Opening tonight in Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station, Luis de Jesus Gallery is presenting new paintings by Karen Ann Myers in an exhibition titled Thinking Of You. In a series of mid-sized fleshy paintings of hyper sexualized young women, the work seamlessly combines heavy flat patterns with figuration. Patterns slide in and out of abstraction, only grounded by the figures in the image. Based in self portraiture and personal narrative, Myers work both questions and confirms the objectification and idolization of youth and sexuality in American culture. The fleshy flatness of pattern and color reflect the soft, subtle handling of the figures, and when the figures are absent, the color and line mimic the curves of the forms.

Along with the paintings, Myers is presenting several new screen-printed patterns that integrate decorative form with image. Hidden within the maze of pattern, one will find reductive Kama Sutra poses embedded in the sea of color and line.

Myers’ paintings and prints have been exhibited at the Robert Steele Gallery in New York, the Commonwealth Gallery in Boston, the Katzen Arts Center in Washington, DC and Scoop Contemporary in Charleston, SC. Her exhibition at Luis de Jesus will be on view until August 7th, 2010. In 2009, DailyServing did a visit with the artist in her studio to discuss the work in relation to her experiences in love and eroticism, her childhood memories, and herself as a young woman in a contemporary culture that places high value on glamor and sex appeal.

Thinking Of You will be on view through August 7th, 2010.

Red76 is a multi-artist collective founded in Portland, Oregon, in 2000. The project they conceived for We have as much time as it takes was executed mainly by two of its members, Sam Gould and Gabriel Saloman. Counter-Culture as Pedagogy: Pop-Up Book Academy is a yearlong series of events that take place in a variety of venues. The latest edition of The Journal of Radical Shimming, available for free in the gallery, includes interviews and a counterculture index created for this exhibition. It will accompany the project’s next iteration at the Walker Art Center this summer. Learn more at www.red76.com.

Courtney Dailey: As practitioners whose work ex­ists primarily in the public realm, how do you create a situation to get the greatest amount of people engaged?

Sam Gould: We’ve developed methodologies over time for our publicly engaged, dialogical practices. There are basically four points: clear frames, horizontal space, generative action, and ephemeral distance. Clear frames develop a space that’s very familiar to people: they act as an entrance point; you’re on a con­struction site, you’re entering a bar, you’re going to a copy shop, or a restaurant. It may be the worst restaurant or the worst business that you’ve ever encountered but you understand what it is. Famil­iarity is key.

Nicole Cromartie: But your project for the Wattis, Counter-Culture as Pedagogy: Pop-Up Book Academy, 2010–1 is, by comparison, an unfamiliar, hybrid structure.

SG: I don’t think so. We talk about it as a traveling bookstore. So people are like, “Oh, it’s a bookstore,” but it’s actually a school. We arrange small classes, small sessions, where people RSVP to an open call that’s publicized through various means: word of mouth, flyers, and email. We control the frame through pub­licity, location, and topic.

Gabriel Saloman: I think it’s worth admitting that there’s a degree of fraud in that.

SG: Oh, yeah, it’s a total fraud. It’s a ruse.

GS: But once people are there, we’re not doing this thing where we told you it was going to be a candy house and now we’re going to put you in the oven. It’s not re­ally important that people get the exact experience that they came for. We invite you to this bookstore or construction site, and while we’re here, let’s talk. And it seems innocuous enough that people immerse themselves in it, because they already feel like it’s familiar. They don’t know that they’re par­ticipating until they already are.

SG: Once people get within this frame, we work to level or flatten our au­thority, and to allow them to make decisions through direct conver­sation. At the end of a project, we shouldn’t be there (though by necessity, we start out directing or facilitating). But through our ac­tions over time, we want to divest ourselves of that role; this is the horizontal space part.

Generative action stems from the feeling that I get in a particular situation, like at band practice or at a political rally. Things might be totally inspiring when you’re there, but the minute you leave that energized space, everything dies. So the idea of generative ac­tion is that the activity acts like a battery—it’s the power station that transforms the energy in a room into media, in the widest defini­tion of what media can be: from the Internet, to newspapers, to direct conversations between you and me, even to rumor or myth or disparaging commentary.

Ephemeral distance suggests that this is not the thing you’re after. We are trying to get people to internalize a situation, then trans­form it into their own thing. This conversation/publication/display is not the conclusion. Those are the four points: pedagogical tools that we use all the time.

