November 16, 2008 - January 24, 2009

Opening Reception: Sunday, November 16, 2-4 PM

a gathering of seven sculptors with seven visions using consumer materials as a base of sculptural practice.


Michael Dee, McLean Fahnestock, Eric Johnson, Kiel Johnson, Nancy Kyes, Margaret Pazella, Macha Suzuki

Artists have always adapted to their environment. Our post-industrial society births new material and forms at a fantastic rate, and artists are often the first to embrace these materials, capturing them and adapting them to unintended and new purpose.

Macha Suzuki, Halfway Home

Margaret Pezalla, Missing Parts

Kiel Johnson, Pack It Up

About the Artists

Michael Dee crafts multi-pointed stars from clear plastic drinking cups. These stars, resting on lightboxes or dramatically lit, reflect the false brightness of a shallow culture. McLean Fahnestock's work routinely employs domestic objects and furniture placed in a position of tension or restraint. They bring a sense of suspicion and an invitation to question our relationships with both the objects around us and the individuals who those objects represent. Eric Johnson works in polyester resin, the raw stuff of today's cornucopia of goods. For this exhibition, he has used plastic molds from product packaging to form his sculptures, exploring the semi-abstract, functional forms that mediate the territory between consumer and object. Kiel Johnson employs cardboard, chipboard and other low-value materials to create near-comical replicas of real-world objects. Johnson's work explores the raw possibility of material and display an adaptation of craftsmanship to the materials of mass production. Nancy Kyes' sculptures are organic gatherings and groupings, accumulated from post-consumer waste, stray objects and anything else. Held together with tension and wire, they imitate the search for meaning in a complex and mysterious world. Margaret Pezalla's foamcore and Bristol board iceberg sculptures are unnaturally light representations of Earth's silent ocean voyagers. Hovering in the air, they invite viewers to contemplate the fragility and majesty of these behemoth objects Macha Suzuki tells stories through his sculptures, composed and assembled out of railroad model bits, wood slats and automotive finishes. The seductiveness of these objects' casual and clean beauty captures the viewer, attracting their attention into deeper exploration.

www.flickr.com See all the images from the Forming exhibition on our Flickr page