Artists

United States of America

Maren Preston
SUB30: Between Spaces

25.02.13 15.03.13

Maren Preston did a SUB30 artist residency at La Torre. After having an accident before her trip, in the period of residence she not only explored the city looking for material and matter (garbage and objects found in the streets) to carry out her work but also dived intimate places of her being.
I create in her workshop a production linked to the sacred (from paintings of sacred art and animal bones found on public roads); to the mundane. She worked on a written record of her perceptions and travel annotations, drawings, collages and paintings recreating the space as if it were an installation.

ARTIST STATEMENT
My aim at the ´ace Project residency is to create a series of pieces that explore the relationship between language, culture, identity and the transcendence of categories.
I am interested in expressing ways in which language builds a framework to perceive reality and one’s own identity. Integrating my own past of speaking English and learning Spanish, I want to explore how culture and its context give meaning to words, which are transformed into labels and groups where people are delimited. Some basic examples of the categories in which people are placed are age, gender, nationality and race. I am particularly interested in the spaces that exist between these categories and what happens when they break and transcend.

By combining the processes of painting, photography and collage of objects and texts in three-dimensional forms, I hope to blur the boundaries between these means of expression in a new way, also to create an exterior representation of the city and the culture exploring through the use of material and the photos taken in Buenos Aires, as well as the internal expression of being immersed in a new place, integrating the drawings, paintings and writings.
This Residency offers me the opportunity to expand my knowledge of Spanish and gain a global perspective on my art while experimenting with this new combination of materials.

BIO
Maren preston
1990 | Santa Cruz, California, USA

STUDIES
2012 | Bachelor of Fine Arts, University of California at Santa Cruz, USA
She studied a semester away at Massey University, New Zealand. Where she took classes in textiles and drawings.

EXHIBITIONS
2012 | Art Show at Food Not Lawns Co-op. USA
2012 | A collaboration of art and poetry
2011 | Spirituality Art Show, Cowell College, California, USA

Related Activities

International Projects, Exhibitions

CROSSOVER @ KCAC, USA
Group exhibition

17.10.14 14.11.14

The international project CROSSOVER [KC-Bs As] was exhibited from October 17th until November 14th, 2014 at the Mallin Gallery, Kansas City Artists Coalition, Kansas City, USA. Organized

ALEJANDRO THORNTON I WRITE / I DRAW

PLACE AND MEMORY – Kansas City Art Institute students participated in the Foreign Travel Led Program to Buenos Aires. Upon their return they created a series of works made in response to their experiences in Argentina and Uruguay. These visual sources, or tokens are being adapted and processed around notions of the found print and memory recollection.

CROSSOVER [KC-Bs As] is an in-progress international collaborative printmaking project between artists questioning the established norms of the original production and authorship of artistic works. In this project one’s work, property and egos became irrelevant, as artists have to trust each other allowing themselves and their counterparts to place their hand-marks, images and matrixes on one’s previous works. In April 2015 the project will be received by the Western Gallery at Western Washington University in Washington States, United States, completing a successful project carried out as an initiative of ‘ace in 2013.

Check pictures of the exhibition here
Check catalogue on line at issuu

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International Projects, Exhibitions

CROSSOVER-Cruce de Vías
Collective exhibition

06.04.15 16.05.15

From April 06 to May 16, 2015 the works produced in the International Project CROSSOVER [KC – BsAs] were exhibited in the Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Washington State, USA.

Organized by Cara Jaye, one of the creators of the project, CROSSOVER [KC-Bs As] was in this oportunity part of a larger exhibition and event. It included the pieces of all the Crossovers sessions as well as artists Miguel Rivera, Alicia Candiani, Melanie Yazzie and Patricia Villalobos Echeverria’s residencies, lectures scheduled for April 7, 8, 9, 21 and May 5 and 7, in addition to gallery talks with the artists explaining the project.

Created by Cara Jaye (Washington, USA) and Miguel Rivera (Guanajuato, Mexico) in 2004 as a spontaneous collaboration that has now expanded to include the taking and trading of artworks by more than 30 artists from over ten countries, Crossover/Cruce de Vías addresses issues of exchange, borders, authorship, travel and the interplay within collaboration. The diverse body of more than 150 works incorporate drawing, collage, photography, painting and printmaking techniques as artists use layers and multiple viewpoints to form an active and ongoing dialogue on crossing borders and nationalities, bridging differences and expressing commonalities while sending work across actual borders.

