Harper National Juried Exhibition: Small Works 2024

Iron Tree, 2024

lithograph, 14.75" x 11"

My Urban Landscapes depict the environment we live in. These images typically capture the essence of the urban landscape by utilizing the endless tonalities available to me in drawing and printmaking. It is with these rendered impressions that I depict these vignettes through a more refined interpretation of the compositions before me. My use of shadows, texture, and value establish areas of movement and light that create a certain mood, and help the viewer understand my vision of the contemporary landscape.

Iron Tree compares itself to what grows in nature, this symbolic vertical trunk with limbs branching out helps to maintain itself and is integral to the other elements that surround it.

baczekstudio.com

sun burns out, 2022

etching and transfer, 13" x 11"

sun burns out is a print from the portfolio Like Leaves Like Ashes Like Stars, a suite of handprinted images originally conceived as a book, with images paired in spreads. The prints are a record of enduring ruminations on time: geologic and human time, cyclical and linear time, event-based and dream time, pandemic and deep time.

Scattered throughout the portfolio of images are many visual and literary citations from other artists’ and authors’ reflections on the nature of time. This print, sun burns out, includes and is inspired by a quote, used here as a caption, from For the Time Being, a profound little book by author Annie Dillard.

lisabulawsky.com

Naked Lunch, 2023

oil, oil pastel on wood, 9" x 12" x 1"

While my creative practice is currently grounded in painting, I consider my work inherently interdisciplinary. With a distinctly humorous and feminist lens, I explore the relationship between nature and culture through paint, in order to reimagine female archetypes. Ranging from large scale landscapes, to portraits, and genre scenes, I explore themes of eroticism, confronting societal myths as they relate to gender.

With a recent focus on depicting women in swimming pools and beach fronts, I explore the cultural relevance of these sites as symbols of not only wealth and status, but also narcissism and escape. Inspired by the surfeit and spectacle living on the East End of Long Island I enjoy playing with the imagination of an overstimulated and desensitized audience. Commanding psychological space and drenched in color, I present visions of women and their bodies autonomously lounging, crying, swimming, eating and moaning-satirizing a rarefied world governed by pleasure, with its own reflection.

www.carodranow.com

Colosseum #7, 2023

oil on board, 21.5" x 5" x 2"

John Ferry is a Professor serving in the Illustration Department at Kansas City Art Institute. After visiting Rome, the Colosseum subject matter has provided a rich environment for inspiration. You will see in Colosseum #7 my exploration of color, light, and space. I simplify the reference as I draw it out, ensuring the final composition captures my initial vision but nothing more. I don’t think of my paintings as documentation, but rather an inspirational starting point for a painting. Edward Hopper said, “What I wanted to do was to paint the sunlight on the side of the house.” That quote captures my intent perfectly. I’m looking for a composition that makes me want to paint. I feel I have done that with this painting.

John is represented by the Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art Gallery in Kansas City, MO. John lives and paints in Prairie Village, KS with his wife Amy and two daughters Katherine and Paige.

johnferry.art

Nexis Study II, 2022

photograph, acrylic, glitter on paper, 16" x 12"

I am interested in exploring the complexity of the natural world through both representational and abstract systems that illustrate the intersection of external conditions with inner emotion, imagination and memory. It is a dialogue between the objects we can visually see and the things that are hidden - subtle systems of movement, energy and communication. I am drawn to the varying patterns in the natural world, forms that repeat or clone, sculptural in the way they interact with the surrounding environment and light, and particularly in their fluctuating states of growth and decay. The complex symbiotic relationships in nature are networks of collaboration and interconnectedness, and while sometimes it may be perceived as chaotic, nature finds its own order. The natural world can be viewed as a metaphor for life in its vulnerability, resilience, transformation and impermanence. It is a space for pause and contemplation, which is the underlying theme of my work.

kikigaffney.com

Cosmic Traveler, 2024

eraser drawing: graphite, watercolor, acrylic on BFK on panel, 12" x 9" x 1"

Terra Keck is a Brooklyn-based artist. She received her MFA from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and her BFA from Ball State University. Keck’s work explores the ontology of our universe and consciousness through the metaphor of the UFO. Instead of siphoned through the language of militarism and conspiracy, Keck approaches the UFO from the angle that our universe is, at its core, benevolent.

