What: Target Gallery’s 2009 Open Exhibition Winner, Renee van der Stelt, will be exhibiting her drawings/sculptures that explore how a drawing can affect and shape space.
When: October 28- November 29,2009, reception to meet artist on November 12: 6-8pm with artist talk at 7pm
Where: Target Gallery, TFAC, on the Waterfront in Old Town Alexandria
Walking into van der Stelt’s studio in Roswell was like suddenly being enveloped in rays of celestial white light in the middle of a busy city street on a workday-except that in this case the quotidian setting was the apparent emptiness of the environment. ~ Kathryn Davis
The artist’s drawings apply a variety of methods, from cutting, pricking and puncturing paper, delicate graphite marks, to the use of light. Some of her drawings take on a sculptural form challenging the viewer to reconsider the traditional notion of a landscape drawing. The artist will be conducting research with the City of Alexandria’s Archaeology Museum, examining land use in Alexandria and creating a few drawings from this research to be on exhibit. The majority of the works on exhibit, however, are from her recent yearlong artist in residency in New Mexico at the prestigious Roswell Artist In Residence.
The catalog, which will be for sale in the gallery, includes a critical essay by acclaimed arts writer/critic and art historian Kathryn Davis. Davis, who is based out of New Mexico, is the Executive Editor of THE magazine and writes for a variety of national publications to include ARTnews. The catalog will include all the work on exhibit except for the Alexandria drawings, which are still being made especially for the exhibition. Davis says about the artist’s work: “Drawing, then, is van der Stelt’s laboratory, her notebook of experiments on the subject at hand. Like a physicist filling a chalkboard with mathematical proofs, the artist seeks to stretch our understanding of space itself.”
Artist Biography:
Renee van der Stelt received a Masters in Art History in 1990 and a Masters of Fine Arts in drawing in 1993 from the University of Iowa. Van der Stelt now lives in Baltimore, MD and exhibits nationally in solo and group exhibitions. She has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the City of Baltimore and the state of Maryland. She was an artist in residence at the MacDowell Colony in 2008, and recently spent a one-year artist residency at the Roswell Artist in Residence, Inc in New Mexico. Her work is included in the Drawing Center’s Artist Registry, NY and the Washington Project for the Arts registry.