International Crossover exhibitions

2015 | Crossover / Crossroads, Western Gallery, Western Washington University. Bellingham, Washington, USA.
2013 | Crossover [KC-BsAs], Proyecto´ace. Buenos Aires, Argentina
2012 | Crossover KC, Kansas City Artists Coalition. Kansas City, Missouri, USA
2006 | Crossover / Cruce de Vias, Shift Gallery. Seattle, Washington, USA and Jesús Garcia Gallery, Guanajuato, Mexico

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Organizer Cara Jaye
Curator Amy Chalouptka
Lectures Alicia Candiani | April 7th, Miguel Rivera | April 9th
Gallery talk
Amy Chalouptka, Alicia Candiani, Cara Jaye and Miguel Rivera | April 10th

International Projects

CROSSOVER [ KC-Bs As]
Artists in dialogue

22.02.13 13.05.13

CROSSOVER [KC – Bs As] is the 4th edition of an in-progress international collaborative printmaking project between artists questioning the established norms of the original production and authorship of artistic works. In this project one’s work, property and egos became irrelevant, as artists have to trust each other allowing themselves and their counterparts to place their hand-marks, images and matrices on one’s previous works.

Adriana Moracci, ´ace‘s Master Printer, inspired by a set of woodcuts matrixes that artist Miguel Rivera left behind during his residency with us in 2011, launched the ideas that initiated this CROSSOVER session. The international project was completed at Proyecto ’ace/Artist-in-Residence International Program in Buenos Aires Argentina, and directed by Alicia Candiani, from February to June 2013.

Crossover has been designed as a collaborative project between artists questioning the established norms of the original production and authorship of artistic work ,leading to the collaborative work between artists from around the world.One’s work, property and egos became irrelevant, as artists have to trust each other allowing themselves and their counterparts to place their hand-marks, images and matrices on one’s previous works. Each piece made in this series is unique, these works are not editions, as individual pieces are worked on and circulated among its participants. All artists aimed to evolve in their own practice by finding common points of view and theoretical discourse. CROSSOVER [KC – Bs As] re-semantized 15 woodcut plates carved with digital techniques by artist Miguel Rivera at KCAI workshops in the USA. During three different sessions, participants joined to create new works based in Rivera’s matrixes.

Last but not least, Rivera himself participated in the different sessions in Buenos Aires given talks and delivering critiques via video-conference. Later on, he travelled for the opening of the exhibition at Sala Políglota in ‘ace on May 15th, 2013. The exhibition travelled to the USA and was exhibited at Maller Gallery, Kansas City Artist Coalition, Kansas City and Western Gallery, Western Washington University in Bellingham.

Click HERE to see pictures of the three sessions @ ´ace

ABOUT CROSSOVER

Crossover is an ongoing art project started by artists Cara Jaye and Miguel Rivera. It began as goal oriented project in 2006 in the US and in Mexico, with Cara Jaye working in Bellingham, Washington and Miguel Angel Rivera in the historic city of Guanajuato, Mexico. Both artists traveled between their home countries to create these layered works on paper, which use various printmaking and photography techniques, Vandyke brown print, digital imagery, collage, fur, drawing and painting.

After having two successful shows in Guanajuato and Seattle, a continuation of that initial project became necessary after Rivera moved to Kansas City. This new body of work included a broader range of artistic practices using the immediate dialogue among artists.The project continued in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2011, during the residency that Miguel Rivera did in Proyecto´ace where he started some pieces in collaboration with artist and ´ace director Alicia Candiani. The pieces was overtaken later while Alicia was in the Kansas City Art Institute as a visiting artist, where it was finished and exhibited as part of the Candiani solo show in Maller Gallery in the Kansas City Art Coalition in October 2011.

