The waterfront comes to life with a big after-hours party to kick off the Late Shift Summer Series. Music, activities, and art await on all three floors.
Target Gallery joins the festivities with its 2019 Solo Exhibition reception, too.
Save the dates for more Summer Series Late Shift events on Fridays, July 12 and August 9.
Welcome Julia Kwon, the 2019 Solo Exhibition artist in the Target Gallery. The Art Center partners with Congressman Don Beyer’s Office to host the top twelve honoree’s of the 2019 Congressional High School Art Competition from Virginia’s 8th Congressional District. The Mason Arts Project Studio welcomes MFA Candidate Danielle Dravenstadt and the launch of her project, Tend.
Artists Strange Lens and Andi Benge are the two performance artists behind the collaborative group STRANGELAND. Tonight they present A groTEAsque PARTY, an elaborate performance featuring contributions by Jessica Kallista, Katie Macyshyn, Lilia Gestson, and Matt Nolan.
FEATURED ARTISTS
PERFORMANCE: A groTEAsque PARTY
STRANGELAND
STRANGELAND is a collaboration between artists Strange Lens and Andi Benge. Join the artists in the Grand Hall along with a curated assortment of guests for a series of performance pieces throughout the night, all centered around a Mad Hatter-esque tea party in the center of the Hall.
Featured Artists:
- StrangeLand
- Jessica Kallista
- Katie Macyshyn
- Lilia Gestson
- Matt Nolan
ABOUT THE PROJECTS AND PERFORMERS
JESSICA KALLISTA: INSTIGATING BLISS
Jessica Kallista
Jessica Kallista is an artist, teacher, juror, curator, and gallery director. She received her MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in poetry from George Mason University in 2002. In November 2014 she founded Olly Olly, an alternative art space, in Fairfax, Virginia. She has served as Business Representative on the City of Fairfax Commission on the Arts. Jessica has taught collage at the Corcoran School of Arts & Design GW and poetry, critical theory, aesthetics, and writing for artists at George Mason University. She is Gallery Director of Buchanan Partners Art Gallery at the Hylton Performing Arts Center. Through her multi-faceted work in visual and literary art, Jessica seeks to disrupt the isolation of those living in suburbia and elsewhere by creating situations of surprise, play, and experimentation while instigating dialogue about gender, sexuality, feminism, embodiment, decolonization, commodity fetishism, spirituality, pleasure, and interconnectivity. Jessica’s work has been shown at a variety of venues including Target Gallery, GRACE, The Fridge, Tempus Projects, Rhizome, VisArts, NoMüNoMü, Fenwick Gallery at George Mason University, Galerie Kritiku Prague, Watergate Gallery, and the Margaret W. and Joseph L. Fisher Art Gallery.
Project Statement: “Joy, Love, and Bliss are revolutionary acts. We must lay claim to the everyday moments of our lives and demand that they are filled with bliss. Rooted in the belief that what we practice we become, Jessica Kallista’s Instigating Bliss disrupts the passive nihilism intrinsic in many of our everyday lives by countering with the intentional, active, manifestation-oriented pursuit of revolutionary everyday bliss through meditation and play. She counters with tea, books, kisses, sweetness, music, light, flowers, laughter, community, consensual touch, luxury, comfort, pleasure, and sensuousness. Jessica invites you to participate in her Everyday Bliss Meditation. Take the corpse out of your mouth. Love, laugh, taste, touch, dance, play.”
Katie Macyshyn
KATIE MACYSHYN: SWEET GREEN KATIE MAGICIAN
Katie Macyshyn received her BFA, with a focus in performance art, from the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design at George Washington University. Macyshyn uses high camp to make the profane spiritual and vice versa. Her work has been included in various performance festivals, including ITINERANT, Staten Island, NY; PGH PAF , Pittsburgh, PA; Transmodern Festival, Baltimore, MD; and (e)merge Art Fair, Washington, DC. Her work has also been included in gallery exhibitions at VisArts, Rockville, MD; IA&A at Hillyer, Washington, DC; and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Through workshops, creative group activities, and high camp multimedia rituals, Macyshyn’s work helps recover lost parts of the soul. Her pieces are speculative journeys that mix the sacred and profane. From a place of radical empathy, radical inclusiveness, and radical self love, the work helps overcome familial or societal guilt and shame in order to live a life of empowered self-expression and integration as simultaneously sexual, spiritual, and social beings.
Project Statement: “In the performance Sweet Green Katie Magician performs a musical number to the tune of MacArthur Park by Jimmy Webb in the style of Donna Summer. The piece references the French Revolution as an analogy for the bourgeoisie’s blissful ignorance towards the daily lived experience of the working class. As the ballad builds in intensity, pieces of cake with green icing, as references in the lyrics, will fall from the performer’s costume.”
Lilia Gestson
LILIA GESTSON: I AM RED
Lilia Gestson grew up in the suburbs of DC where she cultivated her love for the visual and performing arts. As a performing artist, Lilia pursued a career in dance with Pittsburgh Ballet Theater. During her recovery from an injury, she discovered her love for the visual arts and shifted her artistic focus to fine art. She is currently living in Gaithersburg Maryland and pursuing a Fine Arts degree at Montgomery College.
“I Am Red” is a performance artwork by Lilia Gestson that will be performed throughout the duration of the event. She will be dressed in all white at the Tea Party asking visitors their opinions on menstruation. The visitors will then be encouraged to write their answers on her clothing with red pens.
