Simultaneous Contrasts

Priscilla Roggenkamp

My sculptural work in textiles stems from the recognition that much about human nature and experience can be expressed by tapping into a universal understanding of clothing and its many contexts. For example, we share memories and associations with clothing as signifiers (status, employment, time-period) but also with clothing as a tactile experience (softness, stiffness, and comfort).

Some of my clothing sculptures are forms that are impossible to inhabit. They help develop the idea that we are sometimes asked to become something that we can’t easily take on. We are pressed into roles that change us into something new; sometimes a change for the better and sometimes changes that we need to reconcile with or recover from. Some of my clothing forms are vessels like buckets or luggage that represent the things we carry with us in life. Add together our DNA, family traits or physical limitations, plus our hurts, concerns and prejudices and we have a lot to carry. These works attempt to highlight our amazing and complex role as vessels.
Some of the clothing sculpture is about the process of making. Slowly twining or weaving a form out of nothing but ‘string’ also speaks about how we develop and change in increments. Staining, distressing outdoors, dyeing, and felting are all processes that inform as well as create.

There is both tedium and delight in the making of this work. This could be said of the making of a life as well.

David Kuntzman

I have always been intrigued by artworks of the Op Art style, specifically the works of Julian Stanczak, Victor Vasarely, and more recently, Susie Rosmarin. My earliest paintings were investigations of those styles – attempts to recreate the retinal experience with results of vibrations, movements, blur, and after-images. My work focused on comparisons of various color progressions, supported by my use of rigid and methodical gridworks.

At present, in addition to the “Op” artists, my influences now include Frank Stella (specifically the “plane” paintings of the early to mid-1970’s) and Liubov Popova of the “Constructivist” movement. As such, my artworks have evolved into presentations of various grid comparisons, such as grids of different sizes, angles, and colors. The color progressions are now being used to present the contrasting gridworks creating a dense and ambiguous space.