The work is created by erasing layers of graphite and watercolor, a reductive process that alludes to the importance of what is left behind and the negative spaces in our cosmic story. Spiritually, the work is generated in response to the broad consensus that the future is canceled. When things feel so uncertain, what are we supposed to do but look up and out at an opaque and glittering emptiness and dream of someone who traveled a thousand lightyears just to catch a glimpse of us?

terrakeck.com

The Shapeless Path, 2024

oil on canvas, 20" x 16"

My commitment as an artist is to probe into what the mind insists to disengage with in order to function. The complicated emotional landscapes that arise from our interactions with the world and ourselves are my object of portrayal. Those notions are more important than the figures that inhabit the canvas. My goal is to create a simulation of the internal experience through the sensations of looking at the canvas rather than to tell a story. The figures are tools to express the actual subject, which is the inherent trauma of living and experiencing a world we are still to understand scientifically, metaphysically and socially. We are always left with nothing but questions, and the human experience always demands a surrender that I am ultimately driven to explore.

lorennalannes.com

Untitled, 2023

archival pigment print, 16" x 20"

My photographs explore the boundaries and interactions between human-made environments and nature. Modern structures and machinery facilitate the expansion of our spaces but also continuously encroach upon the natural world. Through my work, I aim to document the visceral tensions that arise from this interference, presenting the troubled and uncanny relationships that develop.

juneyonglee.com

Welcome Bouquet, 2023

fiber, sticks, beads, concrete and varnish, 20.5” x 17” x 6"

Welcome Bouquet was built over a core of ritual objects created as tools to physically embody otherwise invisible hopes. Skin-like surfaces combine with textile construction processes that showcase human ingenuity to transform everyday materials into a densely crafted sculptural form.

Botanical yet bodily, this work operates to complicate any easy distinctions between instinct and intent, surface and form, art and craft, and being human within complex ecological diversity and interdependence. What is ordinary becomes mysterious and out of undervalued parts comes an indelible whole.

tinalinvillestudio.com

2912, 1966-1980, 2020

ink on paper, 19.87" x 12.75"

I make works on paper, text-based images and installations, which focus on location, definition and recognition of the impacts of trauma in particular places. My most recent series of ink and gouache drawings, titled The Breach, represents through local patterns and perspectival abstractions, places where I experienced trauma. Working largely from memory, I developed a pattern based on something particular to each space, like wall paper, bedding, or clothing. These patterns are overlaid on perspectival drawing of a place, based on five different views. Through this series I have transformed my pain and grief into a positive and edifying object. For my audience, I hope these works evoke wonder and beauty, while also raising awareness about the restorative work that is inherent to art making, and how healing and transformation can occur by facing the ugliest of personal experiences.

sitecited.com

Just a Small Gathering, 2024

collage on paper, 12" x 16"

My work explores occasions surrounding the spoils of indulgence and the nourishment of moderation throughout one's life, by digitally altering images, colors, and patterns and compiling the printed results. My still-life scenes reveal new meanings of reality found in the digital and physical manipulations of imagery and paper. I navigate the boundaries between living in life and in death, celebration, and reflection – and the magic in between.

My fascination with these themes stem from personal experience, having grappled with the loss of my father to alcoholism. It is a profound confrontation with mortality, a journey that has led me to ponder the complexities of indulgence, restraint, fulfillment, and the transient nature of life. Through the lens of isolated yet elaborate tablescapes evoking occasion, I seek to spark nostalgia, inviting viewers to ponder the richness of existence and savor life's precious moments with fervor and appreciation.

georgiemillerart.com

My Kitchen, 2024

ballpoint pen on paper, 5" x 7"

My recent collection of drawings are small detailed depictions of my interior life. Using something as simple as a ballpoint pen, on a 5x7 piece of paper, they attempt to convey quiet moments of gratitude within the reality of my life at home. I am interested in the play between the sacred and the mundane. I want to bring the focus of experiencing reverence while moving through the motions cooking dinner, weeding the garden, or taking a shower. Following a period of time in my life that was latent with grief and loss, it was going through the motions of daily life that brought me back to myself and where I found healing.

erinelizabetho.com

Composition No. 291, 2023

acrylic on linen, 12" x 12"

