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Dutoit Gallery

Dayton’s 2018 Top Ten Visual Arts

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Dayton’s visual arts scene is abundant with compelling exhibitions and activities; selecting ten was a challenge.  Enjoy this review of my top ten favorite visual art exhibitions in 2018!

Connie Campbell, Archetypes
Rosewood Gallery
November 26 – December 28, 2018

Connie Campbell’s sculptures are created through mathematical references to the golden ratio, with intricate formulas to create each shape, curve, and line. Made with aluminum, copper, and wood, the sculptures echo animal skeletons and snares. Learn more about the exhibition and the artist here.

Kei Ito and Migiwa Orimo, Nuclear Fallout: The Bomb in Three Archives
Herndon Gallery, Antioch College
September 20, 2018 – December 7, 2018

Detail from Migiwa Orimo’s Souvenirs installation

This incredibly moving exhibition featured the work of Migiwa Orimo and Kei Ito, both reflecting on the 1945 atomic bombings of Japan. Orimo’s body of work, Proofs of Burden, is a reflection of the elements of destruction, censorship, constructed narratives, and reflections on popular culture through her research. Artist Kei Ito explores the 1945 bombings through personal narrative. Kei’s grandfather survived the destruction of Hiroshima, witnessing the horrors of radiation effects on his loved ones.  Learn more about the exhibitions here.

Drawing from Perception
Robert and Elaine Stein Galleries, Wright State University
January 16 – February 25, 2018

Abel Dolby, “L & G,” Graphite on paper

Drawing from Perception featured sixty artists with a focus on the tradition of observational renderings. Sometimes there is nothing better than admiring a beautifully rendered drawing! Stand outs included Bradley Mulligan’s still life; Abel Dolby’s studies of quiet domestic moments; Mark Lewis’ collaged cut paper scenes of Americana; and Amy MacLennan’s richly textured streetscape.  See more about the exhibition here.

Kim Rae Taylor, Rendered Complete Equals
Virginia Kistler, Fungal Impressions
Rosewood Gallery
April 16 – May 18, 2018

Rosewood Gallery was host to two excellent solo exhibitions featuring work by Kim Rae Taylor (Cincinnati) and Virginia Kistler (Gahanna, Ohio). Kim Rae Taylor’s exhibition Rendered Complete Equals explored materiality, process, relationships in mixed media paintings. Virginia Kistler’s Fungal Impressions documented the natural world through photographic processes. Learn more about these exhibitions here.

Muse: Mickalene Thomas Photographs and tête-à-tête
Dayton Art Institute
October 20 2018 – January 13 2019
Mickalene Thomas: I Can’t See You Without Me
Wexner Center for the Arts
September 14, 2018 – December 30, 2018

Mickalene Thomas, la leçon d’amour, 2008, c-print

Ohio lucked out with two important Mickalene Thomas exhibitions this fall – large scale painting and collage works at the Wexner Center for the Art’s, and photographs at the Dayton Art Institute. Thomas’ work is monumental in scale and examines representations of the female body in contemporary subject matter to art history. Both exhibitions reflect on the dual influence of photographs with her paintings and collage that initially brought her acclaim in the contemporary art world. Learn more about the Dayton Art Institute exhibition here.

Edmund Merricle, Recent Paintings
Dutoit Gallery
May 2018

Martyr, 2018, oil on linen

It was great to see the quirky color palettes, focused nautical content and joyful painting of Edmund Merricle at Dutoit Gallery. Learn more about the exhibition here.

Julia Oldham, Dogs of Future Earth
Blue House Gallery
October 13 – 31, 2018

Oldham is a prolific artist, with fascinating artwork and travels on her resume. Oldham’s recent series was part of an artist residency in Chernobyl, where she documented the feral dogs that roam the seemingly empty town, descendants of those that survived the nuclear disaster.  Blue House featured her large-scale fantastical collages, as well as videos, allowing a glimpse into a reality blended with science fiction.  Learn more from the Blue House website.

Akram Zaatari, The Fold – Space, time and the image
October 05, 2018 – February 10, 2019
Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center

The photo-based work of Akram Zaatari represents sometimes haunting narratives, but his work extends beyond his own studio – Zaatari is also the co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation, which preserves a history of photographic images from the Middle East. This exhibition impressively balances his artistic vision and preservation work. Learn more here.

Juan-Sí González, Displacement: Collective Practice to Recover Memory
Rosewood Gallery
October 15 – November 16

In Displacement, Juan-Sí González digs deep into his own personal archive, from his youth in Cuba, to his political asylum which eventually led him to Dayton, Ohio.  This exhibition was a dense, emotional, and significant telling of an artist’s story, as well as his connections to his present-day community. Learn about González exhibition’s here.

