Reclamation

Reclamation -- an exhibition where the mundane is beautiful, the industrial is refined and function gives over to form.

Used cardboard, discarded and splintered pallets, last year’s billboard ads, emptied beer cans and film cartridges – all destined for the wasteland see a rebirth as raw material in art making. Detritus of our consumer culture, once serving a functional purpose have been reclaimed as fodder for new formal narratives.

Sabin Aell subverts billboard messages by repurposing the vinyl, which she repaints, cuts and forms into dazzling installations. Aell shifts the focus from economic concepts of wealth to a genuine well-being of the human self.

For his mixed media constructs, Brian Cavanaugh juxtaposes discarded objects and utilitarian common materials with the aim of creating something significant from the seemingly insignificant. 

Terry Maker assembles various everyday elements including medical records, shredded church documents, straws and more into large, resin-poured forms. Cross-sections of the compilations offer surprising views of the embedded objects and exploration of her unusual visual vocabulary symbolizing desire.

Jon Rietfors creates photo-based assemblages using consumer-goods packaging. His works symbolize the joys to be found in the consumer marketplace as promised by advertising.

The works of Yumi Janairo Roth function as both natives and interlopers to their environments, simultaneously recognizable and unfamiliar to their users. Roth collected discarded shipping pallets and modified them with inlaid mother-of pearl using patterns gleaned from traditional Filipino furniture.

Ann Weber creates monumental sculpture from discarded cardboard.  Her abstract sculptures read as metaphors for life experiences such as the balancing acts that define our lives