ART – N – STUFF III is Ejecta Project’s third annual, seasonally celebratory exhibition that pairs affordable works of art with carefully curated objects for sale. Unique paintings, prints, photographs, and sculptures are displayed alongside retail items that echo the theme, form, or narrative of the artworks. The exhibition features uncommon or quirky games, toys, books, and domestic miscellany that have been carefully selected for their utilitarian function, elegant design, or nostalgic simplicity.
Exhibiting artists include Amy June Bates, David Byrne, Anthony Cervino, Jason Ferguson, Alex Gingrow, Craig Hill, Chloe Irla, Kirsten Olson, ChaeWon Moon, Paul E. Shortt, and Jon Weary.
We invite viewers to read the labels on select images to find out more about the connections – narrative, personal, and thematic – between the art and the stuff.
All works of art are for sale unless indicated otherwise. Quantities of merchandise are limited. If you love it, buy it quickly!
Stained Glass Gummy Worms
David Byrne
2001
ink jet print, Epson Archival Inks, edition of 100, to benefit the Center for New Media, Maryland Institute College of Art
NFS
Jerry Saltz
Random House, 2020
$18
Although he may be best known as a musician, David Byrne is also a writer, filmmaker and visual artist. When Byrne installed an exhibition of his photographs at the Maryland Institute College of Art in the fall 2001, where Anthony Cervino (co-director of Ejecta Projects) was then the Assistant Director of Exhibitions, Byrne produced a limited-edition and affordable series of photographs. Tony worked closely with David Byrne on the installation of the exhibition and came home from work that week with one of his signed prints, Stained Glass Gummy Worms. The work is now a reminder of our brush with a successful artist, a master of many disciplines.
For those of us who haven’t achieved the artistic success of David Byrne, we can turn to art critic Jerry Saltz for advice on How to be an Artist. Saltz’s first lesson is “Don’t Be Embarrassed.” He writes, “I get it. Making art can be humiliating, terrifying, leave you feeling foul, exposed, like getting naked in front of someone else for the first time. You often reveal things about yourself that others may find appalling, weird, boring, or stupid. People may think you’re abnormal or a hack. Fine. When I work, I feel sick to my stomach with thoughts like None of this is any good. It makes no sense. But art doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t even need to be good. So, don’t worry about being smart and let go of being ‘good.’”
Jerry Saltz is the senior art critic at New York magazine and its entertainment site Vulture. He is the winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism. David Byrne is a singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, artist, actor, writer, music theorist, and filmmaker, who was a founding member and the principal songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist of the American new wave band Talking Heads.
Crate (For Mother)
Anthony Cervino
2013
wood, paint, hardware
price: a mother’s love
Cubebot®
David Weeks for Areaware
beech, elastic, water-based paint
Recommended for ages 3+
$10 each
Anthony Cervino’s Crate (For Mother) is an abstracted, tongue-in-cheek portrait of his own mother. The work belongs to a series of Cervino’s sculptures that consider the formal and conceptual significance of crates as protective structures for transporting and storing works of art. Here, the art is imagined at once as the cargo within and the crate itself. The life-size form, with its profoundly stylized, stout stature and small size, also draws an affinity with the oldest and one of the most famous depictions of a mother, the Venus of Willendorf (ca. 28,000 – 25,000 BCE). Cervino’s yellow crates may at first seem at odds with the maternal roundedness and dense materiality of this paleolithic fertility goddess, but the geometry of this stone age mother, specifically the emphasis on her large breasts and stylized genitals, is echoed in Cervino’s angled rectangular prism and large red arrow. It may not be apparent at first that this sculpture evokes the Venus of Willendorf and other religious statuary that celebrate a Holy Mother, but Cervino toggles between multiple referents, jumping from one art-historical object to another, to honor (and store) his mother.
