J.J. McCracken
I am continually negotiating with perspective; I want to capture a feeling of being at once infinitely large and infinitely small. (This reference to size may be about physical size, but can also include my position in time.)
Reproducing ancient forms allows a hands-on investigation that probes deep into the history of our manipulating this material. These are vessels with powerful symbolism; they point to the integral roles both clay and ceramic had in the rise of civilization. Sustaining living growth definitively places the work in today's context, where it grapples for a position of simultaneity -- inclusive of the universal and the local, reconciling the vast and the miniscule.
Jan Razauskas
Things occur, and occur again. Repeating things stream out of individual cognition, subsumed as multiples, interchangeable as pattern. Rarely, a singular thing coalesces, shape-shifts and veers into focus as certainty. In the onrush of constant occurrence, a thing becomes a pause-point, a singular event, which stays and coheres stray bits around it like a pearl.
My practice considers the intangible concepts of time and the event as man-made structures of culture and history. My avenue of investigation in the series present is through banal or ephemeral images that function as a unique talisman of a singular moment in time. Each is allusion to the link that occurs between the outer appearance of physical things and 'event': a revelatory thought or circumstance recognized at the same moment. This key to perception invites an expansion of sign and context, with images taking on emblematic connotations.
My process involves staging or capturing random conditions through photographic means. Analyzing the photo prompts a pulling apart, dissecting and a rebuilding of information through the visible layers of the painting process. This inquiry into the sense of suspended time suggested by the photographic image explores and questions how we make associations between the visual and the intangible.
Millicent Young
At its core, my work addresses the necessity of transforming our Cartesian paradigm -- a paradigm that is both personal and cultural and which enthrones separation and destruction as our modus operandi. My current work focuses more on intra-personal transformation as the vehicle for socio-political transformation than in past work. Each piece is a meditation on transformation - a still point in a world careening out of balance.
Juxtaposition of paradoxical elements and associations is the bed rock of the work. The materials I use are both substance and symbol yet all are ordinary. Most I have found then manipulated, removed from their original context within nature or culture to inhabit a hybrid construct of my own design. The love that I have for these materials and the processes associated with transforming them is about polishing the beauty of the mundane; about finding the sacredness in the profane; and about the practice of change.
Process/Source
My work is organized into cycles. The cycles cohere primarily by content. Themes and forms reincarnate themselves because the source is fundamentally archetypal. The longer I work as a sculptor, the less chronology seems relevant.
Source and substance for my work present daily: the local lace factory is razed to give me steel frame windows; the dying of the forest's first sere gives me the narrow, finely arced cedar saplings; a Bosnian grandmother is raped by soldiers. The precision of a quilt's stitches; a poem's cadence; the chords of a musical progression; all remind me that it is art that truly defines our humanity. And without it, we disconnect ourselves from the deepest well.
Drawing frees me from the constraints of gravity, mass, and the rigors of construction. The paper is like a view finder in an infinite field rather than a finite plane. I work on the image with the paper on the floor and the wall using my forearm, palm, and fingers as tools - as extensions of core. Drawing is a dance, giving still form to movement.
I have worked as a gardener for as long as I have as a sculptor. The rhythm of my studio work is influenced by the seasons and weather. In return, the land gives me a model of creation, destruction, and fallowness - an enduring trinity, a paradox that sustains me.
January 21 – February 19, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, January 21, 7-9pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, February 19, 2011, 4pm
Civilian Art Projects presents climate, control, a three-person exhibition curated by Kristina Bilonick and Karyn Miller featuring J.J. McCracken, Jan Razauskas, and Millicent Young. The name climate, control refers to the artists' response to their immediate surroundings, as well as the exacting nature of their practice.
The artists in this exhibition work in drastically different materials – from clay and horsehair to drawing and paint – but in each of their works, there is an intense focus on the precision of artistic production, and a sense of significance in the medium they chose to work in.
