Luke Jerram, HIV, 2010, Glass. Courtesy of Heller Gallery

Contemporary Art Purchasing Program Selections 2010-2011

Exhibition from August 29, 2011 through October 15, 2011

Opening Reception September 8, 2011 5:00-8:00 PM

We here at the Stamp Gallery are getting really excited for our upcoming exhibition, opening in just a few short weeks.  This exhibition will be to showcase the selections of the 2010-2011 Contemporary Art Purchasing Program committee.  Seven engaging, beautiful, thought provoking, perspective changing works have just been added to the Stamp’s growing art collection.  These works represent the hard work of the student committee and the awesome dedication of the Adele H. Stamp Student Union-Center for Campus Life to the project of “educating and inspiring by exposing the campus community to challenging art created by contemporary artists.”  (From CAPP’s mission statement).  We hope you’ll join us on September 8th from 5:00-8:00pm for an opening reception.

Here’s what the five 2010-2011 student committee members have to say about the year and their selections:

“During the 2010-2011 academic year, we embarked on an invigorating journey of discovering contemporary art and its place within the university community. The program involved weekly meetings to discuss researched artists and galleries, a contemporary art markets and collecting theory course which served to inform our opinions about art and presentations to an advisory board of professionals involved in various art related careers.  Slowly our individual inquiries and interests evolved into a more interactive and cohesive group. Our identity as a committee representing the student body became our focus and after a semester of intensive research and discussions we were prepared for the next phase of the program: assembling a collection. In what proved to be an exciting and eye opening experience, the committee contacted galleries in Washington DC and New York and scheduled various gallery visits and three artist studio visits to see the work in person. These visits provided clarity and helped us to make informed decisions about which pieces would fit within the campus community.

The result of this combined effort is a cohesive collection we feel confident will engage a wide array of academic areas of the university community both visually and intellectually.  While subject matter and style varies, collectively these pieces explore new territories and unveil layers of meaning for the viewer to be able to have an interactive experience with the work individually and perhaps spark collective discussions.  Discovery, perceptions, identity formation, the visibility of the invisible, dimensionality and process these are themes and ideas that encompass this collection and that we believe are greatly relevant to the University of Maryland community.  We hope you enjoy the presence of these works on our campus as much as we enjoyed picking them out!”

–Michele Briley ’11,  Mara Duvra ’11,  Erin Kim ’11,  David Phelps ’13, and Eldis Sula ’11

The Stamp Gallery is located on the first floor of the Adele H. Stamp Student Union-Center for Campus Life, at the University of Maryland, College Park. The gallery is free and open to the public Mondays-Thursdays 10:00am – 8:00pm; Fridays 10:00am – 6:00am, and Saturdays 11:00am – 5:00pm. For more information call (301) 314-8493 or email stampgallery@umd.edu

Have you visited the Stamp Gallery recently?  Have something to say?  Click here to complete our online survey!  Thanks for your comments!

-Amanda Chavenson

-Sabrena Sesay

-Victoria McGoogan, “Are you Kitten Me?”

Congratulations to the winners and Thank You to all contestants.

And so now the time has come to decide: which three designs deserve to be printed? Well, dear bloggers, we are leaving that decision up to you! So choose wisely and the first 125 voters will be rewarded with a free tee-shirt with one of the three winning designs! (unfortunately, only students of University of Maryland College Park are eligible to vote and receive a free tee-shirt, you will be asked to present your UMCP ID upon picking up the shirt)    We had a huge response and we have reached our first 125 voters!   But we are still accepting votes, from students and non-students alike!  So please let us know which you think would make the best tee-shirt!

There are a total of 18 submissions, each with the name of the artist and the artist’s own selected color scheme, so be sure to review all 18. Please also note that the link to vote is at the bottom of this post.

Voting will close on April 24th at midnight or when we reach the 125th voter.   The three design winners will be announced on Monday April 25th here on the blog, and we will email our lucky first 125 voters when the printed tee-shirts are available to be picked up at the Art and Learning Center in the basement of the Stamp Student Union.

Happy voting!

Here’s the link to follow to vote for your favorite Tee Shirt! All voting entries will be kept confidential!  We suggest opening the above link in a new tab or window so you can refer back to the entries while you are voting!

Come get lost in the light fixtures and backed into the corners of the Stamp Gallery’s new exhibition, In Response, featuring the works of artists Julie Benoit, Leah Cooper, Nicole Herbert and Elena Volkova. These site-specific pieces interact with the physical space of the Stamp Gallery and the University of Maryland to focus our attention to the shifts of light, ambient sounds, cracks in the walls, and architectural details that our eyes and ears commonly edit out, emphasizing the beauty of these ever-present but overlooked qualities.

