(To be released May 21st, 2019.)
Bedrock welcomes Amy Feldman in the creation of a portfolio of seven lithographs titled “Loose Truths.” From neutral grounds to fluid and punchy figures, Feldman’s bare bones approach presents a powerful conversation of form and color. In her first lithographic series, the artist delivers her signature gray-on-gray abstract sign system with remarkable advance. Typical of Feldman’s hand, each resulting lithograph comes alive with personality, humor, presence, and stark elegance.
Loose Truths Series, 2019
Bedrock welcomes Amy Feldman in the creation of a portfolio of seven lithographs titled “Loose Truths.” From neutral grounds to fluid and punchy figures, Feldman’s bare bones approach presents a powerful conversation of form and color. In her first lithographic series, the artist delivers her signature gray-on-gray abstract sign system with remarkable advance . Typical of Feldman’s hand, each resulting lithograph comes alive with personality, humor, presence, and stark elegance.
Chain Reaction Series, 2018
The “Chain Reaction” Series, Wendell Gladstone’s first project with Bedrock, is a variable edition of nine embossments treated with custom-colored, pearlescent powder. A gorgeous dance of image, color, ingenuity, and hard work, “Chain Reaction” evokes feminine strength and liberty from the central figure’s personal prison. Though Gladstone’s image is referential to his canvases, the embossed treatment he created in collaboration with master printer Aaron Shipps results in a series of distinct, sumptuously rendered prints: a triumphant contribution to Gladstone’s body of work.
Wendell Gladstone
Based in Los Angeles, Gladstone produces figurative paintings that evoke dream-like spaces, free from logic that pertains to traditional representation. He uses allegory and metaphor to examine a wide swath of cultural references from contemporary politics, art history, and personal experience, allowing psychological mood to govern the narratives over concrete reality. With a bright, often candy-colored palette layered with transparent mediums that subtly reveal the forms beneath, his works immediately seduce the viewer and only later reveal psychologically charged subtexts.
Amy Feldman
Deceptively simple, Amy Feldman’s large acrylic paintings feature loosely geometric motifs set against areas of bare canvas. New York Times critic Roberta Smith once noted “a kind of back-to-basics abstraction characterized by simple forms, not much color and an emphasis on process.” In letting the paint drip where it will, Feldman seeks to retain the casualness of her preliminary sketches, often based on her surroundings, yet she also strives for poise. “I think, the unfinished (or seemingly unfinished) quality in my work feels like it is in a dialogue with the landscape … the forms are carefully articulated yet under-polished,” she explains.
Jaune Quick–to–See Smith
Bedrock Welcomes the iconic Jaune Quick-To-See-Smith in the creation of an ambitious seven foot vertical diptych lithograph. Created in the Bedrock Studio and in progress, this project proves to evolve one of Jaune’s tricker figures to lifelike presence and present political relevance.
A Native American of French-Cree, Shoshone, and Salish blood, New Mexican artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith creates paintings and drawings that reflect her upbringing in a household where art and horses were equally important. In the initial stages of her career, Smith’s painted landscapes inevitably contained a “portrait” of her horse Cheyenne shown with tepees, tools, pottery, and other Indian artifacts. Eventually Smith began to incorporate collage elements into her paintings, adding bits of calico and muslin fabric and wire mesh over which she lavished paint. The result was surfaces that acquired a texture and topography reminiscent of the landscapes she was depicting. Smith is part of the new generation of Native American artists who are helping to redefine their culture’s relationship to contemporary American life and its problematic past. She lives and works in Albuquerque, in close proximity to the land that inspires much of her art.
Scanner Monotypes, 2018
“Exploring technologies we as humans use to communicate, scanners in particular have a symbolic parallel with the print mediums, as both use surfaces to transmit and transfer data. This being the case, both monotypes were initiated using Bedrock’s lithographic press to drag, press, and pull printing ink across the paper without the use of stone or lithographic plate. This technique, used in the creation of the background of each piece, brings to life a luminous backdrop which is rich, dimensional, and very tactile, each one to be anchored by the geometrical body of the scanner itself. The bodies of each scanners were printed with the more exacting transfer of ink to paper from a lithographic plate overprinted several times, building up increasingly thick layers of ink…”
Anne Boyer and Andrzej Zielinski
2018 Cy Twombly Award winning poet and essayist Anne Boyer joins with artist Andrzej Zielinski to collaborate towards the creation of a box set of poetry conjoined with original art. Based on the concept of 13 substances as 13 poems/artworks, this project proves to illuminate the uniquely fierce and anti-categorical mind and words of Anne with the materially based work of Andrzej.
