CSArt Madison 2017

Arts + Literature Laboratory is pleased to announce that shares for the inaugural season of CSArt Madison—southern Wisconsin’s first Community Supported Art program—are SOLD OUT!

The 2017 CSArt Madison artists are: Faisal Abdu'Allah, Katharine DeLamater, John Hitchcock, Helen Lee, J. Myszka Lewis, Dakota Mace, Jason Ruhl, Chelsea Thompto, Bernadette Witzack, and Ariel Wood. Information about the artists is available by clicking the links at the bottom of this page.

Much like Community Supported Agriculture programs, in which shareholders invest in a local farm and receive shares of fruits and vegetables, CSArt Madison asks shareholders to invest directly in the arts community with a ‘buy local’ mentality. Participating artists—selected by the ALL Curatorial Board through an open call process—will each receive a stipend to create 60 “shares” for the program (50 for shareholders, 9 for the other participating artists, and 1 for ALL's permanent collection). Interested collectors or “shareholders” purchase a share, and in return, receive one piece of locally-produced artwork from each of the ten featured artists.

Shares cost $300 and will be available for purchase online or in the gallery. On July 29, 2017 shares will be distributed at a pick-up event and exhibition reception providing opportunities for artists and patrons to further connect. ALL will also organize studio visits to take place during May and June for artists to receive feedback and support from the Curatorial Board, and for the public to learn more about the artists. The schedule of studio visits is posted below. Participants are asked to RSVP to csart@artlitlab.org or 608.770.2052.

The goals of CSArt Madison are to support artists and to create an engaged community of local arts supporters. CSArt supports artists: in the creation of new work, to establish relationships with local collectors and patrons, and to participate in the launch of an exciting new model of art support and distribution. CSArt shareholder benefits include multiple works of art from local emerging and mid-career artists at a fantastic value. Additionally, CSArt shareholders have the opportunity to develop relationships with the local artists and art community, discover new artists, explore a variety of disciplines and support artists’ careers and a vibrant community.

CSArt Madison is based on a national model of art support and distribution developed by Springboard for the Arts, which has been successfully implemented in over 40 cities across the country. ALL’s unique addition to the model includes an exhibition, where participating artists are given the opportunity to display larger-scale works (different from works in the CSArt shares) at ALL during a month-long exhibition from July 7 to July 29. The culminating pick-up event will coincide with a closing reception for the exhibition, providing an opportunity for the general public to view the work and meet the participating artists.

ARTIST STUDIO VISITS

RSVP to csart@artlitlab.org or 608.770.2052
View/download PDF of schedule with map

SATURDAY 5/13
Humanities (455 N Park St.)
John Hitchcock 1:00-1:30pm

Art Lofts (111 N Frances St.)
Dakota Mace 2:15-2:45pm
Chelsea Thompto 2:50-3:20pm
Helen Lee 3:25-3:55pm
Faisal Abdu'Allah 4:00-4:30pm

SATURDAY 6/3
233 E Mifflin Street
J. Myszka Lewis 3:00-3:30pm

SUNDAY 6/4
ALL (2021 Winnebago St.)
Katharine DeLamater 2:00 - 2:30pm
Ariel Wood 2:30 - 3:00pm
Bernadette Witzack 3:00 - 3:30pm

SUNDAY 6/11
30 N 4th Street
Jason Ruhl 2:00-2:30pm

CSArt Madison is organized by the Arts + Literature Laboratory Curatorial Board. The project is supported in part by grants from Dane Arts and the Madison Arts Commission, with additional funds from the Wisconsin Arts Board, the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation, The Evjue Foundation, Inc., charitable arm of The Capital Times, W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation, and Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation.

Faisal Abdu'Allah

Faisal Abdu’Allah is a multidisciplinary British artist who creates iconographic imagery through a conceptual lens, exploring intersections of race, identity, power, and representation as they relate to ideology and culture. A trained printmaker and barber, Abdu’Allah’s practice blends photography, print media, installation, film, music, and performance to challenge and interrogate these constructs.

Katharine DeLamater

Katharine DeLamater’s handmade paper works incorporate drawings of personal domestic spaces, architectural dissections, and unconventional mending and preservation methods. She is particularly interested in combining paper and printmaking techniques, Japanese papermaking, and natural dye applications.

John Hitchcock

Inspired by the long history of social and political commentary within the discipline of printmaking, John Hitchcock frequently uses the medium to explore relationships of community, land, and culture. Many of the images are interpretations of stories told by his Kiowa/Comanche grandparents and abstract representations of indigenous historical trauma.

Helen Lee

Helen Lee’s studio practice investigates the morphological nature of language as words traverse a circuit of relationships through glass, design, and the body. Her latest body of work explores the inscription of cultural identity through literal mistranslations, slippery interpretations, crossed wires of communication, and other unintentional consequences of bilingualism.

J. Myszka Lewis

J. Myszka Lewis’ work is motivated by the intricacies of language and the complex relationships between object, image, and materiality. Using printmaking, painting, and embroidery, she breaks down and re-images basic objects in order to examine notions of familiarity, structure, and stability.

Dakota Mace

Dakota Mace is a Navajo (Diné) artist whose works in photography and weaving investigate issues surrounding romanticized representations of Native Americans, gender roles, stereotypes, identity, and Native culture. Her research and practice are focused on addressing these concerns and enforcing a positive representation for Indigenous peoples.

Jason Ruhl

Jason Ruhl’s current work merges music, printmaking, cataloging, and correspondence to produce collaged print imagery inspired by songs sent from friends. Disparate images are reduced to essential parts, and reimagined into mixed media works that are mailed to the person who provided the source music.

Chelsea Thompto

Chelsea Thompto’s practice is strongly rooted in her experience as a transwoman. The act of transitioning, while a deeply personal process, is also a politicized act—throwing into sharp relief the inadequacies of her learned perspective of gender as binary system. Thompto employs intricate and deliberate systems (numerical and otherwise) to create visual form, articulate data, and to allude to our habitual ordering of peoples and behaviors.

Bernadette Witzack

Bernadette Witzack’s improvisatory artmaking explores feeling, abstraction, and presence through colorful and tactile compositions. Her paintings, drawings, screenprints, and works in mixed media are at once abstract configurations and intimate, confessional narratives—portraits that are autonomous visual entities with their own idiosyncrasies and bodily presence.

Ariel Wood

Ariel Wood employs sculptural form and painterly articulation to explore complex notions of intimacy and comfort, challenging the prescribed duality of solitude and companionship. In her installations, sculptures, and paintings, Wood fabricates poetic indices of human interaction, evoking relational memory and facilitating moments of introspection.

PLAN YOUR VISIT

Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.

Our galleries are open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday noon to 5pm, and other programs take place throughout the week. Please check the events calendar and education section for details.

CALENDAR

CSArt Madison 2017

ARTIST STUDIO VISITS

PLAN YOUR VISIT

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