Image: Courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Craft

Barb Tetenbaum, book arts department head, recently curated “Object Focus: The Book” at Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland with Gerri Ondrizek of Reed College and Namita Gupta Wiggers of MCC. The show runs November 18, 2010 – February 26, 2011. The artist’s book is an object that extends work beyond the boundaries of a gallery setting. Through selections from the significant 20th century modern and contemporary artists’ books in Reed College’s Special Collections, this exhibition explores the book as an object which defies the boundaries between art, craft and design, and moves along a spectrum from a recognizable to a deconstructed form.
http://mocc.pnca.edu/exhibitions/1245/

Heidi Schwegler, metals faculty, is showing her new installation “Hold,“ at Disjecta in Portland. The work is an installation of sculpture, audio and projection, which together speak of a moment of anguish. In conventional warfare two opponents confront one another and inflict damage until one side is defeated. Personal struggle, however, is a battle in which the enemy is not external; the enemy is the self. Situated in the mind, it manifests physically within the body and is particularly insidious; it is unnecessary and the opponent does not exist. Outside the mind and body, inner angst is mostly unseen.

Colt Toombs (mixed martial artist and son of the famous World Wrestling Entertainer “Rowdy” Roddy Piper) will stand in as the oppositional force. Filmed with green screen, Colt will put the artist Heidi Schwegler in a variety of defensive holds as she fervently tries to free herself. Each of these moments will discordantly contain moments of humor and futility.

A gate that rhythmically slams shut on a magenta chain link dog run, a jump rope cast in bronze, and a wool blanket suspended in frozen gesture are a few of the pieces to be presented alongside multiple video projections: the artist experiencing a catastrophic moment, Colt reciting text from Rudolf Arnheim’s text “Entropy and Art: An Essay on Disorder and Order,“ and a triptych of monitors that offer “The Perfect Experience.”
http://disjecta.org/events/heidischwegler.php

Image: Lena Welker
Lena Welker, library staff, is showing Navigation [chime] at North Dakota Museum of Art in November. She will be giving an informal talk the evening of the opening reception.

Image: Maggie Sasso
Maggie Sasso, wood department faculty, is showing “Chapter 1: In which Strange finds a tool and adopts a new aesthetic along the way,“ at Doppler PDX in Portland November 4 - 13, 2010 and by appointment. Opening Reception: November 4th 5:30 - 9:00 p.m. Gallery Hours: Saturdays (November 6th & 13th) 1-4 pm
 
In her previous work, Sasso has explored ideas about material culture, museum as institution, artist as anthropologist, and narrative through object making.  For her newest work she allows these themes to informed her material choices, while also allowing a new fantastical nature to generate the installation’s narrative based on Sasso’s alter ego, ‘Strange.’
 
Strange can “see the world with a sense of wonder, just as a child does” and thus begins to collect objects and create drawings which illustrate her journey. The result is a new (or rather a very old) aesthetic based on sea charts, repetitive patterns and antique tools.

Maggie Sasso is currently an Adjunct Lecturer / Visiting Artist for the wood department at the Oregon College of Art and Craft.  She received her BFA from Murray State University (2006) and her MFA from the University of Wisconsin – Madison (2010). She was the first Student Representative on the Board of Trustees for the Furniture Society in 2004. Sasso recently finished designing and building an installation for the new Madison Children’s Museum (with collaborator Kara Ginther).