Art

#books
#installation
#paper
#pencils
#sculpure
#wood

October 22, 2020
Grace Ebert

“Dendrite” (2019), Q-tips and plaster. All images © Jessica Drenk, courtesy of Galleri Urbane, shared with permission
Montana-born artist Jessica Drenk (previously) employs simple materials, like shopping flyers and standard No. 2 pencils, to create organic sculptures that are chaotic and arresting explorations of the substances themselves. Bundled Q-tips spread across a site-specific installation like the roots of a tree, a carved section of plywood reveals concentric patterns, and strips of junk mail are plastered together in long waves.
While Drenk’s latest series, titled Transmutations, is diverse and ranges from wall pieces to cavernous sculptures, each artwork explores materiality and how disparate shapes and textures combine to create forms that are new both physically and conceptually. The artist explains in a statement:
In treating everyday objects as raw material to sculpt, I practice a form of conceptual alchemy: through physically manipulating these objects their meanings become transmuted. Each piece is a direct response to material—a subversion of the meanings associated with it, and a reference to the life cycle of objects through time.
If you’re in Dallas, Transmutations is on view at Galleri Urbane through October 31. Otherwise, follow Drenk’s textural works on Artsy, and watch an interview with the artist at her studio below.

“Contour 3” (2020), carved plywood, 47 x 38 x 3 inches
“Implement 68” (2020), pencils, 22 x 18 x 17 inches
“Cerebral Mapping” (2020), books and wax, 132 x 80 inches
“Compression 3” (2020), books, wax on wood panel, and wood frame, 44 x 38 x 2 inches
“Dendrite” (2019), Q-tips and plaster
Top: “Aggregate 3” (2020), junk mail, 28 x 130 x 2.25 inches. Bottom: “Aggregate 2” (2020), junk mail and plaster, 20 x 78 x 2.5 inches
Left: “Circulation 18” (2020), books and wax, 31 x 29 x 1.5 inches. Right: “Circulation 19” (2020), junk mail and cardboard, 36 x 36 x 1.5 inches



#books
#installation
#paper
#pencils
#sculpure
#wood

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Art

#encaustic
#flowers
#hands
#memory
#plants
#wax

March 2, 2021
Grace Ebert

All images © Valerie Hammond, shared with permission
In Valerie Hammond’s series of wax drawings, protection is two-fold: the artist (previously) encases dried flowers and ferns in a thin layer of wax, preserving their fragile tissues long after they’ve been plucked from the ground. In outlining a pair of hands, she also secures a memory, or rather, “the essence of a gesture and the fleeting moment in which it was made.”
Centered on limbs lying flat on Japanese paper, the ongoing series dates back to the 1990s, when Hammond made the first tracing “partly in response to the death of a dear friend, whose beautiful hands I often found myself remembering.” She continued by working with family and friends, mainly women and children, to delineate their wrists, palms, and fingers. Today, the series features dozens of works that are comprised of either hands tethered to the dried botanics, which sprout outward in wispy tendrils, or others overlayed with thread and glass beads.
Although the delicate pieces began as a simple trace, Hammond shares that she soon began to overlay the original drawing with pressed florals, creating encaustic assemblages that “echoed the body’s bones, veins, and circulatory systems.” She continued to experiment with the series by introducing various techniques, including printmaking, Xerox transfers, and finally Photoshop inversions, that distorted the original rendering and shifted her practice. Hammond explains:
The works suddenly inhabited a space I had been searching for, straddling the indefinable boundary between presence and absence, material and immaterial, consciousness and the unconscious. For me, they became emblematic not only of the people whose hands I had traced but of my own evolving artistic process—testimony to the passing of time and the quiet dissolution of memory.
Hammond’s work recently was included in a group show at Leila Heller Gallery. Her practice spans multiple mediums including collage, drawing, and sculpture, all of which you can explore on her site and Instagram.

#encaustic
#flowers
#hands
#memory
#plants
#wax

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Art

#body
#identity
#painting

October 5, 2020
Grace Ebert

“In my feelings” (2020), oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches. All images © Laura Berger, shared with permission
In Laura Berger’s minimalist paintings, female figures entwine together in abstract formations. Their dark locks flow with the curves of their bodies, which are posed in relaxed, natural stances. Using tight color palettes of muted tones, Berger works mostly in acrylic, although she’s ventured into oil since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I’m not sure if it’s related to everything that’s been going on in the world or to the shift in medium itself, but my ideas have been moving in a more narrative direction which has really opened up a lot of new things for me to work with,” she tells Colossal.
The Chicago-based artist (previously) continues to explore themes of identity, community, and connection, in addition to more abstract conceptions of energy and quality of life, throughout her largely geometric body of work. “As a woman, I usually paint from that perspective point, but the figures are really meant mostly to serve as characters through which to explore our collective humanity and shared experience,” she says.
If you’re in New York City, check out Berger’s solo show, which is open from November 21 to December 12, at Hashimoto Contemporary. Otherwise, follow her on Instagram to see her latest considerations of the female experience.

“We wanted to feel the light” (2019), acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20 inches
Left: “If I were you” (2019), acrylic on wood panel, 30 x 40 inches. Right: “If I were you 2” (2019), acrylic on wood panel, 30 x 40 inches
“Mood” (2020), oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches
Left: “If I were you 3” (2019), acrylic on wood panel, 30 x 40 inches. Right: “Night fruit” (2020)
“Strata” (2019), acrylic on cradled wood panel, 16 x 20 inches

#body
#identity
#painting

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 “Lost in the Shuffle” (2019), acrylic on canvas, 36 X 24 inches. All images © Calida Garcia Rawles, shared with permission Five years ago, Calida Garcia Rawles learned to swim by joining a team dedicated to the exercise. The sessions were “therapeutic and spiritually uplifting,” the Los Angeles-based artist shares with Colossal. “I found […] More


Art
Colossal

March 10, 2021
Christopher Jobson

Photo by Andrea Wan during her trip to Nepal. All images shared with permission
In a new interview supported by Colossal Members, Jeroen Smeets dives into the story behind The Jaunt, a travel project that he founded in 2013. Since then, the project has sent more than 70 artists to new destinations around the globe—locations are wide-ranging, spanning from Helsinki to Los Angeles to Caye Caulker, Belize—with the goal of producing a single, hand-pulled screenprint.
We try not to guide or give too much structure for their trip. And this is what I think makes this project unique. Usually, artists travel to set up exhibitions, work on a specific project, paint murals, but rarely are they going to a place with the sole purpose of finding new inspiration.
In this conversation with Colossal editor-in-chief Christopher Jobson, Smeets recounts The Jaunt’s first-ever collaboration, some of the surprising experiences to come out of the artists’ excursions, and what’s next for the ongoing project.

The Jaunt print by Collin van der Sluijs

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