Gerri Sayler: Ad Infinitum
June 14 – October 2008

Idaho artist Gerri Sayler presents her first solo museum exhibition in conjunction with the Jurors Prize award in the 2007 Idaho Triennial exhibition at the Boise Art Museum.  Her site-specific installation, will consist of over 900 glistening strands of sculpted hot glue resembling drizzled icicles or frozen ripples of water, cascading 20 feet from the ceiling enveloping the viewer in a web-like room.  Ad infinitum is a Latin phrase meaning "to infinity” and can be used to describe a set of instructions to be repeated "forever."  Her repetitious creating of the fibrous glue strands is connected to craft traditions historically associated with women, who have used their hands to spin and weave the fibers of their lives into the tapestry we know as culture.  Sayler’s filigree strands also call to mind the human body, referencing muscle, nerves, veins, and the threads of our hearts, intertwined with the patterns and rhythms nature’s cycles of birth, growth, death and decay. 

Ad Infinitum (detail), 2008
Spun hot glue and filament
Image courtesy of Joe Pallen

Frederic Remington Makes Tracks: Adventures and Artistic Impressions
June 28 - August 24, 2008

Adventures and Artistic Impressions is an exhibit which combines images printed during Remington's lifetime with silver recasts of his sculptures to provide examples that demonstrate his growth as an artist. Presenting a broad range of subjects, the exhibit showcases Remington's achievements as an illustrator, painter, and sculptor. Frederic Remington (1861-1909) became one of the most well-known American artists of all time through his illustrations in popular magazines of the late 1800s and early 1900s and later in bronze. His work has timeless appeal. This traveling exhibit has been organized by The Frederic Remington Art Museum, which is dedicated solely to the art and archives of this great man. Organized by The Frederic Remington Art Museum, Ogdensburg, New York.

.

A "Sun Fisher," 1895
Published 1895 by Davis & Sanford Co.
Black and white lithograph

Catherine Chalmers: American Cockroach
July 12 - November 9, 2008

In her American Cockroach project, Chalmers records the half-imaginary life of the domestic pest known as the cockroach. The exhibition highlights the photographs, sculpture, and video work of Catherine Chalmers. Chalmers explores the question of what it is to be human and what is man's relationship to the insect world, examining preconceived notions about insects and specimens. As Chalmers notes, "Today, people tend to deny the obvious fact of death and violence in their world." And this is especially true with regard to animals, which tend to fall into the category of either pests or pets. Our connection to nature and the animal world has been domesticated. "In the past, animals had a much higher value in peoples' understandings of themselves." Chalmers' series theatrically dissects the life of the prehistoric cockroach and the sometimes-surreal operations of nature that deposited the creature plunk in the middle of modern kitchens and bathrooms. American Cockroach offers up an ecosystem where the laws of roach life and survival become strange and distorted human manifestations, not so much a biology but a mythology of the common house roach. Her eco-system is at once natural and exquisitely overwrought, seen schizophrenically from behind the lens of a camera as well as shot from the one-on-one perspective of the roach itself.

.

Drinking (from Cockroach-Residents)
2000
c -print