October 4th - 29th
Noxious Fumes
Group Exhibition - Opening October 4th, 7-10pm
Group Show with:
Annie Owens • Kathi Olvias • Andy Clarkston • Brian M Viveros • Louis Fleishchauer
Chet Zar • Steve Cvinar • Terribly Odd • Chris Peters • Tin • Todd Cameron • Clint Carney
Davey Wong • Doctor A • UNKL
I have the most esteemed honor of being the feature artist for November, 2007 on
underground art union
This site has featured some of the most prominent artists in the underground art movement.
the likes of Chet Zar, Michael Hussar, and Travis Louie just to name a few.
Please take a moment to visit the site and make sure you check out the gallery pages of all the other fantastic artists.
Interview:
www.undergroundartunion.com/code/interviews/interview004.html
Gallery Page:
www.undergroundartunion.com/code/gallery/artists/stimpert/stimpert.html
Boise Weekly Artist Profile ~ May 16th 2007
read the orginal article on the boise weekly website
Pouring Heavy Metal
Artist Samuel Stimpert lets it flow
By Katy Dang
photo credit ~ Dallas Dean
The process of turning a chunk of metal into liquid and then into a metal sculpture is truly something to behold. The metal is melted into a glowing, flowing liquid, unrecognizable as the solid form that it usually takes. It goes from a bright yellow to a raging, rosy red, taking on the colors of a coastal sunset as it sets into its new form. This is a process that has fascinated artists for centuries. The alchemy of changing lead into gold is one thing: changing liquid into an original sculpture is another thing altogether, but with similar connotations. Sculptor Samuel Stimpert relishes all aspects of the process.
In general, Stimpert is a person who makes things happen. He is well-known as one of the founders of Visual Arts Collective (VAC), which has become the hub of progressive art in Boise since opening in 2005. Stimpert runs the gallery with his wife, Anneliessa, and a core of committed volunteers. He takes an active role in the foundry at BSU, helping to facilitate pours. He also produces his own artwork: sculptures that confront their audience with uncomfortable, apocalyptic images that command attention and also show the subtle interaction of the materials that he uses.
While he puts in the effort to make these things happen, he also has the sense to let them occur naturally. In each of these projects, he puts the process in motion and controls the details to facilitate the activity, but allows the freedom to let things manifest as they will.
Stimpert was born and raised in Caldwell, Idaho. He was brought up surrounded by art: His father, Bob Stimpert, was an art teacher at South Junior High School for 30 years. "I've been throwing ceramics my whole life," says the younger Stimpert. He originally followed a path with a much different creative bent, earning a degree in culinary arts from Boise State. After some time in the food industry, he decided to pursue a degree in graphic design. It was during this time that Stimpert's life changed course.
"I took a sculpture class from Francis Fox, and that was it," Stimpert recalls. "I dropped all of the graphic design plans and started focusing on making sculpture." He was able to work with Fox at the metal pours at Boise State, which has a gas-fired foundry that melts bronze and aluminum. He immersed himself in the various stages of the process and experimented with both approaches to casting: the ceramic shell and the direct pour method. Along the way, he became enamored with the process of the pour. "For me, it is as much about doing it, as it is about the end product," says Stimpert. "I love the whole process, from melting down used car parts to casting them into a form of your own design."
"Sam was a student, and now he is a friend," says Fox. "The way that he works is very direct and spontaneous. He just loves working with metal."
Professor Tamsie Ringler from Mt. Hood Community College introduced Stimpert to cast-iron pouring at a summer workshop in 2003. Iron pours are very involved and take three or four days to do. They use a different type of foundry known as a cupolette, which is fired using spent coal (coke). The first iron pour was an intense undertaking for Stimpert, who worked with the molten metal pour from 5 a.m. to midnight. "I actually got heat stroke and physically ill," he says. "The theme for that pour became: 'Pour metal--puke--sleep--pour metal." Stimpert took on an independent project with Fox to build a cupolette for Boise State, and "Floyd" was completed in 2003.
