The fundamentals of art making taught at Mesa Community College during a two-
year art program are similar to artmaking curricula taught at other colleges and
universities. Fundamental skills are vital for understanding techniques and uses of
materials, especially the more traditional ones associated with the plastic arts.
BLUR offers students, community artists, and community creatives the opportunity to
view, respond, enjoy, and reflect upon the work of artists who are outside the
student arena and are building practices as professional artists.
These professional artists blur the boundaries of traditional materials through risk-
taking and experimentation with unusual media combinations and installation.
Similar approaches are evident in aspects of late 20th Century and early 21st
Century artist practices and museum education. Topics of curatorial conversation
include; art as a “precious” object, ephemeral artwork as it relates to
sustainability, science, technology, communication, and do-it-yourself approaches,
and from a gallery and museum standpoint, conservation concerns in the care and
MCC Art Gallery
Mesa Community College, Mesa, Arizona
November 13, 2017 - February 2, 2018
Curated by Ted G. Decker
The fundamentals of art making, taught at Mesa Community College during a two-year art
program, are similar to artmaking curricula taught at other colleges and universities.
Fundamental skills are vital for understanding techniques and uses of materials, especially
the more traditional ones associated with the plastic arts. BLUR offers students, community
artists, and community creatives the opportunity to view, respond, enjoy, and reflect upon
the work of artists who are outside the student arena and are building practices as
professional artists.
These professional artists blur the boundaries of traditional materials through risk-taking and
experimentation with unusual media combinations and installation. Similar approaches are
evident in aspects of late 20th century and early 21st century artist practices and museum
education. Topics of curatorial conversation include: art as a “precious” object, ephemeral
artwork as it relates to sustainability, science, technology, communication, and do-it-yourself
approaches. From a gallery and museum standpoint, conservation concerns apply to the
care and storage of artwork and the presentation of art in galleries. Late 20th century ideas
related to semiotics, feminism, identity, and Postmodernism are also considerations that
inform work in the second decade of the new millennium.
2.
BLUR is an ambitious exhibition featuring visual production by 27 artists from the
Metropolitan Phoenix area, Tucson, the United States, and from Brazil, Mexico, Germany,
Portugal, and Spain. It is the result of an innovative community partnership between MCC
Art Gallery and Phoenix Institute of Contemporary Art (phICA). The exhibition is sited within
my long-time, overarching curatorial objective and practice of building cultural bridges
between people.
Each artist selected is a generator of conceptual ideas in response to the global
contemporary art arena of visual cultures spawned by local and global histories. Through
media and travel, the artists interconnect with the creative activities of others. These artists
combine media, form, and content freely on a regular basis to best convey their purposes
and visual voices. They relentlessly conduct research and experiment. In BLUR, visitors have
opportunities to view, engage, and enjoy a wide variety of works in traditional genres but
with a twist - works that blur the boundaries between materials traditionally used in past and
present handicraft. Shaped by artists who use innovative, experimental, trial and error, and
risk-taking methodologies in their professional practices, the works in the exhibition have a
common interwoven thread.
A 10-week special projects course coincided with the two final months of exhibition
preparation. Working as a team with MCC Gallery Coordinator, Jennifer Harris, six
curatorial assistants gained hands-on experience in all facets of curating and producing an
exhibition, transferable skills for students who plan to work professionally in art fields. This
course also reinforced the role of “community” in community college and offered various
opportunities for critical thinking and global connectivity with artists, their art, and the
diverse materials used in making it.
Ted G. Decker
October 2017
3.
Bob Adams Phoenix, Arizona)
Young Boy, 2017, copy paper, tape with studio detritus
Making something from nothing is one of many themes that
has occupied Bob’s work for years, including ideas of
transformation, of alchemy, and in particular of creating value
from waste. He is fascinated by the role that presentation and
process play in creating meaning. Young Boy addresses ideas
of perceived importance and the part of packaging and
presentation in creating the illusion of worth.
Q: How does using studio detritus change the work?
4.
Alberto Aguilar (Chicago, Illinois)
Affixed Break, 2017, sign paint on paper, site-specific
installation
Alberto Aguilar is best known for pushing the boundaries of
form, invention, and play. The simplicity of hand-painted
shapes onto store-front signs creates a natural connection with
the viewer, identifiable by a broad audience. The work builds
curiosity, an advertisement, and a relationship to the physical
architecture of the space.
Q: What do you think of when viewing Alberto’s work from outside the Gallery?
5.
