DOG BREATH
Natalie Wadlington, Raven Moffett, Brittany Kieler, Eva Sturm-Gross, Ella Rose Flood, Noelle Choy, Cameron Cameron
10.04-11.1.2024
Opening Reception | Friday, October 4: 6-9 pm
Closing Reception | Friday, November 1: 6-9 pm
“When I ask whom I touch when I touch a dog [,] I learn something about how to inherit in the flesh. Woof . . .”- Donna Haraway, When Species MeetDog Breath brings together artists Natalie Wadlington (NY), Raven Moffett (OR), Brittany Kieler (MN), Eva Sturm-Gross (NY), Ella Rose Flood (IL), Noelle Choy (MO), and Cameron Cameron (CA). Working through sculpture, drawing, print, painting, photo/fabric collage, video, and poetry and prose, these artists all consider ‘dog’ as both form and friend. The dogs in this show act as witness, as sense, as guide, and as makers of messes. They tell stories and hold stories, rolling over to expose wounds and tender bellies. They are ageless and grow old, lick your face and piss on the floor. They peer behind the curtain, keeping secrets—both theirs and ours—while we attempt to see through their eyes, seeing nothing yet feeling everything. In Chinese mythology, foo dogs are the guardians of a threshold, such as a house or palace. In some stories they guard Heaven, and in some they guard Hell. But everyone knows that all dogs go to heaven, and it just so happens that G-o-d is d-o-g spelled backwards. The works in the show are often playful, but speak poignantly and sincerely about the complexities of our relationships to others—be that animal, family, or environment. They speak to our feverish capacity for care as well as grief. As exhibiting artist and scholar Raven Moffett writes:
The idea of “dog” is not as singular and inflexible as many Euro-American Christian narratives would have us believe. As the species outside of ourselves who we have lived with, hunted with, survived with, played with, learned from, and loved for the longest, dogs have made us who we are today…My dogs teach me abundance, responsibility, boundaries, and fierce love every day. They have guided me on my continuous journey to becoming my best self, to becoming more human.
Whom do I touch when I touch a dog? WOOF
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Cameron Cameron (b. 1991 Texas, based in Los Angeles, CA) Cameron uses delicate interventions to interrogate how one's relationship to bugs, nature, and place corresponds within the quotidian our day-to-day. She received her MFA from University of California Los Angeles, BFA Studio Art from University of Texas at Austin, and Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has attended American Austria Foundation Seebacher Prize in Salzburg Austria, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and Shandaken: Storm King Residency. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and she is a founding and contributing member to MATERIAL GIRLS. @winter_shorts
Ella Rose Flood (b. 1999, Chicago, IL) lives and works in Chicago. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Simone Subal Gallery, New York, NY (with Dominick DiMeo); Galerie Hussenot, Paris, France; in lieu, Los Angeles, CA; Lubov, New York, NY; and Jargon Projects, Chicago, IL. Selected group exhibitions include Bodenrader, Chicago, IL; Final Hot Desert, London, UK; Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA; Harkawik, New York, NY; Palazzo San Giuseppe, Polignano a Mare, Italy; and Jargon Projects, Chicago, IL. @oscarcash
Raven Moffett (they/them) is an artist and art educator working on unceded Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla, Stl’pulmsh, Multnomah, Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Confederated Tribes of Stiletz NDNs territory with their partner and three canine companions: Odin, Jasper Shash, and Iinniiwaa. Raven is currently working towards their Certificate in Applied Animal Behavior from the University of Washington and is pursuing a PhD in American Indian Studies with a focus in Indigenous storytelling and interspecies reciprocal recognition across mixed media. Raven graduated with an MFA in Studio Art focused on lens-based media (photography and video) from the University of Arizona. Raven received their BA in Art and Visual Culture with a studio art emphasis and an anthropology minor from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. @feathered_talon
Brittany Kieler (b. 1989) lives in Minneapolis, MN, among two dogs: Alice (6) and Hilma (3). She spends a good amount of time thinking about her dogs, petting them, and walking them with her partner, AJ. Alice calls the shots. Hilma has white eyelashes. Kieler earned her BFA in Printmaking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2012 and her MFA in Drawing, Painting, and Printmaking from the University of Minnesota in 2018. Her work is in special collections libraries at Kent State University, Kansas City Art Institute, Montana State University, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, among others. She has been an artist in residence at Duncan of ordanstone College of Art & Design (Scotland) and Wayquecha Biological Research Station (Peru). @b_kieler
Noelle Choy (b. 1992) makes work that lives mostly as performative sculpture, objects, and video to seek counter-narratives in cultural mythmaking and the phenomenon of getting big inside our bodies. Often working in collaboration, she uses improvised methods and materials to distort biographies, thinking about reenactment, dogs, and mothers. Noelle received a BFA in Sculpture+Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University, and an MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has exhibited and performed both nationally and internationally, including at Socrates Sculpture Park, Christies at Rockefeller Center, Satellite Art Fair, and Snug Harbor Cultural Center. She has been awarded residencies from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ACRE, Vermont Studio Center, and Bunker Projects (Pittsburgh), and is the recipient of the Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts from the American Austrian Foundation, and fellowships from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Color Network, and AICAD Post-Graduate Teaching Program. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Kansas City Art Institute in the Painting department. @soyeahill
Eva Sturm-Gross (b. 2000) is an artist and woodworker originally from Vermont. She graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in studio art and religion. Her prints and sculptures have been exhibited nationally most recently at the Kent Museum in Vermont and the Ohio Craft Museum in Columbus. She has worked as a studio technician during Haystack’s Open Studio Residency and has been awarded fellowships as a Winter Resident at Penland School of Craft and resident at Vermont Studio Center among others. Eva is interested in art as a form of creative exegesis by which to reinterpret traditional texts. She is committed to a rigorous study of craft and believes that this is integral to her practice. Eva is the art director of Gashmius Magazine and works as a craft educator. : @evasturmgross
Natalie Wadlington (b. 1992) is currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Born in Modesto, California, she completed her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in May of 2020. She has shown both nationally and internationally, including a museum solo exhibition at the Dallas Contemporary Museum of Art in Dallas, TX in 2022. She has been a resident artist at Ox Bow School of Art (2019) , the Center for Ceramics at CSU Long Beach (2023) and High Desert Test Sites (2024), among others, and will be the visiting artist at Bowling Green State University Art Department in 2025. Her practice includes paintings, drawings, and ceramic sculptures which explore scenes of tentative engagement between humans and domesticated animals in urban, outdoor spaces. Through story-telling and figuration, her works depict specific metaphors which communicate larger, archetypal narratives of love, conflict, and misunderstanding, set in the gardens and neighbourhood parks we meticulously cultivate. In the work, humans and animals come together in symbolic scenes which mirror our own complex struggles for mutual understanding.Natalie is represented by Library Street Collective in Detroit, MI.. @natalie.wadlington
Thanks to dog and art lovers Sparky’s Ice Cream for sponsoring this exhibition!