5 x 5 Submission 20 - Nikki Mull

Nikki Mull
Nikki Mull's Website

I was born and raised in a rural town in Eastern Idaho known only for being the first city in the world to be lit by Atomic Power...and only for two hours. I received both my BFA and MFA at Idaho State University before moving to the Northwest to attend the Seattle Film Institute. Currently, I live in Seattle with my husband and a black cat named Banana.
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About the work:

It was suggested that I start with a self-portrait. However, the twelve paintings of myself that followed did not do so as portraits of my character any more than they remain completely faithful to my outward appearance. My form became a surface that I draped with the dresses of martyrs. I peeled crimson paint from the canvases of masters in hopes to borrow a few moments in which to bleed.

Death is a persistent thought. I see the absurdity of living immersed in a culture where the world’s suffering becomes a spectator sport that can be watched comfortably from living room couches. Without knowing a real struggle, I foolishly imagine death: blinding white drenched in heavy red, blood in the snow, and silence.

For this series, I searched art history for images that portrayed blood. Not mere cuts that bled, but wounds of symbolic selflessness, struggle, accomplishment. Some portrayed martyrs bleeding for a cause. Some bled in personal torment. I found that the pain of assassination disappeared under the serene face of Marat and that glowing hollow of Cato’s chest betrayed his silent screams of pain. I saw blood in the innocent cloth held by Soutine’s pastry chef, I opened the cut under Van Gogh’s bandage, and I imagined the life flowing out onto the sash of Dali’s dreamer. To my body, I pinned on the wounds like costumes, playing dress up with cultural, political, religious and personal artifacts borrowed from history. Sometimes I felt content. At other times I felt disgusted. Often, I was indifferent.

In starting with a self-portrait, I ended up with twelve women each in silent reflection as red paint stained their fingertips, blinded their vision, and soaked their bed sheets. Blood is a persistent image in my mind, conjuring thoughts of not only death, but also life. Sometimes between white light and black shadows there appear sanguine incidents of red.

To submit work for 5 x 5 , email luara@greygalleryandlounge.com

Check out our blog for more information: 5 x 5 Information

Deadline for submissions is February 15, 2010

5 x 5 Submission 19 - B. Kim Tran

B. Kim Tran
website: www.bktran.com

Biography
I received my BFA in Painting from the University of Washington. Currently, I live in West Seattle in Cooper Artist Lofts, a historic building that Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association has renovated to house Youngstown Cultural Arts Center as well as 36 affordable live/work spaces. Some of the artists that I am influenced by are: Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Philip Guston, Jackson Pollock and Francis Bacon.

Artist Statement
In my most recent drawings, I am restricting each series to a single subject such as “ellipses,” “words,” or “plaid” and am beginning each of the drawings by mechanically laying down the structural lines of the piece with the use of a compass, a straight edge, stencils or design templates. In doing this, I am not interested in creating anything resembling machine-like precision; instead, I want to explore the process of creating within a specific set of limitations.

To submit work for 5 x 5 , email luara@greygalleryandlounge.com

Check out our blog for more information: 5 x 5 Information

Deadline for submissions is February 15, 2010

5 x 5 Submission 18 - Anja Ziegler

Love Kills

48 x 60 inches

acrylic on canvas
















Anja Ziegler

Who is the ar-teest known as Zee?

Zee came to America from Germany December 1993, bringing with her a love of freedom, a zeal for living, and the ability to find beauty and potential in everyday things. Her paintings represent the sum of her life experiences: her struggles, triumphs, loves, passions, and humor. While growing up in Germany she enjoyed standard scholastic art training.

Zee paints on furniture pieces as well, creating functional objects of art. She has shown her works in smaller venues in the Seattle area over the last few years.