GS: We create models for action rather than finished, complete ideas. And the intention is to create a proposi­tion that other people conclude. It’s turning the experience of the art situation into a commons over which we don’t claim owner­ship. That’s not to say we don’t have proprietary rights to certain things, and certainly we have privileges that other people aren’t going to have. A total horizontal­ity really couldn’t happen unless people took off and ran with it, without us.

SG: Unless people just felt direct au­thority, and decided: this is mine now. And if that happened, I’d be psyched.

CD: Many of your projects evolve and develop over the long-term, and in multiple places. How can viewers who might encounter the work just once understand your projects in their entirety?

SG: There is no entirety to the project; the project just keeps going. I talk about it in terms of literature: books don’t die. Just because Proust finally stopped writing Re­membrance of Things Past doesn’t mean that the work is over. The work is there as long as people are talking about it and engaging with it, which is a way that you can define any artwork.

GS: That also explains why we have a blog for every project, and pro­duce as much printed media as we possibly can. There are multiple ways that the work moves through the world and ways that the proj­ect can continue to be relevant. We cherish printed matter. Those objects become totemic devices that give us time travel; they give us an opportunity to exist simul­taneously in the past and in the present. They allow us to see not only the things that have changed, but the things that have cycled around.

NC: Your practice is not typically gallery-based, but for this exhibi­tion, you’ll have ephemera in the gallery. Why did you decide to do that?

SG: Because we’re punks. It’s funny to us: we fought so long to get out of the gallery and now we’ve reached a stage where people are asking us to come and do projects outside of the gallery. So, inevita­bly, in our contrarian way, we want to go in.

GS: The new taboo!

SG: The deeper answer is that it per­tains to the project. We’re focusing on moments that find their way into so-called mass culture. We can shine a light onto those objects that build up to create the domi­nant culture. We want to find a way to extrapolate and physicalize our discursive practices in the gallery and illuminate them. We get to say, “Look at this!”

GS: So often, we experience visual work on the Web. Now the gallery is becoming an analogue device. The gallery has more in common with a record player, a slide show.

CD: How does Red76 make work?

GS: Sam develops these initial projects and they expand, depending on what’s appropriate, who can say yes, and who we feel resonates with the project.

SG: There’s a big difference between someone who happens to be involved with one thing that we’re doing, and a real, holistic engagement. So much of what we do occurs “off-stage,” if you will, when we’re just hanging out. The work is based on the affections between all of these people—even feelings of disenfranchisement. There’s been a lot of disaffection and infighting, as in any collabora­tive project, but it’s always based on friendship.

We have as much time as it takes is on view from May 6 – July 31, 2010 at the CCA Wattis institute for Contemporary Arts. For more information see www.wattis.org.

Universe Revolves ON (XVIII), Hema Upadhyay, Edition of 12, Etching, aquatint, open-bite and screenprint on machine made fabriano 100% cotton paper 71 x 92 (28" x 36¼”) © Hema Upadhyay/Singapore Tyler Print Institute

Hema Upadhyay creates works based primarily on photography and painting, and she resumed her foray in printmaking as a means of experimentation, after a decade’s hiatus. Her art practice revolves around issues of identity, dislocation, nostalgia and gender, often drawn from her family history of migration and her personal experience with the socio-economic inequalities present in Asia. The visceral impacts of these socio-political issues on the human condition are frequently represented through miniature and collaged bodies. In Universe Revolves ON (XVIII), cut-outs of flailing and falling bodies disrupt the intricate etchings of botanical tree forms shrouded in delicate silk-screened patterns, drawing attention to the attendant psychological and social upheaval and theme of human displacement arising from the rapid urbanization in Mumbai. Upadhyay completed her BFA (Painting) in 1995 and MFA in 1997 from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda, and is now based in Mumbai.

