the talkies is a series of Artist Talks that began as the combined result of COVID and the desire to make artist content available to the public in lieu of in-person discussion.
the project continued upon artists’ request and are archived here and on youtube.
Wall of Memories: Diane Kahlo and Adalberto Castellon Jr. April 2023
During the last twenty years, my work has addressed the intersection of violence against vulnerable populations and the human assault on our environment. “Disposable” has been a frequent term, linking the populations of people seen as less important or replaceable to the disregard and lack of protection of our environment and animal life. I found the mandala a perfect vehicle to use objects that are disposed into landfills and polluting our water sources.…giving new life to the disposable.
A mandala is a symbol for the cycle of rebirth and life, and often represents the sacred or the Divine in many spiritual practices. The Aztec calendar, the Tibetan Mandala, the "eye of God" symbol from many indigenous spiritual practices are all based on circles, repetitive shapes often radiating out from a center. It is a symbol for the energy of the sun.
The repetitive shapes and designs are meant to symbolize the tedious repetitive tasks forced upon laborers in sweat shops, on farms, and in food processing factories.
This talk was coordinated by houseguest, and led by local activist and organizer Adalberto Castellon Jr.
Receiver: Lalana Fedorschak. May 2022
Lalana Fedorschak (she/they) is an artist and educator based in Louisville, Kentucky. Lalana holds a BFA from Northern Arizona University and an MFA in from Ohio University. They are currently the Artist in Residence, Visiting Professor, and Studio Technician in Ceramics at Indiana University Southeast.
Lalana is influenced by body horror and practical effects, queer theory, phenomenology, sex politics, and imaging techniques. She makes ceramic sculptures that incorporate wood, metal, and textile elements, building interior scenes within the exhibition space.
Lalana also maintains a photography practice, expressing their identity through abstract self-portraiture. Sculpture and photo forms complement one another in real space, creating friction between object/image and body/mind.
Gathered Lack: Kacey Slone, February 2021
Kacey Slone was raised in a cornfield in Southern Indiana. She received a MFA in Intermedia at the University of Texas at Arlington. Her work investigates identity, memory, and how place affects one's belonging. By using familiar objects, Slone hopes to connect with others through collective memory. Kacey teaches at Indiana University Southeast and works as a gallery manager for the Barr Gallery and the Pat Harrison Fine Art + Design Gallery.
Virtual Paradise: Jen Dwyer, Gracelee Lawrence, and curator Samantha Simpson. February, 2021
Samantha Simpson
Simpson is an art historian and curator based in Lexington, KY. She received her BA in Art History from William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ. In 2014, she entered the graduate Art History and Visual Studies program at the University of Kentucky, where her passion lay in art of the late medieval and Renaissance periods. In 2016, she took the position as Director of Art Galleries and Curator of Collections at the Galleries at Georgetown College, in Georgetown, KY. In this role, Samantha has had the opportunity to work with numerous emerging and mid-career artists, both nationally and internationally. She has also worked on various independent curatorial projects, including Aurora, a group exhibition at the Lexington Art League in Lexington, KY in January 2019, and Virtual Paradise, a two-person collection of work by Jen Dwyer and Gracelee Lawrence.
Jen Dwyer
The Female Gaze is an alternative way of seeing that represents everyone as a subject and acknowledges that people have complicated narratives. Dwyer constructs fanciful porcelain vessels and sculptures housed within her installations adorned with acrylic and oil paintings. Fusing with contemporary feminist themes, Dwyer merges iconography from prehistoric imagery (such as the Venus of Willendorf, which is thought to be a self-portrait of the artist) with the Rococo Aesthetic. She creates an amalgamation of ceramic sculpture and paintings to examine contemporary socially constructed identity notions by invoking the female gaze. The Female Gaze, coined by Jill Soloway, was created in response to Laura Mulvey's theorization of "the Male Gaze," which is when cinematic depictions of women are seen as objects of male pleasure. The Female Gaze is an alternative way of seeing, a way of looking or representing that seeks to give everyone agency and make everyone a subject. Rococo art was created in reaction to boredom with the baroque style, and instead opted to depict humor, wit, emotion, and whimsy. Characterized by its light-heartedness, the Rococo presents itself at a more intimate scale, often in private spaces. I aim to create otherworldly installations, filled with ceramic sculptures, to blur private and public barriers, subject and object, and self and others.
Gracelee Lawrence
Lawrence's work deals with relationships between food, the body, and technology. It is born in the transfigurative space between physical and digital reality, exploring the ways in which bodies are both gendered and metaphorically fragmented in terms of capitalist-driven material desires, physical sustenance, and the digital spaces we inhabit. There is a waning tension between digital and physical space. The boundaries are quickly dissolving as, on average, Americans spend nearly one-fifth of our waking hours on our phones. Lawrence is interested in this shift. Her work parallels these translations and our shifting perception of reality that is no longer merely relegated to physical sensations. For the digitally tethered, life is at the intersection of the virtual and the physical. Experience is tempered through a stream of simultaneous meta-interactions, archives, extensions, and reflections of 'experienced' reality. The truncated and disembodied limbs, fruits, and packaging parallel the fragmentation and compartmentalization encouraged in digital space by questioning literal and metaphorical touch, or even the sensation of closeness, between bodies. This work becomes whole through the translation and recombination of the digital and physical, relying equally on digital fabrication and hand augmentation. Made using digital fabrication and human labor, the objects themselves come into existence from the reciprocal translation of the digital to the physical (and vice-versa), ending with a physical manifestation. In our current technology-focused world, the action of physical making through digital means underpins my belief in the potential of technology and the power of objectness, the importance of things that unapologetically hold their mass in the world.
Place: Lindsey Dezman. November 2020
I explore materials and objects as a means to understand the movement of time. As we age so do the things around us; the steps upon our front door creak and slump more with every season, while a fossilized, thousand year old dinosaur bone is a test of time. My work is inspired from these pulses of life. The results are simple ceramic forms with a focus on material exploration. All materials inherently have a lifespan and I choose to focus on that with the work that I create. For Place, the installation at houseguest, I explored the diverse hues of a singular clay body. As each form is made form the same clay, they are fired to different temperatures which causes the difference in color.
This installation comprises various vessel shapes that float an ambiguous timeline between contemporary forms and ancient divverware. Encapsulated within a painted archway, Place references a classical sense of architecture. In the corner of the gallery sits Stacks. Installedu nder a small archway, the delicate pile of bowls and plates transports us to a place of the familiar and what we see within our own kitchen cabinets. Together these works bring the viewer to places of collapsed time, classical archways, and domestic setting.