View the galleryUnfiltered Kilter: University of Oregon Department of Art MFA Alumni Exhibition
Carl Diehl, Heidi Schwegler, Cara Tomlinson
March 5- April 25, 2015
The White Box at the University of Oregon in Portland is pleased to present Unfiltered Kilter, work by University of Oregon Department of Art alumni, Carl Diel, Heidi Schwegler, and Cara Tomlinson.
In Unfiltered Kilter, a cohort of University of Oregon alumni seek to trouble their habitual practice as artists, jostling firm solutions in hopes of uncovering overlooked possibilities. This endeavor is signaled with the use of the fossilized term, “kilter,” which, by definition, conveys a state of order, alignment and proper functioning. Most commonly, however, the word is used in idiomatic reference to its own “offness;” it is this implied interval of wayward movement which the artists have embraced.
Carl Diehl, Heidi Schwegler, and Cara Tomlinson have unsettled their own established terms of production in an effort to revitalize the interim between balance and its undoing. “Unfiltered” not only connotes a particular cigarette and cloudy pint, but those generative moments in the studio free from constraint, when material is pushed beyond intention. In the production of the works for this exhibit the artists and their materials collude and collide, assured that any unexpected aesthetics will be a sign of good working order.
In conjunction with this exhibition Ken O’Connell, professor emeritus of art, will present some of the highlights from 100 years with examples of art by the teachers as well as students that studied closely with them. These teachers at Oregon changed people’s lives. Students went on to become artists, designers, filmmakers, and teachers themselves. Most felt their time at UO was a Golden Era. They also experienced such visiting artists and designers as Robert Motherwell, Joseph Albers, R. Buckminster Fuller, Judy Chicago, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Bock (Frank Lloyd Wright’s sculptor), Kazutaki Uchida, Harry Davis, Toshiko Takeazu, and many more. O’Connell will have several books on hand about a number of the UO faculty and students for purchase and further study. People are invited to bring references to their time as students at the UO to share.
Carl Diehl (b. Syracuse, NY) is an artist and educator based in Portland, Oregon and teaches at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, the Northwest Film Center and Portland State University. Diehl holds a BFA in Art Video from Syracuse University and a MFA in Digital Art from the University of Oregon. From 2000 to 2003 he was an events programmer at Artists’ Television Access, a media arts space in San Francisco, where he continues to volunteer remotely as a layout and copy editor. Diehl’s artworks and writings have been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including: Transmediale, the International Symposium of Electronic Art and the &Now Festival of New Writing. He is a co-founder of Weird- Fiction, an interdisciplinary arts group which explores networked culture. His reflections on the group’s methods were recently published in the Signal Culture Cookbook, an anthology of essays from contemporary media artists.
Heidi Schwegler (b. San Antonio, TX) explores a wide range of materials in the service of her subject matter. She has participated in numerous shows, including exhibitions at the Co/Lab Art Fair, CA, Raid Projects, CA, Platform China, Beijing, Scope Art 2004, NY, and the Hallie Ford Museum, OR. Schwegler is a Ford Family Fellow, OR, received a 2010 MacDowell Colony Fellowship, NH and several RACC Individual Project Grants, OR. She has lectured on her work at institutions such as the Burg Giebichenstein, Germany, Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI and Kendall College of Art and Design, MI. Reviews of Schwegler’s work have been published in Art in America, ArtNews and the Huffington Post. Schwegler received a BFA in Art History and a BFA in Metalsmithing, both from the University of Kansas, her MFA from the University of Oregon in and is Associate Chair of the MFA in Applied Craft + Design, OCAC/PNCA.
Cara Tomlinson (b. San Francisco, CA) focuses on the processes and materials of painting, exploring oil’s viscosity, strata, support and dimension. In dialog with the long and varied tradition of modernist abstraction, her work explores the intersection between painting and sculpture. A recipient of numerous national artist residency fellowships, she has shown her paintings and sculptures in group and solo shows regionally, nationally and internationally including the Workplace Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium; Cornish Gallery in Seattle, WA; the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, PA; the Everson Museum, NY; and Des Moines Art Center, IA. Among other awards, Tomlinson received an Individual Artist Fellowship Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission, a Ford Family Foundation Grant, and Professional Development Grants from the Regional Arts & Culture Council and Oregon Arts Commission. Currently she is an Associate Professor of Art and head of the painting area at Lewis and Clark College.
This exhibition was made possible by the Davis Family Art Fund.
