CCAI Divergence Exhibition

The Capital City Arts Initiative announces its exhibition, Divergence by artist Katie Lewis at the CCAI Courthouse Gallery from October 2, 2015 - January 21, 2016. CCAI will host a reception for the artist on Friday, October 2, 5-7pm and Ms. Lewis will give an artist talk at 5:30pm. The Courthouse is located at 885 E Musser Street, Carson City. The reception and the exhibition are free and the public is cordially invited. The gallery is open to the public Monday – Friday, 8am – 5pm.

Katie Lewis' exhibition, Divergence, presents an installation that revolves around the transformation of common materials over time. She begins by collecting data such as the number of steps taken each day, or the physical sensations in her body, or how we might move through a landscape. She devises tightly controlled systems of how these data will be visualized using limited materials for each piece like paper, pin holes, and graphite. The use of repetitive actions within a system begins to transform the materials into complex accumulations of visual information. The pinholes and graphite compile into a black mass and the holes drilled into paper begin to grow larger.

She is interested in how a controlled set of repeated actions can eventually lead the system to reach a breaking point—the paper begins to tear or is eaten away by the number of poked holes, the wall starts to crumble, the thread buries the pins beneath it’s web.

Ms. Lewis will be constructing her exhibition in the gallery from Monday, September 28 - Friday, October 2. The public is invited to visit the gallery to watch the exhibition's progress. She will give a short talk about her work and art processes at noon on Thursday, October 1, 12:15pm; the public is cordially invited.

Katie Lewis received her BA from Colorado College and her MFA from California College of the Arts. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art Luxembourg, Museum Rijswijk – The Netherlands, Stanford University, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco State University, and the Patricia Sweetow Gallery. In 2010 she was awarded a prestigious Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant. She has also been included in the publications The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography and Cartographies of Time both published by Princeton Architectural Press. She lives in Reno, Nevada.

Writer and artist Michele Carlson wrote the essay for Ms. Lewis' exhibition: It Might Just Fall Apart: The Works of Katie Holland Lewis. Ms. Carlson's art, primarily collaged drawings on paper, have been exhibited nationally at venues including Patricia Sweetow Gallery, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Intersection for the Arts, and Cerasoli Gallery, Los Angeles. She has received awards and fellowships from Kala Art Institute, San Francisco Arts Commission, and the Reader’s Digest Museum Foundation.

Ms. Carlson is a practicing artist, writer, educator, and curator whose trans-disciplinary research investigates the intersections of history, loss, power, and visual culture. Carlson was born in Seoul, Korea, but grew up in Seattle, WA where she attended the University of Washington. She received a BFA in Printmaking and BAs in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts and History. After her undergraduate work, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where she completed a Dual Degree MFA in Printmaking and MA in Visual & Critical Studies from the California College of the Arts where she is currently a Adjunct Professor. She lives in Oakland, California, and has officiated at four weddings.

During the exhibition, Ms. Lewis will give talks about her work to art students at Carson and Dayton high schools.

The Capital City Arts Initiative is an artist-centered organization committed to the encouragement and support of artists and the arts and culture of Carson City and the surrounding region. The Initiative is committed to community building for the area's diverse adult and youth populations through art projects and exhibitions, live events, arts education programs, artist residencies, and online projects.

This exhibition is funded with a Challenge America grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. CCAI is funded in part by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Nevada Arts Council, City of Carson City, U.S. Bank Foundation, Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the John and Grace Nauman Foundation.

For additional information, please visit CCAI’s website at www.arts-initiative.org.