Beth Van Hoesen: The Observant Eye

Racine Unified Exhibition 2012

Out On A Limb: Contemporary Wood Jewelry

A Chosen Path: The Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes

Kim Cridler: My Wisconsin Home

Events

Beth Van Hoesen: The Observant Eye
May 20 - September 9, 2012

This traveling exhibition chronicles decades of her realistic images of animals, floral studies, figure drawings, and human portraits. Unique to RAM, this show combines pieces on loan with recent gifts to the museum that support the development of an archive of Van Hoesen prints, color proofs, preparatory studies, and copper plates.

The exhibition contains 147 works by the artist of which 74 are works the E. Mark Adams and Beth Van Hoesen Adams Trust has recently presented to the Racine Art Museum. With the help of the Trust, as well as Anne Kohs and Associates, the museum acquired 58 color proofs, preparatory studies, and copper plates among the pieces. Not only does this gift strengthen RAM’s holdings of works on paper, it affords the opportunity for a unique, in-depth look at an artist’s process. The show offers numerous examples of Van Hoesen’s work where the life of a print from start-to-finish may be traced through multiple stages and various media. RAM is the only venue on the exhibition’s tour that will showcase these study materials.

MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Catalogue Raisonné of Limited-Edition Prints, Books, and Portfolios
This hardcover book by Bob Hicks, Lori Fogarty, and Bruce W. Pepich, authoritatively documents and fully illustrates her work in limited-edition prints, books, and portfolios.

EXHIBITION EVENTS
SPARK! Gallery Engagement at RAM: June
June 15, 2012

Join us for our free SPARK! Cultural Programming for People with Memory Loss and their Caregivers

Friday, June 15 at the Racine Art Museum: Gallery Tour and Exhibition Discussion of Beth Van Hoesen: The Observant Eye
10:00 - 11:30 am

This exhibition is made possible at Racine Art Museum by: Presenting Sponsors – Karen Johnson Boyd and William B. Boyd, RAM Society Members, Jay Price Ruffo, S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., Windgate Charitable Foundation; Gold Sponsors – Helen Bader Foundation, Inc., National Endowment for the Arts, Racine United Arts Fund; Silver Sponsors – Elwood Corporation, Osborne and Scekic Family Foundation, W.T. Walker Group, Inc., Wisconsin Arts Board, Bronze Sponsors – Clifton Gunderson LLP, CNH America LLC, E.C. Styberg Foundation, Inc., Educators Credit Union, In Sink Erator, The Marjorie L. Christiansen Foundation, The Norbell Foundation, Real Racine, and Runzheimer Foundation.

Racine Unified Exhibition 2012
April 29 - May 19, 2012
AT RAM's WUSTUM MUSEUM

The annual Racine Unified Student Art Exhibition features artwork created by area school children from grades K-12. Curated by the school system's art faculty, the exhibition demonstrates the excellence achieved by the students and their teachers.

Opening Reception
Sunday, April 29
1:00 – 4:00 pm

Out On A Limb: Contemporary Wood Jewelry
February 26 - June 17, 2012

Out on a Limb features the work of emerging and established artists that use wood as the primary medium for jewelry and adornment. Long utilized in objects of wear, wood immediately connects the body to the natural landscape while simultaneously offering compelling color, pattern and texture or a pliable surface to manipulate. Those whose works are featured in this exhibition are drawn to the material for both conceptual and aesthetic reasons. Whether carving, painting, appropriating, or otherwise manipulating, they stretch the boundaries of how we understand a familiar material.

ARTISTS IN EXHIBITION
Michael Dale Bernard, Liv Blavarp, Christine Brandt, Gillion Carrara, Sharon Church, Daniel DiCaprio, Julia Harrison, Sukyo Jang, Bruce Metcalf, Edgar Mosa, Tina Rath, Gustav Reyes, Julia Turner, Flora Vagi, and Julia Walter.

A Chosen Path: The Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes
January 29 - May 27, 2012

For more than 60 years Karen Karnes has been at the forefront of the studio pottery movement. Over her long career she has created some of the most iconic pottery of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. She has worked in some of the most significant cultural settings of her generation, including North Carolina’s avant-garde Black Mountain College in the 1950s.

Karnes’ artistic output is recognized for its understated, quietly poetic surfaces and sublime biomorphic forms. From her dramatic salt-glazed pottery of the 1960s and 70s, to her most recent complex joined sculptural pieces, Karnes consistently has challenged herself – with the unintentional consequence of irreversibly transforming the medium. She remains one of the medium’s most influential working potters and is a mentor to several generations of studio potters.

The organization and presentation of A Chosen Path: The Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes was generously funded by an Artist Exhibition grant from the Windgate Charitable Foundation, with additional support from the Ceres Trust, Friends of Contemporary Ceramics, the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design and the University of North Carolina Press, who undertook the production and distribution of the handsome exhibition catalogue. The exhibition will travel to four museums nationwide after the presentation at ASU.

The presentation of this exhibition at the Racine Art Museum is made possible by: Presenting Sponsors - Karen Johnson Boyd and William B. Boyd, RAM Society Members, Jay Price Ruffo, S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., and Windgate Charitable Foundation; Gold Sponsors - Helen Bader Foundation, Inc., National Endowment for the Arts, Racine Community Foundation, Inc., and Racine United Arts Fund; Silver Sponsors - Cotsen Foundation for Academic Research, Elwood Corporation, Osborne and Scekic Family Foundation, W.T. Walker Group, Inc., and Wisconsin Arts Board; Bronze Sponsors - Clifton Gunderson LLP, CNH America LLC, E.C. Styberg Foundation, Inc., Educators Credit Union, Friends of Fiber Art International, In Sink Erator, Real Racine and Runzheimer Foundation.

Kim Cridler: My Wisconsin Home
in RAM’s Windows on Fifth Gallery
July 31, 2011 – July 22, 2012

Using steel and bronze, as well as organic materials such as beeswax, bone, hair and mother-of-pearl, Kim Cridler creates vessel forms that connect her interests in history, craft, ornament and function with an investigation of material and metaphor. Comprised of several sculptural works utilizing patterns and motifs based on the environment around Cridler’s current residence, My Wisconsin Home also references “open storage areas in museums that facilitate the formal and cultural study of objects and their histories.”

Skeletal vases and urns-built with a systematic grid as a frame and augmented with stylized flora and fauna-evoke historical shapes while denying the uses commonly associated with the objects. The grid itself contributes to the ornamentation of the vessel and Cridler’s addition of flowers, bees, fish, birds, mice and plants further enhances a juxtaposition of shape and form while simultaneously offering content.

For this Windows at RAM installation, Cridler presents a collection of patterned and ornamented vessels on shelving structures that echo the storage areas of some cultural institutions. The shelves establish a literal and metaphorical framework, allowing for a certain kind of study and examination, as well as a means of collecting and cataloguing. Cridler’s careful observation of the environment and natural life around her Wisconsin home provides inspiration for materials, patterns and motifs. As Cridler notes, the ornamentation is “based on sketches and studies made during [a] daily practice of collecting plant material and insect life from the gardens, fields and prairies.”