With her new series Zee suprises with the ability to pour raw feelings onto canvas choosing texture over color. love kills is a series of paintings expressing love-gone-wrong, passion and pain in a minimalist, clean and very unique style.

website: www.uptownzee.com

details/close-up of love kills
Caught in the Act
48 x 60 inches
acrylic on canvas
details/close-up of caught in the act
Ouch!
20 x 24 inches
acrylic on canvas


















Love Bleeds: close-up
6 x 6 inches
mixed media (latex on clayboard with metal shavings)

Surrender
48 x 60 inches
acrylic on canvas
details/close-up of Surrender

To submit work for 5 x 5 , email luara@greygalleryandlounge.com

Check out our blog for more information: 5 x 5 Information

Deadline for submissions is February 15, 2010

5 x 5 Submission 17 - Bob Scoverski

Bob Scoverski
Bob Scoverski's Website

I created my first photo collage twenty years ago using print film. Reading through a photography magazine I stumbled across a photo collage and was instantly intrigued. I shot three rolls of film and played for hours arranging and rearranging the 4x6 prints. It was like a jigsaw puzzle but without constraints. When I finally glued down the 4x6 prints the two dimensional subject was transformed into a three dimensional scene. I looked at the final piece over and over. Lines connected and collided through the 4x6 prints. Negative space between prints actually created connections between those prints. Motion existed from one end of the piece to the other. I was hooked.

With the advent of digital technology I began to transition my photo collage work from film to memory cards and software. Taking photos and then arranging 4x6 images was still the core technique for creating a digital photo collage, but learning how to do it with the computer bought on new challenges. The challenges however were just as exciting to figure out and the results were even more dramatic then the print film days.

After several years of creating digital photo collages my process is continually changing and expanding. Each time I create a new collage I find the bounds of possibility are still unlimited. I have a long and fun journey still ahead.

The project I am submitting is called “The Musicians – Point of Contact”. This project is a study of musicians, their instruments and the interaction between the two. From subtle to intense this interaction creates not only sound but emotion as well.


To submit work for 5 x 5 , email luara@greygalleryandlounge.com

Check out our blog for more information: 5 x 5 Information

Deadline for submissions is February 15, 2010

5 x 5 Submission 16 - Malaina Weinstein

Malaina Weinstein
Malaina Weinstein's Website
I am an Artist at heart and a Interior Designer by day. Since I was very young I have always loved creating Art and Design. I knew that my love of the Arts would in some form become my profession, and I am so grateful that it happened this way. I attended a local art college, Cornish, in downtown Seattle where my artistic abilities were expanded into Sketching, Drawing, Painting, and a BFA in Interior Design. Since graduating, I have worked primarily in residential Interior Design , but have always practiced Freelance Artwork as well. The focus being, mainly mixed media on canvas. The freedom of creating artwork for my own satisfaction as well as my client's, provides a creative fullfillment in my life.

5 x 5 Submission 15 - Kenneth Susynski

Kenneth Susynski
Kenneth Susynski's Website

I was raised abroad due to my father's work with the US government, mostly in Germany yet also in Turkey, South Korea and the United Kingdom. My varied cultural experiences impact my work just as much as any artistic influence.

During the course of my life I've been fortunate to bear witness to historical events and customs in such diverse cultures, and the common thread binding it all together that has kept me keenly fascinated is fluidity of movement - for example, the rich motion of local dancing, the entranced beauty of dervishes, the wild sensations of local cuisine on the tongue. I seek to have my paint move across the canvas in similar spontaneity and long-term effect - to be alive, in motion, in rhythm, never still.














































































To submit work for 5 x 5 , email luara@greygalleryandlounge.com

Check out our blog for more information: 5 x 5 Information

Deadline for submissions is February 15, 2010

5 x 5 Submission 13 - Leslie Irving

Leslie Irving

My artistic interest finds direction along the edge I navigate on many levels with oncology patients--between grief and hope, real and unreal, darkness and light. Art offers the potential both of escape and confrontation that are each vital to the personal journey at the heart of the work I do and the people I’m privileged to meet through it. In my explorations with the camera I find connection with sides of self that are aroused and at the same time confined in my care-provider’s role. Often this need expresses itself in feelings of wonder and awe that compel me in particular directions through the lens. I like the immediacy of photography in this capacity and the balancing experience it involves between inward and outward receptivity. One shapes the other. In the connection of two I feel as much controlled by my subject as I do controlling in the aim of portraying it. Sorting the line out between opens an intriguing door of discovery to what I can identify in reflection about myself, sometimes in ways that I lack expressive ability to otherwise relate.