While a fan of modernist design and architecture, Raúl Ortiz’s paintings do not prescribe to the "less is more" philosophy credited to Mies van der Rohe. With a penchant for color and contrast, Ortiz combines a variety of distinct colors, patterns, and forms from multiple sources such as ethnographic patterns, architectural elements, and botanical forms. Composition No. 291, on display, reflects a collage-like process of overlapping layering, obliterating, and refinement of images with decidedly contemporary color choices.

raulortizartist.wixsite.com/raul

Bankshot, 2023

acrylic on canvas, 12" x 9"

I create abstract paintings using a unique visual language inspired by the visual and emotional stimuli of everyday life. These paintings are informed by my daily practice of making and refining digital drawings. While abstract in nature, my artwork often alludes to spaces and places, locations and views seen through filters and windows, at work, at home, and while traveling through an urban environment. This work references frames and layers inspired by scaffolding and architecture. These layers are overlaid with diagrammatic line work that reads like the lines of a map.

christopherrose-art.com

Des Nuages (Yellowstone NP), 2021

watercolor on paper, 6" x 7.75"

The work, Des Nuages (Yellowstone NP) is from my current series, The National Park Project, a continuation of my works in the Fragility of the Sacred series, comprising paintings and individual handmade artists' books integrating idea, text and visual images, with the theme of fragility.

My most recent series aspires to explore the National Parks as pristine environments that need to be considered as sacred to protect the land and environment which serves as our nation’s natural legacy. Most importantly, I am reflecting on the impact of climate change, tourism, and man’s use of natural resources on each park; the paintings will reflect these concerns by representing the natural beauty, plants and animals impacted and threatened, and using text to address the fragility of the natural environment there.

bethshadur.com

Interpolation 5.24.2024, 2024

ink on paper, 14" x 11"

Interpolation 5.24.2024 is part of a series of “soft grid” drawings. With these works, I am thinking about how everything holds together ever so loosely, despite the stresses of accumulating absences and flaws - but are there signs of unraveling? I enjoy the way these drawings play at being almost-rectilinear, almost-organized, and yet carry a touch of characteristically biotic messiness. Resilience is always in the imperfections. Softness is stronger than rigidity.

leahsmith.studio

Supermodel (You Better Work), 2023

textiles, 23" x 20.5" x 1"

I continually find myself drawn to the archetype of the Rebel. Whether through the lives of musicians, philosophers, street artists, or other boundary pushers, I admire those who push back against unhealthy social norms. For this piece, I was inspired to create an abstract image of the RuPaul song, Supermodel (You Better Work). I began sewing this quilt with no end design in mind; I started by constructing one of the curvy, mouth-like segments, and built the rest of the design improvisationally, responding to each previous decision, and guided by the song. This work was made entirely from fabric, pieced with ¼” seams and quilted with free-motion stitching to create the effect of scribbling on textile.

iothealien.com

Material Remains #1, 2023

brick fragment, roof tile, wood, glaze, 5.5" x 6" x 8"

My art practice is intuitive, based on process and the exploration of materials and form. Rather than starting with an idea or context, I think through materials, gradually finding form through process and matter.

My work centers on a visual language of line, volume, and shadow, and the creation of unexpected juxtapositions and conversations between objects in space. The display and reframing of things into ordered visual systems and topographies is fundamental to my practice. I am seduced by the raw, malleability of clay and its transformation from wet lump to fragile object through the heat of the kiln. My inspiration is the power of every-day urban and natural objects – their history, form, texture and thingness. With these materials, I seek to create new objects and moments for the viewer to discover.

melissaweberstudio.com

After the Rain, 2023

gouache on paper, 13" x 17"

My practice, largely consisting of works on paper, concerns questions of ground, memorial, and connections to place established through walking. On my walks, I am often struck by arrangements of things I come across. Desiccated plant fragments and inanimate debris feel alive in an indescribable way. I believe in reverent observation and intentional, meticulous mark-making driven by an understanding that what I am looking at cannot look back, at least in a human sense. I am drawn to the densely intricate nature of an ordinary patch of dirt, constellations of stones, and the dark spaces in between overlapping sticks and leaves. Through the labor of painting, I get to know the ground as it was the moment I encountered it, and I take pleasure in that the next time I come upon the same spot of soil, there will be more to see.

ayeagerart.com