Dennis, Mowat, Untalan : being in the woods

Stella Untalan and Brian Dennis with Lesley Tao Mowat @ ARTSPACE1241
June 8, 2016 to June 25, 2016

This installation, Being in the Woods, consists of drawings by Stella Untalan, sound by Lesley Tao Mowat, and a corrugated cardboard construction: [bar] by Brian David Dennis. Come experience being in the woods.

 

Reception
June 11 / 5 - 8 pm
 
Artist Conversation and Performance
June 23 / 6 - 8 pm
 

 

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Wednesdays and Thursdays 1:30 - 4 pm  and special hours the final day: Saturday June 25 1:30 - 4 pm

 

Brian David Dennis
Brian grew up in a house nestled at the edge of the forest. The woods were his favorite play ground. Happily building what he could with what was at hand, He learned to think big. He also learned that it was the making he enjoyed, completion was never the end game. [bar] suggests a segment of a much larger piece, displaced in time, lodged out of place. A small piece of what was never finished.

The piece hovers just off the wall surface. [bar] is made of  multiple layers of corrugated cardboard strips. The natural color has been bleached. The seemingly solid block protrudes from the wall at an angle, 21” deep on the left, tapering to 4” on the right.

 

Lesley Tao Mowat is founder of DrumFlower, a company dedicated to Music, Spirit, & Wellness. A Spiritual Creative with over 40 years in music and visual art, she has also been a shamanic healer/teacher since 1998. She was creative director of a professional band for over a decade. With a BFA, Photography (UArts) & MFA, Computer Art (SVA); she taught digital media at University of the Arts and worked creating websites in pioneer days of new media.

 
Tao inhabits a world of Sound, creating music from both listening and seeing with heightened awareness - also known as mindfulness. She starts from that concept when teaching or facilitating others in the art of making music and when creating her own music. She creates music which assists in shifting consciousness and supports the personal healing process, collaborates with visual artists, and creates music in dialogue with the Web of Life.
 
Lesley Tao believes everyone can experience the healing effect of self-expression through creativity. Her greatest love & inspiration is Mother Earth's Web of Life and The Spirit That Lives In All Things.

 

Stella Untalan
Stella has created a series of drawings that are driven not by results but by process. Each of these drawings is made using the same ink, the same pen, the same unrelenting process. The results reveal themselves to be reminders of her meandering walks and joyful runs in the woods. The straight trunks making blurred lines that suggest motion, space, and time — a DNA image of being in the woods. 

 

 

 

Brian David Dennis statement

My goal is two fold, obviously I want to create something that presents a beauty and truth. Second, and what is personally most important is the act of making. While working I become focused only on the matter in hand and I experience a wholeness with the world. Ironically, the results express the ethos of an outsider, things are hidden or so obscured it is often difficult to know what you are seeing. This outcome is very akin to my experience when I am making. I am vaguely aware of a liquid consciousness, passing snippets of something dissolving and reforming, all just out of range of knowing. It is this realm that directs my work.

 

Transcendence is also important to my work, not only the experience of Making, but also for the materials to become other then what they were. I am drawn to use common materials that I strive to push beyond their original context. I do the same with the photographic images I appropriate. They are chosen usually not by their subject matter, but by a shape or color that interests me, a form that may capture the realm floating in my peripheral vision.

 

stella untalan statement

My drawings focus on measurement and probing. 
Each series of marks is made by filling a tool then making marks until the liquid is gone. The repetition allows me to be caught up in a rhythm; the proximity of the marks create rest and action. I touch the surface, make the mark, and then move away.

In this work the process defines the outcome. It is minimalist, repetitive, and iterative. A topology of process is revealed.

 

Lesley Tao Mowat statement

The experience is something like this…
Be in the Woods
Being in the Woods
Beings in the Woods
Life in the Woods
Together in the Woods
See in the Woods
Listen in the Woods
Rhythm in the Woods
Music in the Woods
Sing in the Woods
Love in the Woods
Woods in the Beings
Woods in the Being
I am the Woods
Sing the Woods
Play the Woods
Share the Woods
Love the Woods.
- Lesley Tao Mowat, June 2016