Breakers & Bastards - Jim Ford

Breakers & Bastards is an exhibition of paintings and collage art by Jim Ford. Using elements of typography, bold colors, patterned fabrics and found objects, Ford creates eccentric artworks that swell with playful energy. The Breakers are pieces that broke new ground for the artist, leading to new methods and bodies of work. Bastards are the outliers that never fit in to a series. Together, they present a six year journey through a detailed creative process.

Jim Ford (b.1981) is a type designer and visual artist living and working in Milwaukee. He studied art and Graphic Design at Columbia College Chicago, graduating in 2005. While honing his craft as a type designer, Jim also forayed into poster art, creating silkscreened editions for shows and events. Around this time, he developed his collage techniques further and began moving toward abstraction. Jim continues to evolve as a dynamic creative person, striking a harmonious balance between art and type.

OPEN ON SATURDAYS: January 12 - February 28, 2019
ARTIST RECEPTION: January 12, 2019, 6-9 PM
OPEN FOR GALLERY NIGHT: January 18, 2019, 5-9 PM

GROVE GALLERY
832 S. 5TH ST. MILWAUKEE, WI
GALLERYGROVE.COM

The God-Almighty Stanley Ryan Jones $ell$ Out

Opening Reception: Fall Gallery Night; Friday, October 19th, 2018. 5 – 9pm.
Also open on Gallery Day – October 20th, 2018. 1-5pm
Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 12-5pm through November 23rd, 2018.

“The God-Almighty Stanley Ryan Jones $ell$ Out” is a retrospective of 40 years work in photography, painting, collage, sculpture and shadow boxes.

Hundreds of black & white photographs documenting the late 70’s Punk/New Wave scene and late 80’s Dance Clubs in Milwaukee.

Two dozen large paintings composed of latex caulk applied like cake frosting and painted in candy colors.

More than 50 sculptures assembled from all manner of wooden objects: bowls, keys, weapons, fruit and hand-carved animals.

Over 30 shadow-boxes featuring action figures, children’s toys and religious icons playing with absurd and brutal truths.

80 fantastic paintings and monoprints made from drips, splatters, coffee cup rings, and bingo daubers.  

400+ Unique Works of Fine Affordable Art. Everything Must Go.

Stanley Ryan Jones, born 1951 in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, graduated from Mayville High in 1970. He was immediately drafted into the US Army and served in Bamberg, Germany.  Jones has been recognized for documenting the punk and new wave scene in late 70’s Milwaukee. His work was published primarily in the Bugle American and New York Rocker.  In 2007, the Milwaukee Art Museum accepted a collection of 83 prints titled “Milwaukee’s Blank Generation” into their permanent collection.

In 1981, Jones left Milwaukee to become a smokejumper and for five seasons parachuted from planes to fight wildfires in the American West.  On his 91st and final jump, he shattered his ankle colliding with the top of a pine tree. He moved to back Milwaukee, settling in at the infamous Norman Apartments.  When the Norman burned down in 1991, he lost all but a fraction of his work.

More recently, Jones was the Artist in Residence at Hi-Fi Cafe from 2011-2017.  He’s a member of the collaborative printmaking band, The Dry Points. He is also Frank Lloyd Wright’s fourth cousin.   

Musical Prints and Choreographed Lines: Works by Arthur Thrall

July 14 to September 1st, 2018
Opening reception, Saturday, July 14, 1 – 5pm.   
Also open on Gallery Night – July 20, 5-9pm & Gallery Day – July 21, 1-5pm
Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 12-5 and by appointment (contact 414-520-3891) 

Musical Prints and Choreographed Lines is an exhibition of etchings, engravings and drawings by Arthur Thrall.  His complex images include music notations, scientific illustration and bits of illuminated manuscripts.  The marks of these distinct symbolic languages are a kind of visual music. The honed techniques of this master printmaker are on full display in these prints.  The use of multiple plates, music engraving punches, myriad intaglio processes and hand-coloring demonstrate Thrall's expansive approach to printmaking. 

Arthur Thrall (1926 – 2015) was a printmaker, painter, Professor Emeritus of Art and former Charles S. Farrar-Laura Norcross Marrs Professor of Fine Arts at Lawrence University. Winner of numerous awards, his prints and paintings are included in national and international museum collections, including the Tate, Victoria & Albert and British museums and corporations.  Thrall’s art has recently been featured by the Museum of Wisconsin Art, Cedarburg Art Museum and Lawrence University.   

