December 1, 2021
Clark College’s Archer Gallery presents
Of a Setting Sun
a two-person exhibition by Anna Fidler & Katy Stone
Exhibition dates: January 3, 2022 – March 11, 2022
Virtual Artist Talk: January 21, 12pm Pacific Time (via Zoom)
In-Person Closing Reception: March 11, 6-8pm Pacific Time (on-campus at Archer Gallery)
Virtual Artist Talk will be held via Zoom at links provided at website below.
Closing Reception will be held in-person on-campus at Clark College’s Archer Gallery. Face masks and completed health screening questionnaire required for entry.
To view the exhibition in-person, please contact Archer Gallery Director Michelle Ramin at mramin@clark.edu to set-up an appointment.
For more details, please visit: http://www.archergallery.space
Exhibition Statement:
Heading into our first in-person, physical exhibition since winter 2020, I wanted this show to be about building captivating worlds. Drawing inspiration from formal design elements, both Anna and Katy make work based on a set of rules they create for themselves – before eventually giving way to innate knowledge and psychic connection.
Anna’s work begins with a grid. She lays down the framework for each piece by lightly drawing out perpendicular lines. These intersections act as a guide that leads her through the composition – like an architect working her way through a blueprint. From there, she adds the color, leaving at least a portion of her beautiful, large-scaled works to chance and intuition. Katy, on the other hand, relies on shapes to guide her, subtly pressing outward from the wall into the depth of the room. She layers two-dimensionally atop two-dimensionality, like cinder blocks that form the foundation for the eventual three-dimensionality that slowly, but surely and entrancingly, forms.
There’s a meditation that exists in this world-building – high craft that sensually pulls you in, but with enough stillness in the in-between, in the negative space, to allow for (and even command) breath. An inhale/exhale pattern of mesmerizing repetition provides inherent life to the space, complementing each other’s works and providing escape hatches out of reality and into a world beyond. Of a Setting Sun is a gasp, a moment, a fractal, a spectrum, a whole and a fragment at once. It becomes hard to look away.
-Michelle Ramin, Of a Setting Sun curator
Anna Fidler
Artist Bio:
Anna Fidler (b. 1973, Traverse City, Michigan) lives in Corvallis, Oregon where she teaches studio art at Oregon State University. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, in 1995 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in studio art from Portland State University in 2005. Fidler has had solo exhibitions at The Boise Art Museum, The Portland Art Museum, Johansson Projects in Oakland, and has been widely exhibited at such venues as The Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science, and Art, The University of Southern California, The Tacoma Art Museum and The Sun Valley Museum of Art. Her exhibitions have been reviewed in publications such as Art in America, The Washington Post, The Oregonian and The San Francisco Chronicle. Her work is held in the collections of The Portland Art Museum, The Boise Art Museum, The Hallie Ford Museum, Portland and Seattle Portable Works Collections. Fidler exhibits with Johansson Projects in Oakland and Charles A. Hartman Fine Art in Portland.
Artist Statement:
I swim in intentional elements—dipping into this other place. That place begins in my studio then jettisons outwards—beyond. The first decision is color followed by emotion. I can feel the energy of color and shape. Spill it. Ink it.
Here: a grid made of pencil, painted symbols, geometric shapes, inked on calligraphic—flat and matte. Rulers, borders, count, glide. Cut paper traced, mirrored. Pointy, jagged shapes. Oval jewels. Fluidly, go. Emit it. Spark it.
Look: Just outside the golden circle there are eight moons, spaced with diamonds. I see this space as a way to walk out and into a new way of perceiving. The studio is an in-between place—liminal. I can feel it. The secret is every day.
I see shapes as passageways, tools for seeing differently. I explore the energy of this language. Symmetry and asymmetry. Collapse and build. Control and ground. Crumple and unfold.
Brushstrokes are painted incantations. Ideas generate, materialize. I harness the energy.
You are far away. You are coming closer. You are interested in my thoughts. I am attracted to objects, people, places—I am a magnet. Scissors, erase, compass, spin. Move in closer, closer, still closer.
Am I a conduit? Reveal it, baby!
Katy Stone
Artist Bio:
Spreading across the wall, spilling onto the floor, or cascading from architectural supports, Katy Stone’s artworks are like Rorschach tests of natural phenomena. She paints on a variety of materials and layers the elements into constructions that explore materiality and transformation, blurring the boundaries between drawing, painting, and sculpture. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally in New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco and Vienna and has been reviewed in many publications including Sculpture Magazine and Art In America. Her works are in museum and corporate collections including Boise Art Museum, The McNay, Columbia University, Michigan State University, Microsoft and Facebook, among others. Stone received her BFA from Iowa State University and her MFA from the University of Washington. She lives and works in Seattle.
Artist Statement:
My work explores materiality, phenomena and beauty. I use industrial materials that are light, that call attention to themselves as surfaces. Everything I choose is a thin thing. I paint, cut, and layer these surfaces into constructions that blur the boundaries between drawing, painting, and sculpture. My pieces capture a kind of monumentality and at the same time a feeling of transience. They brim with dualities: organic/synthetic, micro/macro, real/imaginary, moving/still. The recurring natural forms and forces I evoke are allusions of elemental power and symbols of transformation.
This installation explores the poetry of geometric abstraction, color, and material. Evoking atmospheric phenomena and elements of landscape, these emblematic works offer psychic and physical space for contemplation.
Please contact Michelle Ramin, Director of Archer Gallery, for inquiries.
360.992.2246 | http://www.clark.edu/archergallery | mramin@clark.edu