Blake Shirley
Skull Couch

Artist Statement:
Life is an infinitely layered experience. It's a swarm of trivialities, a mixture of both the familiar and the inexorably strange. There are moments of clarity, if only fleeting, with certainly plenty of uncertainty. There are spaces, boundaries, and limitations- whether real or perceived. Interiors. Exteriors.

We all have filters that distort the way in which we perceive the world, of which we are mostly unaware. We simply cannot take it all in ALL the time. I don't remember most of it; the first seven years of my life, my cell phone number, people… How do we create meaning out of the onslaught of information in a world that is constantly changing? The attempt is at times befuddling, occasionally humorous, and frequently scary. If we are, as proverbially stated, the sum of our experiences, yet we cannot remember much and what we do remember is grossly distorted, questions of how we see, experience and understand the world arise.

About the Artist:

Blake Shirley is a painter and video artist currently living and teaching in eastern Connecticut. Traveling far from his roots of in the deserts of New Mexico, Shirley earned his MFA in painting from the University of Connecticut in 2007 and a BFA from the University of Utah in 2005. Recent personal achievements include the honor of a full fellowship to study at the Vermont Studio Center, which he participated in during the month of June. Shirley also received a 2010 individual artist grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and was awarded acceptance into the Radius program at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. His work has been exhibited in several solo shows in NY, MA, GA, and CT as well as several group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad. His work is in collections at Poland's Akademia Sztuk Pieknych in Krakow Poland, and The London College of Art, School of Printing and Publishing. He currently teaches at the University of Connecticut.

Aricoco
RUNawayHOME

Artist Statement:
I make garments and bags to create nests that are like my own home. These function as cocoons for me, to heal and nourish myself so that I regain strength to survive in an ever-changing world. Interacting with the garments and bags, I invent ritualistic play that revives my childhood experiences and interprets the influences of my culture. I perform to investigate the discipline and distraction of my cultural existence. I use different materials and processes to explore specific meanings. Robing and disrobing my temporary shelter, I package my body to be disconnected from reality, but also to tie myself to it. Using video, I record my ritualistic play, exposing my struggle and desperate hope to get through today.

About the Artist:

Born and raised in Tokyo, aricoco (Ari Tabei) received her BA from Sophia University in International Legal Studies in 1997. She attended the Post-baccalaureate Program in Studio Art at Brandeis University in 2001 and received her MFA from the University of Connecticut in May 2007. She was awarded the A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship for 2008-2009. She has participated in several artists' residencies including chashama, Vermont Studio Center, LMCC's Swing Space, Smack Mellon Artist Studio Program, Sculpture Space, Blue Sky Project and Triangle Workshop. She is a current artist in residence at AAI Lower East Side-Rotating Studio Program.

Mark Williams
The War Is Over

Statement:
The War is Over started shortly after the United States 
went to war with Iraq for the second time. In an era preoccupied with war and the military-industrial complex, I became interested in how war is perpetuated and glamorized to our youth. I chose to use toy soldiers which are marketed to young children as my source material. Later on, I obscured these toys with playful objects made from Play-Doh to quell the aggression of the toy soldiers. Recently, The United States officially ended the war with Iraq and I have declared myself finished with this series of work. The war is over. 

About the Artist:
After spending his first 22 years in Ohio, Mark Williams  moved to Greenwich Village in New York City to seek fame and fortune as an artist.  After that didn't work out, he moved to Providence, Rhode Island and then to Connecticut where he earned  his MFA from the University of Connecticut. Mark then worked for the artist Sol LeWitt and was awarded a full fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center as well as an artist fellowship grant from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism.  He has exhibited his artwork extensively throughout North America and is in several public and private collections including The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Wadsworth  Atheneum in Hartford.  Mark lives and works in New Haven and teaches art at Three Rivers Community College. 

Stacey Steers
Night Hunter

About Night Hunter:
Night Hunter is composed of more than four thousand collages, the actress Lillian Gish is seamlessly appropriated from silent-era cinema and plunged into a new and haunting role. Night Hunter evokes a disquieting dreamscape, drawn from allegory, myth, and archetype. Music and sound by Larry Polansky.

Stacey Steers' films are created from thousands of handmade works on paper, whether collages or individually-painted drawings. Her process is both labor-intensive and intuitive. Several years are spent creating artwork for each film, typically eight distinct, unique images for every second of animation. Over time, these images become a formal record of an ongoing and obsessive engagement with an original idea, through all its transformations.

About the Artist:

Stacey Steers lives in Boulder, Colorado, where she is on the faculty of the Film Studies Program at the University of Colorado. Her animated films have been screened at The Sundance Film Festival, New Directors/New Films (The Museum of Modern Art and The Film Society of Lincoln Center), and numerous other festivals worldwide, and have won national and international awards. She is the recipient of a major grant from The American Film Institute, and has been awarded residencies at Harvard University, The MacDowell Colony and Yaddo.

Susan Classen-Sullivan
Love You More Than Life

Artist Statement:
Love you more than life (corpse series) began when I started to discover the small bodies of frogs splayed open on the damp road. I was amazed by their exquisite beauty and began bringing them back to my studio each morning to draw in the posture I had found them. Relating to the space of the paper they began to float, sometimes seeming to dance, always appearing to be in a state of ecstasy. I have now transposed the corpses to human scale with the intent of this wall-mounted installation. In their moment of transfiguration the forms in "Love you more than life", exist fully revealed in the space between life and death, pleasure and pain, between the sacred and the profane.

