Fabricate

MOSAIC

Chris Salley — Thu, 09 May 2013 23:41:05 +0000

Donald Crank was born in the small Chicago suburb of Evanston and lived in a nearby community until he was four. From four to twelve, he lived in Pakistan where his family carried out missionary work. Since then, he has spent the bulk of his time in Cincinnati.

“My artistic influences began with animation and video gaming. At a certain point, I came under the influence of Fantastic Realism and Surrealism. The decisive impact of the Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski in providing me with a desire to work in this direction can’t be understated: he’s a brilliant master of expressive art that is not known well enough worldwide. Despite the fact that I find his work worthy of emulation, I hope that my own art does not resemble his in an excessive way. As far as I see it, the purpose of any introspective art is to be just that, introspective. The work that I create is a mirror of certain sort, directed towards my own internal nature, and hopefully, because of the abstract nature of the imagery, towards some aspect of the viewer as well. People often provide me with differing interpretations of certain images, but there is often a steadiness to the overall current of interpretation.

The images on the wall represent different degrees of influence ranging from drawings done in a quiet room, to works that were channeled in a very compelling way. The main focus of my art at this point is the relationship between inspiration and understanding and my various attempts to synthesize the two, says Crank.”

Please join us this on Saturday, May 11th from 6p.m. to 10p.m. for the new art exhibition, lovely weather and Northside Second Saturdays, our favorite night in the neighborhood.

http://laskroto.cghub.com/

Shameless Traveler

Chris Salley — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 20:25:03 +0000

Shameless Traveler is a collection of photographs taken over two years, across twenty-three countries, and three continents. Stephen Bischoff set his camera, and his heart, to discover the beautiful in the mundane, the weird and the extraordinary.

“This collection of photographs is a dedication to the shared experience of life on this planet, which in the words of John Cage, ‘is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord,’ ” says Bischoff.

Bischoff has been working as an artist, graphic designer, writer and teacher, since receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from DAAP in 2006. In 2011, disillusioned with mediocrity and harboring an inextinguishable sense of adventure, Bischoff began teaching in South Korea. He then proceeded to backpack around the world for the next two years, covering over twenty countries by land, sea and air. While gallivanting across the globe, he started a successful travel blog called ShamelessTraveler.com, where he publishes stories and photographs of his many experiences. He currently resides in Cincinnati, plotting his next great adventure.

Please join us for this wonderful exhibition of wanderlust and Northside Second Saturdays on Saturday, April 13th from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.!

DO IT!

http://www.shamelesstraveler.com/
https://www.facebook.com/shamelesstraveler

Things Your Food Might Say (and other thoughts from Kentucky)

Chris Salley — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 21:58:46 +0000

Things Your Food Might Say (and other thoughts from Kentucky) is a show of new handmade tiles by Rick Hoffman.

Over the past eight years, Rick has developed a style of stoneware recognizable by its colorful glazes, vintage images and bawdy sayings. His work is fired three times to set homemade decals into the glaze. For TYFMS, Rick leaves most of the vintage images behind and uses jello molds and silhouettes as the inspiration for his text. Some pieces will make you laugh out loud, while others, rife with double entendres, may make you blush.

Hoffman graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1984. In 2008, after twenty years of exhibiting work and teaching pottery, he built Covington Clay (a teaching studio and gallery) so that others may also experience the satisfaction of working with clay.

We’re excited to be showcasing his newest creations on our gallery wall. Hop around the ‘hood this weekend and join us for the March edition of Northside Second Saturdays on March 9th!

http://CovingtonClay.com/

https://www.facebook.com/CovingtonClay

Love Kills.

Chris Salley — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 16:24:09 +0000

“I asked my psychiatrist to look at my cartoons, and he said:
‘Not now — I’m going through an existential crisis.’
Maybe he was right not to look. My cartoons reveal the treachery of love, sex and trust and make my viewers laugh at the demons hiding in the dark places of their minds.”

Brian Hagen contrasts innocence and heartlessness in pen-and-ink cartoons of vermin and disturbed adults on pengrenades.com, his outlet for a constant flow of new comics and art. Hagen’s distractible superhero, known as A.D.D. Man, appears in Twelve-Way with Cheese, a full-color anthology of twelve of Cincinnati’s most creative and successful graphic artists and cartoonists. After having sold his art on the streets of New Orleans and creating full-page illustrations in Florida’s The Gainesville Sun newspaper, he now works designing art for books, local movie posters, his webcomic and galleries.

