2016
My Medicine Art Series Part Three:
The New Medicine
Smiling Logo Window
Photo by Vicki Milewski
2' X 5"
The New Medicine continues Galaudet Gallery's Art Series titled My Medicine now in its 3rd year. Galaudet Gallery has scheduled this art series to run each summer for four years and has brought exceptional art to its space in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Over 40 artworks from 10 juried and invited artists make up this part of the show. Each of these artworks uses beauty and truth to speak about healing and rebellion against negative connotations to medicine and self renewal through understanding and a force of belief in one's self.
“Powerful artworks were chosen for their dynamism.” International collector and a New Medicine judge Jules Hefe says, “Works that spoke to us with vitality were the most discussed. Some works seemed to disqualify themselves simply because we had seen something similar in the recent past.”
Over 200 artworks were submitted for this exhibit which made it difficult for the judges to choose 10 artists. Judging was done blind, so that only the artworks and title were seen. Artist narratives were glanced at once there were 50 artists to choose from but both judges felt the artwork should “stand alone” showing again the further demise of conceptual art.
“We’re continuing our Year of the Rebel theme by pushing the boundaries of what ‘medicine’ means and could mean,” Vicki Milewski explains, “It was refreshing to see the judges choose pieces that speak to a new reality for medicine that only artists acting like shamans can propose.”
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Juried Artists Include:
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Skin and Bone #5 (2016)
Penny Alexander, British Artist
"Mind Maps"
Serena Laborante, Italian Artist
Ghost dance - Spirits Circle (2016)
DNA’s in Everything (2016)
Erewhon
Getting Healed (2016)
Vicki Milewski, American Artist
Badlands Road North: the pink road (a gentle way a learning the red one) (2016)
Elizabeth Benoit, French Artist
Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Being Healed (2016)
Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Healing (2016)
Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Healed (2016)
Emma Connolly, British Artist
Skin and Bone #5 (2016)
25 X 35.5 cm
Oil Painting
Mounted on bespoke white wooden frame
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London, England artist Emma Connolly’s oil painting Skin and Bone #5 shows a new angle to a shared reality. Connolly writes about her work, “My work explores the theme of the internal body and the beauty of organic form. My work is influenced by scientific diagrams of the human skeleton, medical journals, the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci and animal carcasses. The intricacies of the internal workings of a body form a jigsaw of shapes which I can manipulate into an abstracted plane."
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Penny Alexander, British Artist
"Mind Maps"
14cm x 14cm x 2cm
A one of a kind Artist Book
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British artist Penny Alexander’s “Mind Maps" uses the artist’s book medium to heal and create a healing environment. Written about Alexander, “After suffering with Post Natal Depression Penny Alexander found her creative passion via the medium of typewriter art. Having already worked with artist books she used this skill to put together a conceptual book. The book contains a series of 12 hand-typed maps, each sitting alongside duplicate "keys" which have varying responses as a result of the particular environment in question; the experiences there, her private life and her general mental health state. The works are all drawn on a typewriter, formed by delicate lines of full stops…. Conceptually this pleased the artist since the full stop also stood for an ‘end’.”
Serena Laborante, Italian Artist
Ghost dance - Spirits Circle (2016)
3.9” X 19.685”
Watercolor on five wood tiles
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Genoa, Italy’s Serena Laborante’s Ghost Dance - Spirits Circle makes the old new through collective memories and stories. Laborante writes, “Inspired by the religious movement incorporated into numerous American Indian belief system, Ghost Dance – Spirits circle represents, in five little square wooden tiles, a circle composed by different natural elements, such as: Achillea, Poplar, snake's vertebral column, spike and a mix of those elements. Within the work this ancient Indian ritual is reproduced many times amplifying it’s sacred sense of health and peace. My artistic focus is upon how and where we store up our memories, how we select emotions and thoughts and how we conserve them.”