Join us for the opening reception and gallery talk on Thursday, February 10, 6-9PM. The show will be up in the Stamp Gallery through February 25th.

Take a quick tour of Stamp Student Union with Social Mobility, a piece from Derick Melander’s recent solo exhibit in the Stamp Gallery.

This is the final week of the Stamp Gallery’s latest exhibition, Structure, featuring the wearable sculptures of Clarina Bezzola. The show, which opened August 30th, will be closing this Friday, October 8th.

Clarina’s unconventional garments, in her own words, “question and redefine the role of the garment. Wrapping the body to reveal instead of conceal.” Although these pieces cover the body, they confiningly do so. Connector Suit comprises five heavy straight-jacketesque ash-gray fabrics which zip together to connect the five wearers’ arms and cover their heads. Padded Suit not only restricts free movement by wrapping the upper body in long strips of foam-stuffed fabric, but also deliberately inflicts pain on the legs with stones that dangle from the bottom of each strip. The apparel in this collection also reveals the “emotional landscape” of the wearer by suggesting an internal mood, and it does this in part by externalizing aspects of the body’s interior. Teeth, for example, are everywhere in the show; we see irregular, crooked molars and incisors jutting out of headpieces, as in Russian and I Am Rich and Powerful, and long, sharp canines protruding from Toothvest. The visceral Lamentation, pictured above, is an article which, when worn, must drag behind it a steel post and rod connected to a furry, rotating cylindrical appendage. But what connects the main piece to this attachment? Simply the two massive intestinal organs that pour out of the chest, wrap around the legs, and are clasped beneath a metal bar, pulling the structure.

When Clarina performed Lamentation the evening of her September 2 reception, there were a variety of responses. Visitors looked on in awe, in discomfort, in befuddlement, as she slowly dragged the massive piece around the atrium of the Art-Sociology building, her bell twinkling in her hand and her operatic bellows (she is a trained opera singer) echoing off the stone walls. Such a variety of responses to her work has persisted in the Gallery. Over the past month visitors struggled to parse the exhibited pieces. One visitor noticed the sadistic tendency for self-inflicted pain. Another wondered if the works weren’t concerned with the travails of pregnancy and childbirth. Neither of these is a definitive analysis of the show, and this is a good thing. They are a testament to the fact that a number of readings are possible of Clarina’s palpable, imposing, yet elusive wearable sculptures.

I then blink a couple times and look up from my desk to see Zac Jackson’s installation, What? The creaking and shifting are coming from the small gears powered to make the latex mouths slowly open and close to create what looks to be a wholly futile conversation.  The movement together with the sounds evokes the frustration and anxiety of certain everyday experiences that Jackson is most interested in.

Jackson’s work seems to be a close relative of my appropriated experience in the Titanic. What? elicits those same anxious feelings of immobility (in communication or in physical space) which can build up like the pressure of ocean waters on glass.  The threat of this pressure ends up breaking down the stressed, just as Jackson has allowed his latex faces to split from the stress of the movement over the time of the installation.

But Jackson is also interested in how people react differently to stress.  Of the three works Jackson has installed in the current MIDPOINT exhibit, I do feel like I relate most closely with What? It seems that the work has not only clarified my own experiences, but has also developed other metaphors in my mind, as with this Hollywood Titanic moment.

I would be interested to hear from others regarding which of Jackson’s works are most psychologically relatable, especially as final exams approach us here at the University of Maryland…  Feel free to share!

Featured Artists:

Jesse Burrowes

Zac Jackson

David Knobel

Jonathan Monaghan

Stamp Gallery

www.thestamp.umd.edu/gallery

Documentation photographs and video edited by Katie Friedgen

MIDPOINT:

Works from UMCP 2nd Year MFA Candidates

Come view the latest works of Jesse Burrowes, Zac Jackson, David Knobel, and Jonathan Monaghan!

April 15 – May 14, 2010

You still have time!

If you are a student at the University of Maryland, College Park  (undergraduate or graduate) consider applying!!

No art or art history background is necessary to be considered.  CAPP accepts both undergraduate and graduate students, from any major or discipline.  The only requirement to apply is that you will be enrolled as a student during the full academic year 2010-2011.  In addition to regular group meetings, a trip to visit New York City galleries, and meetings and consultations with artists, curators, and professors in the fields of art and art history, students selected for the program are required to take an Art Theory course in the fall and to register for a one credit course in the spring.  To see what work is involved for the program and read a first-hand account of the 2008-2009 students’ experiences, visit the CAPP blog:www.artpurchasingprogram.blogspot.com.

For more information or to apply online visit our website: http://www.thestamp.umd.edu/gallery/capp/contemporaryArt.shtml or contact the Stamp Gallery at 301-314-8493 or stampgallery@umd.edu