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Current Exhibitions
Devorah Sperber: Threads of Perception
June 20 – September 20, 2009
In the second exhibition in BAM’s Threads of Perception series, New York artist Devorah Sperber combines commonplace materials with simple optical devices to investigate the connections between art, perception and technology. Her works address the complex relationship between the way we think we see and the way that the brain actually processes images. Her most recent works examine famous paintings from art history. Sperber uses the computer to pixelate the images and then reproduces the pixels with thousands of spools of colored thread. She then inverts the spool-constructed pictures so that the image is viewed up side down and recognizable only when viewed through an acrylic sphere. To the naked eye the thread spool sculpure appears as patterns of color, but when viewed through the specially designed acrylic sphere, the images spring into focus. Sperber's works were recently presented at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center and the Brooklyn Museum and featured in articles in the New Yorker, the New York Times and Sculpture Magazine.
Sponsored by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.
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After the Mona Lisa 2, 2005
85”h x 86” w
5,184 spools of thread, stainless steel ball chain and hanging
apparatus, clear acrylic viewing sphere on metal stand
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Kid Stuff
June 6 – November 15, 2009
What delights a kid? A look at artwork geared toward children, selected from BAM's Permanent Collection and local private collections. The exhibition will include two- and three-dimensional objects in which artists reflect on the memories of childhood as well as objects and images of interest to children. This whimsical exhibtion will include works by Deborah Barrett, Alexander Calder, Michael Corney, Benjamin Jones, Marianne Kolb, Marilyn Lanfear, David Gillhooley, Marilyn Lysohir, Renda Palmer and others.
Organized by Boise Art Musuem
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Alexander Calder
Circus, 1975
Lithograph
Collection of the Boise Art Museum |
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Corrugated: Sculpture by Ann Weber
May 30 – November 8, 2009
California artist Ann Weber transforms the ordinary medium of cardboard into impressive large-scale sculptures reminiscent of pods, gourds and organic spires. The sculptures have the appearance of large baskets woven into monumental forms with a rich patina created from layers of shellac applied to the surface. Visitors walk among and through the towering shapes, some as large as 16 feet tall, in an oversized wonderland of contoured forms. Weber, who began her career as a ceramic artist, started working with the lighter medium of cardboard in 1991 and finds great interest in the possibility of making beautiful objects from common and mundane materials. Weber received her BA from Purdue University and her MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts where she studied with renowned ceramic sculptor Viola Frey.
Organized by Boise Art Musuem |
Ann Weber
Almost 16 & 15 and ½, 2002
cardboard, staples, polyurethane, steel bases
182 x 48 x 48" and 177 x 38 x 38"
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James Castle: Tying It Together
May 2 – October 11, 2009
Raised in Garden Valley, Idaho, Castle was born deaf and never learned to read, write or use sign language. However, he developed a sophisticated means of communication through drawing and devoted a lifetime to the creation of his own images. Castle ignored traditional drawing materials in favor of discarded cardboard, paper scraps and homemade charcoal dyes. Using these materials, he produced drawings, assemblages and books illustrating his rural Idaho environment, including landscapes, buildings, self-portraits, family pictures and fantasy forms. The exhibition will celebrate Castle’s growing national renown and showcase a representative selection of BAM’s Castle holdings, the largest public collection of his works. The new documentary film about Castle’s life and creative processes, James Castle: Portrait of an Artist, will be shown in the galleries.
Sponsored by the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies
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James Castle
Untitled (Figures in a line), 20th century
Paper, pigment, soot
Collection of the Boise Art Museum |
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Garth Claassen: Bloated Floaters, Snouted Sappers, and the Defense of Empire
March 14 – May 31, 2009
Idaho artist Garth Claassen’s recent drawings are part of a series called The Heavy Dancers that originated over the summer of 2003 during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq. The artist’s drawings and paintings depicted chunky, blundering titans who seemed bent on confronting an as yet invisible enemy. In 2007, his images developed into bloated, floating figures. Blimp-like, sometimes under the remote control of tiny figures, or tethered to the earth, or hovering in hangars, the figures seem baffled by their inability to escape from their predicament. Down on the ground, another order of creatures is at work, probing among debris and clutter. Like sappers digging trenches and tunnels, they seem likely to undermine the structures around and above them. For the artist, these “floaters” and “sappers” are the denizens of an empire whose borders are being fortified in a ramshackle and uncoordinated way.
Sponsored by the J. R. Simplot Company Foundation
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Artist’s studio, Caldwell, Idaho, 2008 |
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