Like a Striking Simile | Arts + Literature Laboratory | Madison Contemporary Arts Center

Like a Striking Simile

A Series of Objects by Helen Hawley and Chele Isaac

Artists Helen Hawley and Chele Isaac maintain studios one block apart in downtown Madison. They each work across a variety of media and over time noticed an uncanny simultaneity of ideas, images and insights. Curious about the recurring and serendipitous parallels, they decided to explore the source and terrain of this shared language with a collaborative exhibition. Throughout “Like a Striking Simile” Hawley and Isaac explore a fascination for how, under careful observation and consideration, the materials and objects often overlooked in daily life seem to suggest something else entirely. Though produced independently the work of the exhibition evolved in a sort of call and response to each other’s sketches and experiments.

Helen Hawley

Helen Hawley is a visual artist working across several media including sculpture, prints, painting and video. Recent exhibitions include Nature and Neon at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and Ink, Press, Repeat at James Patterson University in NJ. Her work was included in the 2016 Wisconsin Triennial at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and the Endless and Mobile Beautiful exhibition at Flux Factory in Queens. She has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center, the Wassaic Artist Residency in NY, and Waaw in Saint Louis, Senegal. Special live projects include collaborations with Willy Street Chamber Players and Bach Dancing and Dynamite in Madison, WI. She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She lives in Madison, WI.

Chele Isaac works across several media including video, sound, sculpture and photography. Her installation works have been shown locally and nationally in art centers, project galleries and museums. Her short films have been screened in group shows and film festivals in the US and internationally. She was the Windgate Artist in Residence in the Spring of 2015 at the University of Indiana Pennsylvania which culminated in shows at the Pittsburgh Center for The Arts/Summer 2015 and Pittsburgh’s SPACE Gallery 2016. Upcoming projects include a solo show at Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in 2017 and learning how to be a farmer. Isaac has been an adjunct professor teaching Digital Arts Studio for the UW-Madison Art Department where she also serves on the Board of Visitors. She holds an MFA from the UW-Madison and maintains a studio and collaborative arts space in a renovated former church, downtown Madison.

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

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