John and Linda Friend Art Gallery

Art Exhibitions and Lectures 2012-2013

Please contact the gallery director, Niclas Kruger at niclas.kruger@cui.edu for additional information.

Buoyant Conclusions of the Future

Concordia Student Art Show

Artist's reception: Opening reception on Tuesday April 30 at 6:30 p.m. in the John and Linda Friend Art Gallery.

This exhibition will highlight work that was produced during the spring semester of 2013. Student artwork is also on display throughout the academic year in the Library Arts Building at CUI.

Southwest Colorscapes

An Exhibition of Oil Paintings

By: Carolyn Counnas

Artist Statement:

Growing up on a horse farm in Maryland, I have always been inspired by the rich green textures of the landscape. So it was quite an adjustment a decade ago when I settled in Southern California, to fully appreciate this landscape where it doesn't rain for 8 months of the year.

Now instead of seeing just green, I see color everywhere. At this stage of my career, color is my primary spark, more so than form or subject matter. You might say that subject matter is just an excuse to use color. My favorite excuses for a subject is the desert, especially cactus. Now that's a plant with personality! I go for the feel of a subject and pushing the color boundaries connects me emotionally. I work in oil paint for its buttery, luminous effects. I use a dual primary color system incorporating a cool and warm version of red, yellow and blue, plus white.

To create the most harmonious colors I mix all my browns, greys and secondary colors. I don't use black. My favorite painting tools, besides my sables, are a color shaper, looks like a spatula, and my pin-striping sign painters brush. When I'm not painting I drive race cars. It makes me brave enough to paint.

Let Me Put It This Way

New Collaged Paintings and Objects

By: Anne Baumgartner

Artist's reception: Wednesday March 6, 2013, at 7.00 p.m. in the John and Linda Friend Art Gallery in Grimm Hall, followed by lecture in the CU Center at 7.30 p.m

Artist Statement:

Built, bent, layered, stacked. Two years ago we moved to Los Angeles from Seattle and everything changed. My studio has been a safe place to work things out. Letting go and re-arranging, it all starts as a conversation in my head. The collages reference accumulation, loss and new juxtapositions: expressed in overlapped shape, pattern and multiples. These pieces reveal my particular way of seeing and responding.

The large panels are wrapped with papers and paint; they have survived an arduous process. The cardboard constructions are familiar yet quirky. Their uniqueness is revealed in both form and the spaces between things. The collections invite affinity and investigation. Are they handmade packages?... poetic totems?... redeemed detritus? High concept and low-budget, they continue the discussion.

From the Back of the Line

By: Mark Garry

Artist's reception: Wednesday February 13, 2013, at 7.00 p.m. in the John and Linda Friend Art Gallery in Grimm Hall.

Artist Statement:
The artist demands from himself an authentic deconstruction; of his creative process, of his relationship to materials, and his relationship to his environment.

About the Artist:
Mark Garry has been working as an illustrator, creative director, and artist for the past 20 years. He is fascinated by the universal interconnectivity of the human condition and expresses this through form, gesture, color and texture.

Conceptual Mapping

An exhibition of printmaking
By: Noriho Uriu

December 5, 2012 - January 30, 2013

Artist Statement

My art is my journey of my life. My style of Art I have focused on here is printmaking. I would like to express the images by integrating my observation, feeling, and thoughts from my daily life. I have been exploring various printmaking methods, such as intaglio, relief, and monotype. Some of my prints in this show are born from the "conceptual mapping series". As a conceptual map is used a way to develop one perspective based on those that came before it. I used an intaglio print of a normal circuit board, altered it and added overlapping layers. The image evokes a developed urban space, featuring overlapping ripples of social communication and interactions.

Intaglio:
Such as etching, engraving, drypoint, aquatint, and other processes in which the image is cut below the surface of the plate. After the image is etched into the metal plate, the surface is inked and wiped, leaving ink in the recessed areas that are then printed on dampened paper under pressure on an etching press.

Relief:
This process includes the woodcut, and the linoleum cut. I cut away areas of the block, leaving a raised surface that is inked by a roller and printed on paper through the pressure of a press.