On view will be a video, “Orchestrated Lines,”  of Thrall creating “Confluence” which shows him engraving, punching, proofing and printing the plate.  It will be shown at the gallery with the music punches and the printing plate. 

“Viewers will find his work aesthetically pleasing and intellectually engaging.”  
-- Beth Zinsli, director of the Wriston Art Gallery.     See arthurthrall.com 

Website: Arthurthrall.com
Press: https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2018/08/16/visual-art-enthralled-by-arthur-thrall/

"Variations", Engraving by Arthur Thrall

Partly Cloudy Skies: The Skyscape Series. Paintings and Drawings by Todd Mrozinski

Over the last decade, the sky has been a haven, a collaborator and an inspiration to Todd.  Skies and clouds have emerged in his work as the visual equivalent of freedom and transition.  The work in this show spans ten years of both observed and imagined skies from various points of view. 

Todd Mrozinski acquired his BFA in painting and drawing from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design in 1997 where he was the recipient of a Frederick Layton Scholarship and attended The New York Studio Program. He and his wife, Renee Bebeau, have a studio in The Nut Factory in Milwaukee, WI. Todd was the 2015-16 Pfister Artist-in-Residence and curator of The Pfister Pop-Up Gallery.

He is currently represented by The Woodman/Shimko Gallery, Provincetown, MA and Palm Springs, CA.

Opening Reception
Friday, April 13, 6-9pm
Artist Talk
Saturday, April 21, 1-2pm
Show runs April 13- May 26

Out From the Darkness - Drawings and Prints by Gregory Martens

“Out From the Darkness” Is an art exhibition of new drawings and prints by Milwaukee artist and master printmaker Gregory Martens. “Out From the Darkness”  refers to letting go of the influences and pressures of academic training and just trying to channel the teenaged kid back in the 1970’s who loved drawing for endless hours while listening to rock and roll on the 8-track. There is also darkness in the drawings which depict demons, comics, snakes, skeletons, monsters, crying babies, bad boys, and cool cars. The exhibition features richly detailed black ink drawings, acrylic paintings, and screen prints. 

Martens has developed a series of incredibly detailed sketchbooks over the last 16 months to support his work. A beautiful anthology of his best pages entitled “The Sketchbook of Gregory Martens” (Waterhouse Press, Milwaukee) will be available for purchase during the opening reception. You will get a rare glimpse into the psyche of a working artist complete with finished drawings, comics, tidbits of found wisdom, copies of the great masters, fascinating quotes, and Martens’ inviting sense of humor. 

Over the years Gregory Martens, a natural storyteller, has been a janitor, graphic designer, traveling salesman, a shoe cobbler, a university art professor, and bone marrow cancer survivor. His diverse experience includes winning first place at an international show carving competition in Harbin, China, receiving a research grant to study Spanish tiles in Lima, Peru, and presenting an etching demonstration for the Milwaukee Art Museum Print Forum. 

Martens’ works have been exhibited and collected around the world at venues including the JM Kohler Art Museum, The International Print Center of New York, The Milwaukee Art Museum Print Collection, The Museum of Wisconsin Art, and the Southern Graphics Council Archive. 

Artist Reception
Friday, Oct. 20, 2017; 5-9 pm. Cold beer and live blues/folk music by Graveyard Shift
Artist Talk
Saturday, Oct. 21, 2017; 12-5 pm, Gallery Talk at 2:00 pm 

Gallery Hours: 
Open on Saturdays 12-5 pm and weekdays by appointment,
Show runs through November 3, 2017

Final-Final: Paintings by Jim Finnerty

Opening Reception
Friday, July 21, 2017; 5-9 pm
Saturday, July 22, 2017; 12-5 pm

Final-Final: A Vietnam vet’s plight with PTSD through his art showcases the abstract paintings by the late artist, Jim Finnerty.  On display will be 20 pieces from his painting career.  This is the first gallery exhibition of the artist’s work since his passing in 2016.

Jim Finnerty went to the Layton School of Art to study commercial art before enlisting with the Army in 1967-68, which included a year of deployment to Saigon.  He served as a military police officer in charge of investigating accidents involving military vehicles.  Upon returning to Wisconsin, Finnerty finished his degree and established a successful graphic design business, DesignCor.

In 2008, Jim was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after seeking treatment with the Milwaukee VA Medical Center.  It was through the VA that he began to use painting as a meditative act to deal with his trauma.  He devoted himself to his painting and in 2010 took second place in the National Veterans Arts Competition with his piece, “Year of the Monkey”.

