This Friday! Steve MacDonald & Rachel Budde

Work by Steve MacDonald (San Francisco, CA) & Rachel Budde (Brooklyn, NY)
May 2nd- 31st 2008
Curated by Faythe Levine

Steven MacDonald, Cargo Ship 1, 2008
Canvas, Gesso, Thread 2' x 3'

Please join us for the opening reception May 2nd 7-10pm
Both artists will be in attendance from their respective coast!

For additional information & further print images please contact Faythe Levine

Curator's Statement:
I can't remember when I first came across the stitchery of San Francisco based artist Steve MacDonald, however, once I saw it, the bold lines and imagery was burned in my brain. MacDonald has shown his machine stitched wall based work in gallery's around the world, from Tokyo to Jerusalem and I am very pleased to bring his work to the walls of Milwaukee. Aside from his machine stitched gallery work, MacDonald has a creative resume that extends into all mediums and methods from film and music to fashion, including design work for Modest Mouse, Timbuk2 to name a few, of many, impressive clients. Since Paper Boat loves artists who cross the lines of the creative world we are happy to be selling a brand new line of MacDonald's t-shirts along with his show.

Along with MacDonald's wall based work will be the mixed media work of Brooklyn based artist Rachel Budde. Budde has recently been published in two books "Graffiti Women" by Nicholas Ganz and "Stencil Pirates" by Josh Macphee and has also assisted street artist SWOON from 2004-2007. For her upcoming exhibition at Paper Boat she will be installing a collection of her paintings in a way that references shrine building. Budde says "I hope to take the viewer into the paintings while also calling attention to the everyday objects outside of the paintings, creating a juxtaposition and a dialogue."

The combination of MacDonald and Budde's work will bring attention to urban landscapes, over-looked objects, and detail's of the handmade in innovative presentation and form. Both artists will be joining us from their respective coasts, please join us opening night, Friday May 2nd 7-10pm.


Steve MacDonald Artist Statement:
www.ramblinworker.com

Characteristic of Steve MacDonald's work is crimson thread, making its way across a sea of golden canvas and arriving at surreal destinations. A close-up examination of the red stitching is required in order to understand the laborious and compulsive nature of the process employed by nothing more than hands, paint and an old Singer sewing machine driving its red thread. The mood of the stitching varies from one painting to the next and many times within a single painting, describing the texture and lines of any given element; whether it be foliage, water, the grooves carved into a mountainside or lineament of buildings. Tailored patches of peaks, fog, superstructure and shrubbery adorn these unusually luminous vistas, a perfect backdrop for myth and magic.

Read an interview with Steve MacDonald on Razor Apple HERE

Rachel Budde Artist Statement:

In my work, I am attempting to express (through a multiplicity of symbolic images) a relationship between the ethereal and the mundane, the sacred and the profane. An individual’s physical orientation can contradict that individual’s ideological, spiritual or political orientation, one is able to exist on many levels within one space. I am interested in the places where art and the everyday meet, whether it be through adornment of a car, or through creating religious shrines in a home. Adornment and ritual infuse banality with a sense of transcendence. Symbols in our churches or on our billboards are a part of a continuum of evolving ancient symbols; symbols that maybe profane in a contemporary context may have at one time been sacred. Symbols flip and flop, and I am interested in a symbols ability to carry historical residue with it, creating vast complexities within each given symbol. My aim is to take my own interpretation and experience with a number of given symbols and activate them, adding yet another layer to a symbolic history.