Kent Manske: Making Sense

Kent Manske: Making Sense
March 21–April 28, 2024

NY2CA Gallery
617 1st St, Benicia, California
Gallery Hours: Thursday–Sunday, 12–5pm

Kent Manske, Landscape, 2024

Kent Manske: Making Sense at NY2CA Gallery presents original prints and artist books from multiple bodies of work that demonstrate the conceptual breath and creative practice of an artist whose well-being requires making visual narratives about the nature of things and matters of conscious. The artist, Kent Manske, considers his art practice as serious play. His work addresses the challenges of our complex times while celebrating the opportunity to reflect, learn, provoke and be more resilient.

Work in this exhibition explores human behavior, the environment, biology, aging, morality, politics and knowledge systems through many lenses including curiosity, spectacle, wonder, and empathy. Manske’s highly symbolic works are visual records of thoughts, feelings, and fears that seek understanding and insight while contributing to the visual language system he has developed over the last four decades.

Kent Manske, from Existential Epistemologies, 2024

EVENTS

Saturday, March 23
Artist’s Talk: Printmaking, 3–4pm

Kent Manske will describe the process of making hand-pulled prints including screen printing, etching & intaglio, relief, lithography, collagraph, and monoprints. He will bring the printing plates and tools used to make prints. He will address what is an original print, what is a reproduction, and things to consider when investing in prints.

Exhibition Opening Reception, 5–7pm
By email invite only. Subscribe to email list at ny2cagallery.com

Saturday, April 20
Artist’s Talk: Artist Books, 3–4pm

Kent Manske will share a brief history of art that takes book form. He will use books in the exhibition to talk about conceptual and technical approaches to making artist books. He will talk about who collects artist’s books and why.

NY2CA Gallery One Year Anniversary Celebration, 5–7pm
Live printing event. Take home a print.
By email invite only. Subscribe to email list at ny2cagallery.com

Kent Manske, Filter, 2024

EXHIBITION STATEMENT

I regard what I do as serious play. Asking uneasy questions feeds my studio practice. How does one make sense of the complex times we live in (pandemics, genocide, glacial meltdown, global mass extinctions, artificial intelligence)? How do we grapple with systems of control (authoritarianism, disinformation, algorithmic prompts, book banning, loyalty oaths, teaching restrictions) that deny these realities? We have many challenges here at the top of the food chain.  

Paying attention, not being reactionary, and staying grounded is challenging. It’s exhausting to be constantly trying to decipher fact from fiction, information from noise, genuine beliefs from tribal influences. Navigating reality can be disheartening, but cherishing the light sometimes requires exposing darkness—processing concerns and moral predicaments in creative ways.

The work in this exhibition explores human behavior, the environment, biology, aging, morality, politics and knowledge systems through many lenses including curiosity, spectacle, wonder, and empathy. Each work is a record of an investigation that gives form to complex issues and emotions. They seek not answers but larger conversations and continued points of intersection.

We hope to see you out there, making sense of your own complex and beautiful lives.

Pathways Exhibition at Art Ark Gallery

Nanette curates Pathways: An exhibition about mapping, navigation, wanderlust and borders

Spirit Bridge for Brian by Neil Murphy

Nine Bay Area artists will be exhibiting in an interdisciplinary, themed exhibition at Art Ark Gallery in San Jose. The exhibition is curated by Nanette Wylde. It includes a wide range of media including artist books, conceptual works, glass, mixed media, painting, performance, printmaking, sculpture, sound, video, and installations. A collaborative, site specific vinyl installation for the gallery’s west facing windows is by José Arenas and Kent Manske.