His paintings are abstract departures from landscapes, focusing on the actions of color on the horizon.  Creating a balance between the calmness of the horizon and the full emotion of his saturated pigments, Finnerty applies the paint with palette knives, sponges and rags.  Writing for “Caggio Blog: an Art Experiment” in 2010, blogger Maureen Mulhern observed the tension of a graphic designer creating spontaneous, abstract forms:

“Choosing to work not from photography, but rather from a vibrant library of memories categorized by color and texture, Finnerty's paintings provide a balance of recognizable to purely abstract and emotive representations. In color fields of rough geometry lies a structure by which memories are placed like elements in a pictorial space, creating strong compositions varying in mood. As concept is key, the artist uses his superb understanding of color to inform his process--one that is remarkably spontaneous!”

Join us as we pay tribute to a man whose life and talent were taken from us too soon.  

Gallery Hours:
Saturdays 12-5 pm and weekdays by appointment.
Show runs through September 22, 2017.

Otherlands 5-D - Nina Bednarski

Opening Reception
Friday, April 21, 2017; 5-9 pm
Saturday, April 22, 2017; 12-5 pm

Otherlands 5-D remarks on landscape traditions through the personal narrative of the artist, Nina Bednarski. Her work pays homage to nature and the limitless realities envisioned within it. Her use of color and methodical painting techniques join to create the bright and enchanted environments in Otherlands 5-D. Striving to reach a meditative state while painting, Bednarski created this new body of work to inspire the mind and heart.

The paintings in Otherlands 5-D are made primarily with enamel on glass and acrylic on canvas. A methodical, slow-painting approach achieves a smooth, blemish-free surface reminiscent of mechanical print processes.  Experiments in mixed media sculpture accent and combine with the paintings to achieve poetic foregrounds that the landscape paintings enrich.

Nina Bednarski is a multi-media artist working and living in Milwaukee, WI.  After graduating with a BA from the University of Wisconsin in Madsion, she began a fifteen year career of group, solo, university and museum shows across Wisconsin, Chicago, and New York City (where she maintained a Brooklyn studio for many years.)  More recently, Nina has taken on several large curatorial projects in raw spaces, storefronts and experimental galleries in Milwaukee.  To learn more, visit www.ninabednarski.com  

Gallery Hours: 
Saturdays 12-5 pm and weekdays by appointment.
Show runs through Saturday June 18, 2017.

Warmer: Modern Quilts and Weaving from the Upper Midwest

Opening Reception
Friday, January 20, 2017; 5-9 pm
Saturday, October 21, 2017; 12-4 pm

WARMER features a selection of modern weavings and quilts by four regional artists working in fibers.  Their individual practices oppose the disconnect between work and meaning. Using traditional techniques requires long investments of time and careful consideration of materials.  This collection of work is a comforting yet critical response to consumerism and industries that thrive on exploitation.

Work like theirs whispers to the person seeing or touching it. It vibrates with the energy used to create it; deep concentration, patience, tenderness, hopefulness, and time are vital to construction.  The artists have developed unique approaches to fiber arts less through formal training than through their personal desire to create and explore.

MANDI SMETHELLS graduated with a BFA in printmaking from UW-Eau Claire , and currently reside in St Paul, MN. For the weavings in this series, she repurposed leather from five jackets found at thrift stores. Contrasting the texture of leather with colorful yarns transforms this unconventional pairing into delicate and beautiful wall-hangings.

AMANDA TOLLEFSON received her BFA in painting from Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design in 2003. She was inspired by ski fashion and the solar system as she designed the quilts featured in Warmer.  They are made of recycled sweatshirts that would otherwise be destined for a landfill. The utilitarian aspect of these quilts is elevated by their intended potential to transfer love.

JENNA VALOE is a self-taught textile artist with a BA in Cultural Anthropology from UW-Milwaukee. She is a daydreamer who attributes her innate fiber skills to the abundance of makers in her ancestry.  Considering place-making, symbolism, and magic in daily life, she employs large color planes in gentle  combinations to capture the calm of rural skylines.

KELLY WANDERER is a weaver and musician with a BS in Film Studies from UW-Milwaukee. Her formal introduction to weaving began in a a class at ABK Weaving Center.  She’s taught herself complex weaving skills through analysis of 1960s and 70s weaving books.  Her techniques produce technically sound fabrics using modern yarns and historic patterns. She’s drawn to the immersive nature of the act of weaving.