My recent focus through photography is directed by the explorative potential of teasing the line between the known and unknown. This interest draws me to subjects that are direct and common to the experience of northwest living and artistically inviting for these reasons to the prospect of challenging or deconstructing ingrained associations about them. The combination of water and light reflection I find to be particularly well suited in these regards as both subject and medium.

To submit work for 5 x 5 , email luara@greygalleryandlounge.com

Check out our blog for more information: 5 x 5 Information

Deadline for submissions is February 15, 2010

5 x 5 Submission 12 - Julie Alpert

Julie Alpert
Julie Alpert's Website
My installations are a playful response to the architectural space they inhabit. They are ephemeral and immediate, using disposable or found materials like roadside furniture, house paint, contact paper, and hot pink duct tape. I remove or alter the function of these materials. I approach the installations as a way to animate cold, banal, institutional spaces, creating color, depth, movement, and contrast where it wouldn’t normally exist. My fascination with the illusionistic qualities of film and theater is explored by visually collapsing corners, activating inanimate objects, incorporating synthetic images of naturally occurring materials (brick, wood) and creating a false sense of depth and perspective. My intention is for the work to read as an oversized collage upon first take, and then for the viewer to discover small areas of detail and humor.

My installations are grounded in painting: the study of shape, color, space, surface, light. I prepare 50% of the installation at home in the evenings and complete the remaining 50% on site during the 2-3 days of gallery install. It is not until I arrange my found, altered and homemade objects, and respond with paint and collage materials that an installation reveals its narrative to me. I am delighted to discover the relationships between these objects. They tell me, I don’t impose it on them. The entire process is intuitive, responsive, and subconscious. I am creating an arena, much like in painting, in which I respond to marks with other marks, taking away and adding as needed. The excitement of not knowing what the final results will yield or how I might respond is what fuels my practice.

Bio

Julie was born in Washington, DC at George Washington University Hospital Center. She was raised in the DC suburb of Silver Spring, MD and attended public school. Julie found herself attracted to the fine, performing, and literary arts. She was very bad at math. In high school Julie starred in Shakespeare and in musicals. She was also a host of a cable access show called Art Strands in which she and 3 peers wrote, conducted, filmed and edited interviews with local and national artists including John Waters, Jonathan Richman, and Nat Hentoff. Julie went on to study painting and film theory at University of Maryland where she graduated in 2002 with Honors and spoke at her graduation ceremony. She then spent 3 years as a buyer and manager for a heath food store in the DC area. In 2006, Julie moved to Seattle to earn her MFA in Painting. Since graduating from University of Washington in 2008, she has had multiple exhibitions, is a recipient of the Artist Trust GAP Grant, and a member of SOIL Artist-Run Gallery. She currently lives, works, and shows in Seattle.

To submit work for 5 x 5 , email luara@greygalleryandlounge.com

Check out our blog for more information: 5 x 5 Information

Deadline for submissions is February 15, 2010

5 x 5 Submission 11 - Carol R Williams

Carol R Williams
Carol R Williams on Myspace
Carol R Williams on NW Art Alliance
Carol R Williams on Cafe Press
Carol R Williams recent show

With a Masters Degree in Whole Systems Design I am a designer and leader of deep systemic change. My paintings emphasize relationships between personal, community, organizational, economic, social and ecological issues. I understand these issues from a systems perspective and focus my paintings on preferred sustainable futures as a way of transcending constraints. My M.A.degree has primed me to go beyond narrow problem definitions & the status quo. I approach art & situations in terms of their contexts, interrelationships & dynamics. I imagine & create new possibilities, perspectives & ways of seeing & ways of thinking about traditional 2-dimensional works of art. As a North West Artist the tree has become an ever present symbol in my work. Relationships between past & present, history vs. future, symbols vs. traditions allow me to form layered visions & images that invoke analytical thinking, sustainable conclusions & spiritual metaphors. Deeply interested in issues of environmental/leadership sustainability, diversity and pro-active leadership, these messages play out in my work.

To submit work for 5 x 5 , email luara@greygalleryandlounge.com

Check out our blog for more information: 5 x 5 Information

Deadline for submissions is February 15, 2010