Project Statement: “I Am Red” is a performance artwork inspired by my own frustration with my menstrual cycle and the lack of open conversation within our society about this topic. Though we are making large strides, there is still stigma around the topic of menstruation and it causes many to feel uncomfortable and ultimately hide this aspect of their lives. Menstruation is an important part of many people’s identity and for many, including myself, it is a traumatic experience every month. As a personal aspect of ourselves and our body, we should be able to freely express this topic and be able to have these personal conversations with anyone, not only our personal friends and family. By including everyone in this conversation, I want to promote this cause and create an outlet for those who need a platform to express their feelings about menstruation. It is important that we continue to make strides to an open future where people no longer have to be discreet or worry about making others uncomfortable when menstruating.
MATT NOLAN: VISUAL ART PROJECTIONS
Holding a Bachelor of Music (B.M.) degree in Music Synthesis/Voice Principal from Berklee College of Music and a Master’s Degree (M.M.) in Music Composition from George Mason University, Matt Nolan has a holistic vision for music, art, movement, and light. His programming and interactivity work has been used and performed at SICMF Seoul Korea , 2007 Florida Electro-Acoustic Music Festival at the University of Florida, Berklee College of Music, George Mason University’s Center for the Arts, The Hylton Center for Performing Arts, New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) 2007 at the Columbia University Computer Music Center as part of NYC Electronic Arts Festival, CHAW (Washington DC, TedX Tyson’s, The Atlas Theater, EABD (Fredericksburg), Monkeytown (Brooklyn), and his artwork was selected for The Newtown Project : A Call to Arms for the Charles Krause Reporting Fine Art Gallery in Washington, DC. His photography was featured at the Philips Collection in Collaboration with Helen Frederick. He is the founder of the Virginia Artist’s Residency at STUD Gallery/Manahoac Farm in Catlett, VA.
ABOUT TONIGHT’S CO-CURATOR
STRANGELAND: A GROTEASQUE PARTY
STRANGELAND is a performance duo, made up of Bunni (ANDiLAND) and Goatface (STRANGE LENS) that explore the superficial construct of reality. ANDiLAND works with a variety of media to create her campy but whimsical immersive installations and performances. Utilizing a perverse humor she invites viewers past the looking glass of reality down the rabbit hole of her own personal female psyche, attempting to assault the norms of acceptable female behavior to subversive ends. STRANGE LENS is a mixed media artist who explores the world of dreams, nightmares and the obscure irrational of the subconscious. She recreates the experience and atmosphere of disorientation and disconnect caused by excessive vivid dreams and re-enacts them through video, installation and performance.
Project Statement: “The work consists of a peculiar tea party, an elaborate performance by the collaborative group STRANGELAND, where visitors are served riddles and inedible ephemera. With a perverse humor and provocative pleasure, this staged seductive spectacle questions the aestheticization of politics and more concerningly, violence. This avant grade fairy-tale ambiguously swerves between parody and enactment, investigating the collision and collusion of fantasy to form a new reality of consciousness.”
EXHIBITIONS & ARTIST TALKS
Target Gallery: Julia Kwon
TARGET GALLERY
SOLO EXHIBITION: JULIA KWON
OPENING RECEPTION: 7–10 pm ARTIST TALK: 8 pm
Target Gallery presents interdisciplinary artist Julia Kwon. Kwon creates sculpture and textile art that explore reductive representation, othering, and objectification, in relation to ethnicity and gender as a Korean American woman. Kwon was chosen from nearly 130 artists from across North America for this annual competitive opportunity for a solo show.
The jury panel for this opportunity was: Sandy Guttman, DC-based independent curator; Michael Matason, Gallery Manager of DC Arts Center; and Terence Nicholson; DC-based artist.
Mason Arts Project Studio: Danielle Dravenstadt
MASON ARTS PROJECT STUDIO (STUDIO 8)
Danielle Dravenstadt
RECEPTION: 7–9:30 pm ARTIST TALK: 9 pm
Danielle Dravenstadt is an interdisciplinary artist, specializing in photography, with an MA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a BA from Furman University. She is an MFA candidate and photography instructor at the School of Art at George Mason University. Her work explores, challenges, and transforms the ordinary through photography, painting, printmaking, and installation, articulating nuanced perceptions of everyday life.
Project Statement: In Tend, Dravenstadt transforms simple gestures of care into radical expressions of acceptance through photography and installation. Dravenstadt builds an aesthetic around the tender engagement with materials of caretakers to make care visible, mentionable, and to provoke a consideration of the transformative potential of practicing care in daily life.
SITE 2
2019 CONGRESSIONAL HIGH SCHOOL ART COMPETITION
Cancelled due to extenuating circumstances. Apologies for the inconvenience. All artwork is still on view.
RECEPTION: 7–9:30 pm ARTIST TALK: 7:15pm
The Torpedo Factory Art Center is proud to partner with Congressman Don Beyer’s Office to host the top twelve honoree’s of the 2019 Congressional High School Art Competition from Virginia’s 8th Congressional District.
ALL EVENING
Post Grad Studio: Nava Levenson
STUDIO 319
OPEN STUDIO: Nava Levenson
Spring Post-Grad Resident
Nava Levenson in a multidisciplinary artist, instigator, and collaborator based in Richmond, Virginia. She completed her bachelor’s of fine arts in 2017 from James Madison University. Her work investigates anthropological concepts such as hospitality, labor, consumption, and space making. Nava incorporates repurposed materials in much of her art in an effort to chip away at the surplus of objects that crowd the planet. Stop by her studio from 7-10 pm to meet the artist and see her work in person.