Cervino has not been the only creator to reimagine the human form as cubist sculpture. Cubebot® is a wooden toy robot inspired by Japanese Shinto Kumi-ki puzzles. Made from wood and elastic, the Cubebot puzzle can be positioned to hold dozens of poses, but there is only one solution. When it's time to rest, Cubebot folds back into a perfect cube.
Anthony Cervino is the co-director of Ejecta Projects and is Associate Professor of Art at Dickinson College. David Weeks is a New York-based designer, who founded his namesake studio in DUMBO in 1996 as an umbrella for his diverse interests, ranging from metal fabrication techniques to contemporary toy culture.
Untitled from the Super Freaky Memories Series
Craig Hill
collage and decollage on paper
2018
$300
artwork by Craig Hill
holiday greeting card
$4.00 for two cards
Artist Craig Hill collects comic books, cheap plastic toys, vintage wallpaper, old magazines, and sewing patterns. Hill is interested in the histories of these objects, their messages of modern life, and their connections to cultural nostalgia. The Santa at the center of Hill’s collage is evocative of the imagined frenzy of a young child’s Christmas morning, as wrapping paper, toys, comics, and kitsch are strewn across the floor and under the tree. This sense of excess, punctuated both by religious iconography (Jesus in white robes on the left) and overt sexuality (a buxom brunette in distress at the right), is emphasized by the density of his composition. The swirl of colors and fragments of texts suggests a psychedelic, almost dreamlike flashback to one’s own childhood, or to a mid-century American fantasy of violence, religion, and desire – a Super Freaky Memory.
Designed and printed by Ejecta Projects, the accompanying note card reproduces Craig Hill’s collage. Send it to family and friends this holiday season as a unique greeting in these distanced and disorienting days; it will also reflect a love and longing for seemingly simpler times.
Craig Hill is Associate Professor of Art at Kenyon College, where he teaches drawing, painting, and printmaking. In using well-known childhood imagery such as super heroes, toys, and ray guns, Hill creates works of art that often examine issues of masculinity and male rites of passage.
I want to be able to find the light switches at your house in the dark
Alex Gingrow
flashe, ink, graphite, colored pencil, and gesso on paper
2020
NFS
Designed by Ejecta Projects
sassafras and aluminum
packaged with 100% beeswax candles and Swedish matches
$25
This work by Alex Gingrow uses the structure and form of diagrammed sentences as a response to a longing for order and structure in the midst of chaos, both political and personal. The verse is poetic, evocative of desire and intimacy, but here is also constrained or interpreted by an almost scientific, pictorial representation of a sentence. At once, Gingrow synthesizes verse and order as both text and picture. The rational structure of her syntax is seemingly at odds with this allusion to a more sentimental yearning to find one’s entry into art and poetry, as well as to know and love another person.
Trå is the third annual tealight candle holder designed by Ejecta Projects. Inspired by Gingrow’s connotation of darkness and light in a domestic space, as well as the diagonal diagramming of her sentence, this candle holder mirrors the linearity as well as the narrative of the accompanying artwork. Translated from the Norwegian, Trå can be understood as to step or tread, and here might imply the careful walk through a dim house, but it will also bring light – in this season of darkness – to your loved relations.
Alex Gingrow is a New York-based artist who makes mixed-media drawings and paintings through which she has unflinchingly addressed war, racism, and the business of art. The product of a long line of storytellers, she incorporates text into her work, which is always derived from a larger narrative.
Designed by Ejecta Projects
sassafras and aluminum
packaged with 100% beeswax candles and Swedish matches
$25
Designed by Ejecta Projects
sassafras and aluminum
packaged with 100% beeswax candles and Swedish matches
$25
Amy June Bates
2020
acrylic on canvas
$600
drawing and colored pencils, custom notepad, eraser, pencil sharpener
$10
In a painting by illustrator and artist Amy June Bates, a figure with gently mottled face and hands turns her head, closes her eyes, as her shoulders slump forward over her lap. In this unselfconscious, almost vulnerable pose, we understand this woman’s weariness as an echo of the ceaselessness of this year, the larger anxieties that loom, the tasks left unfinished. We have a deep, sympathetic knowing of her exhaustion, and yet, there is beauty and dynamism in the areas of seeming unfinish in the painting. Bates leaves the expressive, gestural marks of her paintbrush visible, and these traces of her process offer a sense of both kinetic and potential energy; we imagine the touch of Bates’s hand and the imagined movement of her sitter. The viewers are asked to complete the portrait in their minds’ eye – to consider the assured lines of the woman’s body amid the expanse of white ground behind her. In other words, Bates draws us into this intimate and seemingly brief moment of repose, as well as into her own active artistic process.