Upon receiving his bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Hagen used his education to teach with the Peace Corps in Equatorial Guinea, the only Spanish-speaking country in Africa. He later worked as a deckhand on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico as he created the art for his first published comic. He received a Master of Art degree in mass communication in 2005 at the University of Florida.

Brian resides in Cincinnati, Ohio with his wife Natalia and their huge stuffed tiger “Barack.”

Bring your cold, battered, not-so-Valentiney hearts to Fabricate for this February edition of Northside Second Saturdays on February 9th! Warm and lovey hearts welcome too.

http://www.pengrenades.com/

Head In The Clouds

Chris Salley — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:12:31 +0000

“It’s all in your head: thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears and love
are caught in the daydreams of your imagination. They grow and twist like vines in the garden of your mind, spinning webs in the story hidden deep within the secrets of longing, desire and memory. Briefly, these dreams break free and materialize with abandon in the real world. Ultimately, they thrive best when kept locked in your head, where they are held in safety from those who hurt, and remain unbroken and pure.” – ESC

Emily St. Clair is a graphic designer with a degree from DAAP. She also employs herself with her other passions: gardening for Hyde Park Farmer’s Market and baking for her gluten-free bakery. The rest of her time is devoted to her artwork and her lovely daughter. Head In The Clouds is a collection of new and old designs, as well as her T-shirts and prints.

“Keep your head in the clouds, and your feet in the ground.”

We invite you to come get lost in St. Clair’s beautiful pieces and join us, and all of Northside, for the January Edition of Northside Second Saturdays on Saturday, January 12th!

Salvaged Spirits

Chris Salley — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 17:52:22 +0000

Ursula Roma’s lively and colorful “Northside – Keep It Beautiful” mural greets us daily as we come over the viaduct into Northside. She is a fine artist, designer and sculptor who studied art and design in New York, Ohio and Connecticut. She received both her BFA in design and an MFA in illustration. For over twenty years, she has owned her own business doing commissioned design, illustration and fine art work for local and national clients. She works in a variety of mediums, including: acrylic, oil and

watercolor painting; collage; and pen and ink. Roma also creates mixed-media wall art and sculptures using found objects and salvaged materials. As a seasoned salvager and recycler, she sees potential in all kinds of discarded shapes and objects, and repurposes these pieces into works of fine art.

“I’m driven to collect found objects and other random sculptural forms in order to tell the story of their second life. In that way, I feel like I am salvaging the spirit of the creators of those original parts and collaging them together into a new soul: a mask, a figure, a bird, a fish. These creatures come alive and their spirits call out from their new body,” says Roma.

We love Ursula and are happy to close out 2012 with such a longtime, local favorite. Please join us for cheap wine and beer, SPRING WEATHER IN DECEMBER?!?! and Northside Second Saturdays this weekend!

Celebrating Three Years!!!

Chris Salley — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 02:00:39 +0000

We’ll be celebrating our three year anniversary with an opening reception for our new show Tabula Rasa. Tabula Rasa is a small collection of painted illustrations by Sara Gelbert, which represent the awe of nature after half a decade in an urban environment. The neglected becomes essential. Ignored details are the focus. The natural beauty we are surrounded by every single day becomes glaringly obvious within the right context.

With an artist for a mother, it comes as no surprise that the most creative period in Sara’s life was her childhood. Between selling friendship bracelets to the neighbors and building

a magical village in the woods behind her house, she cultivated a need to make and do. But apparently a keen eye for color theory and design weren’t enough. It took years of half-assed projects and unpacked and neglected studios for nature and nurture to align themselves. After five years in Chicago, a move back to her childhood home was just the ticket. Surrounded by trees and stars, it was impossible to not be swept up in the nostalgia and magic of nature. And most unexpectedly, revisitation of the simpler things that had always existed before the quest to find more, ultimately engaged the creativity she was always striving for. Almost two years back in Cincinnati, and two fully functioning studios later, she is still swept up.We’re happy she decided to share it with us for our Three Year Anniversary show and we’d love for you to come out and share this milestone with us! Without your loyal patronage and bountiful handcrafted awesomeness from a bevy of clever artisans and designers, we wouldn’t have made it this far. This also coincides with the November Edition of Northside Second Saturdays, which is pretty much our favorite night in the neighborhood! GET. OUT. IN. IT.

http://saragelbert.com/

Bellow & Roost

Chris Salley — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 23:49:00 +0000

Fabricate is psyched to present Bellow & Roost: A Seasonal Manifestation. This show is a collaborative effort by Ali and Michelle Calis to celebrate the magic and mystery of the autumnal season; when the living goes dormant, the air turns crispy, and the skies grey. With a rustic unorthodox technique, they muster up the enchantment of all those little creatures that tend to send tiny chills down your spine, and pair them with quaint but curious patterning to trick the eye.

