Bedrock welcomes Amy Feldman in the debut creation of her elegant portfolio of seven lithographs titled “Loose Truths.” From neutral grounds to fluid and punchy figures, Amy has powerfully continued her conversation between layering and form with her fist works in the medium of lithography. Speaking to her relationship with shades of grey, Feldman further explores her signature abstract sign system, speaking to systems of writing and the transmission of information, often alluding to anthropomorphic explorations. Typical of Feldman’s hand, each resulting lithograph comes alive with personality, humor, presence of form, and stark elegance.
Neal Ambrose-Smith
Bedrock is proud to welcome contemporary Native American artist Neal Ambrose Smith in the creation of a new lithograph, full of humor, wit, and vibrance. Neal Ambrose-Smith, descendent of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation of Montana, is a contemporary Native American painter, sculptor, printmaker, and Professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work is included in the collections of many national and international museums and institutions, including the New York Public Library, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Galerie Municipale d’Art Contemporain in Chamalières, France, and Hongik University in Seoul, Korea. He received his BA from the University of Northern Colorado and MFA from the University of New Mexico.
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.
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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
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.