Opening Reception: Saturday, February 4th
6-8pm

Show runs February 4th thru March 25th

DDR Projects is proud to welcome Canadian artist Alexa Hatanaka to {open} on Saturday February 4^th, 2012 at 6:00PM for an exhibit of her recent screen printed and hand embellished works done during her recent tour of China.

Alexa Hatanaka is a Toronto native who paints large-scale murals and creates work that is based in material exploration, craft and playful representation. To create her work she employs different combinations of printmaking, weaving and dying, painting, and papermaking. In recent years, her colorful, tactile works have been shown at the Nanjing Arts Institute in China, La Place Forte in Paris, Articulate Baboon in Egypt, and the Manifesto Festival in Toronto. Very close to Alexa’s heart are the public murals she paints in Canada’s Arctic communities. The projects are created in collaboration with NUSchool Design agency, based in Iqaluit, NU, and involve mentorship work with local youth. A large part of her practice is devoted to collaborations with her partner Patrick Thompson, which included three-dimensional installations, outdoor murals, and mixed-media pieces on traditional and unconventional substrates. Alexa is currently completing her thesis in Printmaking at OCAD University, and previously studied for two years in Sheridan College’s BAA Illustration program.

If you would like more information about the artist, this exhibit or to schedule an interview, please call John Geldbach at 562.673.3134 or email John at john@ddrprojects.com

Show runs thru January 22.

Predator Instinct
new works on wood by Ashes in Orange Peels (Suzanne Walsh)
March 26 – June 17

March 26 – opening reception
7 – 9 pm // FREE
featuring a live performance by Will Morrison of the Vacuum Bell

April 23
AIOP issue one magazine and special edition hom[ep]rairie EP launch
reception 7 – 9
featuring Joy Shannon and Will Morrison performing the EP in its entirety
copies of the magazine and the EP will be available for sale
sale price: $15

Get details on Ashes in Orange Peels here: ashesinorangepeels.blogspot.com

ARTIST STATEMENT
As an artist, I am obsessed with contradictions stemming from a childhood between Europe and the East Coast and a suburban life in Orange County, California. First to Geneva, then Prague where we stayed in a small apartment (within what used to be my grandfather’s family home before Communism), and then back to backyard camping with the girl scout troop in a sea of pink homes that all looked the same. Always trying to integrate, always trying to fit in and feeling much like a hybrid of several different and often times opposing cultures and environments, my ability to draw became the great bonding agent with which I could communicate in all areas of my life.

The series Predator Instinct deals directly with identity confusion. Growing up in Southern California we are, almost to a one, products of parents who at some point were chasing or actively living a dream life. Whether they achieved what they had hoped for or not, the erratic nature of dream chasing is what we are accustomed to and therefore attempt to seek out ourselves, with mixed results. The animals in these works are all hybrids from common animals found on all continents. wolf/coyote/fox, deer/rabbit/mouse. The environments are multi-layered with full desert scenes existing beneath blankets of fur-like snow. My hope was to convey a highly aesthetic truth as to how it really feels to grow up here, each painting a knowing wink to the joy and the panic of being both predator and prey in one.

As an added bonus. my friend Joy Shannon, herself an Irish/SoCal hybrid, offered to compose a series of music inspired by the themes behind my work. She asked fellow musicians Will Morrison, Sean Wallace and Mark Sheppard to join her and the result is a deeply lyrical and witty series of songs that are as harmonious as they are strangely schizophrenic. I was so moved by the collaboration, that I decided to produce the record now entitled hom[ep]rairie. It will be available on itunes on April 16th as well as included as a download in the first ever issue of Ashes In Orange Peels magazine, also set to release on the 16th.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ashes in Orange Peels has evolved into a creative think-tank dedicated to making connections between galleries, visual artists, musicians and non-profits in order to directly affect the functionality and sustainability of the arts as a whole.

AIOP began as a name and a kind of shield behind which artist Suzanne Walsh hid as she littered the world with re-purposed typewriters, bikes and other various “reclaimed sculpture” leaving her mark by abandoning her work in cities from Prague to New York to Los Angeles.

Bookish

www.amyalice.com

Opening reception
Saturday, January 29, 7-10pm
FREE

About Bookish
These pieces are meant to be images from a librarian’s daydreams. Little glimpses of life, awaiting their escape from between dusty book jackets within the stacks. The librarian works quietly to herself, inputting, organizing, re-shelving, following Dewey decimal’s order of things. These are meant to be her inner world, her private menagerie.

About Amy Thompson
Amy is an art director, illustrator and mixed media artist currently dividing her time between Portland OR and Ottawa ON. She has created illustrations for magazines, book covers, and calendars. Recently, she contributed to a t-shirt line in South Korea and created album artwork for Jim Bryson and the Weakerthans. Her artwork has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Paris and Berlin and has been featured in the pages of AU Agenda (Spain) and Vogue Girl (Korea).

Though they had never taken an art class before, her students captured their unique perspective of life in a developing country, unconsciously illustrating the tenuous balance that exists  between tradition and the influence of modernity.

Kim returned to the U.S. in July 2009, bringing her students’ work with her, both to showcase life in Mongolia and to hopefully help her students through the sale of their artwork.

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100% of the proceeds from each piece will be given to the artist.

100% of sales will be given to the artist.

“In Mongolia”
August 8 – September 20

During a two-year collaboration, Trawick and Wallace traded pieces back and forth via the US Post Office, adding to each work as it changed hands.

Wallace, who lives in Pittsburgh, and Trawick, who lives in Southern California, never met throughout their collaborative process. Their first contact was via an email Wallace wrote Trawick after seeing some of her collages in a gallery. Rebecca was immediately struck by David’s work and within a few months David approached Rebecca about doing a collage collaboration. The two artists first met at a Hand to Hand exhibition opening in St. Louis in 2007.

{open} will be exhibiting 25 of the works, along with thumbnails documenting each step of the collaborative process.

Hand to Hand
the coast-to-coast collage collaboration of Rebecca Trawick and David Wallace
opening reception – Saturday, May 30, 6-9 p.m.

show runs Saturday, May 30 – Sunday, July 19, 2009

About the artists

David Wallace is a collage artist, graphic designer and musician living in Pittsburgh. He’s been making art for “as long as he can remember” but found an obsession with the collage process about 10 years ago. The narrative that found materials create when juxtaposed together in the same composition drives Wallace’s collaged works of art. He creates new realities and new stories out of found materials. David has shown his collages, paintings and installations at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh; Gallery Neptune in Bethesda, MD; Michael Orr Gallery in Columbus, OH; Boogaloo in Brooklyn, NY; and A Muse Gallery in Columbus, OH, among others. He is also currently performing with Pittsburgh’s internationally touring Squonk Opera. See David’s artwork online at www.salaczar.com.

Rebecca Trawick has been working as a collage artist and calligrapher since her days as a poor art student in Minneapolis, MN. Vintage ephemera have become an obsession for her – finding the perfect piece of paper, a photo, a button or image is her goal. She is also obsessed with letter-writing, handwriting, mail art and the art of correspondence. She has shown at Blue Ruin Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA; Galleria D’arte Modern E Contemporanea, Bondeno, Italy; Treehouse Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, among others. Her lettering and illustration have been featured in Somerset Studios, ME’s Home Companion, Bust magazine, Lollipop magazine, Garage Magazine and many others. You can see Rebecca’s work online at www.bluebirdstudios.com.

So Long
new work from Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs
January 31 – March 22