Jackie Mantey

Columbus Alive

January 10, 2013

More than 25 Ohio artists will have work in the 2013 edition of ImageOhio, Roy G Biv gallery’s competitive annual exhibition of photography and film. But that doesn’t mean viewers won’t notice some re-occurring ideas.

“As far as the still images, there are a certain number of works that situate themselves explicitly with the history of photography and embed themselves with a very knowing lineage of photography history,” said ImageOhio 13’s curator Bill Horrigan, the Wexner Center’s curator at large. “A number of people also worked in serial formats.”

For example, the “quite beautiful and almost abstract” series of photographs of ceilings throughout the Ohio State campus, Horrigan said; or another artist’s powerful photographs of landscapes today that were used as Japanese internment camps during WWII.

Horrigan also noted the images by Leah Fisher. They are “really striking images of working class people in Columbus,” Horrigan said, noting that during his curatorial process, all the photographers and filmmakers were anonymous to him. “I was half-jokingly referring to that person as the Zoe Strauss.”

The filmmakers are not to be outshined, either. Around nine moving-image works will be in ImageOhio, including “Pigment,” by Alexis McCrimmon. “Pigment” is a 12-minute personal essay about a woman living with vitiligo, a skin diseases that results in a loss of pimentation; it mixes live action footage with illustration.

“There are many refreshing points of view,” Horrigan said of the final lineup. “It’s a lot of highly varied work in terms of the totality. The trick is to make it all live harmoniously in that space.”

Jackie Mantey

Columbus Alive

January 3, 2013

Roy G Biv Gallery

The ritualistic manner in which we spend money and time on decorating our spaces — whether it’s for Christmas or the Fourth of July — is the interest of the art by Elijah Funk and Shawn McBride at Roy G Biv’s January show.

The holiday references in the pair’s installations are not overt. It’s also not one big bashing of consumerism and holiday spirit.

“It’s not that decorating is a bad thing,” Funk said. “We like the holidays too.”

People just seem to always be looking for what’s next.

“It’s interesting that if [the decoration] is there past its time it’s not interesting anymore,” Funk said. “It’s trash.”

The artists played with celebratory color schemes and used various media to present their ideas. One installation includes a witch hat dried in the side of a cement pedestal.

“We did a lot with how people are stuck in their ways,” Funk said. “But we’re never pointing a finger. It’s kind of like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re all stuck.’”

If there’s any finger pointing, it’s at the artists themselves.

“It’s pretty funny to spend months and hours on something that’s only going to be up, sometimes, for a few days,” Funk said. “Decorating is similar to making art in that way.”

Joining Funk and McBride’s work is a waiting room of the future, including fictional pamphlets and plants, made by Funk’s fellow Roy G Biv co-worker Samantha Rehark. The three artists are good friends, connecting over their work with the gallery’s Emerging Artists Series and creating zine-style books together.

“I graduated [from CCAD] this past spring and I’m really excited to be part of something new in town,” Funk said. “There are a lot of us working in a manner that’s really different than presenting artwork in a gallery. People should pay attention to the recent graduates of this town.”

As for roommates Funk and McBride’s Olde Towne East dwelling, Funk said it looks like it is decorated for Halloween year-round.

By Wes Flexner

 January 2, 2013

The Other Paper

While talking about his upcoming art show with Elijah Funk and Samantha Rehark at Roy G Biv Gallery, Shawn McBride mentioned that a 20-year-old friend once had sex with a 60-year-old woman just for the experience.

The encounter came up while McBride and Funk were talking about the likable kitsch of Ohio holidays that is the inspiration for their new show.

I’d asked the Ashland native what his favorite crappy things were, and he said his friend’s sexual encounter was high on the list, coming in second only to Styrofoam.

Styrofoam, along with cinder blocks, papier-mâché, paintings, a witch hat, a video projection and various other items will be used to fill the Short North gallery to create their dark-humored takes on holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Halloween, Veterans Day and Easter.

“I like crappy things a lot,” Funk said. “There is something endearing about something crappy—or a crappy holiday. It’s not bad.”

Picking up on the latter theme, Funk said he loves the holidays as they’re celebrated in his hometown of Zanesville.

“It’s pretty awesome,” he said. “There would be like these crazy houses with lights covered in stuff. Then you drive down the road and there is a ceramic Santa that’s falling apart. It’s super cheap. I think the cheap stuff is real cool.”

“We keep Halloween decorations up all year,” he added.

All three artists work in a variety of fields.

Funk runs a hardcore label called Shaver Tapes that has put out releases by his band, Shaver, as well as Nervosas. He and McBride have published books that were featured in an exhibition at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum in Beijing. Rehark runs a book company called Let’s Publications.

