(Sky Water II, oil on 6 wood panels, 45. x 142.5″ by Leah Wilson)
At Liberty, a dedicated arts space and cultural hub in Downtown Bend, announces their new group exhibition: Divergence. Curated by Andries Fourie, Divergence explores the artistic strategies of eight artists who share a dedication to skill, elegance and beauty, while working in different media and investigating a variety of subjects. This exhibition will feature photographs, paintings, drawings and prints by Hong Chun Zhang, Susan Rochester, Nathan Lewis, Analee Fuentes, Tallmadge Doyle, Leah Wilson, Kirsten Furlong and Frank Miller. Divergence will run from June 07 to July 27 with an opening celebration on Friday, June 7, at 5:30pm.
Fourie is a South African-born curator, artist and educator. Andries has taught, lectured, exhibited and conducted art workshops in South Africa, Canada, Namibia, Kenya and the United States. He was associate professor of Art at Willamette University from 2006 to 2017, where he also served as faculty curator of the Roger W. Rogers Gallery. Andries was also the Curator of Art and Community Engagement at the High Desert Museum in Bend from 2017 to 2019.
“The work in this exhibition celebrates the fact that artists who follow very different conceptual paths can still reach the same aesthetic destination,” says Andries. “It also reminds us that in a world where we are often confronted with ugliness, there is still a place for art that explores important ideas in a format that is characterized by the lightness and elegance of beauty and skill.”
ARTISTS INCLUDED IN DIVERGENCE EXHIBITION
Hong Chun Zhang is a Lawrence, Kansas-based artist who makes exquisitely rendered, large-scale charcoal drawings of hair that explore the notion of layered identity.
Analee Fuentes lives and works in Coburg, Oregon. Her large, immersive paintings of Pacific Northwest fish blur the line between representation and abstraction.
Frank Miller is a photographer who lives and works in Salem, Oregon. His “Specimens” series invites us to think about the history and philosophy of science and the thin line between attraction and revulsion.
Susan Rochester is a Sutherlin, Oregon-based photographer whose “Remendando la Frontera/Mending the Border” series of digitally manipulated landscape photographs printed on fabric invite us to contemplate the artificiality of the US-Mexico border.
Leah Wilson lives in Eugene, Oregon and makes paintings and installations that are place-based records of changes that occur within environmental ecosystems over time.
Tallmadge Doyle is a printmaker from Eugene, Oregon whose work explores moments of ecological change through the lens of natural events like animal migrations. Doyle’s prints are shaped and inspired by the palette of the natural world and its rhythms and patterns.
Nathan Lewis is a painter, draughtsman and printmaker from Seymour, Connecticut whose work is shaped by his careful study of art history and his appreciation for the potential of image-making as a vehicle for intellectual investigation and storytelling.
Kirsten Furlong is a drawing and installation artist from Boise, Idaho, who is interested in depicting meaningful instances of human, plant and animal interactions that clarify and epitomize our impact on the natural world.