For the month of October, we are pleased to introduce the seven talented folks recently selected to join the PUNCH Gallery list of members. We’re excited by the range of skill, media and conceptual approach these individuals bring to the group, and look forward to their exhibitions and projects in the upcoming 2015/2016 exhibition cycle.
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Brandon Aleson
Using sound, image, installation, performance, and gustation as a physical and conceptual material, Aleson constructs and deconstructs art and its artifices. He was born and raised in Southern California, and relocated to Seattle 4 years ago after attending UC Santa Barbara. Trust us when we tell you that you must see this work in person.
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Chromatopia: Liz Tran and Elizabeth Gahan
Chromatopia is a mission to create colorful and stimulating artwork using any means necessary. This artist team of Seattle-based Liz Tran and Elizabeth Gahan pursues painting, ceramic, installation art, video, and mixed media to express their unique artistic perspective.
Tran’s artwork is influenced by the connection between the natural world and her internal environment. She is a graduate in Print Art and Painting from Cornish College of the Arts, exhibits both nationally and internationally, has work in numerous public collections and has received multiple awards for her efforts.
Gahan’s artwork similarly explores the use of color and landscape as it relates to architecture and the everyday experience of our natural and built environments. She grew up in San Diego, CA and received an undergraduate degree in Global Studies and Fine Art from UC Santa Barbara. After receiving a MFA from Claremont with an emphasis in painting, she participated in a residency program at the Banff Centre Canada to pursue installation art in more depth. Like Tran, Gahan has also won some bad-ass awards and done a boat-load of cool shit.
www.LizTran.com
www.ElizabethGahan.com
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Shelly Leavens
Leavens has worked in public history, museums and the arts for the last 12 years. She joined Gage Academy of Art as Curator and Manager of Public Events in January 2012, and her independent curatorial projects have spanned the art and public history divide. Projects include exhibitions at the Museum of Northwest Art, Kirkland Arts Center, the Center for Wooden Boats and Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival. Currently, Leavens is interested in artists who are examining the mundane, utilizing everyday objects in their work in ways that question their supposed function or former utility or else make her laugh.
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Ray Mack
Ray Mack received her MFA from the Art Institute of SF in 2012, and a BA in Studio Arts from Bard College in NY in 2006. She is interested in using the space between conventional, erudite practice and crude, lowbrow gesture as a platform from which to highlight themes present in a male-dominated art history and our over-sexed, under-stimulated popular culture. She recently donated a painting titled Thickly Painted Horse to Gallery One’s annual art auction in Ellensburg, WA. Justin Gibbens is still kicking himself for not bidding on it.
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Nate Steigenga
A Seattle area native, Steigenga studied drawing, painting & sculpture at Central Washington University graduating with a BFA in 2009. He received the John and Joyce Price Award of Excellence during the High-Fiber Diet exhibition at the Bellevue Arts Museum 2012 Biennial and was awarded his first museum exhibition there in 2013. His work is best described as a serene and haunted tale of American culture placed against unassuming landscapes. Simply radical might be a better description.
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Brad Winchester
Brad Winchester is a visual artist that lives and works in Seattle, WA. His work is an investigation of canonical mediums in a materially and conceptually rigorous manner seeking the latent potentialities of contemporary art practices. In his most recent exhibition, he combined his training as a painter with his current interest in process, material plurality, and post-conceptualization. Post–groovy!