Marie Walsh Sharpe Open Studio & Holiday Party

Shaping Space

images will be posted soon, until then here is a picture of the model I made of the gallery.

Here are images of the show!

Beyond Bounds Brilliant!

Here are both of our works we have donated to the wonderful Nerman Museum, using some of the brilliant yellow paints they provided.

Rachel Hayes

Eric Sall

Eric Sall is an Artist in the World, Rachel Hayes is an Artist in the World

Eric Sall in his Brooklyn studio September 2011, photographed by 'Artist in the World'
Rachel Hayes in her Brooklyn studio October 2011, photographed by 'Artist in the World'

Rachel Hayes & Jiha Moon at ADA Gallery, Richmond, VA

OUR YASU installation & collaborative works by Rachel Hayes & Jiha Moon Opening Saturday September 17th, 7-9pm ADA gallery  228 West Broad Street Richmond, Va. 23220  ADA gallery is pleased to announce new collaborative works by installation artist Rachel Hayes and painter Jiha Moon. Jiha's gestural marks and seductive imagery are painted on, and embedded in, Rachel's sculptural panels that are sewn from fabric and Korean mulberry paper. Rachel's use of shiny swatches of colorful fabric contrast nicely with Jiha's soft fuzzy brush strokes as they attempt to tame the wild beast they envision their collaboration to be. Yasu means "Beast" in Korean, therefore "Our Yasu" is a tribute to their team effort. With separate studios in Kansas City, Brooklyn, and Atlanta, there is a great deal of negotiation and compromise necessary as they construct and deconstruct work before meeting face to face onsite to create their installations. Hayes and Moon have been working together since meeting in 2007 at the Art Omi residency in New York.  Their first collaborative effort, "Outflow" was featured in the group exhibition "More Mergers & Acquisitions" curated by Stuart Horodner at The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, 2009. They followed this with a large work entitled "Chutes and Tears" at The Lab Gallery in New York last April, a grand landscape of fabric and paint which unfolded and revealed itself as one walked past the corner window gallery. This work featured the use of recycled blue jeans, which were collected, shredded, often bleached, and reassembled into curtain-like forms creating cascades and shelters.  For their exhibition at ADA gallery, the team will site specifically re-install "Chutes and Tears". Jiha has finished her recent project with The Fabric workshop and Museum and was in four person show at The Fabric workshop and  museum in Philladelphia this past spring 2011. Rachel had her fellowship exhibition at Saint-Gaudens national historic site in Cornish, NH in 201o and is getting ready for her one year residency at Mary Walsh Sharpe foundtion in Brooklyn this September, 2011. This is Jiha and Rachel's third collaborative exhibition and debut exhibition at ADA gallery as a team.