The Drawing Kit invites us not just to consider this painting in progress, but also, with all the tools necessary (pencils, eraser, and notepad illustrated by Amy June Bates), to sketch on our own, to record the moments when we too might have a chance to pause, to rest, and to look ahead.
Amy June Bates is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed illustrator, writer, and artist and has published over 50 books. Most recently, she has written and illustrated When I Draw a Panda (Simon and Schuster, 2020); this book (available for purchase at the Whistlestop Bookshop) similarly encourages intuitive, creative artmaking without constraints.
Throw the Rope Between Two Holes
ChaeWon Moon
silkscreen, spray paint, vinyl, grommet on wood panel
2018
NFS
Areaware
steel and beech
$20
South Korean artist ChaeWon Moon appropriates motifs from instruction manuals, safety signs, and warning labels in her collaged paintings to question the inefficacies, restrictions, and rigid notions of faultlessness. Moon’s directions are enigmatic; the title advises Throw the Rope Between Two Holes, yet the images do not obey her command. The figure throws the rope in the opposite direction of the holes; a face is doused by eye wash, and a white square at the center of the composition reminds us of opportunities to interpret, to act, and to go one’s own way. In focusing on the defiance of orders, Moon invites us to reconsider perceived failures and the possibilities for finding unprescribed purposes and paths.
The accompanying wooden fish at first seems like it might belong to the somewhat nautical scene depicted in Moon’s painting. But, it too is a multifunctional object, a tool that could assist (or not?) in the obscure instructions Moon offers. Designed by Axel Brechensbauer for Areaware, this combination folding knife and bottle opener can be used while camping, picnicking, boating, and fishing. Cut with its knife blade fin, open a bottle with its tail, and imagine yourself in new places and spaces.
ChaeWon Moon is an artist currently living in South Korea. She received her MFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Areaware is a New York City-based producer of everyday objects that are functional, unusual, humorous, and poetic. Artist and designer Axel Brechensbauer is based in Sweden.
Jon Weary
12-layer screenprint on Stonehenge paper
edition of 24, published by Pressure Club, Philadelphia
2020
$250.00
Makers Cabinet
solid brass, carbon steel blade, and beech base
$75
While digging through a family archive, artist Jon Weary found cross-stitch patterns that had been hand colored by his late mother. She used a series of symbols on the black and white patterns to show her progress and to organize the process of the embroidery. Weary’s print mimics this process of using color to measure time, to determine design, and to connect his creative practice with his mother’s. The impetus for making the print is hauntingly personal for Weary, but the print also is suggestive of early American samplers, a craft used for educational and domestic instruction. Samplers were used for learning the alphabet, illustrating a variety of possible decorative motifs in sewing, and reciting religious sayings or proverbs. Weary imparts this folksy wisdom in the margins of his print – “inch by inch, anything is a cinch” – and appropriates the flowery designs of his predecessors.
The Shakers, a utopian, religious sect founded in the 18th century that promoted pacifism, gender equity, and communal living, often displayed these tenets through their own embroidered samplers. The central text of Weary’s work, “Lay Me Low Where Mother May Find Me,” at once is a poignant intimation of his mother and a more oblique allusion to the matriarchal revelations of the Shakers. In addition to their dedication to hard work, simplicity, labor, equity between men and women, the Shakers believed that making something well was in itself "an act of prayer.” Similarly, Høvel celebrates simple, traditional craftsmanship, manual labor, and perfection. Høvel is an entirely reimagined pencil sharpener; the pencil plane enables the user to whittle a pencil to any desired point. Its unique mechanism prevents the lead from breaking, unlike common sharpeners that twist and snap graphite.