Murmuration, detail of two-story vinyl window installation at Art Ark Gallery, José Arenas and Kent Manske, 2022

Artists: Afatasi The Artist, José Arenas, Carolina Cuevas, Casey Jay Gardner, Caroline Landau, Kent Manske, Neil Murphy, Melissa West, Minoosh Zomorodinia

Exhibition Dates: March 4–April 1, 2022
Receptions: March 4 and April 1, 6–9 pm
SoFF: South First Fridays Art Walk
By Appointment:  genevieve.hastings.artark@gmail.com

Gallery Talks  (performance*)
March 5: José Arenas, Caroline Landau, Melissa West, Carolina Cuevas*
March 12: Casey Jay Gardner, Kent Manske
March 19: Afatasi the Artist, Carolina Cuevas*, Neil Murphy
March 26: Minoosh Zomorodinia, Nanette Wylde

Art Ark Gallery 1035 South 6th Street, San Jose, California

The Gravity Series by Casey Jay Gardner

Catalog Availablepublishing.hungerbutton.org
For more information visit the Pathways exhibition page.


Nanette in The Fierce Urgency of Now: Socially Engaged Printmaking

Nanette’s 2021 print, Milagros for Times Like These VI, is included in The Fierce Urgency of Now: Socially Engaged Printmaking, at the Janet Turner Print Museum, CSU Chico, Chico, California. The exhibition was juried by Aaron S. Coleman.  From the Turner, “The work submitted was extremely strong, and the juror’s job very difficult–with 133 artists submitting 436 pieces for consideration. Coleman chose work by 36 artists for the exhibition.”

For more information: Janet Turner Print Museum


Kent Exhibits and Reads in Shadow and Light at Arion Press

Beyond the Reach, Kent Manske, 2019

Kent is exhibiting a photograph in SHADOW and LIGHT: Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here at Arion Press in San Francisco. A public reception and reading will take place on Sunday, March 6, 2022 at 3pm. 

For more information: Arion Press

Ink to Paper

The garden is producing, the cats are purring, we are exploring, and art is everywhere! Here are few current group exhibitions we are pleased to show in.


Palo Alto Printmaking Residencies Exhibition

O Humboldt, O Muir: Worldviews, monoprint, Nanette Wylde, 2019.

Over the course of the summer, five Bay Area artists were granted nine-day residencies which focused on using the Palo Alto Art Center’s small press to create a wide range of prints. The residency artists were: Angela Smith, Amy Hibbs, Michael Oechsli, Nanette Wylde, and Aileen Lum. 

Nanette created a series of 33 monoprints based on her photographs of severed trees.

Exhibition: through August 31
Reception: Thursday, August 22, 6—7:30pm
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10am—5pm; Thursday, 10am—9pm; Sunday, 1—5pm

Palo Alto Art Center
1313 Newell Road
Palo Alto, California


Perception of Place

San Francisco Bay, artist book, Kent Manske, 2012.

This print exhibition, a collaboration between California Society of Printmakers and MPC Printmakers, was juried by Marianne McGrath. Kent and Nanette are showing three recent artist’s books.

Exhibition: September 6—October 24, 2019
Hours: Wed—Sat, 12 – 5pm; Sun, 12—4pm
Reception: Friday, September 6, 7—9pm

Pacific Grove Art Center
68 Lighthouse Avenue,
Pacific Grove, California


Eco Echo: Unnatural Selection

On Longing series, monoprint, Nanette Wylde, 2016.

In this third iteration of the Eco Echo Collective, artists Anne Beck, Barbara Boissevain, Ginger Burrell, Judith Selby Lang, Richard Lang, Kent Manske, Michelle Wilson and Nanette Wylde continue their environmentally themed collaboration with new as well as previously shown work.

Exhibition: September 13—October 20, 2019
Hours: 11am—5pm every day except Tuesday
Reception: Saturday, September 14, 3—5pm

Gallery Route One
11101 Highway One, Ste. 1101
Point Reyes Station, California

Felicia Rice Interview & Eco Echo Exhibition

Much has been revealed in this engaging and insightful Whirligig Interview with Felicia Rice. Rice is a printer, publisher, writer, visual artist, performance artist and award winning maker of books. She is known internationally for her artist’s book, CODEX ESPANGLIENSIS from Columbus to the Border Patrol, a collaboration with Enrique Chagoya and Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Rice recently celebrated 40 years as Moving Parts Press with a retrospective exhibition: Perseverance furthers: Moving Parts Press 1977-2017 at Felix Kulpa Gallery in Santa Cruz, California. We met up to experience her work, talk about making books, art and working with other creatives.

