Sculpture Space Works in Progress Reception

Utica, NYArea residents and visitors are invited to attend a free Works-in-Progress Program and Reception on Monday, July 26 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, at the Sculpture Space studio, 12 Gates Street, Utica, located nearby the Historic Brewery District. The reception is sponsored by Greg Benincasa of H.R. Beebe Construction. The restaurant sponsor is Minars Fine Indian Cuisine, New Hartford.

The community will have the opportunity to view exciting sculptural contemporary work in a wide range of media created by emerging and mid-career professional visiting artists, Loren Erdrich (Brooklyn, NY), Jimmy Kuehnle (San Antonio, TX), Maria Michails (Bayside, NY), and Joe Winter (Long Island City, NY). These artists have spent up to two months at Sculpture Space making new art.

About the Artists:

The newest arrival to the 34-year-old international artist residency program- that has been attracting professional artists to the Mohawk Valley since 1976- is Joe Winter. Winter received his BA in New Media from Brown University and his MFA in Visual Art from UC San Diego. He has exhibited his work throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and Great Britain. During his time at Sculpture Space, Joe Winter will be developing a series of works that treats provisional displays (cork boards, chalk boards, dry erase boards) as devices for measuring the passage of time.His project is in part made possible with a regrant from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Loren Erdrich is a multi-disciplinary artist working in video, performance, drawing and sculpture. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Painting and Drawing. During her stay in Utica, Loren Erdrich is pursuing a new body of work involvingdrawings, hand-made objects and performances,which reconcile an interior world of fantasy and emotion with the physical reality of everyday life. Loren has also been working extensively with sheeps wool, a non-traditional sculptural material.

Jimmy Kuehnle received an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and subsequently researched public art and practiced sculpture as a Fulbright Graduate Research Fellow in Japan. While at Sculpture Space, Kuehnle has constructed a gargantuan inflatable suit Make it Look Rich, which strides a thin line between spectacle and the absurd, and will be almost as tall as the building (you don't want to miss it!). Since the suit does not lend to simple categorization, the artist envisions that the viewers minds will become vulnerable and therefore open to new thought patterns and ideas. He conducted a trial inflation of the suit on Boiler Maker Road Race weekend, across from Boiler Maker Park.

Maria Michails, originally from Canada, has a BFA from Concordia University, Montreal and an MFA from Arizona State University. Maria Michails is an interdisciplinary artist whose art projects bridge the sciences, engineering and architecture. Her current research interests focus on the relationship between energy consumption and environmental problems specific to place. She has exhibited widely in solo and group shows in North America and Europe. During her residency, Maria has used bicycle parts to create human-powered mechanisms that generate electricity to power art works. She is currently working on a mechanism resembling an old railway handcar.It will power a pump and irrigation system with video for a planter growing native prairie grass. Her project is in part made possible with a regrant from the New York State Council on the Arts.


About Sculpture Space:

Sculpture Space is an international artist in residence program, the only one of its kind in North America. Work created at Sculpture Space is subsequently shown in museums, sculpture parks and galleries around the globe.

A unique cultural resource within the City of Utica, the Mohawk Valley and Upstate New York, Sculpture Space promotes interaction between international visiting artists and the local community by placing works in the public domain, hosting studio tours, and collaborating with other organizations to exhibit artists' projects. Several hundred artists apply annually. Twenty national and international artists are accepted each year to enjoy two-month residencies. They receive stipends, subsidized housing, 24-hour access to the studio and technical assistance. The program is in part made possible with support from the NYS Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts (which believes that a great nation deserves great art), the Milton and Sally Avery Foundation, area foundations and corporations and generous friends.


For further information, please call 315-724-8381 or visit www.sculpturespace.org.