Jon Weary is an artist based in Philadelphia. Unframed copies of this limited edition print are also for sale from The Pressure Club, an artist printshop and gallery in Philadelphia (thepressureclub.wordpress.com). The founders of Makers Cabinet are Odin Ardaugh (Norway), Noah Bier, (London, UK), and Benjamin Weininger (Los Angeles, CA).
Jon Weary
12-layer screenprint on Stonehenge paper
edition of 24, published by Pressure Club, Philadelphia
2020
$250.00
Jon Weary
12-layer screenprint on Stonehenge paper
edition of 24, published by Pressure Club, Philadelphia
2020
$250.00
Jon Weary
12-layer screenprint on Stonehenge paper
edition of 24, published by Pressure Club, Philadelphia
2020
$250.00
Jason Ferguson
3D printed replica of the artist’s skill
Limited edition of 12 + 1 artist’s proof (includes certificate of authenticity and custom hardwood display base)
$1250
Kimberly Mead and James Young, illustrations by Prem Krishnan
162 cards, ages 17+
$25 for the game, $12 for the expansion pack
Jason Ferguson’s Anamorph (half-scale) is a 3D-printed sculpture generated using CT scans of the artist’s skull. The replica has been skewed drastically and reveals the accurate skull from only one vantage point. The artist has collaborated with medical teams at the University of Michigan Health System and Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago for his body-based works. The sculpture reflects innovations both in medical technologies and 3D-printing, and also pays homage to art historical motifs. The skewed skull is a direct reference to Hans Holbein the Younger’s painting The Ambassadors (1533). Like Holbein, Ferguson employs anamorphic perspective and asks viewers to move around the work to find the right location for seeing the skull accurately. In addition to providing a visual puzzle, the skull, for Holbein, Ferguson, and countless other Renaissance artists, serves as a momento mori, a reminder of the inevitability of death.
Although Renaissance painters were well versed in momento mori, contemporary artistic and cultural discourse often shies away from this difficult topic. Morbid Curiosity is a game that offers fascinating trivia and prompts players to engage in delightfully dark discussions. Game designer Kimberly Mead explains its origins, “I was working at a grief center, facilitating a children’s group. … The kids approached a subject most adults see as grim and taboo. They asked all sorts of questions that would make most adults squirm. The kids were simply… curious. I had a realization: Adults need something to help them to regain their wonder with death.” The game is designed to allow players to move between conversation and playfulness, ultimately reigniting our innate curiosities about mortality.
Jason Ferguson is Professor in the School of Art & Design at Eastern Michigan University. He often uses processes from scientific disciplines to create works of art. Kimberly Mead works as a grief and trauma therapist in Austin, Texas and is an accomplished photographer. James Young is the front man for the Austin based Irish punk band. Prem Krishnan is a Seattle-based artist and has worked in the gaming industry for decades.