Discourse Matters

Eric and Rachel have new works at Dolphin Gallery, Kansas City, MO

Eric Sall @ Brain Factory, Seoul, Korea

< Homage to Morandi: Essence of Art > Participating Artists : Anne Harild, Boyun Jang , Bryan Osburn, Changkyum Kim , Changsun Koh, Chunhee Im, Eric Sall, Eunsun Park, Frank Webster, Jahyuk Yim, Joseph Burwell, Manna Lee , Sky Kim, Tom Lee 2011.6.2-6.26 < Homage to Morandi: Essence of Art > Sook-jeen Oh (Director of Brain Factory) The Ideal of this exhibition came from the lingering thoughts  of flower paintings presented at a retrospective of Giorgio Morandi (1890~1964, Italian) who has been considered as a master of 20th century still-life painter, at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art back in 2008. For this exhibition, fourteen local and international artists have individually interpreted ‘the Essence of Art' as a common theme revolving around Morandi's works and life. The beauty of a retrospective comes by encountering the strong aura of existence from the artist's entire life through his artifacts in a confined space. The retrospective of Giorgio Morandi at Metropolitan Art Museum was certainly one of the most memorable exhibitions because of two distinctive reasons. First, the letters he sent to his friends were displayed in frames side by side with his art works, and they prove the artist's private life and his spirit completely stayed in his art. Morandi transformed the daily life from ordinary to metaphysical level through subtle and delicate composition of objects as well as simple but sophisticated arrangement of palette on small canvas. While walking through the aisle where his works were displayed, I started to realize the reason why Morandi could be able to persist with his subject matter. What he was focused on was not the subject matter that was on the canvas, rather it was far more beyond the canvas. Therefore he doesn't seem to need making the visual variation. As a result, what we see from his art, at first, look all the same, but the subtleness of his works vibrates as the time passed by. I thought what he picked as the subject matter; the complexion of what he was searching through making the paintings. What I got was strong impression of his life which completely dedicated to his art as a specimen of all the artists who are searching as he was. This makes the phenomenon of synchronizing the art and the artist himself is something that we all have to think about. The second reason comes from many of Morandi's flower paintings titled ‘Fiori' (all the flower paintings titled the same.) Since they are mostly owned by private collectors- most of them remain anonymous while lending their paintings to the MET- it was very rare to see them in one place. The fact that those flower paintings were only created to give out as presents, according to the descriptions and letters he wrote, the eccentric feeling from the beauty of ‘Fiori' lingered long in my memory. The reasons listed above led me to propose ‘flowers' as the main visual theme of the exhibition. The flowers in Morandi's paintings are artificial flowers that are still preserved and displayed at Morandi Art Museum in Bologna, along with other objects that he used in his still life paintings. Therefore, his flowers in the paintings are also the one of his still life objects that he used for the paintings. This satisfies the hypothesis that the visual theme is flowers and not necessarily flowers at the same time, and it enables to nullify the symbolism of giving and receiving an object or an image of flowers. Then why are Morandi's flowers in the paintings more subtle and elegant than the real flowers? Do the images that are perceived by our eyes reflect the afterimage of our experience? Or, do we implicitly distinguish them as the flowers that would never wilt? Morandi, who once said “ There is nothing more surreal and abstract than reality itself ,” might have thought so. Maybe he wanted to accomplish something that transcends human cognition through our visual system by painting the same subject over and over. This would be the reason why his works, whose essence remains without flesh, are still loved by and inspire many artists all over the world. I'd like to share the experience of a precious opportunity to appreciate Morandi's art world, that deletes the concept of time and imbues the air of contemplation in our spirits, as well as to ponder on the “essence or art”.

Chutes & Tears - Rachel Hayes and Jiha Moon collaboration

Photos of Installation 

Videos 

Sculptor Rachel Hayes and painter Jiha Moon have been collaborating since 2007 when they met at Art Omi International Artists Residency.

Kansas City artist Rachel Hayes’s main interest is in constructing and altering space with layered colors, texture from various fabric and synthetic vinyl by sewing them together. Hayes often builds the large composed sewn panels as an installation that can be viewed in both indoor and outdoor environments. Viewers can experience color, space, material, light and shadow in a transformed setting.

Jiha Moon is an Atlanta-based painter whose gestural paintings explore fluid identities and the global movement of people and their cultures. Moon is taking cues from everyday life, mixing and twisting to make new iconographies that are in between familiar and unfamiliar zones. Moon’s bold, layered and detailed landscapes on Korean mulberry paper appear light hearted and spontaneous.

There are many dualities within the collaboration of Moon and Hayes. There is balance found in the graphic structures, sewn grids, gestural mark-making and fluid forms. Hayes and Moon together combine and embrace their opposite elements in their collaborative installations. Moon’s bold and delicate brushstrokes are painted and embedded within Rachel's sculptural panels sewn out of fabrics and Korean mulberry paper.

They go back and forth with each other’s work to make alterations and suggest possible images. There is much negotiation and deconstruction of the fabric paintings in their separate studios in Kansas City and Atlanta. The second part of collaboration is at the actual site, as they build and install these panels in the new space. Their first collaborated effort, “Outflow” was seen at The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta Georgia (December 2008 – January 2009) as part of a group exhibition, “More Mergers & Acquisitions” curated by Stuart Horodner.

Outflow – Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (2009), Atlanta, GA

http://www.jihamoon.com/P_Link-collaboration.htm

Hayes and Moon have been awarded their second exhibition opportunity at The Lab Gallery in New York. The work entitled “Chutes and Tears” is a landscape which will unfold and reveal itself as one walks past the windows of the Lab Gallery in April 2011. They are working on adding the new element of used denim blue jeans to this installation, to create and evoke waterfalls in the space. They are in the middle of collecting and shredding many shades and different hues of used jeans which will connect to the painting’s fabric panel. They want to bring unexpected, surprising material to their collaborative work.

What's Up?

Blar Dee Blar - 50" x 66"