June 10 - July 22: Wavelengths, presented by microWave project at Honfleur Gallery

Photo courtesy of Honfleur Gallery

When: June 10 - July 22, 2011, reception June 10, 7-9pm


Where: Honfleur Gallery, 1241 Good Hope Road SE, Anacostia, Washington, DC, 20020


Description: Two floors of site-specific installation art that examines the concept of wavelengths. This work is created by four women artists and incorporates their own unique perspective on this theme. This exhibition will also include a hands-on community installation project to help raise awareness and funds for those affected by Japan’s recent Tsunami and Earthquake disaster. 


(Washington, DC)  Honfleur Gallery will be presenting “Wavelengths” a site-specific installation exhibition curated by microWave project. This exhibit will bring together four women artists, who will create installations inspired by the concept of wavelengths. The exhibit will open June 10th with a reception to meet the artists from 7-9pm.  We will include a special community installation outreach project to help raise awareness and funds for people affected by Japan’s recent Tsunami and Earthquake. An ancient Japanese legend says that by folding one thousand origami cranes, a wish will be granted, such as a thousand years of happiness and long-life. As part of this tradition, paper will be made available for visitors to fold into a crane to be hung in the gallery. Donations for Japan’s Tsunami and Earthquake relief will be accepted throughout the exhibit.


The word “wavelength” can be described as the distance between one peak and crest of a wave of light, heat, or other energy and the next corresponding peak or crest. Informally, this word can also be used to express a shared orientation leading to mutual understanding. It is with these definitions in mind that microWave project is bringing together four female artists for the exhibition Wavelengths. They have been asked to create a site-specific installation based on their own interpretation of this theme.


The artists include Jessica Braiterman (PA), Gretchen Schermerhorn (DC), Yasmin Spiro (NYC), and Alexandra Radocchio Zealand (DC). 

Jessica Braiterman, mixed media artist, received her BA from Barnard College and her MFA from the University of the Arts. She also studied with Jane Lackey and Susie Brandt at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. An early interest in gestural brushwork led to an on-going fascination with line in space. She experiments with fibers, wire, books, and found materials seeking a balance of entanglement and light. 
Her installation will be a confluence of many qualities and ideas that relate to line in space – as both embodied drawing and a way of signaling motion.  She uses a subtractive method and finds potency in taking away parts to create a new whole.  She is using Tyvek as her main material for its strength and durability. While thinking about light and imagining ‘whirling trails of photons traveling in space’, she became interested in examining what our eyes are able to see, also what we cannot see. This seeing partially was something that she wants her installation to examine. She does this by using a partial gradation of color, and cutting away certain parts of the Tyvek material leaving a whirling web of color and lines in space. 
Gretchen Schermerhorn, a DC area artist, is a printmaker and hand papermaker, and her work often combines the two media. Thematically, her work often explores the relationships between humans, science, politics and psychology. Her installation will examine how sound can be visual and how what we hear has a distinct pattern that can be measured. The installation will involve the artist asking friends, family, and acquaintances a simple question and then recording the answer. The wavelength is isolated and then the artist makes a hand pulled print of it on handmade paper. These overlapping prints will be hung at different levels and will include a sound component. With the aid of passive infrared sensors, viewers will hear the responses to the question that was asked. 
Gretchen is currently the Artistic Director at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Silver Spring,
Maryland. She received her MFA in Printmaking from Arizona State University in 2004. She has
completed artist residencies at Women's Studio Workshop, Columbia College Center for Book
and Paper, Seacourt Print Workshop in Northern Ireland, and California State University. Her
prints, books and paper works have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is in public and permanent collections including the Janet Turner Print Collection and Amity Art Foundation.
Yasmin Spiro, a Jamaican artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Working in installation, sculpture, film, drawing and mixed media. Her work explores issues of the female identity, cultural identity and socio-economic issues within the framework of urban development and social politics. Often through the lens of the Caribbean - specifically Jamaica.
Her installation will include several pod-like structures hung from ceiling to floor, linked together and strung to walls with webbing and cords creating spaces that need to be moved through by ducking, bending, shifting and lit with reflections/shadows cast on walls, ceiling and floors. Her work considers the city as an organism and the way in which communication happens in a complex, sprawling city space.
Alexandra R. Zealand is a sculptor living and working in Northern Virginia. Originally trained in
Theatre design, she made the transition to more intimate spaces, and received an MFA in
Sculpture from Pratt Institute, in 2003. Zealand is inspired by the transformative process of massing, which causes recognizable objects to evolve into dynamic sculpture when gathered into patterns. She uses this transformation to explore our relationship with the objects we discard, and what our need to discard them says about our relationship with our own mortality.

Her installation will continue with this theme of exploring our relationships with the objects we discard.  It is going to be created out of coffee filters, hanging and suspended from multiple points. She will create a central hanging object as the nexus for the lines to anchor floating smaller objects. These lines, radiating out from the main object, will be tied off to the wall, or ceiling or floor.

Community Project: A special community installation outreach project will be installed on the first floor of the gallery to help raise awareness and funds for people affected by Japan’s recent Tsunami and Earthquake. According to Japanese lore, folding 1,000 origami cranes is truly a labor of love, and if completed a wish will be granted, such as a thousand years of happiness and long-life. As part of this tradition, paper will be made available for visitors to fold into a crane to be hung in the gallery. Donations for Japan’s Tsunami and Earthquake relief will be accepted throughout the exhibit. It is believed that the more people involved, the more luck will be granted.
Also on June 10th, Ayodamola Okunseinde & Yulia Graham’s collaborative project DOCUMENTS: alternative guide to dc underground will open at Honfleur’s sister gallery, The Gallery at Vivid Solutions, just around the corner at 2208 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave SE, Washington DC 20020.  www.vividsolutionsdc.com.
        

About microWave project: http://microWaveproject.org
microWave project, llc, acts as a conduit between artists & groups/businesses to provide space
for temporary pop-up, “micro” galleries. Our mission is to help promote these artists and educate the community. We do this by exploring alternative venues for emerging and established artists with an emphasis on site-specific installation art. We market and promote the artists and the events, and provide and develop special programming to correspond with the exhibits. This allows us to provide accessible art experiences to the public, encouraging community dialogue, and an appreciation for the arts. microWave project was founded by friends and business partners Mary Cook and Allison Nance in 2010.
Honfleur Gallery is a contemporary art space located in the Historic Anacostia and focuses on cutting edge contemporary exhibitions from the USA and abroad.   It is a project of the ARCH Development Corporation, whose mission is to act as a catalyst for local cultural and economic revitalization.  Honfleur Gallery opened in 2007 and is located at 1241 Good Hope Road SE, Washington DC 20020