The Out-of-Towners

DECEMBER 13, 2003 – JANUARY 17, 2004

Laura Amussen, Lily Cox-Richards, Harrison Haynes, George Jenne, & Michele Kong

The Out-of-Towners features the site specific and collaborative installations of five artists from outside of Washington and/or those new to town. The works in the exhibition compartmentalize natural elements, shapes and symbols through the artists' use of materials including linoleum flooring, hot glue, monofilament, earth, roots and light. Contemplating the promise of nature, The Out-of-Towners creates a place between the in and out of doors, the urban and the rural landscape, the winter and the spring. The exhibition seeks to relate the warm and exploding possibility of the natural world, through organic and inorganic materials, within the gallery setting, during the heart of winter.

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Laura Amussen lives and works in Towson, Maryland. Her installations and sculptures involve an accumulation of ephemeral materials, which are often deconstructed then precisely reconfigured. She has had solo exhibitions in Baltimore at the MFA City Gallery, Galerie Francoise Et Ses Freres, Morris A. Mechanic Theatre, School 33 Art Center, and most recently in Washington, DC at the Elizabeth Roberts Gallery. She was recently chosen by art critic Amei Wallach to participate in the Maryland Art Place Critic's Residency Program in Baltimore, MD and has been reviewed in the New York Times, Sculpture Magazine and more. She received her degree in Art from Towson University in 2002.

Lily Cox-Richard's vinyl floor installation offers one perspective of a sweetly iconic version of American hometown fantasy: the family farm. Before receiving her BFA in Jewelry/Metal Arts from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 2001, Lily spent a year "riding shotgun in an eighteen wheeler." From this experience, Lily created belt buckles inspired by the truckers' stories. Lily has exhibited at Southern Exposure in San Francisco, The Oakland Museum Collector's Gallery, the Octagon Center for the Arts in Iowa and most recently at WORKS in San Jose. Her work has been reviewed in Art in America, Trucker's News Magazine and is featured in the book Art of Northern California, Alcove Books, 2003. She lives in Centreville, Virginia and visits DC often.

Presenting a collaborative installation with George Jenne, Harrison Haynes routinely creates paintings and drawings that reconstruct scenes that assume the atmosphere of his childhood memories. Building up a repertoire of themes and images: carports, sheds, fallen trees, fauna, urban sprawl, overgrowth, undergrowth, kudzu, the woods at night, nostalgia, isolation, Harrison shows how people might behave amidst all of it. Harrison's work has been featured in exhibitions at the Conn Gallery Landrum, South Carolina, Juice Design in San Francisco, Space 1026 in Philadelphia, the Duke University Museum of Art, Sestosenso Gallery, Bologna, Italy and most recently in the exhibition Anima Botanica at Branch Gallery in New York. Harrison's work will be featured in Zing Magazine's Fall/Winter 2003/2004 Issue. Harrison received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1995. He lives and works in New York and he will relocate in the spring to Chapel Hill, NC.

George Jenne's work, like a single frame of motion picture film, freezes a story in a specific moment hinting to moments in the before and after. George has exhibited at the Craven Allen Gallery in Durham, NC, Inshallah Gallery in Los Angeles, Space 1026 in Philadelphia, PA and has solo exhibitions at ACME in Carborro, NC, Crook's Corner in Chapel Hill, NC and the Craven Allen Gallery. His films have been featured in the Fourth Annual Film Festival of Taiwan, the Flicker Film Festival in Chapel Hill, NC and the Central Florida Film Festival. George received his BFA in film/video from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1995. He lives and works in New York.

In the installation Drop, Michele Kong combines a suspended ceiling and lighting panels with handmade droplets of hot glue on monofilament. "The lowered ceiling brings the viewer in closer contact with the architecture, heightening awareness of the space; meanwhile the droplets clinging to the nearly imperceptible wisps of monofilament accentuate the tension between gravity and buoyancy in the piece." Most recently living in the Bay Area, Michele Kong received her MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2002 and her BFA in Studio Art from the University of Colorado in Boulder. Prior to the Bay Area, Michele lived in Brooklyn, Boulder, Italy, and Pasadena, CA. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Community College of Baltimore County Art Gallery, Woods-Gerry Gallery, Providence, RI, Emmanuel Gallery, Denver, CO, the Women's Arts Center & Gallery, Denver, CO and the SACI Gallery, Florence, Italy. In 2002, Michele received the President's Scholar Award, Rhode Island School of Design, and the Susan Irey Byrne Fellowship Award from the University of Colorado-Boulder. The 2002 RISD collaborative project, 9/11 Memorial Proposal, of which she was a participant, was featured on NBC's The Today Show, the Sunday Enterprise, and The Providence Journal. Michele recently moved to Washington, DC where she lives, works and teaches.