Jack Boul: Perceptual Painting

Jack Boul, Artist
Jack Rasmussen, Curator

While Boul is justly famed for his etchings and monoprints, this exhibition concentrates on his accomplishments as a painter and on his influence as a teacher. Boul focused on capturing the essence of his subjects using basic shapes, light and dark values, and color, rather than detailed accuracy. As a teacher, he advocated the importance of overlooking small details in favor of interpreting in paint the people, places, and things as they appear to the eye. He was able to move beyond mere appearances to capture profound, poetic truths in his art.

Renee Butler: Travelin’ Light

A Project Space Exhibition

Renee Butler, Artist
Jack Rasmussen, Curator

Discover the innovative and boundary-pushing works of Renee Butler, who’s approach to artmaking was born of her long and intimate association with the artists of the Washington Color School. Beginning as a student of second-generation Color School artists Anne Truitt and Sam Gilliam, she worked with, collected, and advocated for the likes of Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, and Gene Davis. These artists influenced Butler’s generation to move beyond abstract expressionism and minimalism and push against conventional artistic boundaries.

Travelin’ Light highlights Butler’s unique use of everyday materials, notably Ziploc® bags, which are suspended in grids and allow for whimsy in her placement of elements, including her own photos, the theater gels she scissors, and the textiles she salvages.

GROUNDED

Organized by CARAVAN
Artists:

• Ben Pease
• Brent Learned
• Carlin Bear Don’t Walk
• Donald F. Montileaux
• Henry Payer
• Hillary Kempenich
• Jackie Larson Bread
• Jackie Sevier, Artist
• Jim Yellowhawk
• Joanne Brings Thunder
• John Isaiah Pepion
• Louis Still Smoking
• Robert Martinez
• Talissa Abeyta
• Wade Patton

GROUNDED is an artistic exploration curated by CARAVAN, an international arts NGO, to inspire our imaginations about our need of being "grounded" in our relationship with all of creation: the earth and its wildlife, each other and ourselves. At this moment in time, it is critical for both our own health and the survival of our planet, that we acknowledge and honor our intricate connection to the earth as our sustainer, to the wisdom of our ancestors, and to humanity’s need of each other. Our world itself is calling for restoration, from within and without, for a realignment of a sacred harmony and an awareness of a new balance between ourselves and the earth, and with all of life upon it. GROUNDED is an exhibition of Native American creative expressions nurturing that sacred connection, leading to a new “groundedness” that results in more intentional and responsible living.

GROUNDED will bring together an inspiring group of 15 premier contemporary artists from Indigenous American tribes traditionally based in and around the Great Plains region, whose artistic practice is a unique blend of their heritage and creative expression. Their work will serve as a visual representation of the worldview, wisdom and learnings of their forebearers which is urgently needed today as we imagine the way we live in order to heal our world.

Dickson Carroll, Retrospective, 1973 to 2023

Presented by the Alper Initiative for Washington Art

Dickson Carroll, Artist
Chris Addison, Curator

Enter a three-dimensional world that's colorful, abstract, and delightfully whimsical. Dickson Carroll's work as an artist and sculptor is informed by his work as architect. In many ways, one discipline doesn't exist without the other. Carroll creates "visionary" building projects in model form, frequently for specific places in our city. Some are transformations of existing or proposed buildings. Some are fantasies.

Interested in both function and beauty, Carroll makes furniture and other useful objects. He is also fascinated by landscapes and makes three-dimensional visions of specific places, often river scenes, which are built into light boxes with their own illumination.
Carroll works primarily in wood, which is hand-carved, rasped and sanded smooth. There is a minimal use of electronic or computer-aided tools and he works without assistants. Don’t miss this exuberant retrospective of Dickson Carroll's work over the last fifty years.

 

 

The Human Flood

Ellyn Weiss, Artist
Sondra N. Arkin, Artist
Laura Roulet, Curator

What does it truly mean to leave a life behind upon migration and start a new one elsewhere? The Human Flood, a site-specific collaborative installation conceived and created by Ellyn Weiss and Sondra N. Arkin, attempts to answer this question through its exploration of the ever-growing mass migration of human populations caused by climate change. Years of extreme heat, rising sea levels, wildfires, drought, and water shortages have left the environments in which millions of people lived no longer able to sustain human life.

The installation invites visitors to confront the full experience of migration by evoking both the more visible markers of this movement — extreme weather, nomadic refugee scenarios — as well as the human and societal impacts of uprooting, including the fracturing of family ties, uncertainty, poverty, and helplessness.

The dilemma we face is how to accept responsibility without amplifying fear or threat, to recognize our common humanity. The scale of this human movement places immense challenges not only on the resources of the planet, but fundamentally on the capacity of the human heart to evolve, and to address those challenges with honesty and compassion.