Break the Ice, Qiu Zhijie, Edition of 12, Etching and relief print, STPI handmade paper 107 x 81 (42¼" x 32”) © Qiu Zhijie/Singapore Tyler Print Institute

Qiu Zhijie is a Chinese contemporary artist and works with a diverse range of media including photography, video, calligraphy, painting, installation and performance, and combines writing and curatorial practice with his artistic explorations. In 2006, Qiu started the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge Project. Imbued with historical and national significance, as a symbol of modernity and resilience in China, Qiu excavates the meanings associated with the site by investigating the over 2,000 suicides occurring at the bridge since its completion in 1968. Break the Ice is emblematic of Qiu’s combination of traditional Chinese ink painting and Western-based lithography techniques, and the work reflects on the consequences of mammoth, industrial structures on a nation’s history and individuals’ personal lives. Qiu was born in Fujian, China and now lives and works in Beijing. He graduated from Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in printmaking.

The works of Upadhyay and Qiu are on view at All Editions: A STPI Survey Show (16 January – 20 February 2010) at Singapore Tyler Print Institute. The exhibition also features works by Ghada Amer/Reza Farkhondeh, Ashley Bickerton and Lin Tianmiao, from their residencies at the institute.

Off Book is the title of a current exhibition by acclaimed New York based conceptual artist Glenn Ligon. The exhibition, which is on view through January 23rd at Los Angeles’ Regen Projects, continues the artist’s investigation of cultural identity, social and historical constructs, language, race, and gender. Similar to previous exhibitions by the artist, Off Book explores these ideas through text-based work, installation, and video. This new series of works investigate many themes discussed in James Baldwin’s essay entitled Figure, originally published in 1953. For this series, the artist has silk screened versions of existing text-based paintings onto colored backgrounds, and then dusted the surface with coal particles. The result is a semi-abstracted surface where the test is obscured through the application of the screen print.  Also on view is a 16 mm black and white film titled, The Death of Tom, and a neon piece, which features the word AMERICA backwards, titled Rügenfigur.

Ligon’s work has been the focus of several major international exhibitions. The artist’s work was selected by the Obama’s to be on loan at the White House. This inclusion made Ligon the youngest artist ever to receive this honor. Recent solo exhibitions for the artist include, ‘Nobody’ and Other Songs at Thomas Dane Gallery in London and Figure/Paysage/Marine at Yvon Lambert in Paris and Love and Theft at Power House in Memphis. The artist is a graduate of Wesleyan University and Rhode Island School of Art and Design. Ligon lives and works in New York City.

The Lever House, at 390 Park Avenue in New York City, recently commissioned artist Richard Woods to create a site-specific installation for the lobby of the Modernist structure. The installation, titled Port Sunlight, features colorful patterns that cover over forty columns, eight benches, and several areas of floor within the lobby. Each of the nine patterns utilized in the installation are created from a series of print blocks which are configured in a pattern of multiples.

For the commission, Woods explored the history of the Lever Brothers company and discovered that they founded a village near Cheshire, England, in the 1800’s  to accommodate the company’s rapid expansion. That village was named Port Sunlight. The artist grew up not far from the area, and is familiar with the Lever’s massive collection of British Victorian art, which was on public display at the Lady Lever Gallery in the village.

The patterns used by Richard Woods references the graphic nature of the Victorian decoration collected by the Levers. These patterns attempt to take over and colonize the otherwise modernist lobby, allowing for a playful opposition to develop between the two aesthetics.

Port Sunlight will be on view through January 31st, 2010.

Courtesy: Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo/ The Quiet in the Land, Laos/ the Artist

The Mizuma Art Gallery of Tokyo is showcasing artist Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s ongoing project Breathing is Free: 12,756.3 at Art Positions in Art Basel Miami Beach 2009.  This complex and meaningful project is a statement on the current condition of the refugee and, in Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s words, a ‘reflection and offering to the refugees whose lives are to run or to perish’.  As an artist with resources and a passport, Nguyen-Hatsushiba is part of the global elite, whose mobility effortlessly enables movement across national borders.  Through his step and sustained mental and physical discipline the artist physically embodies the desire and struggle of the powerless refugee that is on the move and longs, as the artist notes, ‘to be on “the other side” instead.’

The work is defined not only by Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s act of running, but by the deliberately plotted path the artist takes which crosses any national and ethnic divisions.  In his effort to run 12,756.3 miles – equivalent to the most direct circumference of the earth – Nguyen-Hatsushiba chooses urban areas with a history of forced displacement.  The artist has completed runs in places such as Geneva, Tokyo, Singapore, Manchester and Ho Chi Minh City.  The paths taken in each of these places forms a  shape – often organic – with metaphorical meaning.