Narrative

An exhibition of watercolors and sculptures
By: Gregory Radionov and Eugene Serëgin

October 24, 2012- November 28, 2012

Artists' Reception: Monday November 5, 2012, at 7.00 p.m. in the John and Linda Friend Art Gallery in Grimm Hall, followed by lecture in the CU Center at 7.30 p.m.

Artists' Statement

Gregory Radionov and Eugene Serëgin have known each other for 7 years. Both live in San Fernando Valley, work in the same business, Master Cabinets Company, and see each other almost every day.

Gregory has a Master degree in art after attending the Ukrainian Art Academy during 6 years. He prefers to create large size watercolor paintings, and is a member of the National Watercolor Association.

Eugene has over 40 years of experience in character design, building and manipulation of rod-puppets and custom marionettes. He designed and created many different types of puppets for Sergei Obrastzov's Russian State Puppet Theater in Moscow for over 20 years, in addition to performances for movies and TV shows.

Recent years brought changes in approach, medium, and art philosophy for both artists. Gregory Radionov used to paint oils on canvas, and now extensively paints watercolors. Eugene Serëgin has taken on sculpture. Both artists exhibit locally, with interest and success within the community. Most recent mutual endeavor: the art show ?Visions of Life? at Proverbs Coffeehouse Gallery in Ventura County. The current exhibition ?Narrative? at Concordia University unites the two artists in a dual exhibition for the first time, with a theme close to their hearts:? novels of life.

Lazarus

New Mixed Media Paintings and Sculpture

By: Marshall Roemen

September 26, 2012 - October 22, 2012

Artist's reception: Wednesday Sept 26, 2012, at 7.00 p.m. in the John and Linda Friend Art Gallery in Grimm Hall, followed by artist lecture in the CU Center at 7.30 p.m.

Artist Statement:

"The culture I experience on a daily level, like breathing itself,is both transcendent and everyday. I am intrigued with the way my own perception and the perception of others is re-contextualized constantly. A new idea emerges as a big fish swallowing the smaller ideas and paradigms that came before it. These big fish fascinate me and challenge my notions of personal and communal progress.I begin to wonder how one should respond to ever changing lenses and frameworks on the world. To what degree does "truth" present a roadblock to progress?

"The ancient story of Lazarus freshly intrigues me for the suspension or rearrangement of perception it required from those involved.I tend toward believing things I can observe with my own eyes, yet in large paintings and experimental sculptures I seek a realm beyond what I currently see. These pieces are for me windows; they are meditations on something to which I may be blind. They help me answer the question, "in what ways have I chosen blindness over 'progress'?"

"In an ever-hybridized culture of interconnected frameworks--the unending stream of photographs and glimpses of our world-- I seek another citizenship beyond what I see and understand.Painting acts as a kind of veil-lifting or archaeology for me: through sanding down and building up calligraphic marks, fragments of letters and cut-and-pasted materials, I seek to find a world beyond my current framework. The rearranging of canvas pieces and cut paper act as a physical search for an ever "truer", rearranged self. These works represent an openness to being swallowed by a bigger fish, swimming between what I know and what awaits tomorrow. Like Lazarus and those who claimed to see him re-enlivened, I embrace the process of suspending my expectations and welcoming a greater reality."

- Marshall Roemen

Abstracts In Nature

Impressions in Acrylics and Mixed Media

By: Illona Battaglia Aguayo

August 29, 2012 - September 26, 2012

Artist Statement:

"Is what we're seeing, seen? What treasures dance outside our customary line of sight. Do we miss out on simple pleasures, distracted by day-to-day existence? Be it the arrangement of minerals in a rock that present themselves in a composition of color or the patterns formed in the crystallization of ice, I needn't go further than where I'm standing to identify a source of inspiration.My goal is to spark remembering, stir awareness, create visual tributes to the micro-universe, and expose the most extra ordinary images available during our everyday life. In the design of my work, I often interpret what I see on a larger than life scale using mixed mediums. I invite you to enjoy the visual power and beauty to be seen in the unseen. Revealing it, is at the center of my art.In sharing it, I hope to challenge a new perspective to everyday existence."

- Illona Battaglia Aguayo