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Camp in da U.P., Cross-Cultural Exchange with Finland, shows at Root Gallery in VT, Hair & Nails in MN, Freeform in NM, Millsaps College in MS, and Downtown Artery and Loveland Artspace in CO!

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ART SHAPE MAMMOTH is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization committed to connecting artists to new communities and supporting the development of artistic practice, dialogue, education, and research through creative public exchange.

Our Programs Include:
• 
An Artist Representation Program with thoughtfully curated exhibitions
• 
A Cross-Cultural Exchange Program exhibiting artists across continents
• 
ONE Arts Center gallery and workshop space in Vermont
• 
Visitor Center Artist Camp wilderness residency in the UP of Michigan
• 
Traveling Experiential Workshops
 in Metal-Casting and Ceramics
 

Support the Arts with a tax-deductible contribution to Art Shape Mammoth
RECENT EXHIBITIONS
Passed, Present, Future
Root Gallery, RL Photo
Burlington, Vermont

Artists included (top to bottom): Sarah Phyllis Smith, Julie Ward, Brooke Monte, and Paul Higham.
 
Loose Threads
freeform art space
Santa Fe, New Mexico

The artist talks and closing event for Loose Threads at freeform art space in Santa Fe, NM, went great! We had a nice, engaged audience and Rita and Walter (gallery owners) even made us pasta for afterwards. Jane spoke about all the exciting things Art Shape Mammoth is doing, and discussed her process and context for her work in the show. We look forward to more collaborations with freeform in the future!
 
ASM Cross-Cultural Exchange
 
Iceland/Finland, to Minnesota/Michigan!
This Summer ASM hosted Finnish artist, Mari Mathlin, in the Midwest US, under our Cross-Cultural Exchange Program!
 
Mari first visited Minneapolis, where we designed opportunities for her to get to know the community there, meeting artists and patrons, visiting with the American Swedish Institute, and touring the beautiful city of Minneapolis, as well as exhibiting her work!
Mari was a resident with our friends at The Future, a new artist residency and storefront run by Lacey Prpic Hedtke, and installed an exhibition at Hair and Nails Gallery, a new contemporary art gallery directed by Kristin Van Loon and Ryan Fontaine.

“It was so nice hosting Mari—this was the first international artist The Future has hosted, and it was great to connect her with local organizations like Hair and Nails and the American Swedish Institute and Minnesota Center for Book Arts—places that will hopefully help her grow as an artist. It was also really encouraging to see so many people come out for an opening of an artist whose connections to Minneapolis went back one week.” - Lacey Prpic Hedtke, director of The Future
After her opening reception in Minneapolis, we hosted Mari at our near-wilderness residency site, the Visitor Center Artist Camp in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where she spent two weeks as an artist-in-residence, participating in our Sustainable Practices Symposium!

While Mari was at camp, she gave a public presentation on art and culture in Iceland and Finland, made recycled paper, turned a wood bowl, and created drawings of the camp's buildings!

We loved hosting Mari and are looking forward to building more cross cultural exchange opportunities for artists.
Read Mari’s summary of her exchange experience here.
Loaded : Mari Mathiln
Hair and Nails Gallery
Minneapolis, Minnesota

 

Loaded, by Mari Mathlin, featured process-led work, informed by her materials. Her process allows the chain of events leading up to the finished installation to link each piece, through previously occurring and subsequent stages of development.

Utilizing parchment paper, cellophane, tin foil, black paint, water and lighting, Mari’s installation explores interconnectivity, creating an environment that blurs the line between process and product, physically allowing the viewer inside of her working process. The title of the exhibition can be understood to contain a multitude of meanings, suggesting that each piece has been loaded with both conscious and unconsciously occurring stories and narratives by the artist as well as the audience.




More about Loaded
More about Hair & Nails Gallery
Visitor Center Artist Camp
Camper's Log!

