Public Reception: Thursday, December 8 • 6 – 8 pm • Juror Talk at 7 pm

From a pelt made of keys to a concrete tube lined with shag carpet, the new exhibition in Target Gallery, the contemporary exhibition space for the Torpedo Factory Art Center, turns an eye toward the future of textile art. Material as Medium is on view Saturday, December 3, 2016, through Sunday, January 15, 2017.

This exhibition stretches between two poles. Artists were asked to create traditional work with unconventional materials, such as with Kathleen Kennedy’s Pelt, made with found keys and chainmail. Alternately, they could use orthodox materials in a new context, such as in Diana Baumbach’s Meditation on White IX, which uses cotton reclaimed from baby clothes, lace edging, and other ephemera to create her monotone image. The result is a gallery full of fiber art, textiles, and soft sculpture that incorporate a diversity of media, including some less traditional ones, such as glitter, plastic, chainmail, and pig intestines.

“In this body of work, planes are permeable, texture is also structure, and borders are fringy,” said Aaron McIntosh, juror for the exhibition and assistant professor in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Craft/Material Studies. “The opportunity to organize such a wide range of works has been a special opportunity to engage further with the interdisciplinary of fiber and the pliable plane.”

Though the exhibition looks to the future of textile work, McIntosh selected work that was in conversation with the art-historical influences like cubism, surrealism, dada, abstract expressionism, color field, and minimalism. “This nebulous field of fiber and materials-based making has become an anti-territorial medium. Makers ground their practice in using the soft, the flexible, the structured, the portable, and the social towards artistic ends.”

“Fiber and textiles aren’t usually considered as high art,” said Leslie Mounaime, director of the Target Gallery. “We organized this exhibition because there is a growing trend of artists who have been challenging this, just by using materials as their media. They are pushing the boundary on the very idea of what is art. We hope this show sparks local conversation about this conversation in contemporary art.”

The participating artists are:

• Meg Arsenovic, Richmond, VA
• Emma Balder, Denver, CO
• Diana Baumbach, Laramie, WY
• Arisa Brown, Everett, WA
• Danielle Burke, Black Mountain, NC
• Brooks Dierdorff, Orlando, FL
• Julia Gartrell, Durham, NC
• Lindsay Hall, Arlington, VA
• Krista Heinitz, Eugene, OR
• Hannah Hiaasen, Brooklyn, NY
• Kathleen Kennedy, Mechanicsville, VA
• Tiffany Lange, Menomonie, WI
• Suzanna Scott, Ruston, LA
• Meaghan Westfall, Rock Hill, SC
• Katie Westmoreland, Brooklyn, NY

Material as Medium runs Saturday, December 3, 2016 through Sunday, January 15, 2017. The public reception will be Second Thursday, December 8, 6 – 8 pm, with McIntosh’s comments at 7 pm. The Target Gallery is open daily from 10 – 6 pm and until 9 pm on Thursdays.

About the Juror

Aaron McIntosh is a fourth generation quiltmaker and cross-disciplinary artist whose work mines the intersections of material culture, family tradition, desire, and identity politics. His works include quilts, sculpture, collage, photography, and writing. McIntosh received his bachelor’s of fine arts from the Appalachian Center for Craft and his master’s of fine arts from Virginia Commonwealth University. He has exhibited work widely throughout the United States and his critical writing has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic and Sculpture magazine. McIntosh is a recipient of two Windgate Fellowships and a Maryland State Arts Council Grant, as well as residencies at Haystack Mountain School of Craft and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. McIntosh has taught in the Fiber Department at the Maryland Institute College of Art and at James Madison University. He currently lives and works in Richmond, Virginia, where he is an assistant professor and Fiber Area Head in VCU’s Department of Craft/Material Studies.

Public Reception: Thursday, November 10 • 6-8 pm • Gallery talk at 7 pm

Now in its second year, the Torpedo Factory Art Center’s Post-Graduate Residency Program is the subject of Target Gallery’s newest exhibition. Target will feature the work of the four residents in a group exhibition, Saturday, October 22 – Sunday, November 27, 2016.

