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METROPOLIS: MICHELE MIKESELL & BENNETT BERRY |
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 1, 2008
Contact: Joy Reed Belt
405/842-6336
DrBelt@aol.com
METROPOLIS COMES TO JRB ART AT THE ELMS ON JANUARY 1, 2009
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. – JRB Art at The Elms will continue its tradition of welcoming the New Year with black eyed peas and a blockbuster exhibition when Metropolis opens on New Year’s Day, Thursday, January 1, 2009, from 1:00 pm to 7:00 pm, at the Gallery located at 2810 North Walker in Oklahoma City’s historic Paseo Arts District. Featuring ambitious new works by Michele Mikesell and Bennett Berry, the celebration for Metropolis continues with a reception from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm on Friday, January 2, 2009, during the Paseo Gallery Walk. The exhibit will run through January 31, 2009.
Two of JRB Art at The Elms’ most popular young artists, Mikesell and Berry are also longtime friends who completed their MFAs at The University of Oklahoma at the same time. The proposal by Gallery owner, Joy Reed Belt, for a joint show was met with enthusiasm by both painters.
“Knowing that Bennett and Michele are friends, I approached them with the idea of having a joint show,” said Belt. She added, “As they both do figurative work, and Berry also does architectural and landscape work, they decided to create a metaphorical city with its varied inhabitants. We anticipate that each room in the Gallery will become a borough, full of animal and human dwellers going about the business of living in a metropolis.”
Michele Mikesell
Continuing figurative work which gives human characteristics and personalities to animals, Mikesell’s body of work for Metropolis encompasses the individual experience within the city. Loosely based on the five boroughs of New York, there are familiar faces which tell stories of personal struggle, achievement, personality, and situation, through portrait-like personifications of the inhabitants of this metaphorical city. Although Metropolis is the title of the show, Mikesell’s does not present the physical city. Instead what is most noticeable are the diverse individuals grouped together, the people that actually MAKE the metaphorical city.
Clichés and irony are used to illustrate stories. In one image a group of fish in business suits is stacked together in a sardine can with a fork completing the image at the bottom of the canvas. A chicken walks by wearing fox furs and pearls around her neck. A Doberman peers through the darkness of a boxing ring with an expression of determination yet naiveté and vulnerability. A gangster gorilla shows his fists with tattooed fingers contrasting a white peacock standing above what hints to be a futuristic pristine metropolis of the future. A group of small Byzantine styled icons painted on wood symbolize immigrants and their spiritual hopes and dreams as pilgrim newcomers to the metropolis.
Stylistically, Mikesell’s work retains the familiar quality of built up industrial oil paint which has now evolved to include a multi sanding process. Like the irony experienced in the content of the painting, the surface ties together the process, yet contrasts the worn and sanded paint beneath. We can also look forward to seeing a departure from previous shows in the fact that not only are there paintings on canvas and wooden blocks, but also some found objects including sardine cans, an old pair of little girls shoes and a discarded table top.
Mikesell earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts with a minor in graphic design from Texas Women’s University in Denton, TX and completed her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. Her work is in numerous private and corporate collections including Spencer Stone Company, Capitol Records, and Warner Brothers Studios. Her work has been featured in several international Art Fairs including Frieze in London as well as Art Basel. Mikesell lives and works in Dallas.
Bennett Berry
In contrast to the largely symbolic route taken by Mikesell, Berry’s idea of Metropolis has a more physical and realistic approach.
There are the literal city scenes that are, for the most part, realistic streetscape paintings of Bennett’s own photographs taken in Manhattan as well as Seattle, Chicago, and Oklahoma City. Berry’s concept of Metropolis deals primarily with his unique interpretation of commerce and its connection to people within the city.
Berry’s city scenes are accompanied by figurative works that derive an aesthetic influence from the text of high end advertising and labels with a late '50s to early '60s look, often incorporating backgrounds of stripes, plaids and paisleys as well as strong, vibrant, solid colors. These pieces possess something of a tongue-in-cheek quality. In Berry’s Metropolis, Madison Avenue serves as the link between the city scapes and the figures.
Berry, son of Oklahoma artist Nick Berry, received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Oklahoma. He has studied with artist George Bogdanovitch and with Lenny Pitkin at the prestigious Pont-Aven School of Art in France. Berry has participated in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States. His work is included in several corporate collections including those of MidFirst Bank, the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center, and the Muckenthaler Cultural Center Foundation in Fullerton, CA. Berry and his paintings have been featured in several publications including Southwest Art.
Metropolis continues the Gallery’s tradition of welcoming the New Year with groundbreaking exhibitions. In 2004, the Gallery presented Early Oklahoma Artists and Master Teachers, featuring works by ten artists who were contemporaries of Nan Sheets and Oscar Jacobson. In 2005, Printmakers of the Prairie highlighted the work of twenty regional artists who gained a national reputation for excellence in printmaking.
In January of 2006, internationally recognized Oklahoma artist Joe Andoe selected 12 artists ages 21-34 who currently live in Oklahoma or who have lived or been educated in Oklahoma to be featured in Oklahoma’s Collectible Young New Artists. Michele Mikesell was selected as one of those artists.
In 2007, Ten Since Statehood featured artists representative of the quality and diversity of art that comes from Oklahoma. In 2008, Next presented a select group of contemporary artists whose work represented the content and style of art being created at the beginning of Oklahoma’s second century.
JRB Art at The Elms, the former home and gallery of Nan Sheets which was built in 1920, is located at 2810 North Walker and is open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and Sunday 1:00-5:00 p.m. The Gallery website is www.jrbartgallery.com, e-mail address is jrb@coxinet.net and phone number is 405/528-6336.
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© Joy Reed Belt 2010
All prices subject to change without notice - not responsible for errors. Availability, price and shipping charges can be confirmed by e-mail or phone prior to purchase. |
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