Read Felicia’s Interview here: whirligig.hungerbutton.org


Eco Echo: Unnatural Selection

March 3 - April 15, 2018

Anne Beck, Barbara Boissevain, Ginger Burrell, Judith Selby Lang, Richard Lang, Kent Manske, Michelle Wilson, Nanette Wylde


Exhibition
WORKS/San José
, art and performance center
365 South Market Street
San José, California
workssanjose.org

Gallery hours: Fridays 12 – 6 pm, Saturdays and Sundays 12 – 4 pm
Opening Night: First Friday, March 2, 7 – 10 pm

South First Fridays Art Walk:
Friday, March 2, 7 – 10 pm
April 6, 7 – 10 pm
Eclectic evenings of Arts & Culture in downtown San José’s SoFA district.
www.southfirstfridays.com


Exhibition Programming

Sunday March 11, 2pm
Informal Artist Talk with Kent Manske
Conversation with Kent Manske around his installation Cell Garden. Points of departure will include biology, interconnectedness, life cycles, health, healing and epistemology. The artist will briefly talk about his experimental approach using screen printing to produce one-of-a-kind prints that evolve, mutate and synthesize from blank states to living, thriving organisms.

Saturday, April 7, 2pm
Informal Artist Talk with Ginger Burrell
“Subversive Comfort: Artists’ Books as a Tool for Raising Social Consciousness”
Artist Ginger Burrell will discuss the use of the book format by artists to explore political and social concerns. What is it about artists’ books that provide a unique opportunity and approachability not usually found in other artistic media? How can the selection of content, materials, images, scale and design engage a viewer and communicate an artist’s message? Explore examples of artists’ books that attempt to raise social consciousness, including three works by the artist included in the Echo Echo exhibition.

Sunday April 8, 4:30pm
Panel: “Big Dirty Secrets: Three Photographers Engaging in Environmental Advocacy in the San Francisco Bay”
Photographers Judith Selby Lang, Richard Lang and Barbara Boissevain will discuss their ongoing photography projects that address environmental issues in the San Francisco Bay Area. The panelists will share how the devices they use in their work aim to provoke discourse on local issues and encourage environmental stewardship. They will also discuss the relationship between contemporary photography and environmental and social advocacy, including the “Apocalyptic Sublime.” Managed and moderated by Barbara Boissevain.

Saturday, April 14, 4:30 – 6:30pm
“Constellations in Paper,” Bookmaking workshop with Anne Beck and Michelle Wilson
In this workshop, learn the basic of embroidery on paper. Bring a design of your own or use one provided to sew a design onto a sheet of decorative paper. Embroidery on paper can be a little different that the traditional form on fabric, but still can create a wondrous and exquisite design. At the end of this workshop, this embroidered paper can stand alone, or participants will have the option of turning it into a cover for a handmade book! No embroidery or bookbinding experience necessary, all materials provided.

In addition, Anne and Michelle are Artists in Residence at the San Jose Quilt and Textile Museum through March 24, working on the Rhinoceros Project. Visit www.sjquiltmuseum.org/artist-residency/ to learn how to participate in sewing circles and paper-making happenings.

Foodies at Codex 2017

Two years in the kitchen and we are salivating to serve up Foodies at Codex February 5 – 8.

foodies photo

Foodies: Seven West Coast Foodie Vignettes is a portfolio of seven letterpress printed folios, each with wood type printed cover, two color interior screen print illustration, and original story which explores the diversity of meaning in food related language. Foodies is housed in a letterpress printed portfolio.

The print work for this project includes 46 press runs of 25 colors. The stories are by Nanette Wylde. Illustrations and design by Kent Manske.

You can see and read more at: preneo.org/projects/foodies. Or visit us at Codex!

codex promo