Yuri Hyun, South Korean Artist
Power of Love
26” X 14”
Ink pen, colored pencil, design marker, acrylic on bristol paper
Yuri Hyun, South Korean Artist
Stars pour into my heart
11” X 14”
Ink pen, colored pencil, design marker, acrylic on bristol paper
South Korean artist Yuri Hyun’s acrylic, ink and pencil Stars pour into my heart and Power of Love have mystical movement that this artist captures as medicine. Hyun writes, “Power of Love explores Love as the panacea for mankind. Numerous crimes all around the world are from the lack of love. Although a number of darkness keep disturbing the peace of world, love brighten the possibility of the earth's existence. Stars pour into my heart examines when stars fall into my heart and it sparked in my heart. It flew wrapped around my body and I entered the mysterious world by full of bright and beauty. Stars are the medicine takes me to the most peaceful but beautiful world. “
T. Oa, Canadian Artist
DNA’s in Everything (2016)
8” X 10”
Collage of Deer and Elk Skin with carnelian double helix and metal heart
Winnipeg, Canada artist T. Oa’s mixed media DNA’s in Everything brings together his Métis heritage and scientific background to make highly textualized artworks. Oa writes, “All living things store genetic information using the same molecules — DNA and RNA. Written in the genetic code of these molecules is compelling evidence of the shared ancestry of all living things. Many mystical peoples feel that even the currently inorganic things had or even still have DNA. I collage to make connections with ideas, materials and feelings. Trained as a traditional leather craftsman, I have found each hide inspires me about how we are all connected. Being a Particle Physicist has only enhanced this thinking. Each tree, each horse, each deer, each human—we all contain within us the same building blocks that make up life—DNA which looks like a rounded carnelian bead and so that is what I used for the double helix in this piece.
Rebecca Key, British Artist
Erewhon
18 X 12 cm
Magpie wing, in cast metal frame with wax
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London, England artist Rebecca Key’s mixed media Erewhon delicately shows an inner world that brings together disparate pieces to form a unified whole. Key writes, “Erewhon addresses the Victorian resurgence in natural history as a form of healing the intellectual curiosity, to consider the humanity of experience and our relationship to the natural world. The title refers to Samuel Butler's 1872 novel Erewhon, and the influence of Darwin's 'Origin Of the Species' on Butler's novel.”
Vicki Milewski, American Artist
Badlands Road North: the pink road (a gentle way a learning the red one) (2016)
16” X 20”
Oil Paints on Canvas
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American artist Vicki Milewski's Badlands Road North: the pink road (a gentle way to learn the red one) is one of 8 canvases that comprise the Badlands Roads Series a part of Milewski's Badlands Rebel Landscapes art collection. Milewski has felt a connection with the Badlands for most of her life and it has led her to research the idea of "manifest Destiny"' to learn from a Lakota medicine man who became her friend and to hike mile upon mile in search of understanding this connection and to simply enjoy it.
Q, Turkish Artist
Getting Healed (2016)
24” X 18”
Watercolor on canvas
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Istanbul, Turkey artist Q’s watercolor Getting Healed is an abstraction of a moment in time that seems like an ocean or storm in its forceful strokes and negative space. Q writes, “My piece Getting Healed shows the moment I knew I as healed.”
Elizabeth Benoit, French Artist
Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Being Healed (2016)
Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Healing (2016)
Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Healed (2016)
6” X 18”
Collaged hollyhock drawing with Swarovski crystals, metal and pencil over Watercolor Painting on 400 Series Strathmore Paper
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Charleville-Mézières, France artist Elizabeth Benoit’s triptych Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him: Being Healed, Healing and Healed has an energy all its own that speaks of the healing powers of nature that can be found in our own homes. Benoit writes, “This triptych was made in response to a summer early morning experience I had in my garden with the Hollyhocks in full bloom and towering over my head. Dragonflies were gently hovering over the blooms and the sun was about to rise when a man I love entered my garden and spoke words of love to me as he never had before. I did not realize until then how I had been waiting for such a moment and in that waiting I had lost touch with my health. Like electricity running along a wire I was alive again and knew I would be making a piece of art about this moment. As we embraced the sun rose and filled the sky above us with such a vigorous yellow it seemed to be flowing in waves.”
Detail of
Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Healed
Also included are artists that have been the inspiration for the My Medicine Art Show series: Oscar Howe, Robert Freeman and Vicki Milewski. All pieces on view were chosen to begin a fresh dialogue about The New Medicine and cause everyone to stop and think about what has been, is now and could be.