SCAPES
January 12 – February 17, 2024
Featuring work by:
Richard Eisen, David Hollander, Molly Kaderka, and Pam Rogers
A scape in botanical terms is a long flowerless stem that extends from the bulb or rhizome of plants often buried right below the earth. Common scapes are the greens from onions or garlic, often utilized with the same eagerness of the mature vegetable itself. The term scape can also be used to designate the antennae of an insect or the shaft of a singular bird feather. It is the thing that extends, locates, delineates the object, or acts as a surprise among the norm.
It’s also a term that brings to mind the land, implying an apostrophe on the title of the exhibition.
The landscape, the Earth, the planet that we live on, and the things that encompass that space.
The artists in this exhibition land somewhere within both lines of thought: exploring the world we live on, the lands we have seen and have yet to see, as well as the organisms and artifacts that exist within the universal scape that we as humans dwell within.
Methodologies include but are not limited to:
the skewing of real/hyper-real/digital, creating colored pigment from the world around us, wrapping-binding-harnessing-distilling, floating ink on water and allowing an image to appear on paper, creating new works from broken works, collaged portals, colored binder yet to be fired, streeeeeeeeeetching a material and hoping gravity doesn’t function properly, defying gravity when it does, eliminating the horizon, process over product, depicting unseen worlds and objects, letting vision dictate creation, noticing the curvature of the planet under our feet, and the guidance of water
Exhibition Activation
Improvised performance with Emma Michaux (Boulder Ballet)
Improvised performance with Rachel Halmrast (Mariposa Collective, etc.)
About the Artists:
Richard Eisen
Richard Eisen received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from the University of Miami, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking from the Hartford Art School. He is a nationally exhibited artist and has received the State of Florida Individual Artist’s Fellowship, awards from the Lowe Art Museum and the Chautauqua Art Association, and a Cross-Media Project Grant from the Glass Axis Studio. He has held teaching positions at Metropolitan State University of Denver, Denison University, Columbus College of Art and Design, The University of New Orleans, and The University of Miami’s School of Architecture. Eisen was the Director and Curator of the Belmont Gallery in Columbus, Ohio, and was previously a Scenic Artist in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as an Art Director and Set Designer for music videos.
In his work, Richard searches for the alchemic conversion that occurs when the artist points the creative force towards an object or idea. In the Deconstructed series, this conversion happens somewhere between the collection of materials and objects, the determination of the objects’ expressive qualities, the creation of the original still life, and the digital process of applying “paint” to the image that the camera captures. Eisen’s process of constructing photographic images in multiple layers produces an ethereal and spatial depth that engages the viewer in questioning their perception of the natural world. Richard’s work is represented by Michael Warren Contemporary in Denver, Colorado.
David Hollander
David Hollander completed undergraduate work in ceramics and physics at the University of Colorado Boulder and University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He spent the next fifteen years in independent studio practice, including residencies in Seattle, Washington and in Bologna and Greve-In-Chianti, Italy. In 2019 he earned his MFA in Ceramics at Cranbrook Academy of Art. His work has been exhibited in Seattle, Boulder, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Chicago, Las Cruces and in Australia and Italy. David builds ceramic structures and lives with his family in Longmont, Colorado.
The search for a sensitive ceramic detector led me into a structure-scape composed of thin strands of ceramic. A shift in values allowed the technical and process innovations needed to reach this territory. Recognizing the possibility that fired ceramic and unfired clay can be joined in the heat of the kiln makes possible a non hierarchical workflow that produces an interdependent, collaborative ecology of delicate organic ceramic structures. These structures are all related to each other physically like a family, a body part could fall off and spawn a new structure, two structures might join. This is how the system evolves, as if alive. The significance of a single structure recedes, the prominence of the system, the ecology, rules this new structure-scape. I am interested in how the system works that creates the structures, how the entire population of structures relate to each other, and how the relations between the individual structures evolve.
Molly Kaderka
Molly Kaderka is an interdisciplinary artist working across printmaking, drawing, and painting. Kaderka’s work is inspired by her deep interest in natural phenomena and in human and earth history.
