“Torsion”, mild steel, 76″ x 24″ x 32″ by Miguel Edwards

“Torsion represents a collision between gravity and leverage.” says Edwards.

“Penumbra 1002″ by Miguel Edwards

Above is a piece from Edwards, Penumbra series.

“Thank you for letting me sage” by John Osgood

There is actually a longer story behind “Thank you for letting me sage”, but the short story of this piece is the spiritual search for answers from a loss of a powerful attachment bond between mother and daughter.

“A Turn Towards” by John Osgood

“A Turn Towards” is inspired by the search for a new direction… a fresh start so-to-speak.

Exhibition Synopsis:
Seattle artists, John Osgood and Miguel Edwards come together to present (Un/Re) Attached, an exhibition that explores the natural—and sometimes unnatural—actions of breaking, healing, losing and gaining that we perform every day. Through sculpture, paintings, photography and site-specific installation they consider the ways we tear ourselves apart and build ourselves back up in the cycle of reinvention and experimentation.

This is more than a two man show, but a true exploration of honest and inspired collaboration, as Osgood and Miguel exchange pieces back and forth between one another, thoroughly blurring the lines of painting, photography and installations.

Collaborative Installation by Miguel Edwards & John Osgood

Time Chaos and intuition have been co conspirators of Miguel Edward’s artistic endeavors as he explores primarily sculpture and photography while keeping his Un and Re attachments both in balance and in flux with side jaunts and explorations in Video, LEDs, Glass and installations.

John Osgood’s paintings exaggerate the characteristics of their subjects, revealing their inner worlds in exuberant color and sinuous lines. For this exhibition he uses painting, sculpture and installation to explore the stresses and catharsis that arise from the constant gaining, losing and taking that we undergo.

There are few issues In America as controversial as the Second Amendment. You may be a gun aficionado, a marksman, and anti-firearm activist, or simply a citizen who is not quite sure where they stand. Recent events have polarized Americans and our local community on an issue that has always had explosive undercurrents.

Join artists in a visual dialogue with the community that questions, examines, celebrates, criticizes, and queries the right to bear arms. This exhibit will include artists who are gun collectors and artists who are anti-firearm activists and those who hold opinions that range between the two extremes.

Featured artists include: Rodrigo Valenzuela, Greg Lundgren, Kate Protage, Adream de Valdivia, Frank Germano, Rick Klu, Tatiana Kalderash, Crystal Barbre, Stanley Porkoski, Sam Wood, Dan Voelker and Miguel Edwards.

Attached: joined together; an emotional closeness.
Unattached: apart or alone, single; lack of emotion.
Reattached: coming back together, mending.

Bherd Studios co-founder, John Osgood, and multimedia artist Miguel Edwards come together to present (Un/Re)Attached, an exhibition that explores the natural—and sometimes unnatural—actions of breaking, healing, losing and gaining that we perform every day. Through sculpture, paintings, photography and site-specific installation they consider the ways we tear ourselves apart and build ourselves back up in the cycle of reinvention and experimentation.

This is more than a two man show, but a true exploration of honest and inspired collaboration, as Osgood and Miguel exchange pieces back and forth between one another, thoroughly blurring the lines of painting, photography and installations.

Time Chaos and intuition have been co conspirators of Miguel Edward’s artistic endeavors as he explores primarily sculpture and photography while keeping his Un and Re attachments both in balance and in flux with side jaunts and explorations in LEDs, Glass and installations.

John Osgood’s paintings exaggerate the characteristics of their subjects, revealing their inner worlds in exuberant color and sinuous lines. For this exhibition he uses painting, sculpture and installation to explore the stresses and catharsis that arise from the constant gaining, losing and taking that we undergo.

Squid Inc.—or Giant Squid Supply—was one of the great companies to arise from the American Industrial Revolution, establishing itself in Ballard, WA in 1839. A squid-producing, transporting, refining and marketing company, their products fed kings, presidents, and the common man. Their miracle cure—Squid Ink—battled ailments from halitosis to boot rot, and could be found across the nation and the world (especially popular in print shops behind the Iron Curtain).

A powerful monopoly on the cephalopod trade, the company was broken up by the Supreme Court in 1987, and its history is shrouded in mystery. But the curtain has begun to lift! The collection of artifacts on display at Bherd Gallery was unearthed as recently as 1993, and has been painstakingly restored to the current condition. Four local artisans—Duffy, Justin Kane Elder & Stefan Hoffman of Electric Coffin, and Kellie Talbot—worked with the region’s top scientists, sociologists and philosophers for two decades to piece together facts amidst the mythology behind Giant Squid Supply. Transforming the Bherd Gallery into a cabinet of curiosities from the rise and fall of Squid Inc., these artist-scholars present vintage advertising and artifacts, shedding light on the history of this company that once held the world in their tentacles. Learn the forgotten history of this once-proud company, and find out why Great Grandpop always smelled of brine when he brushed his teeth.