Ashley Jude Jonas, it’s likely in front of you
Dutoit Gallery
November 2018

Jonas’ thoughtful artwork can be highly conceptual, but always is deeply intentional and sensitive to various aspects of material, dimensionality and balance. Her work is most successful when viewers the time to understand the relationships each piece puts forward, both formally and theoretical.  A truly beautiful exhibition.  Learn more here.

BONUS PICKS

Joel Whitaker, When Things Go Missing
Dayton Visual Arts Center
September 7, 2018 – November 3, 2018
Whitaker’s beautiful, quiet photographs documented of sites of trauma, including locations of tornado touch-downs in the American South and “photographs that explore the idea of losing things—the transitory nature of all things.” An incredibly poetic exhibition. Learn more here.

Ann Kim, Time Cycles, but Never Back to Now
Dutoit Gallery
July 2018
Featuring work made from the artist’s experience living in two locations at opposite points on the globe, Kim’s intimate mixed media paintings echo the movement of the tides and a feeling of standing simultaneously between night and day.  The exhibition includes photographs documenting the locations, and sand samples carefully labeled with the latitude, longitude and date of each collected unit. Learn more here.

Stratum: New Work by Amy Kollar Anderson & Kate Huser Santucci
February 22 – March 24, 2018
Dayton Visual Arts Center
In this unexpected and fun exhibition, the artists documented their collaborative process of creating new works, with the result a richly layered, textured, and sometimes colorful play on each other’s aesthetic tendencies and techniques.  The creative process was documented with notes and photos displayed alongside the finished work. Learn more here.

The Woods in Color: Works by Jean Koeller
Springfield Museum of Art
July 28, 2018 -January 6, 2019
Koeller’s incredible use of color and her perception of what some would call the mundane – like piles of wood – transcend to masterful compositions of abstraction, tonality, surface tension and quiet moments of reprieve.  A must see exhibition; learn more here.

Meet Artist Francis Schanberger

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ARTIST OF THE WEEK Francis Schanberger at his home in the South Park Historic District.

Francis teaches photography at UD and he has an exhibition at the Dutoit Gallery (Front Street Warehouse, Building 100, Door BC) opening Friday. The exhibition, titled “Nothing Can Go Wrong,” also features his wife Bridgette Bogle.

Francis has an interest in historic photographic processes. When I asked if his pieces for his upcoming show would be made using historic processes he walked to a shelf with several older cameras and picked one up.

“This is a replica of a Diana camera (a camera developed in the 1960’s with a plastic lens) that I used for most of my photos in this show. I had a problem with film being scratched so I had to make some modifications to the camera. I also added an extension tube so I could take close-up photos.”

“The photos I took with this camera are close-ups of parts of my skin. I took the photos here in my dining room when my twins were napping. They were taken using only natural light, with long exposures. Then in the dark room I used a solarisation technique that was popular in the 1970’s.”

The photo above shows Francis with an anthotype, a photographic process that dates back to the 1800’s. Dyes made from some plants are sensitive to light, and an anthotype uses that sensitivity to create an image. Here Francis has coated paper with two different dyes, one made from the petals of a neighbor’s red tulips and another from a neighbor’s purple irises.

“This piece of clothing attached to the paper was worn by my daughter when she was 3 months old” Francis told me. “The finished anthotype will show the outline of her clothing. I have exhibited many of my anthotypes, and I may show this one, but because of the sentimental value it will probably be marked Not For Sale.”

Meet Ann B. Kim – Mixed Media Artist

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Ann B. Kim is an accomplished artist and an active member of the Dayton arts community, but I didn’t reach out to meet her until I learned she was participating in a two-person exhibition in the Dutoit Gallery this September with my friend Rebecca Sargent.

Ann’s studio is in one of Dayton’s Front Street buildings.  

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These Front Street buildings are filled with artists and interesting small businesses, but they were originally built for manufacturing.  They were part of an early factory development project based on water power.  A company called Dayton Hydraulic Company bought the land in the 1840s and built a water channel from the Mad River that eventually emptied into Dayton’s canal.  They sold the lots to all kinds of manufacturers and leased the use of the water to power the plants.

I climbed the industrial staircase and then entered Ann’s large studio.

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I asked Ann how she came to Dayton.

“I went to school in the San Francisco area, first at UC Berkeley and then at Mills College.  I came to this area to teach at Indiana University East in Richmond.  My husband is from Dayton and we decided to live here and for me to keep my studio practice here, and drive to Richmond to teach.”

“I was a bit reluctant to leave San Francisco but it’s worked out well.  I love my teaching job, and there is an active arts scene here with a lot of great artists.  Plus the low cost of living is great.”

As we talked Ann was busy cutting and pasting bits of paper to an issue of the New Yorker.

