magic

Come see the magic happen this Saturday at Oranje 2011...

http://www.oranjeindy.com/

my space for oranje 2011

This is where the magic will happen...

http://www.oranjeindy.com/

New artwork at Cafe Zuppa for November

Artwork by Joshua Witten

November 2010

For the entire month of November we will be showcasing the art of Joshua Witten. This Indianapolis artist produces lithographs, paintings, and pencil drawings with playful imaginative imagery. His artwork is crisp and geometric and often has a graphic design quality. All artwork is for sale.

Cafe Zuppa

my art + cafe zuppa!

November 01 - November 30, 2010

at cafe zuppa

"Witten's work takes on a deliberate anachronistic turn, comparing mythological and ancient historical concepts with popular cultural references." -Dan Swartz

my favorite part of oranje...

This is the infamous Andy D...rock rockin' it with his pink ipod and special guest dancer from beta male...I think. Honestly, I have know idea who she really is, but I love her nevertheless.

check these links out for more:

Andy D - http://www.myspace.com/rockslow

Beta Male - http://www.myspace.com/betamale

thunderdome construction for oranje

Q: What is your definition of design?
A: A plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best accomplish a particular purpose.

Q: What are the boundaries of design?
A: What are the boundaries of problems?

Q: Does the creation of design admit constraint?
A: Design depends largely on constraints.

Q: What constraints?
A: The sum of all constraints. Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem: the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible (and) his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints—the constraints of price, size, strength, balance, surface, time, etc.; each problem has its own peculiar list.

Q: To whom does design address itself: to the greatest number (the masses)? The specialists…the enlightened amateur…a privileged social class?
A: To the need.

This has been the construction of myspace for Oranje 2010....the best entertainment value for your money!!! 45 artists, 35 music acts, 5 performance stages, 3 enviro-lounges + an interactive fashion lounge & an indie film lounge....all for only $20!!! Mark your calendar!!! Saturday, September 18!!! Don't miss it or else you'll be a loser!!!

here's a preview of my Oranje artist space

This will be myspace for Oranje 2010....the best entertainment value for your money!!! 45 artists, 35 music acts, 5 performance stages, 3 enviro-lounges + an interactive fashion lounge & an indie film lounge....all for only $20!!! Mark your calendar!!! Saturday, September 18!!!

PORTRAITS

PORTRAITS

August 01 - 31, 2010 at

The Firefly

A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer.

Some of the earliest portraits of people who were not kings or emperors, are the funeral portraits that survived in the dry climate of Egypt's Fayum district. These are the only paintings of the Roman period that have survived, aside from fresco's.

The art of the portrait flourished in Roman sculptures, where sitters demanded realistic portraits, even unflattering ones. During the 4th century, the portrait began to retreat in favor of an idealized symbol of what that person looked like. (Compare the portraits of Roman Emperors Constantine I and Theodosius I at their entries.) In Europe true portraits of the outward appearance of individuals re-emerged in the late Middle Ages, in Burgundy and France.

Moche culture of Peru was one of the few ancient civilizations which produced portraits. These works accurately represent anatomical features in great detail. The individuals portrayed would have been recognizable without the need for other symbols or a written reference to their names. The individuals portrayed were members of the ruling elite, priests, warriors and even distinguished artisans.^[1]

They were represented during several stages of their lives. The faces of gods were also depicted. To date, no portraits of women have been found. There is particular emphasis on the representation of the details of headdresses, hairstyles, body adornment and face painting.

One of the best-known portraits in the Western world is Leonardo da Vinci's painting titled Mona Lisa, which is a painting of an unidentified woman. The world's oldest known portrait was found in 2006 in the Vilhonneur grotto near Angoulême and is thought to be 27,000 years old.^[2]

Recently, critics have noted that work by artist Alexa Meade makes "a valid and very interesting contribution to the portrait genre."^[3]

30th Annual National Print Exhibition

April 16 - May 26, 2010

Opening reception on Friday, April 16, 2010 from 6-9 p.m.

artlink contemporary art gallery

Check out work from local, regional and national printmakers. This is a beautiful exhibit that should not be missed!