Daniel Alcalá (Mexico City, Mexico)
Hotel Arizona, 2014, acrylic on hand cut canvas
Glass and steel rise, cities are built. Each day, a new scaffold
takes shape on the horizon, omnipresent and forever, or are
they? Alcalá asks us to consider this question and the fragility
of our existence with his meticulously hand-cut paper and
canvas images. The sharp contrast of black and white
suggests permanence, icons towering in the heat and glare of
a noon sun.
Q: Does Daniel’s work suggest a sense of strength or fragility? Why?
6.
Artwork collection of Ted G. Decker.
Malena Barnhart (Tempe, Arizona)
Web 12, 2017, mixed media
As Malena Barnhart explains, in this body of work “using
stickers sourced from the pink aisles of toy and craft stores.
Mass-produced children’s stickers are stylized symbols that
reflect our culture’s gender roles. Stickers for boys tend
towards the functional. There are doctors, firefighters,
construction equipment and vehicles. In contrast, stickers for
girls are often visually appealing, but problematic. Girl
stickers feature hearts, flowers, prey animals, princess paraphernalia, fashion accessories
and female bodies.”
Q: What is the first thing you notice in this work of art?
7.
Alexandra Bowers (Scottsdale, Arizona)
The Queen of the Night, 2016, pyrography on wood panel
Influenced by her geographical surroundings, Alexandra
Bowers pulls the subject matter for her artwork from the
Sonoran Desert. She captures the unique plant and animal
species that survive this harsh environment. Bowers uses
pyrography, a wood-burning process, to make detailed
portraits of these co-habitants of the desert. As we pave,
develop and grow our urban cities, the desert is forced to
change and adapt to its human neighbors.
Q: How does her use of this technique and material make human encroachment seem more real?
8.
Christine Cassano (Tempe, Arizona)
Encoding Tessellation, 2017, metal, concrete soil, porcelain,
lighting
Christine merges elements of the biological and technological
“to explore the unease, intrigue, and fragility of humanness,
technology, and ecology. Through processes of fabrication,
concretization, and excavation [she] integrates skin-like
textures, synthetic patterns, codes and impressions and imprints
into petrified surfaces to create fossilized, sculptural forms.”
Q: What other artworks reference ecology and technology in this exhibition?
9.
Carlos Contente (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Wild Naif People, 2010, Mixed media on vinyl LP, 12”
Diameter.
Contente in Portuguese means “happy, contented,” and
Carlos goes out of his way to put humor into his works. While
publishing comic books and working as an art educator, he
began painting self-portraits in the streets. Through time, these
self-portraits have morphed into a mini stamp/stenciled face.
This logo has become the starting point for various characters
in what Carlos calls “absurd made-up fictions, combining text and images” on found
canvases.
Q: What story does Carlos’ work tell?
10.
Artwork collection of Ted G. Decker.
Heather Couch (Tempe, Arizona)
1. Before Another, 2017, stoneware and paper clay
2. Learning to Fall, 2017, stoneware and paper clay
Heather Couch earned her Master of Fine Arts with an
emphasis in ceramics from Arizona State University in 2015.
Her work uses abstraction and exploits the delicate nature of
clay and precarious compositions, prompting the viewer to
question constructions we depend on every day. Her use of
different materials BLURs the line between hard and soft,
utilitarian and decorative, ordinary and precious.
Q: How does Heather’s work compare with Daniel Alcalá’s work? How are they both using
themes of fragility
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Joseph G. Cruz (Chicago, Illinois)
1. Open Space Orientation #3, 2016, powdered shrapnel
from a V2 rocket, charcoal on archival watercolor paper
2. Detail of When You Light This Candle You Also Cast a
Shadow (On the Clouds) #1, 2017, sand from White Sands
(New Mexico), sand from Peenemünde (Germany),
powdered shrapnel from a V2 rocket, homemade charcoal
Joseph G. Cruz investigates how science affects the world,
and vice versa. He is also interested in the effects of this
symbiotic relationship in the socio-political arenas of our lives. All of Joseph’s works have
untreated metal in them, and so they are conceptually alive. The materials of the artwork
are oxidizing and rusting on a very slow timescale.
Q: Do they materials change the meaning of this work?
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Einar & Jamex de la Torre (San Diego, California)
Super Indio, 2002, hand-built glass, glass bowl, attached
objects
Describing a work as ‘blown glass” conjures up images of
vases and candy dishes, delicate and off-limits, gathering dust
on a window sill. Brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre
remove this staid preciousness and fling the medium back into
the fire, pulling forth sculpture and found object assemblage
that asks us to look closer at broader societal and intimate
personal histories: joys, sufferings, secrets - our common humanity.
