Beginning September 14th, the NOMAD gallery will be hosting a GVSU Visual Media Arts, unified faculty show. The exhibition, titled Endless Possibilities, will begin with an opening reception at 6pm.
The NOMAD Gallery was founded by Richard App, the former owner of the Richard App Gallery and an alumnus of Kendall College of Art and Design. The NOMAD Gallery is a traveling exhibition space, housed in temporary and non-traditional locations. As the curator, Richard App has “activated uncommon spaces” in the past within parks, the Grand Rapids City Hall, and the Grand Rapids Water Building. Currently, in collaboration with Rockford Construction, the gallery is being housed within the main level of The Morton. Built in 1895, the historical building was designed by the same architect who had conceived the Palmer House, located in Chicago. The Morton wasn’t an unusual place for President Gerald Ford to hold receptions as well.
Richard App appreciated the GVSU Visual Media Arts Department stating, “As a longtime artist, I am impassioned by what they do.” He believes that by highlighting their work in downtown Grand Rapids, the public will be able to see the true talent of the faculty.
Stafford Smith’s “Ancestry in Progress” is a series of collages created with late 19th and early 20th century photographs. The images in which Smith has chosen to incorporate into his art are photographs he had inherited from both sides of his family, as well as photographs found within antique stores and thrift shops. Smith explains, “As a bi-racial person I’m fascinated when I look at these old photos. That these two families, once separated by oceans and living on different continents, had no idea that one day they would be joined.” Each of his collages are produced on photoshop and then printed with a two-step process: first onto transfer film and then onto watercolor paper. Smith shares that, “the possibilities of use and reuse of old photos are endless.”
Dellas Henke will be displaying “Reunion”, his suite of 18 photo-polymer gravure prints. Henke shared the process: “The project started from a single photograph I made one summer setting up a hand-made doll, made by Esther Luttikuizen, in a garden among the hosts and ferns.” Based off of the single image, Henke wrote a story which he used as inspiration to create the rest of the prints, setting the project in place. A second work of Henke’s, in collaboration with Renee Zettle-Sterling, will be shown in the exhibit as well.
Renee Zettle-Sterling’s work, “Objects of Mourning: Veils”, stems from her larger series “Objects of Mourning”. Following the death of a loved one, Renee began the long process of research which inspired her series. She gathered information for over a decade, centering her research around mourning practices and attires. Influenced specifically by the Victorian Era, Renee began fabricating her work through the use of metal, paper pulp, fabric, and the clothing from loved ones that have passed. The images within her series explore the ideas of public versus private mourning space. In her artist statement Renee shares, “It is also my hope that the work becomes a source of meaning beyond its physical properties and becomes an outlet for hyper-remembering, displacement, emptiness, loss, as well as sentimentality and hope. In its most elemental form, I seek to give our dead a presence in the living.”
Endless Possibilities’ opening reception will take place on September 14th at The Morton, located at 74 Monroe Center, Grand Rapids. The reception will begin at 6pm and run until 9pm. The exhibition will be open September 14 to October 31st, 2019.
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