Current Exhibition
DomesticLands
April 9 - June 6, 2021
The home is a place that fosters our understanding of relationships. During the early years of childhood is when we develop socially and emotionally. Later in life, these early years will impact our ability to foster relationships, empathize, and how to interact with others. When revisiting memories of home, it is important to teeter on the edge of both joy and trauma as this duality defines us. There are nurturing memories that offer safety and warmth. However, for others, the home can represent pain where a moment of trauma is forever encased in time. Home can be a physical location, associated with the material, or defined within one's self. This cultivation of objects and relationships defines who we are.
Presenting works by Morgan Bukovec, Gary Sczerbaniewicz, and Allison M. Walters.
Presenting works by Morgan Bukovec, Gary Sczerbaniewicz, and Allison M. Walters.
Artist Statements & Bios
Morgan Bukovec
“common thread”
This site-specific installation investigates the relationship of materials and memory in the domestic spaces we call home. Domestic fabrics (quilts, blankets, sheets, linens, etc.) activate stories and cultivate feelings of connection through generations. The found fabrics, suspended from the ceiling, respond to the architecture of the space and create a feeling of openness that draws in a delicate and airy quality. The fabrics are draped physically close and are connected through seamless ties that cultivate the feeling of intimacy, while the various textures and patterns of these fabrics evoke a sense of familiarity. Collected stories, submitted by strangers and the owners of the work’s fabrics, have been catalogued by a storyteller, the recordings are available via a phone number provided in the gallery. The intent of this work is to invite viewers to slow down, look closely at the materials, listen to the stories of strangers, and cultivate their own meaning and narrative through reflection, imagination, and memory. Viewers will have an opportunity to submit their own stories connected to domestic fabrics and memory.
collage works
This series of mixed media collage works are driven by my desire to understand and contextualize the experience of living female through material, content, and process. The long, narrative titles of each work aim to spark a story, while exploring and questioning the roles and relationships within the domestic space. These works are filled with opportunities for viewers to investigate the materials used, examine the story that was delicately created, then reflect on one’s own role and identity within the domestic space.
This site-specific installation investigates the relationship of materials and memory in the domestic spaces we call home. Domestic fabrics (quilts, blankets, sheets, linens, etc.) activate stories and cultivate feelings of connection through generations. The found fabrics, suspended from the ceiling, respond to the architecture of the space and create a feeling of openness that draws in a delicate and airy quality. The fabrics are draped physically close and are connected through seamless ties that cultivate the feeling of intimacy, while the various textures and patterns of these fabrics evoke a sense of familiarity. Collected stories, submitted by strangers and the owners of the work’s fabrics, have been catalogued by a storyteller, the recordings are available via a phone number provided in the gallery. The intent of this work is to invite viewers to slow down, look closely at the materials, listen to the stories of strangers, and cultivate their own meaning and narrative through reflection, imagination, and memory. Viewers will have an opportunity to submit their own stories connected to domestic fabrics and memory.
collage works
This series of mixed media collage works are driven by my desire to understand and contextualize the experience of living female through material, content, and process. The long, narrative titles of each work aim to spark a story, while exploring and questioning the roles and relationships within the domestic space. These works are filled with opportunities for viewers to investigate the materials used, examine the story that was delicately created, then reflect on one’s own role and identity within the domestic space.
Morgan Bukovec is a mixed media artist, educator, storyteller and collector of things from Cleveland, Ohio. Having received a bachelor's degree in Fine Art and Art Education from the University of Dayton, her studio practice is interdisciplinary with a focus on themes of identity, storytelling, fleeting moments and objects across time. Recent group exhibitions include: /DIFFERENT STROKES/, Female Artist Club, Belgium, Boundaries, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, and Waterloo Arts Juried Exhibition, Waterloo Art Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio. Morgan works as a bartender at the local pub, a server at her grandpa’s butcher shop, as well as a Thoma Engagement Guide Apprentice at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland.
Gary Sczerbaniewicz
My approach to the concept of Home is to document the unheimlich or un-homely. This contrarian position has been gleaned from numerous experiences in which the safety, security, and intimacy normally associated with the concept of home has been subverted or dismantled (often by intangible forces), yielding spaces which are mere remnants of their once vigorous nature. Growing up at the end of the Cold War in suburban New York State in a Catholic family- my childhood was generally happy but always laced with a sense of existential dread from invisible sources ranging from spiritual retribution to literal annihilation by radioactive cloud. The resulting effect of this struggle between security/ insecurity has impacted my thinking, research, and practice to yield a permanent sense of what scholar Ruth Ronen describes as an ‘aesthetics of anxiety’. These four works comprise the first part in a series of eight which depict related wall sections of an old domestic space that have been ruptured by some unknown trauma. This trauma is perhaps hinted at in the acronym titles which refer to a Catholic nighttime prayer recited often in my childhood: *'(NILM) Now I Lay Me...... (DTS) Down To Sleep'…..(IPTL) I Pray The Lord…..(MSTK) My Soul To Keep.’
Gary Sczerbaniewicz was born in Upstate NY, received his BFA in Sculpture from Alfred University and his MFA in Sculpture & Installation from the University at Buffalo in 2013. Sczerbaniewicz is a 2016 NYFA fellow in Architecture/ Environmental Structures / Design from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally and has completed residencies at Yaddo (2017), the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts (2016), and Sculpture Space (2013). Sczerbaniewicz recently served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the University of Notre Dame. Gary is represented by Anna Kaplan Contemporary, Buffalo, NY.
Allison M. Walters
I'm a person who makes things and loves people. My work deals with what it means to be human, with what it means to be imperfect. I study the imperfection within myself, and I broadcast that into the world so that others may relate and feel closer to me and to one another, as imperfect human beings. I am most interested in communication between humans, and the failure of that communication. What happens when we love too much, and our feelings become warped or perverted? What happens when we want to get close, but we cannot? I deal with emptiness, fullness, lust, love, and abuse. I am interested in happiness, and subsequently images, text, and ideas that are connected to happiness, especially ones that have been deprived of context or emotion. Ultimately, I want to share feelings with people.
Allison Walters is a person who makes art. She works in photography, painting, video, digital art, and conceptual art. Her work deals with being human and sharing complex feelings with others. She has an MFA from Stony Brook University, where she studied Studio Art from 2014–2017. She also works as a web and graphic designer at the College Art Association, a nonprofit arts organization based in New York City.