Leslie Vaglica, the curator of Warmer, lives in Milwaukee. She holds degrees in drawing,  political science, and apparel design. She currently works in costuming for dance, opera, and theater.  

Gallery Hours:
Fridays 5-9 pm, Saturdays 12-5 pm and weekdays by appointment.
Show Runs through Saturday March 18, 2017.

The Last of the Bohemians - Bob Watt (1925-2012)

Opening Reception:
Friday, October 21, 2016; 5-9 pm
Saturday, October 22, 2016 12-4 pm

“The Last of the Bohemians” features a suite of ten Native American landscape paintings from the private collection of Jimmy von Milwaukee. This is the first public thematic exhibition of Watt’s works since his death in 2012.

“The Last of the Bohemians” showcases Watt’s signature style of Native American Chiefs in repose on appropriated sofa-size commercial art landscapes.  

In Watt’s playful style, chiefs are “photo-bombs” that lurk in the background, dominate the composition, or meld into the picture like a double exposure in the wasteland of commercial kitsch.

Sampling the facial masks of modern art masters, 19th century portrait photography and the whimsical three-dimensional play of mobiles, Watt creates images that are haunting and haughty totems signifying the clash of the natural and manmade world that requires the viewer to  question what is and what isn’t art.

Bob Watt was a Milwaukee poet, artist and provocateur.  He was considered the most published Wisconsin poet.  His artwork is in numerous private and public collections including Jimmy Carter Library, Hugh Hefner, Jack Nicholson, John Shimon & the late Julie Lindemannn and the Vatican.

Gallery Hours: Saturdays 12-5 pm and weekdays by appointment.
Show Runs through Saturday, December 17th, 2016

View fullsize

Bob Watt painting in his studio, 1997.  Photo courtesy of J. Shimon & J. Lindemann.

Viewshed - Jessica Meuninck-Ganger

Opening Receptions:
Summer Gallery Night & Day
Friday, July 22nd, 2016 from 5-9 pm and Saturday, July 23rd, 2016 from 12-5 pm

Closing Reception:  
Doors Open Milwaukee
Saturday, September 17th, 2016 and Sunday, September 18th, 10 am-5 pm

Gallery Hours: Thurs & Fri, 5-9 pm; Saturday, 12-4 pm

Jessica Meuninck-Ganger's visual art practice can be framed as communal engagement in “making” by means of papercrafts and printmaking. She has a dedicated interest in learning and sharing the traditions of these practices, practices that are rooted in ideas of locale and community. Printed assemblages of built environments utilize paper's strength, translucency, touch, surface, and materiality to offer a unique "Viewshed".

Jessica Meuninck-Ganger’s prints, artist’s books and large-scale hybrid media works have been exhibited in museums and both experimental and commercial galleries regionally, nationally and internationally. Her works are included in several private and public collections, including the Weisman Museum of Art, Northwestern Mutual, the Target Corporation, and in contemporary publications, such as Andrea Ferber’s, Sustenance: Contemporary Printmaking Now, Richard Noyce’s, Printmaking Beyond the Edge, and Nathaniel Stern’s, Interactive Art and Embodiment: The Implicit Body as Performance. Jessica received a BS degree in Art Education from Ball State University and a MFA in Studio Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She is currently the Print and Narrative Forms Area Head, Associate Professor, and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

CASTINGS Made at MATC, 1980-2013, by Celine Farrell

Opening Receptions: 
Friday, April 15th, 2016 from 5-9 pm and Saturday, April 16th, 2016 from 12-4 pm

Closing Reception:  
Saturday, June 18, 12-4 pm

Gallery Hours: Thurs & Fri, 5-9 pm; Saturday, 12-4 pm

During the 1970s, artist Celine Farrell took welding, metallurgy and foundry classes at Milwaukee Area Technical College.  By 1980, she had created a set of techniques to create aluminum castings from polystyrene patterns.  Over the next 33 years, she remained enrolled in the foundry, casting over 200 sculptures.  Working within the themes of puzzles and natural cycles, Farrell creates castings that are reverent and playful.  

Celine Farrell earned a BFA in Advertising Art from the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, WI an MFA in Painting from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI, and an MA in Sculpture from Pius XII Institute in Florence, Italy.  A born-and-raised Wisconsin artist, Farrell purchased a Cream City Victorian commercial building in the Walker's Point Neighborhood in 1972 and has lovingly restored it for over 40 years.  She takes great pride in her building's garden which features many native Wisconsin flowers and grasses.  She's been a part of countless solo and group shows and has public sculpture on permanent display in Milwaukee's south side.