The Dana L. Wiley GALLERY is beautiful. It looks like a place you’d find as you wander around the streets of San Francisco or New York.
I sat down with Dana at the conference table in the gallery’s office and asked about her journey from working artist to gallery owner.
“I still do make my own art” she told me “but I haven’t exhibited in the gallery yet. A few years ago I agreed to curate a show and I loved it. I loved meeting with the artists, I loved deciding how to put the various art pieces together and I loved being around the art all day.”
“I talked with artist Gary Hinsche about the idea and the two of us decided to open up this gallery. This space here is great. We have room for Gary’s studio and this office and lots of room to show art.”
Our last exhibition featured four artists from across the country. Now we’re showing a local artist, Mike Elsass, but we’re showing him in a way that’s different from the way Dayton people have seen his work before. People should stop by tonight during First Friday and have a look.”
Mike’s art celebrates imperfection, bringing together what’s typically abandoned and forgotten into breathtaking statement pieces that capture emotion through composition. Often using materials discarded as garbage, Mike uses things like tar, oil, grit, silicate sand, spent whiskey mash–and this year, even some cicadas–to intentionally deteriorate his pieces before blanketing them with layer upon layer of paint in various colors.