Finalists: Josiah Bell, Nathan Campbell, Eric Chan, merkuria/Johanna Czerwińska, Ian Shearer, Kristen Thacker, and JoEllen Wang
Jurors: George Brandt, Rajaa Gharbi & Trevor Doak
July 4-27, 2019
Thursday, Friday & Saturday Noon-5 pm,
Reception: Friday July 19, 2019 5-7 pm
Congratulations to the winners of this exhibition, Josiah Bell and JoEllen Wang. We are excited to welcome both of these talented artists to our ranks. Be sure to look for their upcoming exhibitions in January 2019.
Welcome to our inaugural Gallery 110 Emerging Artist Scholarship Competition Exhibition – we are thrilled to bring to fruition something we’ve been fund raising and planning for the last 2-3 years. We would like to thank each and every person whose generous contribution has helped to make this program a reality.
The seven King County artists in this show have been selected from a much larger group of submissions. Each semi-finalists is in an early stage of their careers and each has work that merits a Gallery 110 scholarship membership opportunity. The final prize-winner, selected by our three-member jury, will be awarded a full 18-month membership with the same benefits and responsibilities as other members: a solo show, a Gallery 110 artist website page, and the opportunity to participate in gallery operations. We hope that our winner can leverage the experience as a springboard into a successful career as a fine artist. Please see below for more information.
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Josiah Bell, Tag (2015) Monotype: Charbonnel etching ink on paper (BFK Rives), 18 x 24 inches, N.F.S.Josiah Bell has always preferred working in black and white and therefore printmaking, and specifically monotypes have proven an ideal medium for him, allowing him to explore the velvety blacks unique to printmaking. “Tag” well represents his series of monotype prints: monochromatic, a diverse range of interacting marks, and a horizontal composition that allows the viewer to read the individual marks as if they were words on a page, communicating the idea of a visual ‘langue’.
Josiah Bell is a Korean adoptee who grew up in a family of seven in Birmingham Alabama. He received his BFA from Lesley University in Boston, where his primary focus was printmaking. This is where he would discover the wide variety of processes that printmaking had to offer and the unique imagery that could be achieved through it. -
Nathan Campbell, Motion 1.2 (2019), Digital Photograph on Inkjet Paper, 16 x 24, $300Nathan Campbell’s “Motion” series is a reflection on how we all experience movement everyday in our lives and yet movement means drastically different things for each individual. Some can move easily; others only with great difficulty or pain. Some may reference moving between states or across oceans, others may infer moving on from a point in their personal history fraught with emotion. His works attempt to allow all points of reflection to be triggered.
Nathan Campbell is an artist currently attending the University of Washington Bothell. He is pursuing a BA in Educational studies and a BA in Interdisciplinary Arts. Aside from visual artwork, he likes to write poetry and hike. -
Eric Chan, Lion’s Head Beef Ball (2019), Oil on reclaimed wood panel, 16.5 x 16.5 inches, $408Chan uses elements of fantasy, science fiction, pop and object culture, and religious iconography (all of which have rich overlapping canons of patriarchal Eurocentric values) and contrasts them with narratives that aim to decolonize and re-appropriate them for the rest of us. Lion’s Head Beef Ball - inspired by the Shanghainese stewed meatball dish of the same name 獅子頭, named after its resemblance to the Guardian Lion - a Buddhist architectural ornament that guards the entrances to imperial palaces and tombs. In this version of the Lion’s Head Beef Ball, Chan re-imagines a royal fantasy feast that is uncharacteristically liberated from an historically pervasive aversion to queerness.
