The View From Here
@ AFRU Gallery
An Invitational Group Show featuring work by
Trevis Hutsell, Kassandra Montano, Asher Katz, and Sarah Morrigan
April 5th - 27th, 2013
Opening Friday April 5th, 6pm-12am,
free, all-ages welcome
| Afru Gallery 534 SE Oak St Portland, OR 97214 www.afrugallery.com |
Open hours: Friday 12pm – 4pm Saturday 12pm – 4pm Sunday 2pm – 6pm |
Special Features!
Silkscreening for Artists demo & workshop with Asher Katz:
Saturday April 6th, 12-4pm,
Studio session is $5 per person, pre-registration required.
More info
Interactive art opportunity:
Artists are invited to pin up sketchbook drawings of places that are special to them- of their neighborhood, their studio, their homes, favorite buildings, trees, coffee shops, etc, to hang up and share for the duration of the show; we ask that sketches be 9×12 inches or smaller so we can accommodate as much work as possible. Sketches will not be for sale.
Bring sketches to the gallery on Thursday, April 4th, 12-pm, or to the opening on Friday
About the Show
First of all, I’m honored to be working with the fine folks art AFRU Gallery and grateful for the opportunity to curate in their space; it’s been very exciting to watch them take Launch Pad’s old home and inject it with their own powerful creative energy and diverse community of artists.
I first started thinking about the idea for this show six months before closing Launch Pad. I had moved to Seattle a year previously and I was having a hard time figuring out where I belonged in my new city, and how to feel about my old city. It had been 17 years since my initial move to Portland and I could barely remember when the beloved landmarks of my life there were unfamiliar and new, yet even with regular monthly visits to install shows at the gallery, I could see the city changing in ways I would never have perceived when I lived there. I was an outsider now, able to look in.
With The View from Here, I invited artists to take a minute and re-look at their familiar surroundings. I asked them to do an experiment (or maybe an assignment) and to re-observe their habitat through the lens of their sketchbook. While many artists have had a a sketchbook practice, at least in my case, the sketchbook is a place where I escape from the present setting, rather than enter it more fully. As a preparatory step, I asked each artist to go out into the their life and do at least 10 life-sketching sessions– drawing what they observe, writing down things they hear and see, smell and touch, making a record or image or diary of where they were, before beginning their work for this show The idea was for them to deliberately integrate and insinuate some of the places they live into their work. The idea was for art to allow the familiar to become new.
~ Ben Pink, Guest Curator
Ben Pink founded and operated Launch Pad Gallery for 6.5 years, which was located in the same location as AFRU Gallery; Launch Pad focused on showing the work of local emerging artists in solo and duo shows, as well as hosting huge open-call themed shows with hundreds of artists. Since 2011, Ben has lived and worked in Seattle, WA with his fiancee; he is excited to be curating again and eager to share work by artists from around the country with his Portland community.
Selected Pieces
click thumbnail for a full-size view.
 Kassandra Montano |
 Sarah Morrigan |
 Asher Katz |
 Asher Katz |
 Trevis Hutsell |
 Trevis Hutsell |
 Trevis Hutsell |