Push Pin Gallery: Works from the F/8 Photography Club from the University of Saint Francis

POPULOUS: Wunderkammer Company's New Pop

By Dan Swartz

Fort Wayne Reader

2010-02-20

Pop Art is by far the most successful art movement in Art History. No other artistic style or movement has had the power over both the art world and mass culture.

Wunderkammer Company, a non-profit arts organization based in Fort Wayne devoted to promoting contemporary art, is making use of the power of Pop art with its next exhibition, "Populous." "Populous" has been built as an exhibition, which will add a significant performance aspect during its opening, February 19th, creating an interactive experience. Wunderkammer Co. has invited Joshua Witten, Holly Clabaugh, Daniel Dienelt, Michael Shifflett, John Collins McCormick, and Bambi Guthrie to exhibit works which express different aspects of contemporary pop concepts and techniques. Their work is both in the vein of, and in response to the Pop Art of the past.

The original Pop Art movement was cynical, consumer conscious, and accessible. By tapping into the everyday experience and exalting it as a work of fine art, those original pioneers like Jasper Johns and Claes Oldenburg were able to bring the exclusivity of the art world down a peg, and bring the taste of American consumers into focus, showing the inhabitants of the late 1950's and 1960's just what they were buying into and raving about as our nation went through its first large economic bubble.

Fast forward through the seventies and height of Warholian Pop, the eighties with a burning hot art market, the nineties YBA sensations, and the millennium's return to a market of art-as-equity, and we notice that Pop has never left us, just transformed and developed different cadences with each wave of new artists. Currently, contemporary pop art has more to do with street culture, the flash of a camera, and the ubiquitous world of pop culture.

In Fort Wayne, there is a significant vein of contemporary pop art being made and exhibited by a number of young artists. In fact, Pop Art seems to be one of the strongest thematic references among Fort Wayne's contemporary artists. Daniel Dienelt, a highly talented artist working in photography, video, and mixed media painting taps into the contemporary pop concept through manipulated found media, the eye of the camera, and the ambiguously painterly creation of images which could easily be a part of a sign or advertisements. As a testament to his versatile use of media, pieces like "My Thoughts are Deep and unforgivable" are created through a combination of ink, spraypaint, latex, and market. This smorgasbord of information, layered onto the picture plane, gives the work a feeling both of highly crafted fine art, and the nostalgic, empathetic feeling of discarded objects and weathered materials found in urban environments.

Where Dienelt's mixed media pieces bring up references to the street and the transience of the public, Holly Clabaugh's photography is rooted in the memory of the past. Clabaugh, a student at the University of Saint Francis, is creating some of the most poignant photography in Fort Wayne's art scene. While her images have a decidedly pre-Pop era feeling to them, with their graining black and white textures, they deal more with the universal idea of what the past looked like in a mass-psychological sense. Pieces like "The Conservative", and "Sticks and Stones", have the feeling and anxiety of what we have been trained, through pop cultural elements like film and tv representations of what the post-war/cold war era was. By using period clothing and props, Clabaugh also taps into the importance that fashion and design play in what we think of certain time periods and the pop experiences in them. In a similar way, Michael Shifflett creates what feels like a film still from a 60's noir classic into "French Pop No. 1", a large scale black and white painting which references both Fellini and Lichtenstein with a close up image of a woman's face.

Bambi Guthrie, also a University of Saint Francis student and photographer, shies away from nostalgia and representations of time in her work, and focuses much more on attitude. Guthrie's photography, like "Fallen Angel I" exhibits an oddly subtle gothic aesthetic, and an appreciation for the shocking or bizarre. John Collins McCormick, goes against the grain with "12 Untitled Drawings on Paper", which is both a collection of commodity drawings, and a small self-contained installation of his work. McCormick's drawings are Pop at its most basic unit. McCormick obsessively marks the paper with candy paint colored markers creating hidden universal images like numbers in the picture plane. Last but not least, Joshua Witten embodies the idea of contemporary Pop Art perfectly with his immaculately fresh images like "The Antigravity Machine", which is an image of a break dancer and his boom box on a bleak minimalist plane. Witten's use of a macro comic line quality and color fields, sense of color and scale, and complex cast of imagery make for visual poems which are read, line by line, with each impression.

