Winter 2020 exhibitions at the Dennos Museum Center!

Eight-year-old Justo Angel Torrez Diaz’s family improved their coffee production methods by using more sustainable agriculture practices. (Howard G. Buffett)

In this powerful exhibit featuring the photography of Howard G. Buffett, 40 photographs document the world hunger crisis as part of a global awareness campaign. Traveling to more than 137 countries, Buffett turned his camera lens on the powerful forces that fuel hunger and poverty. A philanthropist and farmer, Buffett believes that each of us has about 40 chances to accomplish our life goals, just as farmers have about 40 growing seasons to improve their harvests. His photography is a call to action to find lasting solutions to the world hunger crisis.

40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World was developed by the Newseum in collaboration with Howard G. Buffett Foundation. The Newseum, located in Washington, D.C., increases public understanding of the importance of free press and the First Amendment. newseum.org

365 pieces, 7-¾” x 5-¾” each Media: charcoal, ink, graphite, pastel, Pigma Micron, gold leaf, and press-type on handmade gessoed panels

On August 1, 2014, Canadian-born artist Karen Bondarchuk set out to mark the passing time that her mother – diagnosed with dementia in 2010 – no longer could. For 365 days, she produced a crow a day on a hand-cut, hand-gessoed panel, remembering her mother as she once was and grieving her loss. The resulting work explores communication and an artist’s relationship to the world; it resonates for its depth, beauty, and elegiac and potent whimsy.

In the artist’s own words: “I began this series on August 1, 2014, as a way to honor my mother who is in the later stages of Alzheimer’s disease. I chose to create a crow drawing every day for 365 days as a way of marking time that she no longer seems to recognize. Crows have figured largely in my work for several years and represent both the quotidian and the extraordinary – akin to the Buddhist notion of “ordinary magic.” The labor that went into producing each of the 365 panels – cutting the wood, preparing my own gesso from gelatin and powdered limestone, building up layers, and sanding between coats in preparation for the actual process of creating an image – seemed to evoke the overwhelming labor and repetitious activities of motherhood. The series is simultaneously a marker of my mother’s lost time and a constant and acute reminder of my own days, my life, and an attempt to signal visually the preciousness and individuality of each day. Although the project seemed sober to me at its outset, quirky cheer and serendipity came to inhabit many of the panels.”

Ergo Sum: A Crow a Day is organized by the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin

Psyche-Anthropocene Projection, 2013 Handmade paper, inclusions, PVA 30” x 70” x 1½” (installed) (each panel 30” x 22”)

With traditional hand papermaking at its core, Pulped Under Pressure underscores important contemporary issues steeped in history and craft. Enticed through touch, these works encourage a contemplative slowing down even as they urge acknowledgment of some of the most pressing issues (environmental crisis to global marginalization) facing civilization today.

Each of the artists, Jillian Bruschera, Julia Goodman, Reni Gower, Trisha Oralie Martin, Melissa Potter, Marilyn Propp, Maggie Puckett, start simply with a foundation of pulp made from natural fibers. Their multifaceted results incorporate a rich range of printmaking, letterpress, papercutting, and installation with a diversity of recycled disposable materials (junk mail, egg cartons, old cotton t-shirts, ripped denim jeans) as well as old bedsheets, beetroot, heirloom plants, and electroluminescent wires.

In very unique ways, these artists consider paper beyond its most common function as a passive surface of record or craft. Instead, the material is transformed and imbedded with content that turns communication into a public practice. By challenging assumptions, the artists of Pulped Under Pressure create artworks that are both beautiful and brave.

Pulped Under Pressure: The Art of Handmade Paper is co-curated by Reni Gower and Melissa Hilliard Potter and organized by Wylie Contemporary, Inc.