Courtesy: Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo/ The Quiet in the Land, Laos/ the Artist.

On view in the Mizuma Art Gallery booth at Art Basel Miami Beach is video footage from a selection of Nguyen-Hatsushibi’s runs paired with ‘earth drawings’ or ‘running drawings’ which map his route from an aerial perspective.  These ‘drawings’ are actually lambda prints created by transposing GPS data of his movements onto aerial photographs of each of the cities chosen for the project.  These GPS transfer prints reveal the symbolic shapes formed by the path of his runs.

Nguyen-Hatsushibi’s film The Ground, the Root, and the Air:  The Passing of the Bodhi Tree from 2004-2007 (single channel video, 14 min, 30 sec) is also on view.  This video explores globalization and resulting loss of tradition in Luang Prabang, Laos.  The image of the runner, an empty stadium, the lantern, the Mekong River and the Bodhi tree serve as symbols of this economic change – as well as hope for the future.

Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba has shown internationally and can be found in important collections such as the Centre Pompidou and the Whitney Museum of American Art.  He received his BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.  Nguyen-Hatsushiba currently lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City.  His current project for Breathing is Free: 12,756.3 is set in Chicago.

Art Basel Miami Beach ends 6 December 2009.

Viewing the work of Matthew Brannon is like watching a foreign film with no subtitles–you can understand and appreciate the imagery to the extent that you might even form your own idea of what the storyline might be, but there will always be a disconnect between your imagination and the true intention of the film, as told through its dialog. Similarly, Matthew Brannon’s letterpress prints offer charming and straightforward imagery via a highly accessible medium, but they tease your understanding with lines of text that do not expressly correspond with the image, as I learned upon first viewing Brannon’s work in the 2008 Whitney Biennial. While the intention of the artist might not be to confound, that may sometimes be the result; but in most cases the pieces invite the eager viewer into a cheeky game of wordplay.

Currently, Brannon’s new work is on display in a show entitled Nevertheless at The Approach in London, marking the New York-based artist’s first solo show in the city. Nevertheless marks a departure from the print-dominated exhibitions of his past, showing sculpture installation alongside only four letterpress pieces. The show explores “both the idea and the image of a transatlantic sea voyage. The outdated–once preferred–way to travel to London, now but a literary backdrop or an obnoxious tourist getaway,” according to The Approach, and runs through November 1st.

Matthew Brannon was born in 1971 and lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include: The Question is a Compliment, Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York (2008); Grandmothers, Galleria Gió Marconi, Milan (2008); Where Were We, Whitney Museum of Art at Altria, New York (2007); Meat Eating Plants, David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles (2005).

Deitch Projects in New York City is currently showing Tauba Auerbach’s Here and Now/And Nowhere, an exhibition which explores the collision of two conflicting states. The title (purposely composed as an anagram) reflects the artist’s fascination with the origins of language, both verbal language and the symbols used in written language. The multimedia show includes paintings, photographic works, sculpture, and a musical instrument, all investigating the space between order and randomness.

The exhibition showcases five bodies of work: Crumple Paintings, Static Photographs, Fold Paintings, a sculpture that is situated half inside and half outside of the gallery, and the central work of the show, the Auerglass. The Crumple Paintings require the viewer to stand far away from the work to perceive the illusion of crumples, created by large Ben Day dots. The Fold Paintings, painted on raw canvas with an industrial paint sprayer, are a series of incrementally sized fold paintings, which represent the conversion of a previous three-dimensional state to two-dimensionality.

The Auerglass, designed by the artist and her friend Cameron Mesirow of the band Glasser, is a two-person wooden pump organ. The instrument requires two people to play, as one must pump in order for the other to play and vice versa. The Auerglass was played at the opening on September 3rd, and will be played as a prelude to a Glasser performance at 8pm on September 11th. During the exhibition, it will be played daily at 5pm from Tuesday through Saturday.

Auerbach was born in San Francisco and received her B.A. in Visual Arts from Stanford University in 2003. She has had solo exhibitions at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts and Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco, and was included in the New Museum’s Younger than Jesus this year in New York. She published Tauba Auerbach-How to Spell the Alphabet with Deitch Projects in 2006.

Here and Now/And Nowhere will remain at Deitch Projects at 18 Wooster Street until October 17th.