In addition to this great cast of artists, "Populous" will also include a group of local musicians covering and slightly skewing the "poppiest" of current Pop songs like Sky Thing's abstracted rendition of "Cobrastyle" by the Scandinavian sensation Robyn, Mac's Merry Minstrels, a local group of classical string musicians, performing a medley of Lady GaGa's #1 hits, Hope Arthur covering Lady GaGa's "Beautiful Dirty Rich", and Mason Dillon covering the music of Imogen Heap.

With this sensational combination of visual and performing arts, Wunderkammer Company is creating a rich cultural experience, much like the "art parties" of the 60's and 70's where all of the avant-garde (be they thinkers, makers, or performers) could be found mingling, dancing, and drinking.

"Populous" opening will take place on Friday, February 19th, from 5-11pm at the Dash In, at 814 S. Calhoun Street.

POPULOUS, A WUNDERKAMMER CO. EXHIBITION

Date: February 19, 2010

Time: 5-11pm

Location: Dash In, on Calhoun Street

Wunderkammer Company (W<) presents "Populous", an exhibition of contemporary Pop Art and experimental performances. "Populous" will take place on Friday, February 19th, from 5-11pm at the Dash In, on Calhoun Street.

"Populous" was organized to examine the significant segment of contemorary art which has its roots based in the art historical Pop Art movement of the 1960's. Wunderkammer Co. has invited Daniel Dienelt, Joshua Witten, John McCormick, Mike Shifflet, Holly Claybaugh, and Bambi Guthrie to exhibited their work, and Sky Thing, Mac's Merry Minstrels, and Mason Dillon to perform covers of recent pop songs in interesting ways.

Wunderkammer Company is an independent, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization based in Fort Wayne, IN, dedicated to the revitalization of communities through contemporary art.

"Play for Keeps Opening a Complete Success!"

...from the very beginning the public's reception to the show was amazing, and the room filled quickly! for almost four hours the tribute gallery was packed wall to wall. though i did spend a good chunk of time pouring beer (generously donated by our friends at ninkasi brewing) and leveling pieces that were gently jostled by the lively crowd, i managed to have a number of wonderful conversations with people about art, curation and the tribute gallery.

- CHLOE GALLAGHER, http://welovescotch.blogspot.com/

Play for Keeps Exhibition at Tribute Gallery

Group Exhibition — New Works On Paper

January 7th through January 30th, 2010

Opening Reception January 7th, 2010 6pm-9pm

Tribute Gallery presents Play for Keeps, a group exhibit of new works on paper by a dynamic group of national artists. An opening reception will be held January 7th from 6pm – 9pm featuring live music provided by beloved local DJ Chris Chase. The show runs through January 31, 2010.

Play for Keeps was designed by guest curators Elizabeth Lamb and Chloe Gallagher to explore the often underrated importance of play. 

Featured artists include Jon MacNair from Baltimore, MD whose playful yet eerie works of ink on paper have earned him a national following. Joshua Witten, hailing from Fort Collins, IN, works in a variety of media and possesses an impressive mastery of his bold, graphic style. Mixed media artist Patrick Haemmerlein from Los Angeles builds arresting urban images from the ground up using his own photography and source material. Ashley Sloan, a local Portland artist, will be exhibiting clever, thought-provoking graphite works. And, Max Kauffman, hailing from Denver, CO, whose colorful, folkloric works have been exhibited at a number of prominent national galleries, will also be featured. The exhibit will also include works by Brett Anderson, Huy Nguyen, Garric Simonsen, Angela Dawn, Breanne Rupp, Megan Marie Myers, Brian Costello, Jackie Bos, Karri Dieken, Stephan Ferreira, Mark Colman, Heidi Elise Wirz, Coco Papy, Sally Gilmore, Mark Olwick, Louise Krampien and Cara Tomlinson.

