Salina Art Center

Salina Art Center announces the opening of spring exhibitions…

Barry Anderson:  Always Becoming Something
March 6 – May 3, 2009

Robert Bubp:  Vision/Voice/Plan:  Salina
March 6 – May 17, 2009

Carrie Scanga:  Allegories and Architecture
March 6 – May 17, 2009
 

Opening Reception
Thursday, March 5, 5:00 – 7:00 pm
Artists’ remarks at 5:30 pm

Salina, Kansas – The Salina Art Center announces the opening of three exhibitions on view in the Art Center galleries beginning March 6, 2009. The opening reception of these exhibitions takes place at the Salina Art Center Thursday, March 5, from 5:00 – 7:00 pm with remarks by the exhibition artists at 5:30 pm. This event and gallery admission are FREE and open to the public.

Barry Anderson:  Always Becoming Something

Diverse Salina residents populate Barry Anderson’s newest work, Always Becoming Something, an ongoing video project that explores various communities through video portraits. Volunteer subjects for this video artwork interacted one at a time with the artist on camera, standing in front of a green “chroma key” screen. The artist then brought them together within a digitally created space of his imagination. The “typically minimal environment focuses
viewers’ attention on the negative spaces between individuals highlighting the desire to, and often inability to, connect with each other…not only a portrait of the individuals but of the community in which they exist.”

Other versions of the video were created during a residency at Light Work in Syracuse, NY, and involved art and drama students at Syracuse University. The project will continue on to involve gallery patrons in Oakland, CA, contemporary artists in Kansas City, MO, and various residents of Munich, Germany.

Barry Anderson received a BFA from the University of Texas, Austin, Texas, with a concentration in photography in 1991, and an MFA from the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, with a concentration in Photography and Digital Media in 2002. Anderson’s recent solo exhibitions have shown at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas, the Byron C. Cohen Gallery for Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri, and the Roger Williams University Video Gallery, Providence, Rhode Island.  He currently lives and works in Kansas City, Missouri. 

This exhibition is made possible in part by a grant from the Horizons Grants Program of the Salina Arts & Humanities Commission, City of Salina.

Robert Bubp:  Vision/Voice/Plan:  Salina

Vision / Voice / Plan:  Salina asks what the community of Salina should be in the next 25, 50, or 100 years. Artist Robert Bubp, in a series of workshops with citizens, facilitated an artistic conversation via collage, text, photographs and dialogue on a series of “planning” topics that include: cultural amenities, housing, schools, homeless shelters, green spaces, and community centers. Bubp’s interpretation is a mixed-media installation incorporating the community’s and artist’s drawings, text, constructions, and video. Visitors add to the dialogue through a blog and
                                                    drawing station where they may add their own ideas and visions. Bubp’s collaborative project addresses significant issues that face Salina and many cities of its size. The questions he asks visitors are: What elements define a city? For whom does it exist? Who drives the community-building process? What are the expectations and biases of individuals? What does a planning process look like through the “lens” of an artist?

Robert Bubp is currently an Assistant Professor of Foundation, Painting & Drawing at Wichita State University.  He is the founder and faculty advisor of Wichita State University’s student gallery, Shift Space.  In 1993, Bubp received a BFA from the University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, with a concentration in drawing and painting, and an MFA from Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, in 2002. Bubp’s work has recently been exhibited in the Chapman Gallery, Kansas State University, at ArtsPlace, Ponca City, Oklahoma, and at the Dowd Fine Art Center, Cortland, New York.

This exhibition is made possible in part by a grant from the Horizons Grants Program of the Salina Arts & Humanities Commission, City of Salina.

Carrie Scanga:  Allegories and Architecture

Enigmatic and uncanny, Carrie Scanga’s images are both hauntingly familiar and strangely other.  These pictures grow out of and suggest stories, which Scanga sees as having the power to link “all that’s personal to something more universal.” Beginning with a feeling that she wants to pinpoint, the artist consciously sifts through “fictional and true, personal and cultural stories and settings,” seeking out scenarios that will visually express her sensation or emotion. Of particular interest to her are those “buildings and cultural myths,” architecture and allegories, that are “saturated with people’s stories through use and circulation” - a home that has absorbed traces of its inhabitants, the traditional tales that become richer with each retelling. Drawing upon these tangible and intangible repositories of meaning, Scanga creates scenes dense with potential interpretations.  Conveying more than just her personal feelings, each of Scanga’s images prompts viewers to invoke their own memories and imaginings.

Carrie Scanga, currently living and working in the Hudson Valley of New York, has received numerous residencies, awards, and fellowships including those from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the MacDowell Colony, Artspace, Sculpture Space, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. Recent solo exhibitions have been on view at The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,  and the Hudson D. Walker Gallery,
Provincetown, Massachusetts.  Scanga’s work was also exhibited at the International Print Center New York, Manhattan, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, New York, and at The Free Library of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her current studio practice is supported by a grant from the Pollock Krasner Foundation.

Carrie Scanga’s exhibition and her future artist residency are made possible in part by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, and by the R.C. Kemper Charitable Trust, UMB Bank, n.a. Corporate Trustee.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Several public programs are scheduled to take place in conjunction with each of these exhibitions.  For more information on these programs or the exhibitions visit http://www.salinaartcenter.org or call the Salina Art Center at 785.827.1431.  The Salina Art Center galleries are open Wednesday through Saturday from noon – 5:00 pm, and Sunday from 1:00 – 5:00 pm.  Business office hours are Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.