The art show isn’t just a celebration of kitsch. The exhibition is also a commentary on the impermanent nature of art shows in general.

Funk talked about how art shows are like holidays.

“You have this big expectancy for something super great,” he said. “It’s something you work toward—like a holiday.”

“You wait for your art show…and it’s done. And if you still have the stuff up, then it’s like, ‘Why is it still here?’”

The Lantern

By Chelsea Savage

Thursday, January 10, 2013

The annual ImageOhio art exhibition is scheduled to return to Columbus for a 13th time to showcase video, photography and new media artwork, but this time, it’s expanding its borders.

ImageOhio is organized by the Roy G Biv Gallery, which is located in the Short North, but it takes place at the Shot Tower Gallery in Fort Hayes High School in Columbus.

Typically, ImageOhio only showcases work that was done by artists from or living in Ohio, but this year, it broadened the pool of candidates.

“That opens it up to this huge population of people because almost everyone leaves after college,” said James Payne, gallery director at Roy G Biv.  

One of the featured artists in this year’s gallery is Alexis McCrimmon, an Ohio native who recently moved back to Columbus after living in Pennsylvania for the last three years.

“I didn’t realize you could be from the state of Ohio and participate while not currently living in Ohio,” McCrimmon said. “I’m looking for opportunities to exhibit my more current work in the community that I’m from and this was such an opportunity.”

McCrimmon is one of 27 artists selected among 74 artist submissions. McCrimmon’s piece is a 12-minute video called “Pigment.” The film focuses on her mother’s skin disease, vitiligo, a condition where the skin loses pigment in some areas.

“The film is part her voice talking about this experience and part animation,” McCrimmon said. “Since it is such a medical mystery, I was trying to provide a non-medical answer to that sort of larger question of where does this illness come from? What are its origins?”

McCrimmon said he is looking forward to the exhibition’s opening and hearing feedback from both artists and visitors.

“It will give me a really good chance to meet people across different generations and across different mediums, just to sort of see and find commonalities and sort of a kinship in the process of making art,” McCrimmon said.

Each year the exhibition selects a juror who chooses the artwork that will be placed in the gallery.

This year Roy G Biv chose the Wexner Center for the Arts’ curator-at-large, Bill Horrigan.

“He’s probably the best person in the city for it because his view straddles both photography and video, and he’s also a recognized figure in the art world,” Payne said.

McCrimmon said she and the other artists hope to reach Ohio State students.

Alex Rocca, a fourth-year in art and photography, said she hopes to visit the exhibition.

“ImageOhio supports local artists and helps to get their work out into the public, only helping to fuel their careers,”Rocca said. “It gives me hope for the future that cities will take the initiative to support local artists, and I look forward to seeing the growth of similar galleries.”

ImageOhio is scheduled to hold an opening reception on Jan. 18. The exhibit will remain open until Feb. 15 at the Shot Tower Gallery at 546 Jack Gibbs Blvd.

Posted: Thursday, September 13, 2012 1:40 pm
By Wes Flexner


James Payne sees his purpose.


As the new director of the Roy G Biv gallery, Payne hopes to fill the contemporary art void left in the Short North caused by closings of the Mahan and Rebecca Ibel galleries. He also hopes to make the scene a bit more accessible to the masses.


“The Columbus art scene is so insular that it is absurd,” he said.


Payne isn’t some kid from New York looking down his nose at Columbus. His story starts in Galloway, in western Franklin County, where he began throwing DIY music shows.
He moved into the city to attend CCAD, and then OSU, and graduated with a dual major of journalism and art and media criticism, with a minor in film studies. While in college, he co-founded the DIY music venue Monster House, which hosted some 400 bands while he lived there (2007-2010).


He also cut his visual arts teeth working at the Wexner Center for two years and interning for 18 months at the Mahan.


Complementing his résumé, he’s a published poet and a visual artist, having been featured in exhibitions at venues from Roy G Biv to DePaul University. He is currently a contributor to Beautiful/Decay, a noted art publication based in L.A. He currently lives in and curates the downtown art space Skylab.


Payne said he hopes to use his connections here, and from stints living in Chicago and Pittsburgh, to help promote Columbus’s arts scene.


“The main thing I want to do is to reach out to people from other cities that are exciting and bring them in,” he said.


To accomplish that, he’s posted calls for entries for Roy G Biv gallery shows in an effort to display artists from all over the country. The result, he explained, would be a way to expose local artists to material they might not be familiar with.


Thus far, Payne’s guests have included the so-called Lit Mistress, Cassandra Troyan, and her Chicago-based reading and performance group Ear Eater, which held court at the gallery July 25.