Tribute Gallery is located at 328 NW Broadway #117 Portland, OR 97209 and will be open Saturdays in January from 11am to 3pm and by appointment.

For additional information about the gallery email TheTributeGallery@gmail.com and for updates follow http://Twitter.com/TributeGallery 

Artlink Regional Exhibition Reviewed

Artlink Regional Exhibition

By Dan Swartz

Fort Wayne Reader

2009-12-19

Every two years, Artlink presents an exhibition highlighting three of the region's most active and vibrant artists. Last year at the Artlink Biennial Regional Exhibition, Joshua Witten, Wendy Norton, and Andrew Lemmon were awarded $500 and the opportunity to be a part of a three person exhibition. "Regional Award Winners" is the culmination of work over the last year for those three artists.

This exhibition is always a favorite because it gives a larger view of each artists’ development and their over-arching bodies of work. While Fort Wayne is still notoriously lacking solo exhibitions, the "Regional Award Winners" exhibition is very close, given that these three artists have a 2,000 square foot gallery to fill.

While their work does not share many similarities, this exhibition offers a very fresh perspective, offering viewers the opportunity to examine these three contemporary artists working within the Greater Fort Wayne area, and see how they are truly beginning to hone their work into a consistent form. For instance, Joshua Witten, who has exhibited various times with Artlink, delivers a knock out body of drawings, paintings, and mixed media pieces. Through this exhibition, Fort Wayne is getting its first chance to see the repetitive formal and conceptual mechanics in Witten's work.

In pieces like " Hesperideve," "Prometheus," and "The Conversation," Witten's work takes on a deliberate anachronistic turn, comparing mythological and ancient historical concepts with popular cultural references. "Hesperdeve" is an especially poignant image, a female images holding a floating Apple (think, ipod) logo in the palm of her hand, stylized bite mark facing her, with her profile mimicking its own. "Hesperideve," which would be implied to be the name of the woman depicted, seems to be either a personification of the Greek Triadic nymphs, the Hesperides, or a combination of the that word with the name of the West's other famous garden dweller, Eve. Either way, the conflation of terms and concepts make this rather small, intimate drawing a conceptual vortex. Both of the mythological women were the possessors of apples, and the latter, the Biblical Eve, is the one whose notorious bite is possibly being depicted. This conflation of female characters, and addition of the present day, pop-ish, Apple logo create an end result of a beautiful mystery.

In addition to this addictive drawing, Witten continues to puzzle and seduce the viewer with a long stream of structured, elegant, and sophisticated pieces. With a strong range of off the radar pop culture icons like "Mouse on a Motorcycle," "Sony Aibo ERS-220," "March Hare," and "Return of the Fly," to the pair of subtle, incendiary portraits with "Frida Kahlo," and "Malcolm X,” one could literally write volumes about Joshua Witten's pieces.

Wendi Norton, also working two-dimensionally, presents an extremely cohesive body of work which transitions thoughtfully from piece to piece. Norton's mixed media watercolors on paper exude elegiac imagery and references, combining loss and memory into a final object that is steeped in complex design and high craftsmanship. Her work shows off her formal curiosities, and becomes a description of time, through process, in the same way that her content is a depiction of it. "Rooted," a vertical landscape, is a highlight of Norton's work, with its mid and low tone color scheme and surreal collage of objective naturalism in the depiction of a house being paired with a fading and muffled crimson red fleur de lis pattern filling up the majority of the lower half of the image. While the overall concept of the image being a sort of permanence and historical connection to a home, the piece comes off as honest in its simplicity. Norton's other key pieces, like "Microfilm #1," "Little Daughters," and "Unknown" all extend this idea of an anxiety associated with history and old objects, however they reference psychology of the family and femininity more than the commitment to a place which is brought up in "Rooted."