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I asked Ann how much time she gets to spend working in her studio.

“I’m pretty busy teaching during the week, but I try to spend most of the weekend here in the studio in a typical week.  But this year isn’t going to have too many typical weeks because I have so much scheduled.  I have the show with Rebecca Sargent in September, plus I’m vice president of the Dayton Society of Artists.  In addition I will be circling the globe.”

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“My travels will start in Vladivostok Russia.  That’s the closest place I can visit to where my grandfather was born.  Then I will travel to the end of the Trans Siberian Railroad, stopping at two places.  In preparation for this trip I plan to learn something new – paper making.  I want to learn both Eastern style paper making and Western style.  This paper in front of me is Korean style paper sent to me by my mother.”

“I also plan to gather newspapers on my travels and use them in my art, along with the New York Times for those exact dates.”

“This year I will also have two residencies – one in Southern Spain for 2 months and one in New Zealand for a month.  Those two places are antipodes.  They are completely opposite points on the globe and the art I make at these places will reflect that.”

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I know that Ann has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, and I recognized some of the pieces in the studio from exhibition brochures I had seen.  I asked Ann to tell me something about her mixed media work.

” You can see that I’m creating work  that is layered with symbols of all kinds – past, present, future, fragmentation, artifacts, imagination all looped together so that various cultures and moments in time seem to coexist. ”

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Before leaving, I asked Kim to help me create my own works of art.  We moved a pink studio chair in front of one of her art works and she posed for me.

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Dayton at Work and Play: Colleen Kelsey

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Colleen Kelsey is amazing. Just listing all of her activities makes me tired. In addition to making art she’s raising three kids, teaching at three local colleges, organizing pop-up gallery exhibitions under the name Kelsey Projects and founding the Dutoit Gallery, a cooperative exhibition space.    

 

Most recently, she’s become the Director of the Dayton Society of Artists.The DSA is hosting  a Collaborative Drawing Event on Wed, April 12th from 6 – 7:30pm.  This community drawing performative act involves bringing your own still-life object(s).   We will be building a collaborative environment to draw from.  Brown craft paper and charcoal will be provided but it is suggested individuals bring their own drawing materials if desired.  Tables, chairs and art easels are also available. This drawing event is part of DSA’s monthly drawing program.  This is free and open to the public.

Colleen is also active in groups such as the Dayton Chapter of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and she went to the Women’s March in Washington.

I asked Colleen why she had chosen to pack so much into her life and she said “We might live just this one life so I want to make mine count. I don’t want to have regrets about things I didn’t do.” I asked about her art process.

“When I start to make art I start with a free form gesture, something organic and curvilinear. That often morphs into figures and the figures impact the space. I don’t know where it will end up. It depends on what I’ve experienced or thought about that day. The meaning and content are only discovered after I’ve finished the piece.”

“Sometimes I do have some forethought before beginning a work. I did a series called the Artist and Her Husband. Those works reference pieces by important male artists, with a switch. In my works my husband (artist Jeremy Long) wears the dress.”

New Dayton Art Gallery Opens April 1st

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12779129_1690864594536694_6847003679485403137_oWe are pleased to announce the grand opening of Dutoit Gallery. Dutoit Gallery is a cooperative gallery made up of 28 member artists representing the diversity and talents within the Dayton, OH region. Member Artists will be exhibiting in monthly programs with art exhibitions opening every First Friday of each month. Artworks range in media from painting, photography, installation, and performance. The Cooperative gallery’s mission is to support local artists through the development of engaging relevant exhibitions.

 
Member Artists: Erin Holscher Almazan, Julie Anderson, Nicholaus Arnold, Bridgette Bogle, Michele BonDurant, Glen Cebulash, Stefan Chinov, Landon Crowell, John Dickinson, Gretchen Durst Jacobs, Hansoo Ha, Glenna Jennings, Ashely Jude Jonas, Colleen Kelsey, Ann B. Kim, Jean Koeller, Suki Kwon, James Luckett, David Leach, Jeremy Long, Tracy Longley-Cook, Patrick Mauk, Mychaelyn Michalec, Issa Randall, Rebecca Sargent, Francis Schanberger, Leah Stahl, Emily Trick.

 

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Join us for the Inaugural Members Art Exhibition with other Front Street galleries and artist studio openings on the First Friday of April 1, 2016.

Inaugural Members Exhibition
Front Street Warehouse, 1001 E 2nd St, Building 100, Door BC, Fl 3rd, Dayton, OH
April 1- 24th, 2016
Artist Opening Reception: Friday, April 1st, 6-10pm

Gallery Hours
Saturdays 11 am- 3pm
Sundays 1- 5 pm
Third Sunday April 16th, 11 am- 4pm
* Contact gallery for private appointments