Michael Davis

Color Theory 2022 Contemporary collage

Style: Contemporary, Modern, Conceptual Small study for the series “Rare Earth"

The Rare Earth artworks grew out of my investigative research in 2009 while working on a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (SARF) application. That resulted in a body of work titled “Imagos”– photo/journalism images that capture a moment in history and immediately place the viewer at that moment in time. While navigating Landsat records of Earth's land surfaces from space I discovered large areas of disturbed landscapes. These were immense open pit mines at numerous locations world wide, many of which were Rare Earth mines or REEs. The mining and processing to separate the rare earth elements is an environmental conundrum. On one hand these elements are in extremely high demand and necessary for electric vehicles...

This is a large sculpture and also includes an artist custom framed silkscreen with extensive handwork titled Line of Time, pencil signed and inscribed, presented in heavy metal and wooden frame (framed piece 24.5 x 30 in., sculpture piece is about 94 X 11 inches) Francoise Schein is a visual artist, trained as an architect - urban planner; She also teaches art at the ESAM Higher School of Arts and Media in Caen in Normandy . She is the founder of the INSCRIRE Association. In 2016, she was elected member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Arts and Fine Arts of Belgium. Group Exhibitions Spain: 2016, The "5Contemporary" Paris gallery presented a group show at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Genalguacil, Spain. The show included important artists such as Françoise Schein, Mimouni and Pedro Castrortega. Born in Brussels , Françoise Schein left Belgium after studying architecture at the higher institute of architecture of the French community - La Cambre where she wrote her thesis on fundamental rights, then studied urban design at the Columbia University in the City of New York . She lived 11 years in New York where she begins a work on cartography territories. Subway map Floating on NY Sidewalk is his first monumental urban sculpture located at 110 Greene Street in SoHo (1985). At that time her works are abstract landscapes of cities, made up of networks, lines, trajectories, territories, founding texts and stories. They are constructed of very diverse materials and light. Returning back to Europe in 1989, she continues to work on what she calls her drawings-laboratories while beginning to integrate works in cities on civic themes, the main ones: at the Concorde metro station in Paris in 1991 and then in Brussels, Saint-Gilles , in 1992, these two projects took her to Lisbon in 1993 where she lived for five years and produced two monumental works (in azulejos) for the city of Lisbon at Parque metro station ( 1994) and another for the city of Stockholm at the Universitetet station (1998). She continues to travel to cities where she builds successively projects in Haifa , on the facade of the Beth Hagefen Jewish-Arab Cultural Center with Michel Butor (1994). Then she lives in Berlin where she builds the Westhafen station (2000) which takes her to Bremen to make her first human rights park, Rhododendronpark (2002). In 2005, she made the monumental Time Zone Clock in Coventry in 2005. Since 1999, she has also settled in Rio de Janeiro and initiated participatory artistic projects with the underprivileged population of the favelas . Since then, with the help of a locally trained team, many projects have been carried out, including one in Copacabana and more than 20 in different favelas (from 1999 to 2016). These works transformed the Rio workshop into sustainable development for the people who invested it. In Sao Paulo, since 2009, Françoise Schein has produced a monumental work with the participation of 1000 young people from the favela schools at Luz subway station. Her work is monumental recalling the works of Christo, Maria Dompe, Christian Boltanski, Anish Kapoor, Ai Wei Wei...

The artistic collaboration of Kelly Bugden + Van Wifvat has produced a thought-provoking body of sculptures, paintings, and constructions. Nature, childhood memories, and everyday archetypes take shape in unexpected combinations of materials. The works emerged as the tactile and visual senses channeled the ritualistic power and materiality of selected artifacts. The resulting objects exist in a space between what they were originally and what they could become. A wheel, for example, is distorted as if seen through a prism. Their collaboration grew out of years of shaping materials into one-of-a-kind objects. Intuitively, the process of creating with their hands took an inward turn. Prism is a travelogue through memories and dreams, yielding abstract forms that capture moments of transformation. Van Wifvat grew up with eight siblings and studied sculpture and environmental design in Minneapolis at MCAD. In 1979, he opened a storefront art gallery to promote the work of local artists. The space featured printed materials—art books, periodicals, fanzines, and postcard’s. Wifvat moved to New York in 1983 to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons. In 1987, he co-founded Van Gregory & Norton design studio, specializing in convex mirrors and curtain hardware...