Kaderka holds a BFA in Painting and Art History from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has been shown nationally, including in solo exhibitions at the Haw Contemporary in Kansas City and Jamestown Art Center in Rhode Island, and in group shows at Morgan Lehman Gallery (NYC), Asya Geisberg Gallery (NYC), Attleborough Museum of Art (MA), Newport Art Museum (RI), and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. Recent awards include the Walter Feldman Fellowship, issued by Arts and Business Council of Boston; Visual Arts Artist Fellowship Grant issued by the Somerville (MA) Arts Council, and Inspiration Grant from Kansas City Artist Alliance.
Kaderka has taught painting and drawing at Kansas City Art Institute, Maryland Institute College of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Massachusetts College of Art and Design and is currently an Assistant Professor at Oklahoma State University.
My artistic work has employed the genre of landscape to invoke the awe and mystery of the natural world and to inspire viewers to reflect on their own place within it. Through large-scale paintings and murals, I have sought to reimagine the traditional format of the landscape by removing linear and atmospheric perspective (the meeting of earth and sky at a distant horizon) from the images while still maintaining the recognizable elements of earth and sky.
At its core, my current artistic research pursues the question: How can we reimagine traditional formats of landscape painting? Traditional/conventional landscape paintings rely on the intersection of ground and sky at horizon line removed from the viewer — an illusory framework. By contrast, my work compresses the landscape by eliminating linear perspective and reconfiguring the horizontal horizon line into a circular composition, requiring the viewer to focus simultaneously on the ground and the sky and not on the distance between them.
As earthbound creatures we live our lives within the bounds of the sky and the ground, constantly beneath the one and above the other. The experience of existing between two vast realms involves a perpetually distorted perspective of both: we experience the ground as flat and solid beneath us, and the sky as a giant, domed ceiling above, yet neither realm actually has those characteristics. The earth, in fact, is curved beneath us and in a constant state of change (as the geological record shows) and the sky is simply our window into the vast universe.
Pam Rogers
Pam Rogers is a painter/sculptor/creator exploring the role of the artist within nature. Focusing on materials and process, Pam creates pigments from locally sourced plants, soil and minerals exploring natural environments augmented by humankind. Additionally, she uses plants to create ephemeral sculptures. Born in Boulder, Colorado, Rogers has a BA in Art History: Wellesley College, MFA: Savannah College of Art and Design, and certificate in Botanical Illustration. After a long-term residency at the Arlington Arts Center, VA., Rogers has relocated her studio to Denver, CO. Her work has been exhibited internationally and nationally with recent exhibitions at the Gintner Botanic Gardens, Richmond, VA, American University, Washington DC and Weir Farm National Historic Park, CT. Rogers has worked on numerous curatorial projects as well as being a 2015 Sondheim Semi-Finalist. She has received fellowships at multiple artist residencies, including the Ucross Foundation, I-Park, and The Ragdale Art Center.
My work includes a broad array of organic materials to create fluid, abstract works on paper as well as nature-based sculptures and installations. I create works on paper utilizing plant, mineral and soil pigments, often making the paper as well. My sculptural installations are assembled from an array of vegetation in various stages of bloom and decay. In all my works, I address the complex relationship between individuals and nature, sustainability and growth, past and present. Specifically in this body of work, I have chosen to focus on the effect natural events such as fires and floods change our perception of the landscape and how we find ourselves reacting to these events.
My sculptural installations, whether suspended or earth-bound use locally found flowers, leaves, and herbs, along with fiber and disjunctive pieces of hardware and are bound into compelling forms that are infused with an ominous beauty. I focus on grounding the work into the current season and create the sculpture to be site-specific by incorporating organic materials that reflect the shifting cycles of nature, while utilizing plants relevant to a specific place.
My two-dimensional works reveal dense passages of paint while complemented by a strong use of negative space. I play with a profusion of natural imagery, often counter-balanced by decay, elements that choke or bind, and sometimes s suggestion of tiny creatures hopelessly trapped in the mass of organic matter. Yet in my continuing examination of the complex relationship between people, plants, and place, I try to never lose sight of the beauty inherent in the cyclical character of nature. The concept of Memento Mori merges with the imagery to create a sense of Botanic Magic Realism. “I am always intrigued by presenting beauty with elements that challenge the viewer to question what lurks beneath.”