Jason Ferguson
3D printed replica of the artist’s skill
Limited edition of 12 + 1 artist’s proof (includes certificate of authenticity and custom hardwood display base)
$1250
Jason Ferguson
3D printed replica of the artist’s skill
Limited edition of 12 + 1 artist’s proof (includes certificate of authenticity and custom hardwood display base)
$1250
Jason Ferguson
3D printed replica of the artist’s skill
Limited edition of 12 + 1 artist’s proof (includes certificate of authenticity and custom hardwood display base)
$1250
Kimberly Mead and James Young, illustrations by Prem Krishnan
162 cards, ages 17+
$25 for the game, $12 for the expansion pack
Chloe Irla
acrylic on canvas
2020
$450
Brendan Ravenhill for Areaware
beech
$10
From her series titled Snowballtimore Paintings, Chloe Irla’s work affectionately documents the snowball stands in Baltimore and its suburbs that sell syrupy shaved ice confections from small shacks and trailers tucked into alleys, attached to rowhouses, or pop up on the edges of parking lots. In Dean’s Shaved Ice, Irla pays homage not only to Baltimore’s claim to such rudimentary structures, but also to modernist landscape paintings of the 1920s and 1930s. In these historical works, artists painted vernacular architecture and industrial scenes with a sincere appreciation for seemingly banal sites, and similarly, Irla depicts a specifically American landscape particular to Baltimore and its environs. Here, her square façade – with its lined siding, closed window hand-painted sign, gridded sidewalks, and carefully considered abstracted shadows – also shares with her modernist predecessors a utilitarian interest in plain craftsmanship as well as a Cubist sensibility.
The bent nail bottle opener – with its ergonomic beech handle and inlaid magnets that catch the bottle cap and can adhere to a refrigerator – echoes the straightforward, practical simplicity of the makeshift snowball stand. The color-blocked tips also parallel the bold rectangle in the center of Dean’s Shaved Ice, as painting and object both invite you to enjoy a cold treat.
Chloe Irla is Assistant Professor of Art at McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland, where she teaches new media and digital art. Irla has been a resident artist at the Vermont Studio Center and the Wassaic Project. As an educator, she has also taught studio art courses at MICA and the University of Maine at Farmington. Brendan Ravenhill is a designer based in Los Angeles. The products made in his studio are devoid of excess and ornament, striving for a logical celebration of physics, material, and craft.
Kirsten Olson
2020
prices as marked ($15 – $30/each depending on size)
Kirsten Olson’s work is inspired by the far North and her time learning about the rich histories and narratives of Northern Native Culture in Alaska. Her forms and patterns recall the shapes of baskets, hats, mukluk patterns and ivory objects. Olson uses a variety of glazes to achieve subtle differences in texture and color. The vases appear both organic and geometric and evoke abstracted landscapes with rocky boulders, willowy tree trunks, and steely skies. While they are functional vessels for flowers and foliage, the beautifully hand-crafted ceramics can also be displayed as wall sculptures – singularly, in pairs, or groups.
Based in Carlisle, PA, Kirsten Olson has a shop open to the public at 34 W. Pomfret Street, where she sells a wide variety of her ceramic art and objects. She received her MFA from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. Olson’s background in anthropology has encouraged her to make profound connections between culture, community, and the objects used for daily rituals.
Shortt’s contribution to Art-N-Stuff III includes selections of books designed and self-published under the moniker Shortt Editions. Through his own press Shortt works with a mixture of digital printing, Risograph printing, and laser cutting technologies to create innovative, sometimes political, and always witty works of art. The books on display (and also for sale in the gallery) refer directly to identity and social conventions, the often fuzzy distinctions between private and public spaces, and provide humorous critiques of the all too baffling worlds of art and publishing.
Paul Shortt received his MFA in New Media Art from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his BFA in Painting from the Kansas City Art Institute. His videos have been shown at the Museum of the Moving Image, The Phillips Collection and Whitespace Gallery. He has been in numerous group shows in DC, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, and New York City. He has participated in residencies at The Luminary, in St. Louis, MO and at Montgomery College in Silver Springs, MD. His works usually engage the public in physical interactions and conversation that examine everyday experiences and cultural norms often in humorous ways through video, books, performance and temporary public art. He has participated in the Printed Matter Art Book Fairs in New York City and Los Angeles in addition to art book fairs in Detroit, Kansas City and Baltimore. His artist books are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, and the Fisher Fine Arts Library at the University of Pennsylvania. Shortt has spoken about his work at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, China and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri. He has been written about in Hyperallergic, the Washington Post, Bmore Art and Review Magazine. Shortt formerly worked as the New Media Curator for Arlington Cultural Affairs in Arlington County, VA. Shortt is currently based in Florida.