2017 Artist Residencies
& Sustainable Practices Symposium
Oh, the Wonderful Wilderness Art Adventures!
We did so many exciting things, made such interesting work, and forged so many new connections.
It's difficult to summarize just how amazing the Visitor Center Artist Camp is!


Here is a taste of what we experienced...
Our Yooper friend and local timber-framing and sawmill expert, Mel Seeger, designed and led us through building a Grillikota (It's a sauna, and it's roots are from Finland), and we named it the Octonagon, after its 8-sided shape, and the county it resides in (Ontonagon).
We made great developmental progress for our clay program!
...With help from Mel, we built a shelter for drying and processing our hand-dug Yooper Yum Yum Clay! We call it the Clay Cathedral.
...We're designing a more efficient clay-drying system, among other improvements, and we're working on our outdoor gas kilns!
...And we got an electric kiln and a truck-load of slip-casting molds donated to our clay program, by our new friends John and Rhonda!
We created so much art!
...Hand-processed Yooper Yum Yum Clay tiles, slip-cast pieces, and hand-built sculpture.
...Drawings, photographs, and paintings inspired by our gorgeous natural surrounds and the historical architecture and artifacts of the area.
...Videos both serious and hilarious, about what Art Shape Mammoth is, aerial footage of the camp, and campy tutorial videos starring the VCAC Staffers wearing orange dive suits!
...Music filled our lives everyday, as we played trombones to welcome residents to camp, call them to meals, and send them off toward home again. Mel payed his accordion and fiddle for us on many occasions as well!
...Plus soft-sculpture, handmade recycled paper, screen-printed t-shirts, turned-wood pieces, and home-brewed Sahti Finnish Ale!
We learned wood-turning from Dick Graham, local plant identification from Mary Carol and Cameron Coleman, and how to make leipajuusto (a Finnish squeaky cheese) from Aileen Seeger, and how to safely catch and re-home porcupines that are trying to eat the plywood out of the Porcupine Palace!
We hosted Mari Mathlin from Finland, as our first international resident artist, through ASM's Cross-Cultural Exchange program. Mari shared her work and perspectives with us, taught us about the Finnish language, and gave us insight into her culture, including how to eat leipajuusto! (Dip it in your coffee, or slather it with jam!)
Our 4th Annual Ewen Arts Festival featured Mari's presentation on Icelandic and Finnish art and culture, short films, art objects, and music. We sponsored a raffle for a weaving by local Yooper artist Patsy Daniels to raise money for the Ewen-Trout Creek School art program!
We took incredible field trips to the shore of Lake Superior, waterfalls on the Ontonagon River, Mel Seeger's Matchwood Sawmill, the old Norwich Copper Mine trail, and Caseda Lodge, which was run by the mob and used to be a bordello!
We also watched the Perseid Meter Shower and beautiful sunsets, and had many exciting animal sightings in this wilderness paradise!
For more details and tons of photos of our Amazing Wilderness Art Adventures this year,
Read the Daily Journal of Amy Joy Hosterman, VCAC Co-Director, here!
CURRENT AND UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
Language Orthodox
Millsaps College
Jackson, Mississippi
Curated by Alicia Lange. August 22 - September 18, 2017
Included artists: Dickie Cox, Sarah Phyllis Smith, Rebecca Weisman, Andrew Brown, Douglas Degges, Warren Hicks, Heather Gordon, Jeremy M. Lange, Alyssa Messerendino, Harrison Haynes, and Lindsey Wolkowicz

Language Orthodox examines the personal commentaries artists evoke in their work. These works, stories emerged from historicity, manifested in a series of images both collective and individual. Each narration displayed in a variety of mediums focused as literal and non-literal expressions to communicate with the viewer.
The artists share nothing in particular between their works other than a statement of artistic practice itself. Artistic practice noted as a distinction from science or proof of real or unreal; Rather a form of language itself that allows communication to be interpretive between the viewer and artifact. Permitting the space for recurring opinions and succeeding dialogues in the wake of one’s view.
These works request and provide an open door for the viewer to retreat from the daily despotism of life’s routine and participate in an ongoing non-representational dialogue of communication that foreseeably has no need for an end to occur. Language Orthodox focuses not on the journey’s close but a beginning expressed in works that can be continually reconsidered throughout time.