Alexandre Arrechea
Cuban artist Alexandre Arrechea, co-founder of the artists collective “Los Carpinteros,” interdisciplinary work reveals a profound interest in the exploration of both public and domestic spaces. His earlier works explore common themes of surveillance in contemporary society, the loss of privacy, and sources of power, though more recent works deal with contemporary social and economic issues like the stock market and migrants in Latin America. His experiential installations like The Garden of Mistrust (2003-5) and Perpetual Free Entrance (2006) in particular deal with issues of accessibility and the qualities of public and private space. His practice includes installation, painting, and the use of what he considers are objects with “elements of truth.”
Djamila, 2018
“Djamila,” Asad Faulwell’s first lithograph, depicts Djamila Bouhired, one of the female combatants who took part in The Battle of Algiers. Djamila, like her comrades, carried out attacks against the colonial French population in Algiers. This piece attempts to show how these women were both aggressors and victims, victimized both by their French adversaries and ostracized by Algerian society. The image was rendered using traditional lithographic techniques taken to an extreme fruition, afterwards finished with hand applied embellishments.
The Magical City Series
The Magical City series, a vibrant array of woodcuts printed on wood veneer, is based on recurring dreams that arrive in the mind of Zigmunds Priede. Each magical city is a composite of many different locations in the world, arriving just at the distance of the artist’s imagination, in between his native Latvia and the United States. As is the case for many who find themselves living abroad from their native lands, home is no longer the place that has been left behind, nor is it the place one now lives. For Zigmunds, this beautiful series of work is his attempt to deal with these notions of home, using cities as an emotive expression, rendered in many different color relationships.
The Mishap Suite
Andrzej Zielinski Artist’s Statement: These five stone drawn lithographs are inspired by everyday mishaps that occur with mobile phones which render their functionality useless. The black and white palette emphasizes that the phones are no longer functioning devices capable of turning on, and therefore thwart our expectation of a bright screen to escape into. Additionally […]
Seven Monotypes
“Rashawn Griffin’s diverse practice is grounded in the poetic investigation of social space. Using found everyday materials, from bed sheets to decorative tassels; Griffin’s elegant compositions awaken displaced memories of a collective experience, taking us on a journey that collapses time and space”
— Amy Smith-Stewart
Asad Faulwell
DJAMILA, 2018 | 21 plate, variable edition lithograph mounted on Komatex, with collage, painted map tacks, and gold pins Artist’s Statement / How the work was made Dajmila, Inspired by Gillo Pontecorvo’s film “The Battle of Algiers” attempts to show how female combatants in The Battle of Algiers were both aggressors and victims, victimized both […]
Larassa Kabel
Kabel’s work gravitates towards uncomfortable subjects, using art as a tool for clarity by asking questions that may have many answers but only one truth. How do we encounter suffering with compassion, propagate grace, open ourselves to a relationship with death, and recognize the nature of power? Each inquiry rings like a bell that was a cup until it was struck. Kabel’s work reminds us that it is easy to be unconscious through most of our lives but that unconsciousness leaves us unprepared for the inevitable times when our better natures must be called upon.
Seven Shredder Monotypes
Artist’s Statement: This grouping of seven shredder monotypes was made in context of an analogous relationship between the mechanics of a paper shredder, and that of a lithographic press. The results are surprisingly rich, enabling random data to be distorted in the creation of these new works, and the concept they are founded on: Inserting […]
Artists
Zigmunds Priede
A native Latvian, after graduating from the University of California, Berkley, Zigmunds was hired on as a master printer for Universal Limited Art Editions, where he collaborated and printed for the likes of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, and Barnett Newman. After his time at ULAE, Zig went on to teach for 12 years at the University of Minnesota, then later moved to Kansas where he taught painting and drawing at Johnson County Community College. Zigmunds is now retired, spending his time in the studio.
