Anita Sue Kolman Gallery“Collects, Shoots and Leaves” explores our unique relationship
with nature and the things it leaves behind
Inspired by the Oxford comma, a gallon of dried Borax, and a pile of rotting dead fish, six artists explore our collective experience with nature in “Collects, Shoots and Leaves,” opening at Anita Sue Kolman Gallery on August 25 and running through October 20 with a party on September 15.
The show’s title, with the intentional omission of the Oxford comma, is a play on words that reveals the multiple interpretations we find in nature, especially when taking the time to reflect on the endless impressions it leaves.
“We all have encounters with nature every day,” says gallery owner Anita Sue Kolman. “The artists here reflect that, not by taking photographs of nature, but actually almost re-creating natural objects.”
The re-creations include macabre and beautiful dioramas of dried-up leaves and decayed animals, by multi-media artist Karl Unnasch; wall sculptures that rebirth objects left behind by the sea, by Kelly Jean Ohl; an installation composed of dried cicada wings, by multi-media artist Kate Casanova; and a canvas decorated with bones, dead fish, and one dead fly, by abstract painter and gallery curator Patrick K. Pryor.
“When I was making the piece, ‘Along the Mississippi,’ I was in Anita’s back yard with all of these dead things and smelly fish. I was pouring resin on the image, and a fly landed in it and died. It was like it knew exactly where to go.”
Pryor says that in choosing the art works for the show he was inspired not only by how dead things can be reborn and remade, but also by our ambiguous relationship with nature, and how it, too, can change and become remade.
“Sometimes nature can cross a line, and become an adversary,” he says. “We want to appreciate its wildness, and sometimes we want order. We want to kill the wasps and tame the bushes, and sometimes we want to hug the trees and at the same time get rid of the squirrels in the attic.”
To that end, Pryor says the gallery artists embrace the evolution of nature, and our ever-evolving relationship to it.
“Each artist has a very unique approach and relationship,” Pryor says. “Karl mashes up dead things with man made objects, while Jodi idealizes things in her own ordered way. She frames things and lines them up, where Karl shows the madness of it all…It’s just like nature itself.”
“Collects, Shoots and Leaves” runs Saturday, August 25 through Saturday, October 20, with a gallery party on September 15 from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. The party will include unique foods inspired by nature as well as a photo booth where visitors can create portraits of themselves with nature-inspired objects.
Showcasing artists include: Patrick K. Pryor, Kate Casanova, Josephine A. Geiger, Jodi Reeb-Myers, Kelly Jean Ohl, and Karl Unnasch.
Molly Priesmeyer
Good Work Group