Upcoming Exhibits

A longtime Cleveland mixed media artist, Dott von Schneider received her CEAP from the Ecole des Beaux-arts de Rouen in 1996. Her work has been exhibited internationally and featured in publications such as Kölnisch Rundshau, The Plain Dealer, Cleveland Magazine, Jane Magazine, Cleveland Scene, and Northern Ohio Live. She also functions as Cultural Maraca and owner of Miller Schneider Gallery. She writes, “Of late my work has been about manipulating non-traditional materials as commentary on the physical place I am at any given time. Latitudes and Longitudes is based on my two week transcontinental drive to study the living erosion of the United States.”

Born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Altgilbers earned BFAs from Cleveland Institute of Art and Ursuline College before relocating to the East Coast, earning her MFA from Montclair State University (NJ) and currently teaching at SUNY Old Westbury College on Long Island. “Relic” can be seen reworking the post-industrial ruin exhibiting widely in rustbelt galleries these days (see Anne Trubek’s review-essay in the last issue of CAN Journal). Yet, rather than thematizing human waste against a resilient natural backdrop, Altigebers’ work offers photo tableaus of small survivors of nature’s own vast havoc. She writes, “Some of the pieces are from the beach after hurricane Sandy,” for example, “a sea sponge covered in small coral” against “a damaged home after hurricane Sandy. . . . This work is a celebration of objects that survive time and trauma.”

In a series of landscape paintings, Seward explores our collective use of technology, set against our desire to preserve the natural environment.

For the past five years, “Stealth Towers,” has been the subject of this inquiry, as real and imagined cell-phone towers are camouflaged as pine trees, church steeples, flag poles, barn silos, and totem poles. Depicted with traditional techniques, and with a nod to the Hudson River School style of painting, these works place communications infrastructure in a Romantic, sometimes religious, context.

“My attempt is to seduce the viewer with a beautifully painted image, but then discover a betrayal with a narrative contrary to the original emotion. I’m as conflicted about living in the post-modern world as anyone else, and present these works as open-ended questions.”

This new body of work looks at another current technological wonder framed against the sky: drone aircraft. The on-going quest to control the sphere geo-politically – black operations since the Cold War – continues as stealth drones dominate the skies over domestic and foreign lands. As unwitting ambassadors of American policy, drone planes demonstrate our reliance on technological solutions while, literally, being personally removed from the equation.

“I’m hoping that the viewer considers this surveillance tool from another angle, by juxtaposing the invasiveness of remote technologies with pristine landscape and, sometimes, to explore stylization of the piece from a non-Western tradition.”

peterseweard.com