2012 Emerging Artists from NKU

Annually, junior and senior art majors from local universities, representing the next generation of artists to emerge on the local art scene, are nominated by their professors, juried by SFC and are afforded the opportunity to exhibit their work among their peers. 

A continuing partnership with the Malton Gallery offers the students an opportunity to visit a professional gallery and get a hands on Q & A with the gallery owner on professional practices.  And NEW in 2011, the Malton Gallery awarded two (2) Gallery Choice awards, presented at the Opening Reception. 

In addition to the two Gallery Choice Awards, Summerfair Cincinnati (in 2011) implemented a new scholarship of one (1) $1,000 Purchase Award.  Selected by a jury of professional working artists, the selected artwork will hang on permanent display in the SFC Gallery. 

The following three (3) students were juried in from a list of nominees presented by our third participating school;  Northern Kentucky University - Department Chair Thomas F. McGovern III:

Dylan Bauer

Dylan was born and raised in Cincinnati.  He first found an interest in photography in 2005 when he was introduced to the medium through an elective class in high school.  Dylan is currently pursuing a BA in Photography and is in his senior year.  His work has been exhibited in places such as The Montgomery Photo show (2007, 2008, 2011), the NKU juried student show (2011) and included in a group collection at the Library of Congress.

Artist Statement:

"As an artist the subject of my work is often a reflection of the impression the world around me has.  Though one body of work may have a different subject or visual style from the next they all maintain an underlying theme.  Through my art I explore the places, marks, and objects that our society chooses to leave behind.  Each piece is a visual record of something that makes up our society.  Often the pieces explore elements of our culture that are considered to be unsightly or disagreeable.  With my images I hope to challenge the viewer to look at things they may pass by everyday but never give second thought to; to think about how what we discard, or choose to abandon represents our modern culture.  These images are portraits of who we are through what we have made."

Kendra Douglas

Kendra Douglas was raised in Eminence, Kentucky. She is currently perusing a BFA in Sculpture and BA in Art Education. Her work has been exhibited locally in places such as Leapin Lizard in Covington, KY and at Northern Kentucky University, both outdoors and in the fine arts gallery. She was awarded Best in Show at the NKU annual juried student exhibition as well as the Friends of Fine Arts Scholarship in 2011. She completed an internship at the Taft Museum of Art in 2010 and worked as an artist assistant for the African Arts Institute at Northern Kentucky University in 2011.  She recently escorted four eleven year olds to Denmark to attend an international peace camp through CISV, a global peace education organization. She is currently enrolled in university courses as well as working as the student sculpture technician at the NKU ceramic/sculpture studio.

Artist Statement:

"Latrodecus Mactan is the symbolic storyteller of deception. Each sculpture in this series communicates a story of an encounter with deception I have had, one that has changed me forever. She confronts the viewer, commanding contemplation of the corruption born within the most repulsive and infectious nooks of the Cerebral Cortex. She asks the viewer to consider them self as the deceived and as the deceiver. I am interested in the lies an individual encounters or creates and how they affect and contribute to the evolution of a person. I want the viewer to construct an autobiographical timeline of lies in their mind through reflection of experienced deception. Admit to being human, perhaps truth will come of it."

James Rice

Although he’s spent most of his life within a few hours of Cincinnati, James feels fortunate to have travel throughout the United States and a few other countries in the Americas and Europe. Traveling has been an important part of his life for as long as he can remember: growing up as one of five home schooled children, a large portion of his time was spent looking out of car windows as his mom drove he and his siblings from music lessons to field trips to co-op classes nearly every day of the week. Watching the scenery align itself as they passed must have had some developmental impact on him, for now he derives great pleasure in driving around looking for photographs and carefully composing every element through the window of the camera. Equally important to the way he see things, he believes, is the time he and his older brother spent as young boys exploring the woods around their house in Ohio, and later on, the back roads and vistas of fields and copses surrounding him in southeastern Indiana. “It is not hard to be a landscape photographer when the art has already been made and placed in front of you.”

Artist Statement:

“Human Nature is an ongoing project focusing on humanity’s complex relationship with the natural world. Adhering to a fairly rigid “neutral” aesthetic while working with a digital camera and a 28mm lens allows me to spend my time focusing on the world around me rather than creative interpretation of the subject. The current body of work consists of 32 color inkjet prints, neither matted nor framed, in order to present the photos to the viewer with as little pretense as possible—they are only photographs.  Strongly influenced by the New Topographic artists, as well as contemporary artists similarly interested in the interaction of humans and nature, such as Alejandro Cartagena and Jennilee Marigomen along with the work of color art photography pioneers such as Eggleston and Shore, my work deals with what could be called the “stamp of humanity” upon the natural landscape. Although much art and many commentaries have made it their focus, I don’t believe we’ve exhausted the subject—new flowers bloom every year, and every one of us will notice them, ignore them, trample them underfoot or cut them and put them in a vase, according to our disposition. We dream of and romanticize unspoiled nature, but we cannot live with it. To oversimplify things: as a society we tend to encounter the natural world as either a nuisance (weeds, deer, mosquitoes, winter) or decoration (flowers, feathers, poodles, sunsets) and as such we either destroy nature or refine it to our liking, in both cases modifying the world for convenience or aesthetics. My photographs focus on the intersection of our unnatural way of life (aesthetics and fads, infrastructure, and agriculture) and the real, independently functioning world around us.”