About the Artist:

Susan Classen-Sullivan has exhibited her work in museums and galleries throughout the Northeast and NY.  She was selected to participate in the Connecticut Contemporary Exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum, in Hartford CT, and as a fellow for the Aldrich Museum’s Radius program. The New Britain Museum of American Art featured her work in a solo exhibition through its NEW/NOW series. Classen-Sullivan received a 2010 individual artist grant for sculpture from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts.  She presently teaches in the Fine Art Department, and is Director/Curator of the gallery at, Manchester Community College.

Alix Lambert
CRIME

EXHIBITION

This exhibition represents a cross-section of Lambert's ongoing exploration into the world of crime. From a deck of cards made by Russian prisoners to a courtroom drawing done in Rochester, NY, to a photographic portrait of a former British gangster, the works in this show take a glimpse into both the creative and the transgressive impulses in the human spirit.

PERFORMANCE

Friday, March 23, 8 pm & Saturday, March 24, 8 pm

Crime, USA: Hartford is a unique theatrical piece currently in development. Lambert uses verbatim interviews with Hartford residents on the subject of crime to weave a script that presents a portrait of a city. Damon Locks and Wayne Montana create original songs also derived from the interviews.

SCREENINGS

Thursday, March 8, 8pm
In the cinema with a conversation afterwards
Lambert's Bayou Blue (80 min)

From 1997 to 2006, serial killer Ronald Dominique, raped and killed 23 men in poverty stricken Southeastern Louisiana. Bayou Blue meditates on the decay of the community in which he killed. It is a portrait of one American region's descent into darkness.

Thursday, March 8, 2-10 pm

In the Video Room
Lambert's The Mark of Cain (73 min)

A feature length documentary that is a remarkable portrait of the Russian Penitentiary system as seen through the prism of its convict's tattoos.

Crime Screen, a series of films selected by Lambert.

Diabolique (1955) Sunday, February 12, 2:00pm
Taxi Driver (1976) Sunday, February 19, 2:00pm
High and Low (1963) Sunday, March 11, 2:00 pm
Silence of The Lambs (1991) Sunday, March 18, 2:00 pm
Peeping Tom (1960) Sunday, March 25, 2:00 pm

more information about Crime Screen films available on the cinema page.

About the Artist:
Alix Lambert's work is essentially unclassifiable. Lambert is a film and video maker, a sound artist, a photographer, a writer, an actor, a performance artist, a theater director and a conceptual artist.  Much of her work is immersive, involving her deep engagement with the subject at hand.

Film projects include The Mark of Cain, which was used as a source for David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, HeSheHe (in production), and Bayou Blue, recently included in the 24e International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, is a film about the serial killer Ronald Dominique that she co-directed and co-produced. Video art projects include Tiffany, Box of Birds, and Icarus.

As a writer and editor, she has published books including Crime, The Silencing (about murdered Russian journalists), and Russian Prison Tattoos. She is a contributing editor to Stop Smiling, Open City, and Index Magazine. She has also written and produced for HBO’s Deadwood (Writers Guild of America Outstanding Writing for Television nomination 2007) and John From Cincinnati.

Since receiving her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1990, she has exhibited extensively, with shows at Sara Meltzer Gallery (New York), Galeria João Graça (Lisbon), Suzanne Vielmetter Gallery (Los Angeles), ATRA (Milan), Ridzhina Gallery (Moscow), and others.  Her work has been exhibited in the Venice Biennale, at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and in the Kwangju Biennale.  She has been selected for visiting artist positions at the University of Berlin, Ecole Nationale Superieure Des Beaux-Arts (Paris), the American Center in Moscow, NYU, and others.

Step Up 2012

Request for Proposals
Exhibition Opportunity for Emerging Artists

Jurors:

• Kate Gilmore, Step Up 2004 Alumnus and Artist
• João Ribas, Curator, MIT, List Visual Arts Center
• William Villalongo, Lecturer at Yale and Artist

Entry Form: Download the Adobe PDF Application Form   

STEP UP is an exhibition opportunity open to emerging artists living in New York, New Jersey or New England. Real Art Ways is committed to supporting young and emerging artists.

With STEP UP, Real Art Ways provides emerging artists in our region an exhibition and publication opportunity at a critical moment in their careers.

While artists are permitted to propose the exhibition of existing work, the jury will place special emphasis on proposals that call for the creation of new work.

The jury will select artists based on: the quality of the artist's work, the innovation evidenced by the submitted work and proposal, the potential impact of the exhibition on the artist's career and the economic and physical feasibility of the proposed exhibition.

Artists selected will receive an exhibition, a publication and an opportunity to give an artist talk. Information on all projects by selected artists and the exhibition publication will be available on our web site.

Artists that are not chosen by the jury will be considered for inclusion in our Slide Slam presentation, an evening that is open to the general public.

Eligibility

Emerging artists living and working in New England, New York or New Jersey who are no more than three years removed from a full-time educational program, or artists with less than five years exhibition experience are eligible to apply to this open call.

Artists who do not fit either of these criteria but feel they can make a compelling case to be considered as emerging may also apply; the jury will determine their competitiveness based on review criteria.

Artists working in all media are encouraged to apply. Applicants should be aware of Real Art Ways' mission and our commitment to innovative, non-traditional contemporary work.

How to Apply

Artists interested in this open call should download this Adobe PDF application for full information on how to apply.

Deadline

Materials must be postmarked by Friday, April 27, 2012.

Support

STEP UP 2012 is made possible with the generous support of our Members, the National Endowment for the Arts, Sandy and Howard Fromson, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, the Alexander A. Goldfarb Memorial Trust, the Nimoy Foundation, the National Performance Network's Visual Artists Network, Lincoln Financial Group, Travelers and Greater Hartford Arts Council's United Arts Campaign.

• Open call archives