Stimpert's own work includes striking imagery. His Siddhartha Gotama in Gas Mask is a life-sized vision of the Hindu Buddha. Stimpert shows the prince in traditional robes, sitting cross-legged, with a gas mask on his face. It is the second in a series called "Icons" that Stimpert has been working on for over six years. The first was Madonna and Child Enthroned in Gas Mask. "That particular image came out of a dream that I had just after 9/11," says Stimpert. "I dreamt that the Virgin Mary came to me wearing a gas mask. She was worried that her baby was going to be born deformed. "I think the religious icons wearing gas masks make the comment that even the gods aren't safe from our destruction," says Stimpert. The Siddhartha Gotama in Gas Mask sculpture is currently in the B.O.D.Y Show at Studio on 4th Gallery in Reno, Nevada.
The image of the gas mask is used in many of Stimpert's sculptures. "To me, they are a symbol of triumph and defeat at the same time," he explains. "They provide clean air and allow you to breathe in toxic environments. They indicate a cause and an effect at the same time.
"It's all a part of the hypocrisy of the human experience," he continues. "I think we're all hypocrites in a way. I fancy myself an environmentalist, but I drive a big truck. People wear silver jewelry and use items made from clay, and those materials come from strip mining, from raping the earth. We all live that way, constantly; every living thing is that way. And maybe that's what we're supposed to do. I mean, I want to recycle, and I want to do good, yet I still have to live." Stimpert often lets his work take on a form of its own.
"One of the things I find most interesting about Sam's work is his process," says artist Sue Latta. "He is very loose, and allows the materials to do what they do without trying to control the outcome. He revels in the unpredictability.
"I think his work is a lot like his personality," says Latta. "You know that his hand has been in it, but he hasn't clasped so tightly that you still see his fingerprints. It's more like he starts the process and then just lets the natural outcomes happen."
Stimpert has found that running VAC keeps him inspired to keep creating new artwork. "We've been really busy, so I haven't had much time, but at the same time, being at the gallery has piqued my interest in doing more and more work," he says. "Now, the results just come in spurts instead of being a constant."
One of the eventual goals of VAC is to provide a campus for artists to be able to come together to create their work. "When you get out of school, you lose that community of people working in different mediums in the same area, who help each other out and push each other along," says Stimpert. He also envisions creating a traveling foundry that can be taken to schools, particularly in rural areas where farmers often cast their own tools. "I think that could be a cool way to get kids interested in art, and also bring their fathers into the process. I'd like to show that metal and cast work can be accessible. You don't have to pay big bucks and send it to a foundry. I want people to know that they can do it themselves."
Rest assured that Sam Stimpert will keep up his work with VAC and keep taking his art further. "His work is very detailed, very interesting, and a little bit controversial," says his father, Bob Stimpert. "He pushes the limits, but that's what artists are supposed to do."
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REVIEW OF B.O.D.Y SHOW IN Reno News and Review
Read the original article on the Reno News and Review Website
Body parts
B.O.D.Y.
Reno News and Review
By Chad Sorg
We know that B.O.D.Y. is an art exhibition. By the title, we can figure out the theme. But ask what the acronym stands for, and you'd better be ready to hear a variety of lewd, rude, crude and purely nonsensical responses, none of them serious--"Butts, Orgasm, Dick, Yo-Yo," for instance. Candace Nicol, artist and B.O.D.Y.'s organizer, could offer only this to clarify: "It's open for interpretation."
Nicol, 40ish, with an abundance of giggles and a warm, chipper demeanor, teaches art at Truckee Meadows Community College. She's married, has a daughter, and creates mixed media art incorporating photos of the male nude. In recent exhibitions in which she's been featured, the artist's recurrent theme has become obvious: She wants us to see more naked men.
With B.O.D.Y., Nicol invited sculptors, painters, performance artists and printmakers who she knows to exhibit here in Reno with her. Five of the artists are from Boise, Idaho, where Nicol studied art. One is from Maryland, and one is from Lake Tahoe. Three, including Nicol, are Renoites.
Nicol's two photography and resin works feature the only naked men on view, though a frighteningly giant testicle-like wax and latex ball hangs from a frighteningly sharp steel hook gracing the center of the exhibit space. Across the room from this piece is a work made of 35 clear resin blocks hung from hooks with what looks like bloody smears and violent red gouges on 31 of them.
Sue Latta made both of these pieces, and she explains that the inspiration came from seeing "suspension," where people pierce their skin with hooks and hang their bodies from the ceiling while the skin's stretching accommodates the weight. The big hung ball renders this practice quite realistically.
