A Gathering of Things Seen and Unseen – April 2014
A GATHERING OF THINGS SEEN AND UNSEEN
Featuring: Carolina Ramos and Annapurna Kumar, Jake Reinhart, Jake Alan White, Anna Mikolay, Heather White, Matt Newton, Zena Ruiz
Organized by: Jennifer Nagle Myers
A Gathering of Things Seen and Unseen’ is an eight-person exhibition that features new work from artists based at Unsmoke Systems Artspace in Braddock, Pennsylvania.
The work speaks to that which is lost and found, forgotten and remembered.
It references what is hiding in plain sight, making use of what we can hardly see but sits right before our eyes. Sometimes you can only see a thing by looking away from it. The work spans a diverse range of media including photography, sculpture, video, painting, printmaking and writing.
The exhibition is the first part of an exchange between these two art spaces and the artists that inhabit them. In May, artists from the COOP Gallery will exhibit their work in Braddock at Unsmoke Systems Artspace.
Anna Mikolay, “Red Field with Colored Shapes”, 40″ x 30″, Acrylic on Canvas, 2013
Carolina Jacobs Ramos is an interdisciplinary Brazilian artist, currently living and working in Pittsburgh, PA. Fascinated by impalpable biological and social processes, Carolina interprets and imagines living interactions. She currently works at Unsmoked Systems in Braddock, PA and towards a Masters in Social Work with a specialization in mental health. Carolina has exhibited at a variety of venues including Espaco Viga in Sao Paulo, Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, the SETI Institute and the Miller Gallery. She received her BHA in Psychology and Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University.
Annapurna Kumar was raised in Seattle, Washington and Oakton, Virginia by an engineer and a physicist. Her early life was steered towards mathematics, and it was not until she was 18 that she began to consider a career in the arts. Her background and interest in equations, structuring principles, and ordered abstraction is evident in her work. This mathematical sensibility is combined with other interests such as the gender and sexuality spectrum, multiracial identity, and phenomenology. Kumar uses the medium of animation to convey this personal exploration, using its temporality to convey progression, multiplicity, and possibility while using the act of drawing to convey intimacy and opinion.
Jacob Alan White is an artist and designer working out of Braddock, PA. Jacob mostly works with paint on canvas but employs the computer, found objects, and various mediums to craft his stories. He received an MFA from the California College of the Art in 2006.
Heather White is an artist and educator who works for The Andy Warhol Museum, Artists Image Resource and CAPA (Pittsburgh’s Creative and Performing Arts High School). She received her MA and MFA from the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2009. Heather has taught printmaking, art history, drawing, installation, art as activism, and design to many ages and abilities. Heather is currently working on small mixed media works in her home so that she can hang with her pups Emra and Lizzy.
Anna E. Mikolay is a painter and installation artist who lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA. She received a BFA from Edinboro University and maintains a studio space at Unsmoke Systems Artspace, in Braddock PA. Her work has been exhibited locally at the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and the Westmoreland Museum of American Art. National venues include Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL, Space 4 Art Gallery, SanDiego,CA and Lewis Art Gallery, Millsaps College, Jackson MI. Upcoming exhibitions in 2014 include TSA Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Coop Gallery, Nashville, TN and Kennedy Museum of Art, Athens, OH and Space Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA. She is currently represented by Concept Art Gallery in Pittsburgh, PA.
Jake Reinhart was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. He was originally exposed to photography through the small darkrooms his father would build in the houses and apartments they lived in. Jake studied at the University of Pittsburgh, receiving a BA in Sociology and a JD from Pitt Law. His photography explores the concepts of cultural memory, social mobility and the formation of identity.
Zena Ruiz, originally from Houston, TX, is a community advocate and activist based out of Braddock, PA. She received her BFA in visual art from Carnegie Mellon University in 2011. Her work focuses on motherhood and childhood and how the two realms interact or do not interact. She is influenced by her childhood memories, motherly instincts, and her Catholic Mexican-American upbringing. Her work enables her to surface topics that are taboo or would otherwise be silenced.
Matthew Newton is a writer and journalist from Western Pennsylvania. He has written essays, many about class and culture, for Guernica, Colorlines, and The Rumpus, and his reporting has appeared in the Atlantic, Esquire, Forbes, and Spin. He is currently at work on No Place for Disgrace, a memoir set in the American suburbs in the waning days of the 20th century.
Jennifer Nagle Myers is a visual artist based in Pittsburgh. Her work follows two trajectories: as a studio-based artist who makes prints, drawings, sculptures and photographs; and as director of public performances. She welcomes this opportunity to organize an exhibition for other artists and feels certain that the future is only what we can all accomplish together.