 
FEEL
The Downtown Artery
Ft Collins, Colorado
Sarah Phyllis Smith, "There’s Nothing There to Take a Picture of"
 
Featuring artists Ann Barlow, Wendy Copp and Sarah Phyllis Smith

FEEL is an exhibit exploring the ways that artists use texture as a compositional tool to display a narrative to their viewers. When we look at a piece of art we tend to project our own narratives and experiences into our participation with that work. Sometimes, however, a work can be so tantalizing and engrossing that we lose ourselves and begin to experience a sort of “otherworldliness” inside that piece. The works chosen for this exhibit all have this quality to them and they have used texture to achieve it.
 
Curated by Anna Hultin,
FEEL is on view through September 30th
at Downtown Artery in Ft Collins, CO
Dimensions Variable
Artspace Loveland Gallery
Loveland, Colorado
Julie Ward and David Alban often work in sculpture, employing clay, cast metals, plaster, and wood. Recently however, they have both turned to the a focus on line and movement within more two-dimensional work. Exploring narratives of change, loss, and the trials of human experience, Dimensions Variable features energetic work in graphite, collage, and abstracted photography, with a sculptural twist.  

Opening Reception and Artist Talks: Friday September 23rd, 6-9pm
Loveland Artspace Gallery
140 W 3rd St Loveland, Colorado

David Alban
"My recent work has centered on teeth, and mandibles coming from some industrial strength dental work I endure. Teeth are very prominent in all of the animal kingdom. They function as tools and weapons. Much attention is paid to them visually. Our culture assigns an utmost importance to their image. Likewise, the mandible is a very prominent feature. It is the first bone to develop in utero. I want to them to be large enough to remove you from the experience in front of the mirror we all have of picking, brushing, and flossing. I sometimes pattern them off my own, using a plaster bitewing my Dentist cast of my own mouth. When fabricating I am reminded of the studies I have done in the anatomy lab and the discovery an archeologist must feel in the field.
My drawings are stand-alone pieces, and working plans, if you will. I use a smooth plate paper, drawing with soft graphite, conte, erasures, and pencils. I do a lot of erasing, searching for the form, really carving into the surface of the paper for the contours. I find myself drawing more and more. Forms will emerge and inform passages I will later explore in metal or clay. The investigations are moving into landscape like forms that have grown out of a macro-focus on teeth from a Dentist’s view. I see them moving out onto the floor, off the wall, onto my table."

Julie Ward
"I am currently working on a new project that examines the Dekotora trucking movement. The research is evolving into the foundation of a large body of work encompassing all forms of Sculpture. As I filter through miles of video footage and listen to hours of audio, I find that I am still seeking something that is not present. Through formal transcription of audio as well as video editing I am discovering that the work has multiple layers both visually and formally. When you stand next to a Dekotora truck, you are immediately aware of the reflections and movements within and upon the surfaces of the truck itself. Your morphed reflection within an oversized chromed bumper and the abundance of dancing lights are reminiscent of a carnival ride. The dazzling display can shift you in and out of reality. This project builds on the foundations of my previous research to explore ways in which the ideas of loss, can be celebrated. In my first thesis, I examined the loss of traditional techniques of making due to the advent of technology. For my second thesis I then explored the loss of a way of life for independent truckers in the American Midwest due to technologically-driven government regulation. I now focus on the loss of an entire social subculture unique to Japan. The work to be featured at Artspace in Loveland, Colorado will focus on sculptural digital prints, small sculptures, and moving image."
Copyright © 2017, Art Shape Mammoth, Inc, All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:
140 W 3rd st #280 Loveland, CO 80537
info@artshapemammoth.org
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Art Shape Mammoth · 139 S Garfield Ave · Loveland, CO 80537 · USA

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