Eric Chan’s artwork combines ink line drawing and oil painting on reclaimed wood panels - with each piece possessing unique dimensions, colors and textures. Chan finds that “there is no standard white traditionally-primed surface from which I might express the way people like me (queer, immigrant, left-handed, mixed ancestry / interracial marriage / multigenerational household) exist and experience a world that comprehensively, pervasively, subliminally erases and disfavors us. -
merkuria/Joanna Czerwińska, Border White on Blue (2019), Drawing on cyanotype background on paper, 27.6 x 19.7 inches, $2670Merkuria / Joanna Czerwinska’s "border / personality borders” works are cycle of drawings created with thousands of squares. The works focus on personality: what makes up the personality - features of character, personal preference, repeated behavior and habits – or emotions felt, experiences remembered? What maintains the integrity of a personality? How little is needed for it to disintegrate? At what point are the borders of acceptable character traits factors transgressed?
merkuria / Joanna Czerwinska was born and raised in Poland, where she became an experienced and award-winning visual artist and illustrator. Specializing in working with two-dimensional space, she combines elements of drawing, printmaking and painting while exploring human emotions and their interface with reality. -
Ian Shearer, Waiting at the Crossroads (2018), Acrylic on canvas, 28 X 22 inches, $1100Shearer writes: “Like a lot of my work, this piece explores perception and the beauty found in an ordinary moment. Light and shadow sculpt forms that appear and fade as if a dream. How things feel supersedes what they appear to be. Some forms are insubstantial, seemingly seen through, while others hum with their own music. Here at the crossroads, the divine meets the mundane. A stolen moment of quiet contemplation, is also an act of conjuring—the beginning at the end.”
Ian Shearer is a Seattle based artist and graduate of The Academy of Art of San Francisco. In 2018 he survived a massive stroke. Through therapy he was able to regain use of the right side of his body. However his painting style and abilities were greatly changed. Currently, Ian’s work focuses on urban nightscapes, as severe light and sound sensitivity make the daytime world a difficult place to navigate. -
Kristen Thacker, Frustration (2017), watercolor pencil and brushwork on 96lb acid-free Bristol paper, 17 × 14 inches, $ 1250This piece is inspired by an insurance company that denied a medical necessity. At the end of your rope with the kiddos!? Someone KEY your car or run a shopping cart into it?! Cable company charging fees then charging fees for the flees they shouldn’t have charged you in the first place?! Got lost in a phone tree when all you want to do is ask a simple question to a “real" person?!
Kristen Thacker is a self-taught Seattle artist. Much of her work has a darker gritty flavor that stems from her battle with chronic pain. Drawing and painting is a crucial part of her therapy toward emotional and physical health. Kristen’s skull collection explores mood, personality, and the fragility of life. The emotions collection illustrates several dramatic stages she went through while the physical pain and limitations were at their worst. -
JoEllen Wang, Factory Spec (2017), Ink and watercolor on paper, 30 x 22 inches, $1410 (or three payments of $470)Factory Spec is part of a series titled Disembodying Women. With combustion engine parts and female anatomy, Wang makes up decorative patterns and imagined anatomic diagrams. She is contemplating gender norms, domesticity, medicine, and the politics surrounding the female body. She writes, "As women, we are habituated to the idea that others know better, that expert professionals know more than we could ever find out by ourselves."
JoEllen Wang lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband, two kids, and some chickens. She has an insatiable curiosity about. the values we ascribe to our things. This she attributes to a nomadic, multi-cultural childhood. The inspiration for her paintings comes from everyday life in an urban environment and she paints images of familiar objects and subjects which for her simultaneously trigger nostalgia and complicated feelings about reality.
ABOUT THE EMERGING ARTIST PROGRAM
Young artists starting careers have never faced such daunting odds as at present. Whether they are just finishing school or self-taught individuals committed to full-time artistic endeavors, they are “emerging” at a time when art galleries are struggling. Many small to mid-size galleries are closing, further limiting exposure opportunities for an emerging artist. We hope to play a role in helping to offset this recent trend.
We envision our Emerging Artist Program evolving as it grows, allowing selected artists to become better prepared for entering the larger art world through mutual learning from colleagues while directly engaging in gallery activities. Having such an experience early in one’s career can boost one’s confidence while dispelling common myths of “making it” in the art world.
Through this program, Gallery 110 will engage younger, experimental, and more diverse artists while providing the public who visit galleries in Pioneer Square with thought-provoking and dynamic art experiences.
We are looking for partners, seeking grant opportunities, sponsors and individual donors to help support and share in this vision. Please let us know if you can help in any manner.