Ali and Michelle combined forces thirteen years ago while studying fine art and design at Ohio University. Upon completion Ali began showing his paintings in several galleries around the country, and was soon published in Roger Gastman’s book, Morning Wood.
In 2006, a couple years after making the joint trek to Cincinnati, Ali launched a creative group called Able Projects with partner Ryan Little. Inspired by the large amounts of construction waste and other available resources, he quickly began creating an assortment of large scale installations throughout the city that were made solely from salvaged lumber. Meanwhile, Michelle worked towards melding the unconventional nature of art with the sometimes painful normalcy of designing interior spaces, and attempted to create an atypical product. Finding herself especially inspired by the effects of textiles and color, she began to create and incorporate custom patterns into her work. The transition towards collaborating was a natural one for the couple. These days when found working together, he serves up the meat and she adds a dash of sweet.

Please join us for the opening reception this Saturday, October 13 from 6 p.m. – 10 p.m, as you hop around Northside for the October edition of Northside Second Saturdays!

That’s Just A Myth

Chris Salley — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 00:54:18 +0000

“The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” This was the mentality Michael Hurst had growing up in the suburbs. When he got older, he moved into the city and made a startling discovery: there is no grass there! His work is heavily influenced by his lifelong infatuation with city life. Graphic, urban-inspired portraits speak to the tension between the hip, public persona these figures portray and their true vulnerability that they try to conceal.

“My new body of work is an attempt to incorporate Renaissance ideas with contemporary imagery. During the process of making this collection I spent countless hours studying Italian Renaissance painting, sculpture and philosophy, focusing on Florentine artists, primarily the Medici family tree and the creative thinkers they patronized. I am a strong believer that the best way to understand our past is to walk in the shoes of those who came before us, in my case it was the renaissance masters, in their case it was the Greeks before them. The ideas that they brought to light through art are still relatable today, being that many of those pagan ideas were eventually recycled into almost every school and religion practiced today. Ideas like hope, discovery, temptation, justice, knowledge, accountability, etc. are still very relevant and very necessary in understanding human behavior past and present,” says Hurst.

Michael Hurst was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received his BFA in Fine Art at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Three months after graduating, he co-founded Engine 22 Studios in downtown Cincinnati: an artists’ space with twelve individual studios, which he rehabbed and managed. In the span of two and a half years, he has participated in twenty-three group shows all around the U.S., three auctions and was invited back to the AAC as a guest speaker to the senior class. In 2005 he began Masters Degree courses at Maryland Institute College of Art, and graduated with a degree in painting on May 14th, 2007. Hurst currently lives in Covington, KY and works in Cincinnati, OH.

We’re really excited to welcome Michael’s newest collection to Fabricate and honored that he considered us worthy of showcasing his work. Please join us for the new exhibition, potable beverages and all of the fun Northside Second Saturdays has to offer!

For more on Michael Hurst please visit http://www.michaelhurst.com/.

Tough Love

Chris Salley — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 21:07:07 +0000

Evangeline Bauerle was born and raised in the K.Y. and has a day gig as a designer at Landor. It was like pulling teeth to extract an artist bio from her, even though in real life she’s amazingly sassy, smart and witty, albeit with a soft-spoken voice and a side o’ shy.

This was the original artist statement she sent to me:

“Evangeline Bauerle is a brutal hardass. Just kidding, that’s not true.”

She thinks that the title of ‘artist’ is overused and only after being probed said: “I guess i’m a designer…who does art.”

She tells me she got into Norweigen death metal a few years back and loved the whole aesthetic of it, and says Tough Love is somewhat inspired by that.

“These normal dudes who live with their mom, feed their pets and clean their underwear laundry. This whole facade of being tough, but really being people who have to do normal, commonplace stuff everyday.”

“I always wish I could be a tough-looking chick, but people can see right through you,” she says.

With Tough Love, Evey explores that thing within all of us that makes you want everyone to think that you’re tougher than you really are. Using watercolor, pen and ink, and bleached fabric—because she likes the idea of addressing dark subject matter with what is sometimes considered “cheesy landscape” mediums—she juxtaposes a softer palette against harder topics. It’s a little manifestation of her own trying to be tough and the humor she sees in everything.

In her own words: “This is an art show about misfits, weirdos, freaks, hate, love, hiding, and doing normal shit.”

We’re into that.

Please join us for the opening reception this Saturday night (Aug. 11), whilst hopping around Northside for the August edition of Northside Second Saturdays!

♥,

A + C