Latta says the resin blocks on the wall are a "calendar reference," and the piece is called "Only Women Bleed." Titled after an Alice Cooper song, the artwork clearly refers to menstruation, but more pointedly, it deals with "cutters," or those who make slices on their arms, legs and other bodily locations with a razor in an unhealthy effort to cope with stress. The artist indulges that her daughter is/was a cutter.
Also gripping the audience's attention is a life-size cast-iron Buddha draped in saffron fabric and a cast-iron gas mask. The Buddha, created by Samuel Stimpert, is a reference to our current state of the world, in which countries such as India have taken over the iron industry. The United States, with fairly strict environmental protection laws, can no longer compete with other countries that host lax pollution laws. Iron production is dangerously pollutant. For this reason, there is only one iron foundry left in this country.
Conceptually tight, the India/Iron theme carries over in the form of a wall-mounted manhole cover halo with an Indian mandala design.
Poison, pollution and war are points Stimpert explores with two other works included in the show that present gas masks, in the words of the artist, "as a symbol of triumph and defeat."
B.O.D.Y. isn't an erotic display of the human form or a macabre exhibition of flesh. The varied meanings and analogies in the art point to our ongoing fascination with the human vessel. It is a high-minded display that deals with our curiosity.
But damn it, would somebody please explain what B.O.D.Y. really stands for?
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B.O.D.Y. art exhibit and Grambo Report live at Studio on 4th.
B.O.D.Y. opens at Studio on 4th, Saturday, April 28th, 2007, 7-10pm. The exhibit runs through May 20th and is open to the public Friday and Saturday, 10am-6pm. Studio on 4th is located at 432 East 4th Street, Reno, NV.
Nine artists from around the United States are working with concepts surrounding the body-focusing on manipulations of the human form, biomorphic variations, and how technology has changed the way we communicate and interact with each other. Artists exhibiting at STUDIO on 4th include Isaac Grambo, Angela Katona-Batchelor, EunKang Koh, Sue Latta, Candace Nicol, Jeremy Mayer, Nolan Preece, Samuel F. Stimpert and Justin Strom.
On Saturday, April 28th at 7:30PM during the opening gala, Studio on 4th will feature THE GRAMBO REPORT, the nation's leading source for public access cable news. Isaac Grambo, a Boise, ID performance/video artist and political activist is teaming with Studio on 4th, for a once-in-a-lifetime event. An episode of the acclaimed series will be taped in front of a live audience, outside of Idaho, for the FIRST TIME. After the program, Anchor Isaac Grambo will be available to answer questions and sign autographs. Don't miss your chance to be a part of this ground-breaking news powerhouse IN PERSON!
Candace Nicol, the curator of B.O.D.Y. believes the artists’ works weave together a political/social narrative that exemplifies the complexities of the human body. “I chose 4 artists working in this area and 5 artists working outside of Nevada. I wanted a diversity of medium and content. The works being shown range from three-dimensional resin casts, from worn-out typewriter figures, from cast-steel gas masks that haunt at war ridden hysteria – to gigantic male and female nudes layered under a mist of resin and screenprints. One artist, Nolan Preece, long-time Nevadan artist will be showing his ‘Nolangrams,’ a photo process that accentuates sensuous curves and suggestive shapes that allude to the body erotic. Another artist, EunKang Koh, newest transplant to Reno and printmaking professor at UNR will showcase etchings from her series ‘Menu for Dinner’. In her work, she depicts interactions between human/animal hybrid creatures to address this subject matter.”
Studio on 4th, also known as the Dream Factory, has developed and grown from the generosity of two men, artist Jim Zlokovich and business owner Mike Steedman. The multi-use space has been reserved for showcasing music, visual arts, performing arts and events in the Reno/Tahoe area. For more information contact Studio on 4th, 775-786-6460.
