I dropped off my work yesterday and the show looks fabulous! The work overall is cohesive and strong. I have five accident paintings in the show.    

Works by Kate Vrijmoet, Severn Eaton, Susan Arthur, Susan Gladstone, L. Kelly Lyles, Lita Kenyon
Curated by Tracy Cilona
   
Public Reception: Tuesday, May 24, 12-1:30 p.m.
When: May 20 - June 3, 2011
Hours: Monday through Friday 12 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Where: South Seattle Community College Art Gallery, in the Jerry Brockey Student Center. 6000 16th Ave. SW, Seattle, WA 98106-1499
Contact: Tracy Cilona 206.764.5337 | tcilona@sccd.ctc.edu

    Splatters, Smoke and the Sublime:
   
    (Seattle) South Seattle Community College (SSCC) is pleased to present the 2011 Spring Group Exhibit – a local exhibition of six national artists. SSCC Art Gallery, whose mission is to introduce students and the community at large to unique artists and their works, is showcasing the work of Kate Vrijmoet, Severn Eaton, Susan Arthur, Susan Gladstone, Lita Kenyon and L. Kelly Lyles. Vrijmoet who recently settled in Seattle, features five of her Accident paintings in this exhibition.
Dan Kany wrote of Vrijmoet’s work:

   “Vrijmoet’s radical project is immediately apparent in her Accident paintings in which a single figure is in the process of a horrific (and usually grotesquely bloody) accident with a chainsaw, manure fork, machete or similar tools and weapons. Her handling of the paint matches the situation’s goriness – melting bodies tossing explosive splatters of blood. Often, her subjects seem not yet to be aware of the violence they have perpetrated on themselves: The viewer plays the role of the witness much as he might watch a horror movie – completely aware of the violence and agony that awaits the victim’s realization.
    Vrijmoet’s subject, however, is less the gore than the moment the gore marks: A moment of waking, of a new consciousness, of self-awareness. Vrijmoet handles the subject of consciousness with dazzling brilliance: To respond to the Manure Fork Accident, for example, we have to begin by reminding ourselves that we are witnessing a theatrical fiction. Vrijmoet, in other words, is flicking the suspension-of-disbelief switch up and down to reveal its presence. “What’s he thinking?’ very quickly becomes “What does the artist want us to believe he is thinking?” This is a supremely anti-modernist stance  – following the idea that Modernism doesn’t privilege the artist/author over the viewer.

    Vrijmoet’s artistic vision combines Pop Art (think Andy Warhol’s “Car Accident”) with the sublime (think Edmund Burke who in 1757 wrote “Astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror."

    Vrijmoet received her MFA from Syracuse University. Her work has been shown in dozens of exhibitions around the country. More of her work can be seen on www.figurespace.com The 2011 Spring Group Exhibit will be on view at SSCC through June 3, 2011. There will be a public reception on Tuesday, May 24.