The ArtsWest Gallery launches its 2009-10 season with Altered Associations, a show featuring surreal oils on canvas by Jeff Mihalyo, Lucy Carpenter working in reclaimed plastic bags and chicken wire, and Therese Buchmilller with minimalist re-creations utilizing various appropriated materials.
Altered Associations was curated specifically to complement the concurrent stage production at ArtsWest, Dead Man’s Cell Phone (September 9 – October 3).
Oil paintings by Jeff Mihalyo are based on a daily ritual of sketching during travels in Italy, France and Spain for the past 5 years. Quixotic coliseums are suspended above lush landscapes created from an aesthetic based in velvety realism. Vibrant jewel-like colors are only part of the beauty found in his oil paintings which are filled with universal metaphors for larger than life emotions and dreams.
Lucy Carpenter recycles plastic bags in her larger than life sculptures of human organs. A heart and a kidney are on view from her series, Plastics in Our Food Chain: When We Become Our Waste. Carpenter explores the ways in which we are becoming quite intimate with our trash.
Therese Buchmiller is a contemporary artist that re-organizes found objects such as a plastic frog, paper wings, Styrofoam pellets and a q-tip to create out of the ordinary installations based in simplicity and nostalgic beauty. The space between often means more than the objects themselves as she diverts meaning and identity of Objects by recontextualizing them on the gallery wall.
West Seattle Art Walk 