While Wendi Norton and Joshua Witten constructed deeper bodies of work that can be read piece by piece, Andrew Lemmon's two large pieces must be seen through a far more gestalt lense. Lemmon's large scale, mixed media wooden sculptures, because of their relationships to their viewers and the space around them, become something closer to installations. "Sanctuary" especially, takes a very active role with its environment because of the way it forces the viewer to change perspective numerous ways while taking in the whole piece. This very tall anchored and stilted structure takes on a folk feeling through its "stick build" construction, with its many similarities to bird houses and other animal shelters.

But Lemmon's second piece, "A Consequence of Gravity," is certainly his strongest, with its impeccable construction, selection of materials, and greater conceptual force. This near human sized hollowed coned, tethered to the ceiling by an elastic band, sits deliberately hiding itself from the viewer. Upon a further inspection, one notices the many beautifully jointed slats of wood which create a tapered, curved form — in itself an impressive feat — which leads you into the round opening, bisected by a brace, and with radial interior bracing along the side. The small "prize" is found by truly scouring the object and finding the resin encased corn chaff tip. Throughout this whole experience, it is impossible to not compare and contrast Lemmon's work to Martin Puryear, the master craftsman and artist whose small and large scale sculpture can be found in most museum collections around the Unites States. Puryear, like Lemmon, used formal concepts to carry his work and add a slight mystery to the work, which usually carry narrative or concrete titles and concepts despite their almost complete physical abstraction.

Through more exhibitions like "Regional Award Winners," Fort Wayne area artists will be able to not only engage with the larger art viewing public in a stronger way, but begin to develop their work in relation to itself. This is a very important step for any artist, so that they can construct stronger thematic structures in their work, and ultimately, to gain the attention of the more established art markets around the country and world.

"Regional Award Winners" at Artlink, is open from December 11, 2009-January 13th, 2010. Also check out Don Artamas' collection of work, "Yearnings", which is currently displayed in Artlink's Push Pin gallery.

pics from : The Award Winners Exhibition

The Award Winners Exhibition

Award Winners from the 7th Regional Exhibition

December 11, 2009 – January 13, 2010

Andrew Lemmon, Wendi Norton and Joshua Witten were the three award winners from last year’s 7th Regional Exhibition. Now the three artists will fill the gallery with their work. Be sure to check out Andrew Lemmon’s conceptual sculptural works. Wendi Norton will display watercolor paintings which demonstrate her ability to create distinct moods through color and environment. Joshua Witten demonstrates his eloquent techniques in printmaking, drawing, mixed media and painting. Witten’s draftsmanship and use of line add to the underlying message of his work.

Opening reception: December 11, 6-9pm at

artlink contemporary art gallery

Lots of Little Art with Big Ideals

Lots of Little Art
Oct9ober 16 - December 2, 2009
National juried exhibition featuring work in all media with a size restriction of 6"x6"

Gallery walk through at 6pm on October 16th with Dominick Manco, George Morrison and Audrey Riley.

Hallway Gallery features:

Mini-Quilts Exhibit in Honor of AIDS Task Force's 25th Anniversary

Exhibit Sponsors:

AEP/Indiana Michigan Power, Designer/Craftsman Guild, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Members of Artlink, Arts United of Greater Fort Wayne, Indiana Arts Commission.

Opening reception: Oct9ober 16, 6-9pm at

artlink contemporary art gallery

the members show

The Members Show ( Not available online)
July 17 - August 11, 2009
Opening reception, 7-9 p.m.
This regional exhibition features work by members of Artlink.

pics from the GREEN Exhibition

GREEN Exhibition

GREEN Exhibition
May 29 - June 07, 2009
This exhibition will focus of issues of global warming,
conservation of our environment, environmental
initiatives or artwork made of reusable/found objects
Opening reception: May 29th, 7-9pm at
artlink contemporary art gallery