Tucked away amidst a tranquil, tree-shaded park in North Berkeley is the Berkeley Art Center, currently hosting an exhibition of mostly Bay Area artists who each have a refreshing take on traditional media. Eighteen artists were chosen by distinguished curators Rene de Guzman and Kate Eilersten, who have a wealth of experience in visual arts programming at cultural hubs like the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Oakland Museum of California, and the Museum of Folk and Craft Art. Eilersten and de Guzman chose artists whose technical expertise and conceptual ideas come together as equal factions in a quotient yielding sublimity. Ultimately, the theme of JURIED@BAC: Works on Paper is transcendence–an evasion of the perceived constraints of a two dimensional media.

Leigh Barbier

Leigh Barbier contributed paintings from her series, Mushroomville, an exploration of her fantasy world filled with women and their adolescent daughters on a mission to understand the insidious aspects of reality. The mothers take on a didactic role, using nature, particularly mushrooms, to explain the difference between the harmful and the nutritious. The scenes are absent of housework and other domestic chores, allowing the female characters to fully delve into their surroundings. Barbier’s ground planes are rocky and angular, treacherously winding underfoot, sometimes even extending out into the space of the viewer. Pushing out of the picture plane is a tactic that is reminiscent of the Byzantine painter, Giotto. However, Barbier’s figures are more volumetric and show more emotion than her Medieval predecessor.

Collaging, piercing, and weaving were some of the other techniques artists used to go beyond the flatness inherent to paper. Iris Charabi-Berggren’s piece, Bird Watching-Gyrfalcom literally weaves itself off the wall. Graphite tones describe the bird’s markings, texture, and brain-like headpiece, which flow into an undulating warp and weave. Julie Garner uses a similar technique in her work, Sugar Factory as she weaves multiple images of the same subject into one single image. Buoyant pneumatocysts and algae permeate the surface of Emily Clawson’s pinhole drawings that she creates by puncturing the paper with the sharp point of a needle or pin. Masako Miki demonstrates how shaded planes of patterned paper can indicate linear perspective and bring order to her precariously stacked items.

In addition to the aforementioned artists, works by Henrique Bagulho, Mariet Braakman, Morgan Ford, John Hundt, Lisa Martin, Liz Maxwell, Anthony Lazorko, Camilla Newhagen, Henry Navarro, Sarah Newton, Jonathan Solo, Hyewon Yoon, and Alex Zecca are also exhibited. The show will be on display through September 20th, 2009.

In a world saturated with electronic communication, it is becoming more rare to find anything in your physical mail box that is worth reading. Thanks to the efforts of Abe’s Penny, a new concept-based micro-publication founded by sisters Anna Knoebel and Tess Knoebel, snail mail has become interesting once again. Abe’s Penny takes the form of an ongoing post card series which features a narrative that unfolds over a four week period. Each month, the work of one visual artist and one writer is printed on a standard post card and mailed to subscribers of the Abe’s Penny publication.

The postcard shown above features a collaboration between photographer Richard Gin and writer Mike Sacks. Gin is a Brooklyn-based photographer who works freelance on a variety of editorial and commercial projects, and Sack is a prominent writer that has worked for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Vice among countless other publications.

Abe’s Penny offers a subscription rate so that you can add some excitement to your mailbox experience. Details are offered on their website.

This summer, Beautiful/Decay magazine made the leap from the standard magazine model, chocked full of ads, to a new streamlined ad free book format. The new format allows Beautiful/Decay the opportunity to publish extended articles and interviews, while also dedicating upwards to 20 pages of images for the primary featured artists. In addition, Book One, the first of this new format from Beautiful/Decay, comes with a hand drawn cover by LA-based artist Kyle Thomas, special inserts, stickers, and is released in a very limited numbered edition.

In typical B/D fashion, the book is structured around a theme. For Book One, the artists included engage the concept of Supernaturalism though a variety of different media. This edition of Beautiful/Decay contains over 20 featured artists including the photographer Yvonne Todd, who’s work mimics the language of professional portrait photography, yet defies traditional beauty by distorting her models with fake teeth and bejeweled eyes. The result is a 70’s inspired corpse-like model that is both attractive and revolting in the same moment. You can see more of her work at the Ivan Anthony Gallery in Auckland, New Zealand.

