By UICA

 

Spice up your winter with a trip or three to the UICA and check out Coming Home, a series of exhibitions featuring works by emerging and established Michigan artists. Following SENSE and the international spotlight of ArtPrize, Coming Home returns the viewer’s focus inward, celebrating Michigan’s role as a platform for inspiration, exploration, and creative development by highlighting a diverse group of working artists.

 

Coinciding with the calendar year’s passing of the seasons, and the broader homecoming of travelers, Coming Home celebrates both departures and reunions. Coming Home features work by artists who are from Michigan, are currently based in Michigan, or have spent a considerable amount of time in Michigan during the course of their careers. Here are the current and upcoming works:

 

Through 6 pm, Sun, Jan 17, 2016: Sandra Wilcoxon

 

Wilcoxon’s Embellished Bones explore the themes of memento-mori and macabre while honoring the spirit of the animals used in her work. Sandra Wilcoxon served as the first Executive Director at UICA.

 

 

 

 

Through 6 pm, Sun, Jan 17, 2016: Jacob Wiseheart

 

Jacob Wiseheart is a Michigan based artist who currently resides in Grand Rapids. Wiseheart’s paintings vary between landscapes, figurative process, as well as conceptual abstraction.

 

 

 

 

Through 6 pm, Sun, Feb 7, 2016: Living with Myself by Lisa Walcott

 

Walcott says, “Living with Myself is spirited, thin as air, and uncanny—ready to haunt or strike fancy. Vignettes that are inviting and safe as well as lazy and bored portray the allures and the threats of domesticity. Moods, fears, mystery, sensations, monotony, accumulation and change are given bodies in objects and movement. There is a sense of balance that is on the verge of being lost as joints are precarious and elements within the pieces are codependent—everything has a place for now. Eventually the absurd attempt to manifest shapeless experience or formless sensations will fail, but something energetic and visual remains.”

 

 

 

Through 6 pm, Sun, Feb 28, 2016: Matt Schenk

 

Matt Schenk is the recipient of UICA’s annual solo show awarded to an artist from the Festival of the Arts Regional Arts exhibition competition. Schenk is an accomplished artist who has illustrated coloring books and album covers and worked on productions for Sony Pictures including the animated version of Jackie Chan Adventures, Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights, Men in Black, and Jumanji. Schenk is currently an Assistant Professor of Illustration and Medical Illustration at Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University.

 

 

 

Through 6 pm, Sun, Feb 28, 2016: Jerry Gretzinger

 

Jerry Gretzinger is a Michigan artist whose works embody themes of mapping and making real the imagined. Gretzinger uses a variety of mediums to complete his works including acrylic marker, colored pencil, ink, and collage. Gretzinger’s work is dictated by the interplay between an elaborate set of rules and randomly generated instructions.

 

 

 

 

From 12 pm, Fri, Jan 29, through 6 pm, Mar 20, 2016: Lydia Boda, UICA Fresh Pick

 

Lydia Boda, a 2015 BFA graduate from the KCAD Functional Sculpture department, won the inaugural UICA Fresh Pick award. Boda’s work is rooted in memory and ritual. Her meditative practice, itself a ritual, is paired with a deliberately complex and rigorous systematic process. This process includes a strict set of rules for every material she uses: paper, clay, wood, metal, and found objects. The resulting works are both a record of balance between practice and process, and a collection of meticulous, ethereal sculptures and installations.

 

The UICA Fresh Pick is a distinction awarded annually to one student in the graduating class at Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University, and recognizes an emerging artist of exceptional promise. The recipient of the Fresh Pick award receives a solo exhibition at UICA within the following calendar year, and is designated during the annual student exhibition at KCAD with a seal of achievement.

 

From 12 pm, Fri, Jan 29, through 6 pm, Sun, Mar 13: Sticks & Squares

 

Visually we can break up grids and deconstruct their forms. The organic way in which our eyes create movement within the woven elements is shown through the repositioning of these pieces. Hand drawn lines create visual weight as well as guide us through a piece. Sticks & Squares is an exhibition of these principles. Featuring works by: Monica Lloyd, Mandy Cano Villalobos, Christine Mauersberg and Ann Cole.

 

From 12 pm, Fri, Jan 29, through 6 pm, Sun, Mar 20: The Third Age of Bashan by Eric German

 

Eric German creates drawings, 3D prints, installations, and other works filled with rainbow-colored creatures, shapes, and forms. German’s “tiny worlds,” and the characters that inhabit them, function as stage and props within pieces that are both technological and whimsical.

 

 

 

 

From 12 pm, Fri, Jan 29, through 6 pm, Sun, Mar 27: U080715-315 by Aj Cooke

 

Aj Cooke earned her Master of Fine Arts from Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University, and has exhibited locally and nationally. Cooke’s work concentrates on the basic connections of biology, and specifically focuses on the cognitive function of perception. Cooke explores the construction of a postmodern sense of variance, unity, and order from chaos.

 

For more info, go here.

 

UICA Members Free
Non-Members $5

 

2 Fulton West
Grand Rapids, MI 49503

 

616.454.7000