Check out the Newest Show at the Steenbock Gallery - "LOST SCHOOLS" by Samantha VanDeman

Steenbock Gallery to Open Samantha VanDeman Exhibit

“Lost Schools” exhibition portrays interiors and objects found in abandoned schools.

“Lost Schools,” an exhibit featuring photographs by Samantha VanDeman, will be on display August 15 to September 23 in the Steenbock Gallery.  An artist’s reception will take place on Sunday, August 21, from 1:00 to 5:00 pm.  The event is free and open to the public.  The Steenbock Gallery is located at the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, 1922 University Ave., and is open Monday through Friday 8:30 am to 4:30 pm.

            “About a year ago, I started making frequent trips to Gary, Indiana,” says VanDeman. “During that time, I started to photograph the interiors of abandoned structures. I wasn’t sure why I became so fascinated with the buildings: I just knew that I wanted to photograph them before they were gone. Lost Schools is an ongoing photographic series that evolved from my many explorations. I began this project by looking at empty rooms and remnants that remained in the spaces. Looking deeper, I began photographing… [and] examining how these objects provide links to memory, nostalgia and loss. I’m interested in how quickly these schools were forgotten about… as if one day, the teachers walked out and didn’t look back… With the destruction of these schools, any memory of these places will be erased from time. Photographs and artifacts will be all that remain.”

New Exhibit! Tyler Robbins: SUBURBAN

Stop by the Steenbock Gallery this week to check out our newest exhibit, "Suburban" by Tyler Robbins.

“Suburban is an identity and a state of mind,” says Robbins. “The suburbanite archetype is not revered, nor is it regularly claimed by those who fit the role. My images are an open-ended narrative. They serve as an allegory for suburban existence . . . [But] if my images fail to become symbols for all that is suburban, they can at least represent what really matters: A well-manicured lawn, beer, grilled meat, and the weekend.”


To view the artists work, please visit http://www.tylerrobbins.net/

Please join us for an artist's reception on Friday, July 8, from 6:00 to 9:00 PM.

This exhibition will run from July 4 to August 12.

New Exhibit! Lisa Frank: THE PATTERN THAT CONNECTS

The newest Steenbock Gallery exhibit opens this week! "The Pattern that Connects" features photographs by Lisa Frank.

“My artwork is influenced by my professional background as a textile designer,” says Frank.  “The activity of taking pictures almost daily in the woods makes for a visual diary – it illuminates my relationship with the natural world, and documents changing evidence of the ordinary and the astonishing.  Season after season I rely on nature’s comforting repetition – the familiarity and security that comes from knowing – seeing! – that soon after the appearance of the jack-in-the-pulpit comes the anticipated morel and the resulting mushroom risotto.  This creates the true ‘pattern’ of my work: the inter-relationships between all of nature’s corresponding parts, where one thing begets another, one day becomes a year and then two... This personal, arbitrary, asymmetrical time chart is deeply resonant for me and key to my understanding of what it means to be alive and of this world.  My patterns are constructed using Photoshop from these daily snapshots, and from scanographs composed in my studio.”

To view the artist’s work, visit www.lisafrankphotography.com

  

Join us on Friday, May 27, for an opening reception from 6-9PM.

This exhibition will run until from May 23 until July 1.  

Click Into Place: Work from UW-Madison Photo Students

Tyler Robbins

The UW-Madison photography students return to the Steenbock!!!!

Opening Monday, enjoy new work from photographers studying with Tom Jones in the undergraduate and graduate art programs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, some that you've seen in years past, some that are exhibiting in Madison for the first time, and some that are new members of the Steenbock committee!!


OPENING RECEPTION: April 15, 5-9pm

Final thoughts on the National Juried Exhibition

After full days of accepting works, hanging the show and meeting with Andy to select his awards, we're happy to announce that the first Steenbock National Juried Exhibition is open, and is gorgeous. We could not be prouder of the work presented here, by photographers from near and far, or of the decisions that Andy made in selecting both the overall exhibit and his awards.

And speaking of awards:

FIRST PLACE
 ($500 and a 2012 solo exhibit at the Steenbock)
Nate Mathews

SECOND PLACE
($250)
Carsten Meier

THIRD PLACE
($100)
Kate Wichlinski

We truly hope to see you at the opening this Friday, March 4 from 6-9pm, and hope you have a chance to spend time with the exhibition outside of the melee of an opening reception.  The work is strong and contemporary, and is an incredibly strong showing for our first National foray.  Thank you so much for supporting the gallery through your entry and your patronage, and the Center for Photography at Madison, and we hope to see more of your work in the future.

Juror's Statement: Andy Adams

As expected, the submissions for this inaugural juried exhibition were ripe with complex visual ideas from a wide variety of image-makers working throughout the United States. Narrowing my selections wasn’t easy, and I’m thrilled to have had the opportunity to play a small part in exposing the work of this year’s Steenbock Gallery photographers with the Madison public.