Laura Berman
Laura’s work has been featured in The Book of Probes by David Carson / Marshall McLuhan, Printmaking at the Edge by Richard Noyce, Contemporary American Printmakers by Rooney, Standish, and A Survey of Contemporary Printmaking, by Ehlers, Ehlbeck and Muise. Laura Berman’s work is represented by Weinberger Fine Art (Kansas City, MO), Long View Gallery (Washington, D.C.) and Uprise Art (New York City). She publishes her work through Bedrock Art […]
Untitled, 2016
I find a calm beauty in subtlety, a soft grace, like a breath of moist forest air. The subtle whites of this piece shift when seen from different angles as trees fall back and move forward, offering new ways of seeing. It reminds me that life is full of beautiful perspectives if we slow down, look close, and allow ourselves to see more than we do at first glance, honoring the subtle beauty all around us.
Megan Lou Gallant
Megan Gallant graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute with a B.F.A. in Sculpture. She is a believer in the power of art practices to transform individuals and community. She has been a volunteer teacher, and later Vice-President of the board, with Arts in Prison. On a trip to India in 2009, she orchestrated a drawing […]
Suspension 1 and 2, Laura Berman
Ouroboros Shredder
In my experience, great creations speak for themselves, and speak also, to their predecessors. Such were my aspirations as Andrzej Zielinski and I began our dialog about what to do for his upcoming lithograph.
The evening Andrzej Zielinski and I met to discuss concepts for this print, the studio felt small, as if trying to contain the many ideas Andrzej brought to the table. Ideas were leveraged, but we narrowed them down to a folded print, structurally similar to a few steel sculptures Andrzej was working on at the time.
The concept was electrifying and frightening, and a bit abstract, in that Andrzej’s concept differed from any other folded print I’d seen or read about. Which is something that will clarify itself as you read on…
Boy with Cordless Headphones
Two Things Happening At The Same Time
During the first visit I took to Rashawn Griffin’s studio, as we stood in front of a wall covered in his work, he gave me this warning: “What I do looks like it was done quickly, but I labor over these. Most pieces take a long time to finish.”
It’s true. Rashawn’s art does have a fluid, easy going nature to it. Nowhere does this become more apparent than in Two Things Happening At The Same Time, Griffin’s first lithograph, where an unexpected world of composition, interplay of shapes, textures, and color compositions comes alive.
Rashawn Griffin
Two Things Happening at the Same Time, 2016 | Lithograph with hand stitching, Chine-Collé, thread embossment, and plastic eyes Two Things Happening at the Same Time, is a continuation of Rashawn Griffin’s investigation into materiality, drawing, and identity. Starting by “re-imagining” the Griffin family tartan, in new and saturated colors, the image was created in […]
Andrzej Zielinski
TWO SCANNER MONOTYPES, 2018 | Monotypes with Chine Collé, lithographic elements and a glaze overprinting Artist’s Statement / Read about the making of the work Ouroboros Shredder, 2017 | Slit and Folded lithograph with registration pins Ouroboros Shredder, speaking to the Greek mythological concept of the cyclical nature of life and death, depicts the […]
Mike Lyon
After many hears of practicing eye-hand coordination required to draw and paint visually (paint what you see), Kansas City artist, Mike Lyon, “became intensely curious about how image was communicated through the marks I made. I began employing automated procedures and, eventually, electromechanical tools, many of my own design and construction. I continue to be fascinated by marks and mark-making, pattern, aesthetics, the past, and the location of meaning. My recent work is typically produced using traditional tools manipulated by non-traditional means.”
Megan Lou Gallant
Kansas City Artist Megan Gallant is a strong advocate for the power of creative practices to transform individuals and community. She is passionate about connection, and using creativity to manifest meaningful experience and expression. Her work explores the connection we have with our selves, with our natural world, and with each other, both symbolically through object making, and experientially through community engagement.
Longevity
By Laura Berman
The story here is of a gentle sway, a sigh, and a settling into. The lines respond to each other one by one, building upwards and compacting downwards over time. This moment in time is not a crescendo, but rather, a much-needed pause afterwards. A vibrating harmony of everything at its brightest and best.