Q: Do the elements of the work remind you of any people, places or experiences in your
own life?
13.
Artwork collection of Ted G. Decker.
14.
Daniel Funkhouser (Phoenix, Arizona)
GOOP CAVE, 2017, corrugated polypropylene, LED lights,
site-specific installation
What constitutes a work of art? Is it shape and color, light and
dark? Does it have to be substantial and quantifiable, like a
canvas or a sculpture, or can a work of art be made real
through our response to it? Daniel Funkhouser’s installation
asks us these questions and invites our answers. Daniel’s work
is an intervention in the Gallery’s workroom, which is not
utilized as an exhibition area, thereby confronting the established boundaries of a gallery.
Q: Could Daniel’s work be considered performance art with the viewer as the performer?
Rita Grendze (Geneva, Illinois)
One Hundred Signs for Those Seeking Light (fragment), 2017,
cut pages from books in the Latvian language, site-specific
installation
While growing up in Manitoba, Canada as the youngest of
six children, Rita developed a love for tactility of materials, a
fascination with the play of light, and became an avid reader.
Her active interest in the history and practice of ethnic craft,
particularly embroidery and pattern, has fueled her artmaking
practice. Rita made One Hundred Signs for Those Seeking Light during a month’s residency
in Latvia. The 100 hand-cut paper panels resembling traditional Latvian lace tablecloths
were installed in the National Library of Latvia. This work celebrates 100 years since the
country’s founding and 27 years of independence from the former Soviet Union.
Q: How is value manufactured by using pages of old books?
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16.
Nick Gutierrez (Tempe, Arizona)
Haymaker, 2017 acrylic paint, ink on drywall
Nick Gutierrez creates worlds to explore and in which he
inhabits. His ideas are informed by various sources including
works by contemporary artists, Japanese manga and anime,
science fiction concepts, and underground comic books. He
produces art that has relevance to modern society, different
entry portals for interpretation and enjoyment, and various
layers of meaning. In recent bodies of work, he is using a
variety of acrylic paints including aerosol, markers, gel media, tube paint, as well as India ink
and gesso. Nick states, “my work is in constant peril. Once complete it becomes obsolete.”
Q: What do you imagine could have happened moments before [or after] the scene shown
here? What part of the artwork made you say that?
Wayne Hulgin (San Diego, California)
Untitled (10 works from the Shuffle series), 2017, mixed media
Throughout his career, Wayne Hulgin has continually and
fearlessly explored the properties of materials and the
intersection, often intervention, of his art with spatial elements.
Hulgin creates new works which void of symbolism, narrative,
and socio-political agendas. His work is idea and research-
driven - ideas about materials, researching old and new
techniques. Wayne abandons limits in working with wood,
paper, canvas, graphite lines, and layers of paint, often BLURring hard-edged boundaries
that are prevalent in much of the art produced these days. His focus is on how the materials
are “put together and how they work with the wall and light.”
Q: What personal limits would you like to abandon? Which boundaries would you like to BLUR?
17.
18.
Travis Ivey (Phoenix, Arizona)
Canyons and Monuments, 2016, utility tape on panel
Travis Ivey revives the human instinct of re-purposing everyday
materials that seemingly went dormant with the
implementation of the business model of planned
obsolescence and the rise of our pervading disposable
culture. Discarded envelopes that once hid our personal
information from unwanted eyes have become Travis’ color
palette. Ivey explains, “I view these pieces not only as
collage, but also as a nontraditional approach to abstract painting, and referencing the
utilitarian arts and crafts movement.”
Q: How can different colors and types of tape be considered “paintings”?
Christopher Jagmin (Phoenix, Arizona)
i will sleep tonight, 2017, labeling tape, pins site-specific
installation
Christopher Jagmin is a “self-described documentarian, and is
constantly trying to make sense of what it means to live at this
moment in time.” For Jagmin, phones, computers, and
televisions continually blasting information make everyday life
feel scary, cluttered and complicated. Out of this chaos,
Christopher finds elements that connect with him and with
us, the viewers. Jagmin, inspired by pop culture, self-help gurus, comic novels, and
discarded items, likes to BLUR together stories of celebration and sadness, energy and
urgency. His works speak to us and for us.
Q: Why do you think Jagmin chose to repeat affirmations? How does this work make you feel?
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