art

Melody Owen at Art Gym

Melody Owen, the weight of a tiny bird

Two new exhibitions open at The Art Gym at Marylhurst University on Sunday, February 21 with a reception for the artists from 3 to 5 PM. The Art Gym’s main space features So Close to the Glass and Shivering by Melody Owen. In Gallery 2, Paula Rebsom will present If We Lived Here. Both exhibitions continue through April 9, 2010.

From the press release:

Both exhibitions address human and animal interactions, migration and travel. Owen uses drawing, video and sculpture as “quiet ruminations on whales and exploration.” Paula Rebsom built a house-like structure and set up an observation station on her family’s abandoned farm in rural North Dakota. Images of the structure, landscape and the birds and animals that frequent the site will be recorded or broadcast live from North Dakota and projected in The Art Gym’s Gallery 2 over the course of the exhibition.

So Close to the Glass and Shivering is a major exhibition for Portland-based Melody Owen. In this new show, the artist presents works in a number of media that are records of travel and exploration. Some of her travels have been in North America, others in Europe. Owen is interested in the records that explorers keep and in making her own. In this exhibition she also builds on the concept of the whale as a record keeper and traveling library. She created an 11-foot, white-wire sculpture of a beluga whale—a drawing in space—and a trace of a whale that lies on the gallery floor. Owen has also carved and sanded a vine from Borneo to resemble a narwhale tusk — something explorers might bring back from the journey — and added a message in Morse code. During a recent residency in Switzerland, Owen was reminded of some old glass slides of European mountain landscapes she found years ago in Beacon, New York. She added collage elements to the slides that will be shown in a light box.

Many of Owen’s significant experiences have been with animals, often through the glass of an aquarium or zoo enclosure. The title So Close to the Glass and Shivering comes from the title of a video Owen made of white wolves in the Berlin Tiergarten. The exhibition includes video recorded through a telescope at the Cornell University ornithology lab and bird sanctuary in upstate New York, and videos of a Beluga whale filmed at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago and of a leopard recorded at the Menagerie du Jardin des Plantes in Paris.

The Art Gym is on the third floor of the B.P. John Administration Building at Marylhurst University, which is located one mile south of Lake Oswego on Highway 43.

POSTED: February 20th, 2010 | AUTHOR: lisa | FILED UNDER: art | TAGS: , , | No Comments »