House Divided

Site-Specific Environmental Installation by Thomas Macaulay

April 10 - June 7, 2009

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Examining our relationship to architecture and public spaces, Thomas Macaulay stacks and layers hundreds of identical mass-produced cardboard boxes resulting in pristine, "classical" structures. Interior passages, chambers, exterior "gateways" and "stairways" that both physically and perceptually actively engage the viewer arise from this common, throwaway material.

Responding to the grid-like structure of the Weston Art Gallery's street-level exhibition space, Macaulay will build House Divided, a new monumental work measuring nearly twenty-two feet in height and spanning thirty-three feet across. Combining 18 x 18 x 18 inch white boxes and 36 x 36 x 36 inch tan boxes in interlocking post-and-lintel modular arrangements, Macaulay will create an architectural structure that consumes the geometric volume of the space. Passageways within the structure allow viewers to walk through and interact with it gaining varying perspectives through openings and voids.

Thomas Macaulay earned a bachelor of arts from St. Olaf College (Northfield, Minn.) and a master of arts and master of fine arts from the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History (Iowa City, Iowa). Since 1970, his work has focused on site-specific environmental installation. He is a four-time recipient of individual artist fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a number of Wright State University grants to further his visual art research. In addition, he has received awards from The Asian Cultural Council, the Fulbright Commission, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Solo exhibitions of his work have been featured at alternative exhibition venues Artemisia (Chicago, Ill.), P.S.1 (New York, N.Y.); commercial galleries OK Harris and Twining Gallery (New York, N.Y.); university art galleries at The University of Delaware (Newark, Del.) and Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.); and museum shows at The Dayton Art Institute's Changing Exhibitions Galleries (Dayton, Ohio), and The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu (Honolulu, Hawaii). Recent exhibitions include the Springfield Museum of Art (Springfield, Ohio); Wright State University, (Dayton, Ohio); the Archetype Gallery (Dayton, Ohio); and the Buckham Gallery (Flint, Mich.). Macaulay currently serves as professor of fine art at Wright State University in Dayton where he has taught since 1973.

Gallery Talk Series:

Thurs., April 16 at 7 p.m.

Families Create!

Education Workshop: Sat., April 18 at 10 a.m. with Thomas Macaulay

Exhibition Sponsor(s):

Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease, LLP

Thomas Macaulay, Installation for Weston Art Gallery (House Divided), 2009

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Transitions

The Dresden Project / Photographs by Fredrik Marsh

April 10 - June 7, 2009

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In an extended series of photographs begun during a three-month artist residency in 2002 and continued over four subsequent summers in Dresden, Germany, Fredrik Marsh documented the detritus of human culture found in the decaying interior spaces of vacant factories, abandoned apartments, and hotel rooms. In Transitions: The Dresden Project, Marsh reveals the juxtapositions and ironies still abundant in the post-socialist world, contrasting the old and the new as well as the grandeur and the decay of once-majestic buildings and former residences of a city steeped in history.

Fredrik Marsh was educated at The Ohio State University, earning a bachelor of fine arts in 1980 and master of fine arts in 1984. He has exhibited his work since 1978, most recently in international photography festivals in Houston, Tex., Germany, Syria, and China. His photographs are in the collections of the Columbus Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Tex., Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Kupferstich-Kabinett), Dresden, Germany, and the Toledo Museum of Art, among others. Since 1985 Marsh has received six Individual Artist Fellowships from the Greater Columbus Arts Council in addition to the National Endowment for the Arts/Arts Midwest, and the Ohio Arts Council. He has also been awarded Artist Project Grants from the Greater Columbus Arts Council, the Ohio Arts Council, and Saxonian Ministerium for Wissenschaft und Kunst. In 2008 he was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in photography.

Gallery Talk Series:

Wed., May 6 at 7 p.m.

Exhibition Sponsor(s):

Whitney and Phillip Long

Fredrik Marsh, installation view of Transitions, The Dresden Project

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The Day of Small Things

Photographs by Michael Wilson

April 10 - June 7, 2009

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Co-organized with The Light Factory in Charlotte, North Carolina, The Day of Small Things is a mid-career retrospective of the work of Michael Wilson, who creates unique and deeply honest photographs that sum up the essence of his diverse subject matter which includes landscape, urban settings, interiors, and portraits. The exhibition will feature a variety of intimate black and white photographic series completed by Wilson during the past twenty-eight years including a selection of his ongoing series of musician portraits that features such local talents as Over the Rhine, Jay Bolotin, and Katie Lauer as well as international stars such as Lyle Lovett, Philip Glass, B. B. King and Emmylou Harris. The exhibition offers a unique opportunity to experience the wonderful array of images that Wilson has culled from his surrounding environment in Cincinnati and during his travels throughout the United States.

Michael Wilson is a life-long resident of Cincinnati residing in Price Hill and maintaining a photography studio near downtown Cincinnati in the West End. He developed his interest in photography while attending Northern Kentucky University where he earned a bachelor of fine arts in 1981. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions at such local venues as Baker Hunt Foundation (Covington, Ky.); Thomas More Gallery, Thomas More College (Crestview Hills, Ky.); In Situ Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio); Carnegie Visual & Performing Arts Center (Covington, Ky.); as well as the Cincinnati Art Museum and Contemporary Arts Center. Wilson's photographs have been exhibited regionally at the J. B. Speed Museum (Louisville, Ky.); Rosewood Arts Centre (Kettering, Ohio); and Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art (Cleveland, Ohio). His work is represented in the Cincinnati corporate collections of E. W. Scripps; PNC Bank; Frost & Jacobs; Deloitte & Touche; and Duke Energy. He is also represented in the collections of the Cincinnati Art Museum and the J. B. Speed Museum. In addition, his images have been featured in more than three hundred photographic projects working with musicians and record labels.

Among the many artists Michael has photographed are: Lyle Lovett, B. B. King, Waylon Jennings, Randy Newman, Emmylou Harris, Bill Frisell, David Byrne, Philip Glass, Dawn Upshaw, and Doc Watson. Clients include: Nonesuch Records, Warner Brothers Records, Sony Music, Capitol Records, Alfred A. Knopf, Penguin Putnam, Mother Jones Magazine, Health Magazine, Uncut Magazine, and Pentagram Design.

Gallery Talk Series:

Wed., May 6 at 7 p.m.

Families Create!

Education Workshop: Sat., May 16 at 10 a.m. with Michael Wilson

Exhibition Sponsor(s):

An Anonymous Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation

Michael Wilson, "The Day of Small Things," installation entrance

Michael Wilson, installation view from north east gallery, 2009

Michael Wilson, installation view of back wall, 2009

Michael Wilson, "Begin (1 of 3 from the Vine Street series triptych)," 2005