Our gallery and Home Suite Home gallery (Greenwood Art Collective) have been busy tying up the phone lines and playing a game of telephone with our artists. Telephone is the visual-arts version of the telephone game: where a sentence is whispered from person to person, becoming more garbled with each repetition.

How do you play telephone with paintings? One artist creates an original work, photographs it, and sends it to the next artist who creates a piece based on the themes of the first—and so on down the line. With only the prior reference to consult, some artists remain strictly faithful to the previous piece, while others embellish and transform, altering the thread as they do. Some threads veer dramatically from their origins, while others end up uncannily similar to the first piece. In the leaf-themed thread—the first three works pictured above—certain elements wiggle their way into the canon, while others drop out along the way. The longest thread in the exhibition is eight pieces long – does it stay intact or go sideways? Get in the whisper chain to find out.

 Co-curated by John Osgood (Bherd Studios) and Solace (Home Suite Home), Telephone’s threads will be on display at both spaces, and pieces are available individually.

Participating Artists: Aaron Jasinski, Amy Huddleston, Andrea Wicklund, Augie Pagan, Carlos Aguilar, Curtis Ashby, Chris Sheridan, Crystal Barbre, Dan Voelker, Ego, Jeremy Gregory, Joe Vollan, John Osgood, Larkin Cypher, Levi Hastings, Mat Savage, Megon Shore, Parskid, Quincy Quigg, Siolo Thompson, Solace & Tatjana Pavicevic

Southern Gothic presents the work of five female artists from Portland, whose works reveal a phantasmagoric world caught between fairytale and nightmare. Lea Barozzi, Lesley Reppetaux, Kalina Torino, Heidi Elise Wirz and Kendra Binney paint lissome, sloe-eyed beauties who journey unafraid through places steeped in myth, symbolism and danger.

Fairytale imagery plays a key role in all of these fantastical visions. Lea Barozzi’s luminous gamines shine against a backdrop of twilit blue, their haunting eyes appearing to follow viewers from within the canvas. Painted in cool colors, Barozzi’s small vignettes contain mysterious iconography: sinuous striped tentacles, ghostly dark-eyed dogs, shy red fawns, and mounds of tiny skulls. Lesley Reppetaux’s acrylic on board paintings are scenes plucked from lost myths, rife with menacing creatures, spirit helpers, and not-so-innocent maidens who explore the wild in their skivvies. Rich jewel tones, a strong sense of humor and inspiration from world mythology mark the work of painter Kalina Torino. Whether they are pudgy mermaids, cutie-pie woodland nymphs, or tricksy sprites, Torino’s lively characters invite the viewer to enter a world bursting with mischief and play.

Palimpsest plays a strong role in the work of Heidi Elise Wirz and Kendra Binney. Wirz brings letters, symbols and words to her dense, graffiti-like compositions, surrounding her central figures in a nimbus. These characters often emit looping, twisting strings which signify hurt, physical ailment, hope or apology. Binney creates landscapes that layer the realistic—using photorealistic imagery of ships, homes, buildings or landmarks—under dripping washes of pastel. Atop these are sketches of animals and wraith-like women, combining to create a feverish dream-scape that is by turns familiar and utterly mysterious.

Bherd Gallery: For viewers new to your work, what is the primary feeling or message they should walk away with?

RAWKSON: When viewers look at my work I want them to smile and get creeped out, feeling as if they just heard an old childhood ghost story. But overall, I want them to feel like a big kid again. A lot of my plush toy art is based on old spooky stories my elders would tell me, or comes from characters of my own stories that I have created. Misfits toys that were once loved but were abandoned or lost due to life’s circumstances.

Rat Deuces by RAWKSON

BG: What is one unique and intriguing thing that you would like viewers to know about you as a person / artist?

R: I’m so shy people think because I have a big personality, that ‘how could I be shy?’ I hide when I see a camera or a large group of people, but I overcome that by forcing myself to be social and put myself out there.

Kebo 88 by RAWKSON

BG: What is the process of creating your 3D work? Do you begin with an overall concept and then fabricate it, or does the final look take shape as you go?