Contact Information:
Candace Nicol, B.O.D.Y. curator
info@candacenicol.com
Jim Zlokovich and Mike Steedman
Studio on 4th
432 East 4th Street, Reno, NV 89512
775-378-7720
Read the Review of this show
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GROUP SHOW
OPENS ~ Friday, February 2nd 2007
Featuring:
Kate Bowen, Angela Katona-Batchelor, Paste Eater, Kevin Flynn, Francis Fox, April Hoff, Nels Jensen, Sue Latta
Marcus Pierce, Erin Ruiz, Samuel Stimpert, Flint Wiesser, Ben Wilson
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Small Works @ Gallery Noir ~ Opening Reception 12•15•06
Chuck Hodi, Saryn Angel, Joshua Uren, Dani Vinokurov, Tatomir A.P., Diana Comstock, NOBODY, Meredith Hahn, Cyndee Arroyo, Aaron Acord, Paul Brogden, Michael Berman, Sarah Cole, Neil Simon Poyuzina, Erik Shearer, Aunia Kahn, David McNeley, Patrick Gothard, Garrett Robinson, Jason Miracle, Erin Palmisano, Colin Harbut, James Thayer, Domenico Foschi, Rachael Hammond, Allison Pasarew, Jesus Raudiel, Julia Taylor-Brown, Nathan Cartwright, Alysa Pakkidis, David B. Cuzick, Meegan Nolan Cuzick, Samuel F Stimpert, Justin Ellis
Live Painting By: Carlos Vera (carlosvera.com)
Live painting by Joe Parker
Installations by Sonik (tranzmutations.com)
Performance Art by Aaron Acord
Special musical guests SON of SIX
Gallery Noir
Small Works: Friday December 15, 8-2am
Over 100 Originals for $300 or less
$7 @ the door
2032 Stoner Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
www.myspace.com/gallerynoir
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SMALL ~ Visual Arts Collective Anniversary Show! ~ Opening Reception 09•09•06
image: small by Laurie Blakeslee
VaC Anniversary Show
small work at small prices
09•09•06
doors at 7pm
featuring:
Angela Katona-Batchelor
Laurie Blakeslee
Kevin Flynn
Francis Fox
Sylvia Hamilton
Nels Jensen
Sue Latta
Amanda Riley
Samuel F. Stimpert
Flint Weisser
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VaC Gallery Grand Opening ~ 09•09•05
Boise Idaho, September 9, 2005 ~ The creators of The Cube will open the doors of Visual Arts Collective in the new Linen District at 1419 Grove Street! Full of creative, cultural energy and the passion of four locals involved in the arts, VaC has come together to support established and emerging artists, to offer a large and open space to show and to share a vision of artistic appreciation and enthusiasm with the community. Christophe Guigon, Corrin M Olson, Anneliessa Balk Stimpert and Samuel F Stimpert are thrilled to announce the opening of Boise’s newest and The Linen District’s first gallery!
With nearly 4000 square feet of exhibition space, VaC’s premiere will feature cast metal, metal and mixed media sculpture. In addition to visual art, VaC will host musical performances. According to Anneliessa, “Our goal with VaC is to offer the community an opportunity to experience many levels of art. Of course, all of our shows will be visual, but we are also bringing in audio by featuring musicians at each opening. We hope to blend music and art and offer our guests a unique experience that indulges all of the senses!”
Visual artists featured are Flint Weisser, Angela Katona-Batchelor, VaC founding members Samuel F Stimpert and Corrin M Olson, and mentor to the artists, Francis Fox.
Musical artist is Steve Fulton.
Friday, September 9, 2005.
1419 Grove Street, Boise Idaho in the new Linen District.
Doors at 7:00 p.m. Music at 8:00 and 9:30 p.m.
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THE CUBE ~ May 2nd - May 6th 2005
The Cube is an interactive art installation with the idea of uniting the public. By giving the public a space to express themselves, The Cube fosters the vision of VaC.
Designed and constructed by three of VaC’s founders, Corrin Olson, Christophe Guigon and Samuel F Stimpert, The Cube is based on the Do It exhibition model, developed by curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist and artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier. The basis of The Cube is a mobile artistic experience designed to involve the public in creating and determining art.
Originally erected on the campus of Boise State University, The Cube invited the public to engage in being an artist. In the four days The Cube was open to the public, people were provided an opportunity to talk, share, create and explore.
By creating this environment, the artists were able to connect with the public on a more personal level. Like much contemporary art, this is the primary goal of The Cube and VaC.
The goal of VaC encompass many artistic elements and it is the hope that Visual Arts Collective will bring artistic, creative opportunities to the Boise public as yet to be experienced.
Learn more about Do It Exhibition Model:
http://www.e-flux.com/projects/do_it/homepage/do_it_home.html
View the Cube Gallery