The Torpedo Factory Post-Graduate Master’s of Fine Arts Residency is a competitive program, housed in Studio 12, where four emerging artists had an opportunity to create and sell work, interact with the public, and network with other working artists.

“With this program, we are inviting emerging artists into our space and providing them with practical resources and professional development opportunities in that critical period shortly after graduation,” said Leslie Mounaime, director of Target Gallery. “This culminating exhibition offers an exploration of the work they completed during their time here.”

The 2016 artists are: Paulette Palacios, Anne Smith, Danielle Smith, and Jihee Kang.

Paulette Palacios’ prints are often her own her self-portrait. She turns her own visage into a pattern to be repeated over and over again. Regardless of how painstakingly designed and crafted it is, her portrait becomes a background object. Looking at it too long begins to wipe it of its meaning. It is not driven by narcissism, but more as an attempt to understand her own existence. To her, a face is a pattern in itself, as well as an object in the pattern of humanity. At the end of the day, it just becomes a beautiful object. Considering it from this perspective gives it new breath.

Anne Smith’s Potomac Prints series developed over the course of her spring residency at the Torpedo Factory, from April to June. Inspired by Torpedo Factory’s location on the Potomac River, Smith observed the conditions on the river each day before returning to the studio to make a small edition of silkscreen prints to represent what she saw. The result was 36 different print editions in the entire series. Though the images are all monoprints–one-of-a-kind–each individual print is part of a “variable edition” of five to sixteen similar prints made on the same day. Each print is titled with the name of the series and the date on which it was made.

Danielle Smith’s work is both a template and a self-portrait. It is a guide to examine select facets of blackness as she discovers new boundaries of her identity and the social arenas it occupies. The space she explores through painting, installation, and writing is the feeling of being neither here nor there, belonging but displaced, being black, being white, French Creole, female, a fetish, a threat, a dream, a reality, an ideal, a hybrid, a sellout, suburban, the little yellow girl, high yellow, whitewashed, minority, mixed, a mimic. Her paintings investigate what characterizes the transparency or opacity of labels, and where meaning is situated within the intersection of gender, race, class, and medium.

Jihee Kang creates her surreal sculptures with a variety of materials and processes, but consistently returns to the themes of identity, shelter, and life. Originally from South Korea, she continues to express her ever-changing identity through her work, using it as a conduit for her memories, ideas, and thoughts. Her creations, though labor-intensive, are playful and offbeat, often incorporating irrational juxtapositions of ideas as well as media. Her current series is focused on objects with goose feet attached to them. One called Scuba Diaper is an 11-foot soft sculpture that is a play on the term “scuba diver.” Incorporating this visual puns, in such an absurd yet memorable way, grabs the viewers’ attention and paves a way for Kang to convey her history and experience to her audience.

 About the Artists

Paulette Palacios earned her master’s of fine art from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She received her bachelor’s of fine art as well as a master’s of art in teaching Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C. Palacios has shown her work in and around the D.C. region at locations like Pyramid Atlantic, Washington Print Makers Gallery, Carol Square, and Hillyer Art Space. She predominately works in printmaking and alternative processes.

Anne Smith is an artist and teacher based in Washington, D.C. Smith received her MFA from George Mason University, where she was honored with the 2015 School of Art Graduate Award for Academic and Artistic Excellence. She received a BA in Studio Art from Williams College, Williamstown, MA, in 2007. Smith has also studied woodworking at the Penland School of Crafts in Baskersville, NC. She is currently a teaching artist with the National Gallery of Art.

Danielle Smith is a Washington, D.C.-based painter and writer, originally from Monterey, California. She received her BFA from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and graduated from the MFA Studio Art Program at the George Washington University in 2016. Dani has traveled to China and Australia to participate in artist residencies and her work has been featured in the Franklin Furnace artists’ book series.

Jihee Kang was born in South Korea and currently lives and works in Washington, D.C. She completed a BFA with distinction at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Design in 2013. She graduated from the master’s of fine arts program at American University in 2016. Kang works predominantly in sculpture and her work crosses media including installation, painting, drawing, and printmaking.