The hope in a call-for-entries exhibition like this is that the photo community responds with a diversity of images that present a wide range of photographic perspectives. I’m pleased to report that this show delivers in spades. There are photographs from many regional artists, but also from image-makers based in Florida, Arizona, New York and Tennessee. Despite their differences, these photographers are inspired by a curiosity that transcends subject matter to present an enlightened way of seeing our modern culture.  

These eighteen artists explore a diversity of themes, styles and genres in their respective projects and each of them is driven by a passion to explore the world ­by considering it through their camera’s lens. Not bound by a formal theme, I approached this assemblage with a free-form attitude — each image representative of its maker, a taste of what's available, should the viewer wish to pursue the work further.  

If you like what you see here, I hope that you’ll make time to learn about these artists; many of them maintain personal websites where you can follow their ongoing series work. And the Steenbock Gallery team has published a succession of stories about each of these photographers in their gallery blog at SteenbockCPM.blogspot.com that supplements this physical exhibition. I welcome you to consider these images not as an end result, but rather, a starting point for further discovery. Enjoy! 

Andy Adams

FlakPhoto.com

February 2011

NJE photographer: Carsten Meier

Our final photographer is also our photographer with the most pieces (three!!) accepted into the exhibit by Andy Adams. An Assistant Professor of Photography at the University of Miami, German-born photographer Carsten Meier travels the globe in search of the natural and the manmade, the quiet and the stunning.  His photography is stark, while his images are lush, and his large prints lure you in close to study and absorb the details.

Claustra No.4, Okertalsperre, Germany 2010, 

archival inkjet print from 8x10 color negative scan,  44" x 53 [$980]

 

Habitat No. 1, Vorre Ridge 2009, 

archival inkjet print from 5x7 color negative stitch,  44" x 87" [$1800]

Claustra No.3, Walters Dam, North Carolina 2010

archival inkjet print from 8x10 color negative scan,  44" x 53 [$980]

Please be sure to visit Carsten's website at CarstenMeier.com and see what his students are creating here.

Carsten gets a late evening post because we've been busy at the gallery today accepting and opening all of the GORGEOUS work. We hope you're as excited as we are about this show, and that seeing the pieces selected and meeting the artists who created them has whetted your appetite for the exhibit.  After opening all of the pieces at the Gallery today, we're so proud to have this amazing group of photographers become a part of our history at the Steenbock.

The National Juried Exhibition opens (at long last!!) on Monday, February 28 and will run until April 8. We're having a party on March 4 from 6-9pm, and would love to see you there!

NJE photographer: Elizabeth W. Parker

While we've met photographers with a variety of other interests and careers, today's profiled photographer Elizabeth W. Parker has got to be one of the most versatile we've met.  Currently President of Isla Catalog and IslaOnline.com, Elizabeth has experience in marketing, education and finance. A former vice-chair at the Wayland Academy in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, Elizabeth now lives and works in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Old Man, digital inkjet print, 12" x 16" [$150]

Connect with Elizabeth on her LinkedIn profile, and come back tomorrow to meet our final photographer.  The exhibit opens Monday, February 28 and runs until April 8 with an opening reception scheduled for March 4 from 6-9pm.

NJE photographer: David Schalliol

Our double feature today is courtesy of Chicago photographer David Schalliol.  David is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago and his photographic work seem to revolve tightly around his research in that department.  Neighborhoods, buildings, inhabitants and structure are all at the core of David's work, as he studies neighborhoods around Chicago and the rest of the country, and how government agencies are gentrifying areas and how residents of those areas are adapting to the changes that inevitably follow. The two pieces selected for the National Juried Exhibition are not from projects featured on David's website, but his aesthetic stay strong and consistent regardless of whether he's shooting in his city or on a larger national scope.

Residential Building (Camden, New Jersey),
digital chromogenic print, 20" x 30" [$750]

Perlman Place (Baltimore, Maryland),
digital chromogenic print, 20" x 30" [$750]

In addition to school and shooting, David is the Founder and Editor of metroblossom and Managing Editor of Gapers Block.  Make some time to visit David's website at www.DavidSchalliol.com - you'll learn a lot and see some stunning research.

See all of the work in person at the Steenbock Gallery; the National Juried Exhibition opens Monday, February 28 and runs until April 8 with an opening reception scheduled for March 4 from 6-9pm.  We want to see you there!!

NJE photographer: Samantha VanDeman

Illinois photographer Samantha VanDeman is a frequent Steenbock contributor.  We first met Sam when we accepted her for a solo exhibition of her work FRAGMENTS FROM THE PAST in 2009.  Her new work, LOST SCHOOLS, was accepted again for a solo exhibition coming up in August of this year, and was selected by Russell Joslin for the Seven State Exhibition as part of PhotoMidwest last year.  Keep in mind, that these are only the CPM exhibits; this work is also making its way around the country!  Her work from LOST SCHOOLS is also what Andy Adams selected for the National Juried Exhibition, running from February 28 until April 8.

Music Room, digital c-print, 20" x 26" [$500]

Samantha's newest accomplishment is her new job teaching at the Illinois Institute of Art!  Check out her website at www.SamanthaVanDemanPhotography.com, and maybe meet her at the opening March 4 from 6-9pm, and you'll see why.