In August, the gallery played host to a DIY Fest, which included a zine-making workshop, a screen-printing demonstration, a button-making station and a guide on how to make and release your own cassette tapes.


Currently showing through September are works from photographer/videographer Elena Harvey-Collins, photographer Nate Mathews and sculptor Philip Spangler, who all work from a kind of gritty, daresay rundown, Midwest canvas.


Much more is planned for the coming year, in keeping with the gallery’s independent, non-profit mission to promote the works of edgy, emerging artists.


Roy G Biv “already has a pretty good name,” said Payne of the 23-year-old gallery. “But I want it to be meaningful for you to show there.”


ALIVE WEBSITE

Friday In Columbus: ImageOhio 13 @ The Shot Tower Gallery
Posted on January 16, 2013 by Wes Flexner
I have two videos in the ImageOhio13 Show:


R
From the press release:


Please join ROY G BIV at the opening of ROY’s 13th installment of ImageOhio, an exhibition of the best of Ohio’s photography, video, and new media artwork. ImageOhio 13′s opening reception is this Friday, January 18th, from 6-8 p.m at the Shot Tower Gallery on Fort Hayes’s campus. Wexner Center Curator-at-Large Bill Horrigan juried this year’s exhibition, which includes artwork by Brittany Campbell, Leah Fisher, Wes Flexner, Alexis McCrimmon, Ardine Nelson, Timothy Smith, and many others. The exhibition is accompanied by a print catalogue


Watch one of my videos here if you want.

DONE WAITING WEBSITE

By Jackie Mantey
From the August 30, 2012 edition
Columbus Alive




Roy G Biv Gallery
Elena Harvey-Collins moved to the Midwest from her childhood home, London, five years ago. Transitioning from a place where space is at a premium to a place where abandoned consumer spaces are a regular sight was a bit of a shock for the Brit.


“It’s a profoundly different landscape,” Harvey-Collins said. “To see these spaces that are devalued in such a way to the point they’re not even for sale, they’re just left, they’re like these monuments. I think I just became really interested in finding out more about those spaces.”


Her query into what becomes of those modern wastelands (think empty strip malls and shopping plazas) is the basis of her video project “When They’re Gone, They’re Gone.” Part of the project will be on view this month at Roy G Biv alongside work by fellow artists Nate Mathews and Philip Spangler.


For six months, Harvey-Collins visited several once-popping, now-forgotten concrete Columbus landscapes several days a week. She’d compose a shot and push record.


Resulting are scenes of places transitioning from, as Harvey-Collins said, commercially controlled to democratically produced public space. “When They’re Gone, They’re Gone,” she said, brings up questions about why we leave these places to rot and whether it’s important to consider who takes over after the in-the-know public leaves.


Plants claimed concrete. A hawk pecked at food as a crumbling Value City served as backdrop. Somali women immigrants used the lost lots to practice parallel parking.


For Harvey-Collins, the camera was the most important tool in expressing what she saw.


“We are trained to think the camera tells us the truth, but it doesn’t. I love that things can happen at the edges. The camera isn’t seeing everything,” Harvey-Collins said. “Things are happening at the edges and on the side of this project that you can’t see. For me and eventually for the work, that whole idea of edges and margins and being marginalized was important. It was kind of a metaphor for these places. Having things happens on the margins of these scenes made sense.”




Grid Furnishings
Brian Reaume is a local writer, painter and sculpture artist (you know him from Junctionview, Por Vida, Birchwater Studios and more). Contemporary furniture store Grid is showcasing his works on canvas and wood through October. If paint was Reaume’s blood, words would comprise the heart that pumps it. One encourages the expression of the other. “Make,” “find,” and “keep” are among the words that rise darkly out of some of his abstract paintings, inspiring dialogue within the viewer about what those words mean to themselves, to the artist and to everybody else. Other paintings don’t use words but beat just as intensely to get that inner conversation started.




Studios on High Gallery
Local artist Marty Husted’s mixed media and oil paintings buzz with colorfully patterned emotion. Fiber art by Deb Johnson will complement Husted’s dreamtastic landscapes at this September show.


COLUMBUS ALIVE WEBSITE

Just wanted to send a little shout out of thanks to GCAC for funding our new computers through the BOOST Grant program!  Without your continued support, we would not be able to support vibrant, emerging artists with such vigor.

ROY G BIV has been nominated for the Best Art Gallery in Columbus by 614 Magazine!  Find us under that Entertainment category.  Voting is open until March 31st.

Vote for us at:
http://614columbus.com/survey/columbest-2012/