists chose to address. But I will state that when it comes to incorporating social and political commentary in art – a course I have pursued during more than five decades of art making — I feel that such art must, first and foremost, be conceptually and aesthetically strong. It is the art which must carry the message. The message alone, no matter how strongly one might agree, will not carry the art.
Finally, I wish to thank Gallery One for inviting me to be a juror for this important exhibition at a precarious time in our nation’s history, and for inviting Beth Lo to be a co-juror. It was a sheer pleasure to work with Beth, who has — full disclosure — been a colleague and friend for at least the past three decades. We found common ground on most of the decisions, and included some mixed-media, non-ceramic works in recycled plastics, paper and fabric. Not only did the recycled nature of the work make a comment in itself, but these pieces often had remarkable references to traditional ceramic vessel or tea bowl forms, or took on very abstract gestural qualities hearkening back to the Clay Revolution of the 1950’s and 60’s. In all, the experience opened our minds to the many possibilities of what constituted “Cups With a Conscience”.
I hope it opens new perceptions and possibilities, in many ways, for all who view the exhibition.
Mezzanine:
Project 2.24% – Rasaan Burke
March 23, 12-2pm
Get your portrait taken by Rasaan Burke, one of our featured artists at Gallery One this March. Cost is $40 per session. You will receive five images emailed to you after the shoot. All proceeds will go toward supporting the artist. Note: All photos will be taken outside to comply with our mask mandate. Sign up here: https://signup.com/go/EJZRkem
March 13, 10am – 12pm
Meet the Artist @ Gallery One
This body of work is born of Rasaan Burke’s experience of moving to Ellensburg, knowing intellectually that black Americans are a minority and for the first time feeling as such. Anytime he encounters any one of the 2.24%, he wants to learn who they are and the motivations and passions that brought them to a small Pacific Northwest town. Rasaan wants these images to highlight black Ellensburg; to show how unique black community members are—their interests, their focus, their culture and passions. By changing the possible false perceptions of black people in this community, he showcases their complexity and individuality. Through a camera lens, we see whom they are in the moment, in the context they are choosing. Each image is an opportunity to see what is not always seen, to make visible the invisible. Through his work he aims to strip away the viewer’s assumptions, to get to the essence of the people in these photographs are, and in doing so, liberate both the viewer of the image and the subject of the projected image. When biases are removed, true unity is possible.
Some of the photographs in this exhibit are from Burke’s 2020 exhibit The Spectacle Puzzle of 5th & Main. To view the full exhibit in -person, visit the CWU Museum of Culture & Environment, located at Dean Hall on the CWU campus (1200 Wildcat Way). To learn more, visit their website: www.cwu.edu/museum
Eveleth Green Gallery:
I Made This Online!
During this unusual year, we’ve had to pivot to doing everything online… including our art! Did you take a class online? Learn a new art skill or medium? This show highlights the work created during quarantine while learning something new on the internet.
Hallway & Picasso Galleries:
CWU Student Art Club Exhibition
CWU students highlight their works in this annual exhibit.