Benjamin's Button - Awall Gallery in Richmond, VA
Cornflower, also known as Bachelor’s Button, was historically worn to see if a crush was mutual. It is associated with depth, hope, and endurance. Presenting artwork can feel similarly nervous to putting a flower in your pocket and hoping for the best. The flower's blue tone appears throughout the work in this show rendering illusionistic depth, recording actual space, but always a result of photo-chemical processes. Shape, pattern, and rhythm echo the minutes, hours, and days the artists have held open for their work.
Brett’s sculptures are constructed with recycled paper and cardboard. Misprint cyanotypes, protest banners and consumer waste are collaged into the body of the objects. Like the iris of an eye, his sculptures expand and contract with movement and time. Keihm’s photograms protect time by anchoring darkroom dates, protecting that space from conflict, to allow for deliberate processing. Her RA-4 printing method requires slow, iterative editing where each step responds to the one before, resulting in vivid colors and studied forms.
Matt Kayhoe Brett is an artist based in Richmond Va. He is an adjunct professor at Virginia Commonwealth University where he teaches 3D design in the Art Foundation program and at Old Dominion University where he teaches introduction to sculpture. He holds an MFA in studio arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in sculpture. His work has been exhibited nationally in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Portland ME. He has attended residencies at The Skowhegan school of Painting and Sculpture and ACRE. His hobbies include gardening, forestry, and cooking.
Colleen Keihm is a Visiting Instructor in the Photography Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She recently concluded a six-year tenure as Executive Director at LATITUDE, a Chicago-based digital lab offering high-end printing, scanning, an artist-in-residence program, and public arts programming. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a BS in Photography from Drexel University. Her work has been exhibited at FLXST Contemporary, Flatland, Roman Susan, Filter Photo, and Tiger Strikes Asteroid. Colleen has been an artist in residence with Hatch Projects at the Chicago Artists Coalition, Institut für alles Mögliche in Berlin, and Studio 3325 in Chicago. Her photographs are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and she is a proud member of the Midwest Photographers Project.