Piecework
PIECEWORK Chapbook Anthology Release and Poetry Reading
May 5 - 30, 2015 at Mill Arts Project, Eastworks, 116 Pleasant St, Easthampton, MA
Saturday, May 9, 2015 5-8 PM Opening & Easthampton Art Walk
Saturday, May 16, 11 AM - 1 PM Kids’ Collage Workshop and Artist Talk with Cathe Janke
Thursday, May 21, 2015 6-8 PM Chapbook Anthology Release and Poetry Reading
Saturday, May 30, 2015 6-8 PM Closing featuring live multi-media collage and performance “A TENSION” by Meghan Minior
Featuring emotionally evocative printed textile collages and quilts by Esther S White, a dreamscape of mixed-media paintings and soft sculptures by Cathe Janke, and a live multi-media collage and performance piece by Meghan Minior. A chapbook of collaged creative writing inspired by the exhibition, edited by Halie Theoharides, is slated for publication by Sister Sister Books. This dynamic multi-media installation invites audience participation, with artwork that can be heard, handled, touched, read, and even hugged.
Piecework is the appropriation and combination of disparate elements to create something new. Piecework takes the discarded and makes it valuable, even beautiful. Piecework is finding time to make work.
PRESS: Daily Hampshire Gazette, Masslive, Boston Compass, WHMP
Cathe Janke working on a sari painted with silkscreen ink during her artist's residency in India, 2015
Esther S White, Untitled, 2014-2015, quilt: silkscreen monoprint with colored pencils and water soluble crayons on unbleached cotton muslin
Esther S White, Discontinuous Intimacy #2, 2014, quilt: silkscreen and breakdown printing on hand-dyed cotton muslin
Cathe Janke, The Continuous Story
Janke’s work for Piecework is a constantly evolving series of paintings and sculptures informed by childhood memories and Janke’s love for color, fabric and material, dress-up, and play that “began on my mother’s sewing room floor. I frequently return to these early experiences as both formative and inspirational and I bring these loves into my paintings and installations.”
Janke and White share an awareness that artistic inspiration arises unexpectedly. White’s work is rooted in personal experience, sometimes told through the voice of an alter ego or characters from comic books. Her work incorporates personal and mass-media imagery with traditional quilt patterns to create emotionally evocative narratives. She makes use of silkscreen, machine embroidery, painting, drawing, and collage, frequently employing the photocopier as a printmaking tool.
Janke has travelled extensively and works to cultivate this artistic awareness through travel, which has been an important part of her artistic life. She has been in India for an artists’ residency in Spring of 2015, bringing her reflections back to the Pioneer Valley for this collaborative project at MAP.
This program is supported in part by a grant from Easthampton City Arts+, a local agency which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
The Mill Arts Project (MAP), a collaboration between Easthampton City Arts+ and Eastworks, that offers a gallery space to incubate new curatorial voices in a community context. While curators bring a vision and dedication, ECA+ and Eastworks assist with space and offer an intensive educational curatorial and organizational guide as well as assistance in project direction.
Esther S White is an artist and arts organizer based in Northampton, MA. Esther's art practice includes printmaking; textile dyeing and needlework; publishing photocopied artists' books and zines; and organizing community art events and spaces.
Esther studied printmaking and photography at Barnard College, Columbia University (B.A. 2007), and the International Center of Photography. She is a member and instructor at Zea Mays Printmaking in Florence, MA, an internationally recognized studio dedicated to safer printmaking practices. Esther is also a member of the Northampton Arts Council as well as the Monotype Guild of New England and Boston Printmakers.
Esther is a publisher of short-run photocopied artists' books and collaborative zines, Sister Sister Books, and leader of Fugitive Arts, a transient curatorial project dedicated to promoting experimental projects and emerging artists.
Cathe Janke received an MFA in 2D art from MassArt, as well as grants and fellowships to Vermont Studio Center, Elsewhere Studios in Colorado, RIACE Festival in Orissa, India, Can Serrat International Art Center in Barcelona, Mustarinda in Finland, and Zea Mays Printmaking. Her work has been exhibited at Brandeis University, San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in Havana, and A.I.R. Gallery in NYC. Cathe recently demonstrated cutting-edge printmaking techniques at the 2014 Southern Graphics International Conference in San Francisco, where she also won the “Best Professional Print” award for her print in the conference portfolio exchange.
Meghan Minior is a multi-media artist, event coordinator, and musician living in the woods of Leverett, Massachusetts. Her screen printed posters are featured in the National Poster Retrospecticus tour, and she has shown her work locally at the HeadQuarters Gallery in Northampton, Massachusetts, the Flywheel Gallery and Fugitive Art Project Space in Easthampton. Meghan has been an active volunteer at Flywheel, a local non-profit, all ages art and music space for over ten years, and many of her screen printed posters are from a variety of events that she has booked there. She helped organize Ladyfest Easthampton in 2011, and The Pioneer Valley Zine Fest in 2012. She is a featured musician in the Feminist Playing Cards deck put out by Homoground and currently plays in the bands Ampere, Siamese Twins and Longings, as well as many other projects over the years.
Halie Theoharides is a poet and visual artist from western Massachusetts. She is the current managing editor of jubilat and getting her MFA at UMASS Amherst in poetry.
The Mill Arts Project is a collaboration between Easthampton City Arts+ and Eastworks that offers gallery space to incubate new curatorial voices in a community context. While curators bring a vision and dedication, Eastworks and ECA+ assist with space and offer an intensive educational curatorial and organizational guide as well as assistance in project direction.