R: When working on a piece I just crank up the music and create my thoughts. I become obsessed until what is in my head is figured out in the form of fabric, paint or any kind of medium. What kind of music I listen to while working depends on my mood: if I am amped The Plasmatics will be blasting, or if I am mellow the sounds of a whale’s blow hole will do.

BG: There is a specific character who seems to pop up frequently in your work, a stitched-together animal with button eyes and a heart on its chest. Does this character have a name/title? What does it represent for you?

R: LOVE 13 is a little bear that I work with a lot. He comes in the form of a voodoo doll or just a little bear. He is based on a story I created about a misunderstood witch who made [the bears] for the townspeople. The witch named the little bear LOVE 13, love because the witch never had [love], and ‘13’ because it was misunderstood like herself. Overall the little bear character represents love, hate, innocence, even and a forgotten childhood.

Love 13 in Gray by RAWKSON

For Picture Perfect, a couple of my pieces I will be showing will be F**k Off Forever and Love Me Forever, which are basically voodoo dolls that represent love and hate. There’s also and Jackie Voodoo—a little girl character that I created that is teased due to her pet spider that lives in her hair. More pieces will be shown at the show…I’m just waiting for that last bit of inspiration to come my way, be it by horror film, music, old ghost stories, memories of my past childhood or just life.

MJ Lindo: There is no message for people to walk away with in reference to my paintings. Every person that looks at my paintings comes up with a different story or a meaning. I would rather have someone make up their story or reasoning behind a painting as to make it more personal to them. What a piece means to me might be irrelevant to the next person.

Wait For Me by MJ Lindo

BG: What is one unique and intriguing thing that you would like viewers to know about you as a person, or an artist?

MJL: I have a crazy obsession with stand -up comedy. I know almost every stand-up comic by name, and secretly wish I could be a stand-up comedian if I didn’t have horrible stage fright and didn’t laugh at my own jokes.

Jessica by MJ Lindo

BG: You paint primary female subjects. Why do you focus on the feminine specifically? Do you see this changing in the future?

MJL: Painting females and animals are the best way for me to relate to my paintings. I am not sure of what I will be painting in the future. I can only focus on what I am doing in the present.

Sem Medo by MJ Lindo

BG: Many of your paintings feature animals or a natural setting: what does nature mean to you in this context? Beauty? Femininity? Savagery?

MJL: I paint animals for many reasons, I like reading what each animal means symbolically in different cultures whether it be negative or positive, which will in turn influence what I end up painting.

Artist Bio:
Throughout her stay in Nicaragua where her family is from, MJ Lindo began to paint females as a result of her surroundings and influences. Currently a bay area artist MJ has lived around the world exposing her to many different cultures outside of her own. As a little girl living in Toronto, Canada, MJ would ride the subway everyday catching glimpses of huge graffiti pieces covering tremendous street walls inspiring her to become an artist. While MJ has painted on many different mediums, she prefers and craves the firmness and stability she gets from painting on wood canvases. She continues to create and aspire as she paints her dreams, fantasies, and nightmares.

Thanks to MJ Lindo for the interview! Come by Bherd Gallery and see her luscious new paintings on display between now and December 21^st.

#TRACKSTARS explores themes of abandoned spaces, pop culture, and marginalization to connote the emptiness behind slick veneers of the city. Both artists consider urban space as places where transformation occurs, like alchemy: in these public, liminal spaces filth can turn to gold, and a single step can mean a life redeemed…or demolished. Using found objects, glass, neon, and shiny surfaces, they create objects and installations commenting on memory, social constructs, fame, and the dirt behind the high gloss.

Dylan Neuwirth’s solo work was most recently seen at 2012’s Bumbershoot Festival. His enormous suspended neon sculpture—titled NOW—was his concept of time, memory and the future made tangible. He has mounted recent solo exhibitions at Punch Gallery and Urban+ Gallery in Seattle. Raven (Jeff Gerber) mounted an installation at CoCA Belltown in 2012, titled You Will Get Through. The artist recently returned from learning about Hindu and Sikh methods of meditation in India, which has influenced the work in this exhibition.

She has exhibited her art at SAM Gallery, Northwind Art Center Gallery, Nordstrom Corporate Gallery, Lynnwood Convention Center, FCA Gallery Vancouver-BC, The Contemporary Arts Center, Las Vegas, General Electric Cultural Gallery, and Whatcom Museum, WA etc.

Her works has been featured on Open Studio Visit Vol.19/20 and International Contemporary Artist Vol. V, both are released in December 2012.