Laura Brothers’ work, also featured in Beautiful/Decay’s Book One, reacts to the modern world of CGI with amazingly detailed GIF images, reminiscent of the early 90’s world of computer animation. You can find more of Laura Brothers’ work on her LiveJournal page, where she continually adds new images from her magical world.

If you are interested in purchasing one of the remaining copies of the new Book One: Supernaturalism, visit the B/D website here.

Aleksandra Mir’s work at the 53rd Venice Biennale, VENEZIA (all places contain all others), is highly appropriate given that Venice is often considered to be the ultimate tourist destination. Responding to the global souvenir postcard phenomenon, Mir has printed one million copies of her own postcard designs for the exhibition. These postcards are available free-of-charge to each Biennale visitor in both the Arsenale and the Giardini exhibition venues. The artist’s basic intention is to have the participant write on and mail the stamped post card using an onsite letter box, dispersing the work globally.

In each of her 100 postcard designs, Mir pairs the designation ‘Venezia,’ with appropriated images of tourist destinations from around the world. However, none of the postcard images actually depict Venice. The locations vary widely, featuring tropical and snow-covered climates, cityscapes and miscellaneous natural wonders. At times, well-known landmarks such as the Ponte Vecchio in Florence and the Chateau de Chambord in France are attributed to Venezia.

All of Mir’s postcard images contain bodies of water, which is the defining feature of Venice. Historically, the city’s location on water was the key factor in its development as a powerful trading empire. Yet, bodies of water are certainly not an exclusively Venetian characteristic. Water is shared by different geographies, and enables transportation, connecting distant areas around the world.

Mir’s ultimate goal seems to be for these postcards to connect places around the globe in a similar fashion as the bodies of water featured on the postcards. The gallery visitor completes Mir’s work by sending it out into our globalized world, thus creating unexpected encounters.

Aleksandra Mir was born in Lubin, Poland in 1967. Mir has shown internationally since the mid 1990s and was a founding member of the collective M.I.M.E. She attended Gothenburg University, the School of the Visual Arts (NYC) and the New School (NYC). Today, she is a citizen of both Sweden and the United States, while living and working in Palermo, Italy.

VENEZIA (all places contain all others) will remain at the Biennale until the closing on 22 November 2009.

Londoner Bob Matthews’ latest exhibition entitled, Garden Ruin, is on view at the Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco, from May 7 though June 27. Garden Ruin addresses the familiar issue of humans in nature, or in this case, superimposed on nature. Matthews’ landscapes have a certain untamed quality, likely resulting from exposure to the English style of landscape design. Although highly stylized, the English garden is known to be less formal than its strictly symmetrical French counterpart, appearing as if it occurred naturally.

There is a striking visual dichotomy present his work, especially in the oil and acrylic on wood piece Human don’t be angry. The natural wood panel contrasts with the perspectival, geometric image and shiny varnish to raise viewers’ awareness of these contributing elements. Prints like, Garden Ruin 1, broach the subject differently, by superimposing shapes over nature scenes. Without being overbearing, these shapes suggest the presence of humans in the landscape, creating a visually and psychologically unique composition.

Bob Matthews currently lives in London. He teaches at his alma mater, the Royal College of Art, where he received his MA in Printmaking. His recent curatorial endeavors include shows at Cell Project Space, London, and Aspen Museum of Contemporary Art. He has exhibited in London at the Collyer Bristow Gallery, Monika Bobinska, and the Keith Talent Gallery.

As one of the most monumental presidential elections approaches, artist Nikki McClure takes action. Vote for Survival, a series of politically minded and motivated screen prints and signs, is on display at Needles and Pens in San Francisco. McClure, who is known for her elegantly detailed paper cut-outs, has taken a new approach in reaction to the present day political changes. Vote for Survival is a traveling exhibition which will tour the west-coast towns of Los Angeles, San Francisco and McClure’s hometown of Olympia, Washington. In addition to silk-screen prints, Vote for Survival includes numerous original paper cuts. These works, generated from a single piece of paper, are delicate in both technique and subject matter. Drawing influence from life’s austerities, McClure’s tactile approach in demonstrating birds, weeds, children, berries and boats is inherently an homage to beauty and simplicity.

In addition to paper cuts, McClure produces an annual calendar, numerous book covers, posters, album covers, cards and t-shirts. Vote for Survival is simultaneously exhibiting at GR2 Giant Robot in Los Angeles until November.