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Gallery | PLACES WE CALL HOME
Tia Factor
Project space | ART ATTACK!
Sacha Eckes
March 20 - April 25, 2010
Exhibit Opening | Saturday, March 20, 6-8PM
Tia Factor, Harrell Fletcher: Babies, Books and Airplane Travel (2009), Gouache, airbrush and graphite on board, 30 x 40 inches
Swarm Gallery is pleased to present Tia Factor's first solo show at the gallery, Places We Call Home. The exhibition will bring
together four series of work exploring themes of "home." Factor starts this process with interviews with her closest friends, and travels to personal redefining and understanding. All work is mixed media on paper.
When Factor first moved from the Bay Area, she conducted informal interviews with friends in Portland, Oregon - Factor's new home - to gather impressions of the novel
city. She recorded her interactions with the interviewees, asking them to respond freely and to elaborate on specific details of their homes, both physically and metaphorically.
First using a camera to transform the interviews into visual information, Factor then painted corresponding mental maps for each impression gathered. While illuminating
the complexity of the individual's concept of home, Factor both absorbs and actuates her own sense of home in her new environs.
Subsequent series of work, "Pocket Canyon," "Postcards from Portland," and "Collections", map Factor's personal impressions. In December 2009, Factor visited her
birthplace with her father and daughter. A rural and remote backwater area of Sonoma County called Pocket Canyon, Factor was confronted with the contradiction between
how she held her birthplace in her mind, and how it really was. She fantasized a beautiful and magical place where living was easy. What she saw were dilapidated
shacks, deteriorated bridges, shady and dark landscapes covered in thick redwood trees and moss, and a distinctly soggy, melancholic quality. Although she had
anticipated the property and the houses on it to had fallen into disrepair, she was nonetheless surprised by just how far it had fallen and how irretrievable it all
felt. In this series of 9 x 12 inch gouache paintings, "Pocket Canyon" reveals fantasies and realities of her birthplace.
With some changed perspective of the meaning of "home", Factor created "Postcards from Portland," and "Collections". Both observe and illustrate her home life in
Portland and pay tribute to the transition to a new place. Factor photographs her day-to-day travels to the farmer's market and a park she takes her daughter. In her
studio, she combines the collected imagery with more nuanced and intuitive responses she has to these places. The small scale of these paintings are reminiscent of postcards,
which she uses as a metaphor for sharing her new home life with friends and loved ones from afar.
BIO - Tia Factor received her M.F.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2001 and her B.F.A. from the California College of the Arts in 1997. Her work has
been exhibited largely throughout the Bay Area, as well as in New York, Germany, Denmark and Australia. She has been awarded artist residencies at the International Natural +
Cultural Residency Program in Tasmania, Australia; at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT; and at the Kala Bhavana in Kerala, India. Awards include Juror's Choice
from the SVMA Biennial in 2005, the J. Ruth Kelsey Traveling Merit Award from the Department of Art Practice at U.C. Berkeley in 2001, the Eisner Fine Art Award from
the University of California, Berkeley in 2000, and High Distinction from the Painting Department at the California College of the Arts in 1997. Tia is now living in Portland, OR.
This is her first solo exhibition at Swarm Gallery.
Tia Factor, Ryan Pierce: Willits, Portland, and Everything In-between (2009), Gouache, airbrush, spray paint and colored pencil on paper, 22.5 x 30 inches
PREVIEW WORKS
Project space | ART ATTACK!
Sacha Eckes
Sacha Eckes, Pick Me! Pick Me! (2008), Ball point on paper, 11.75 x 8.75 inches
Sacha Eckes' art has always dealt with issues of belonging, identity, the search for love and communication. Rather than just paint a pretty picture, Eckes makes drawings
that help people reflect on the absurdities, the little pleasures and the little pains in life. She likes to laugh and really enjoys making people laugh. Stylistically her art finds its
roots in comics, graphic art and painting. One of her creative goals is to bridge the gap between 'fine art' and 'graphic art'. Though her art makes many references to cartoons and contains
a lot of illustrative elements, she strives to create work that transcends literal picture making. It's no surprise that some of her biggest influences include Raymond Pettibon, Philip Guston,
Robert Crumb, Paul McCarthy, Gary Larson, Gary Baseman, Goya and illustrator Henrik Drescher.
Currently, Eckes is on a tirade making fun of the art world: its over-consumptive nature, the trials and tribulations as an artist. She takes advertisements from art magazines and leaves
her mark as it were: like a bathroom graffiti artist, like a dog on the street. The series she is working on is called Fuck Art and uses mostly sexual images as they seem to be the
most primal way for her to express her cynicism. Eckes will be showing some works from this series in Swarm's project space.
PREVIEW WORKS
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