In 2012 a new group included its two initial artists in addition to Patricia Villalobos Echeverria, a Nicaraguan-American artist working in Kalamazoo, Missouri; Melanie Yazzie, a Navajo artist working in Boulder, Colorado, and Michael Schonhoff, artist and curator from Kansas City, Missouri in the USA. Crossover at the Kansas City Artists Coalition residency required artists to trade “half finished” works at the beginning of the residency and allowing their counterparts to intervene their pieces and finishing them. One’s work, property and egos became irrelevant, as they had to trust each other allowing ourselves and our counterparts to place their hand-marks, images and matrices on one’s previous works. Each piece made in this series is unique, these works are not editions, as individual pieces are worked on and circulated among its participants. All artists aimed to evolve in their own practice by finding common points of view and theoretical discourse. Jaye addressed issues of migration and adaptation to harsh environments while Yazzie used a trickster approach to bring attention to Native American political unsolved issues. Villalobos, Schonhoff and Rivera shared similar opinions about place, borders, language, conflict and fear towards unknown entities such as violence, viral threats and identity.

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CROSSOVER
A Miguel Rivera’s and Cara Jaye’s original project

CROSSOVER [KC-Bs As]
Direction
Alicia Candiani
Co-direction and Bs As project concept
Adriana Moracci
Coordinación y asistencia
Valeria Zamparolo
Daniela Ruiz Moreno
Voluntarios en taller
Bárbara Vincenti
Santiago Ocampo
Germán Sandoval Silva

Guest artists
Alejandro Thornton (Buenos Aires, Argentina)| Sara-Aimee Verity (Cape Town, South Africa)

SUB30 Fellowships
Sol Massera (La Plata, Argentina)| Natalio Altube (Pergamino, Argentina)

International Projects, Exhibitions

CROSSOVER @ Bs. As.
Group exhibition

16.05.13 11.08.13

The work produced during Crossover [KC-Bs As] was exhibited in Fundación ‘ace during three months. 26 artists from different countries participated of this project which took place in ‘ace during the beginning of 2013.

On the exhibition’s opening, May 15th, Buenos Aires public enjoyed and shared an ‘aceNITE not only with many of the Crossover artists, but also with Miguel Rivera (initiator of the project) who came all the way from Kansas City in the USA to join us.

Essay on Crossover (by Daniela Ruiz Moreno)

To work in collaboration means to unite, merge, and contrast diverse ways of seeing and thinking. It implies openness to receive others expressive languages, allowing it to penetrate and challenge our own language.

In Theory of Modern Art, Paul Klee, reflects upon human’s creative strength and states “it is necessary to reveal this strength, its functions, in the same way it reveals in ourselves, this strength together with the matter, should embody, become shape, reality”. Is because of this that I believe that working in collaboration means to reveal and to force the emergence of the creative strength inside the others work. This is only achieved by activating one’s own strength.

Following this it is interesting to note the variety of “crossings” and overlaps, the different levels of permeability explored and revealed by each artist. In some cases each ones images suffered mutations, established dialogs in which each issuer maintains some distance, they relate but avoid infection (Viviana Sierra). Images crush or become flatten with the presence of the other, but at the same time a level of merging is achieved (Natalio Altube, Sol Massera, Paula Nahmod). In other case, both languages relate organically (Alejandro Scasso).

Artists appropriate the original for their own work (Alejandro Thornton), or use it as an impulse or stimulation to explore questionings already present in their search (Cristina Solía). Even chance was present in a piece in which a strong syncretism between Judaism, Muslim and Catholicism was achieved (Gabriela Zelentcher). In other works, the link between the two expressions was documented in a video. This resource allowed registering the randomness and importance of the entailment as one expression was not perceptible without the other (María José Sánchez Chiappe).

The virus, fundamental concept in the previous editions of CROSSOVER was interpreted in multiple ways in this session. In one case, the work focused in rats, essential actors and victims of the experiments to resist and battle viruses (Sonia Sánchez Avelar). In other, the artist was interested in the reproductive capacity of the virus, finding in its embryonic state, formal similarities with other beings (Bárbara Vincenti). The duality life/death that the virus holds was explored (Maren Preston), also the social danger and horror that epidemics produce. Infection, destructive in the case of viruses was founded in other human expressions such as laughter, in this case as something positive and empowering. Infection could be related also with colonial processes, where not only physical destruction is implied but also cultural, social and religious (Jennifer Pickering).

Crossover [KC-Bs.As.] is a project in which each artist had the opportunity to explore in a creative environment. Individual expressions became challenged, stimulated and embraced. Each artist, free to invade and to be infected by others creations, achieved in this way new languages.

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