The Exchange Gallery

Every month VAE highlights the work of four or five exemplary VAE artists in its Exchange Gallery. This highly visible retail space in the front windows of VAE's City Market Gallery is excellent exposure for artists and a favorite shopping spot of patrons. Artists are juried into the space annually. For more information contact Meredith Burgess at 919.828.7834 ex 6853, or meredith@visualartexchange.org.

Click here to learn how to apply for your own featured artist exhibition!

October 2009 Exchange Gallery Artists:

• Gabriella Corter
• Garrett Scales
• Mike Sonnichsen
• Steve Wright

Gabriella Corter

You can't go home again. You never should have left.

"You found the earth too great for your one life...But it has been this way with all men...You have faltered; you have missed the way...And now, because you have known madness and despair...We who have stormed the ramparts of the furious earth and been hurled back, we who have been maddened by the unknowable and bitter mystery of love, we who have hungered after fame and savored all of life, the tumult, pain, and frenzy, and now sit quietly by our windows watching all that henceforth never more shall touch us - we call upon you to take heart, for we can swear to you that these things pass." -Thomas Wolfe

Wall sculptures from the series "Will They Still..." focus on alterations of perception toward others after abrupt and disturbing changes in both physical being and mental state. While inspired by imagining transformations during and after times of war this series is meant to encompass a broader spectrum in the realm of human possibilities for we never know when a life-altering experience will descend upon us.

Garrett Scales

I am a self-taught artist and after discovering the process of stenciling began to create my entire body of work from hand cut stencils and spray paint. Since 2003 my works typically depicted pop culture icons of the hip hop world. Later, I chose to depict other American icons for various aesthetic reasons. The most important being the moment that was captured. Now, I am beginning to shape my work to follow the lines and flaws of the human face to give more feeling to the overall work. It is my hope that the viewer walks away from this interpretation and develops one of their own.

Mike Sonnichsen

The works shown here represent selections from Mike Sonnichsen's continuing explorations utilizing color photograms. Through these "camera-less" light recordings, he reveals an aesthetic richness in familiar objects. Many of the items he is drawn to are inexpensive household objects, odd thrift store finds, toys, and sometimes even refuse, yet they are gathered with sensibilities honed by his design education and childhood in the tropics. He is fascinated with the forms, materials, manufacture and life-cycle of objects in our world and our relationships with them. While he celebrates the easily overlooked "underdogs" of material culture, he begins to shed light on current attitudes toward consumption, design, nostalgia, and worth. By revealing previously unseen aspects of "form families" through this historical medium, he seeks to dazzle the eyes and tease a sense of wonder and beauty out of ordinary objects.

Steve Wright

These works are reactions - to world events and one's place in and apart from them. Recognizable figures are drawn from military websites, slot machines, and canonical images in art history and are placed in bright, anxious fields of color and pattern. Some areas of paint are flat and others built of increasingly translucent layers. The combination of these supposedly incongruous painting methods follows the mix of imagery in an attempt to express a whole reaction built of moments and feelings that are often at odds: beauty, disgust, confidence, uncertainty, fear and humor.

See previous featured artists:

September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007