A Happy Medium
by Marisa Olson for Rhizome at the new Museum, NYC

July 28, 2008

Currently on view in an off-beat neighborhood in the off-beat art city of Louisville, Kentucky, is an exhibition of nine very up-and-coming media artists: Justin Clark, Petra Cortright, Thomas Galloway, Michael Guidetti, Jacolby Satterwhite, Hayley Silverman, Will Simpson, Dan Wickerham, and Damon Zucconi.

Curated by artist Ilia Ovechkin, co-founder of Loshadka--a group net art site of the "surf club" variety, the show (open at Plexus Contemporary through August 8th) includes many artists who work primarily on the internet or with web-derived materials and themes, but whose work for the show demonstrates a fluidity between online and offline forms. "The common thread between these artists is that they are all comfortable with being multidisciplinary and working across media," Ovechkin said, in Lousville's local Velocity Weekly, "but the conversation becomes even more interesting when you focus on the individual works and the topics they address." The familiar title of the Weekly piece was "The Medium is the Message," but Ovechkin seems eager to zoom further-in on the works, not prioritizing their form over their content.

For instance, Jacolby Satterwhite's video, Model It, in which the artist is seen vogueing in front of the camera, might initially read as just another artist's response to YouTube culture, but the song in the piece was written by his mentally-ill mother and acts as a sort of empowerment anthem backdrop for Satterwhite's bigger commentary on "African American male patriarchy, sexuality, and material culture." Damon Zucconi's video Slow Rave (last minutes of trance energy), effects a spiritual experience on a well-lit dance floor by slowing down found footage of dancers at a rave. As the subjects gesture slowly and silently, the viewer identifies with the trance-like feeling they must be experiencing on a higher level. The binary "on" of a strobe light is emphasized, even as it's clear that a lot of "dark" information is missing from this sequence in which software fills-in "the blanks between 'real' frames, creating 'artificial' information."

This question of the relationship between real and artificial is also taken up in Petra Cortright's YARNSTRIPE, in which she worked to create a large, archetypal, painter's-perspective natural landscape image within the scale constraints of computer software. Will Simpson and Thomas Galloway both use found and modified internet material to exploit this vocabulary in presenting condensed representations of the fantasies, mythologies, deities, and monuments erected online, pushing the seemingly amateur ethos into the realm of something more cryptically symbolic. Not all of the artists in the show are taking their work offline. Michael Guidetti works in paper, canvas, and bits, but says that his visually bombastic site, www.yyyyyyy.info is in fact influenced by the techniques used in his drawings and paintings. Perhaps examples like these can help us move beyond the division of message and medium in which one must always be prioritized.

- Marisa Olson

The Medium is the Message
Plexus Contemporary exhibit turns media and technology into art

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

by Javacia Harris for Velocity Magazine

Log onto www.yyyyyyy.info and you may think something is seriously wrong with your computer. With the exception of a few passages, you'll have trouble making sense out of much of the script, as if you're trying to read in a dream. The images, upon first glance, may seem distorted or out of place. But relax. Your computer is fine. This collage of symbols, colors and images are all part of a web-based art project by San Francisco based artist Michael Guidetti.

Guidetti's work, along with pieces by several other young artists and art students from across the country, are part of Build a Fire, a new exhibit of technology-influenced art that opens Friday at Plexus Contemporary.

Build a Fire brings together artists who paint, draw, photograph and sculpt, but for this exhibit they use their skills to manipulate different forms of media and technology into art.

With "Slow Rave (last minutes of trance energy)," New York-based artist Damon Zucconi takes video footage of a rave and slows it down dramatically. The result is a dream-like sequence that could easily put the viewer in a trance of his or her own. The exhibit includes works by artists whose drawings are inspired by images from the Internet and artists who play with things like codes and GIF animations and software interfaces to create art.

"I think the public will connect to these pieces because they are presented in a way that people are used to viewing imagery. More often people are used to looking into computer and television screens for hours as opposed to a painting on the wall," said local artist Bryce Hudson, who owns Plexus Contemporary.

Hudson opened Plexus Contemporary to serve as his studio and as "an alternative art space" for exhibitions of works by emerging and established artists. The gallery focuses on collaborative and experimental projects, and Hudson pushed the envelope even by deciding to open his gallery in Portland, not in the downtown art districts of East Main and Market Streets or even Frankfort Avenue.

"I wanted to have this show when it was presented to me because I consider opening a gallery in Louisville's Portland neighborhood very progressive and at the heart of the show is very progressive forward-thinking, forward-moving work," Hudson said.

But the exhibit isn't just about technology, curator Ilia Ovechkin said.

In "Model It," artist Jacolby Satterwhite films himself vogueing. In the piece, he dances to a song created by his mother, who suffers from mental illness. The piece may address the popularity of amateur videos found on sites like YouTube, but it also explores themes of sexuality and much more.

"The common thread between these artists is that they are all comfortable with being multidisciplinary and working across media," Ovechkin said, "but the conversation becomes even more interesting when you focus on the individual works and the topics they address."

-- Javacia Harris

Building Connections :: Build A Fire at Plexus Contemporary

Sunday, July 13th, 2008, by Diane Heilenman for The Courier Journal

Ironic.

Millions are connected at the level of intimate thought and images via the Internet, but in the physical world -- and Louisville is an example -- traditional neighborhood boundaries can defy those connections.

One Louisville artist and entrepreneur is among those building new connections in the physical and virtual worlds.

"In the spirit that made this city a city, I'm a pioneer, pushing west," said Bryce Hudson.

An artist represented by Louisville's Gallery NuLu, Hudson also is a successful Web designer, and he opens the first exhibition -- of digital art, naturally enough -- at his new combination gallery and studio, Plexus, in the Portland neighborhood west of downtown Louisville.

"Build a Fire" was organized by curator Ilia Ovechkin, 21, a Louisville native attending the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, which many of the nine artists in the exhibit attend or attended.

"A lot of it is very new, very new thinking, experimental," said Hudson, 29.

These artists are influenced by visual arts that run powerfully outside the conventional, such as film, special effects, anime, video games, comic books and advertising, even early 'net art. They were born after the early Internet years and are fluid, accomplished and unself-conscious computer geeks.

Hudson, who is biracial, said he realizes that his presence in Portland is experimental too.

The neighborhood of bungalows, shotgun houses and corner stores in 19th-century buildings is robustly white and lower middle class. Hudson, whose abstract art or staged photographs are often about the disconnects between genders, races and social constructs, formed Adorno studio at 24th and Main streets in Portland nearly four years ago with Cynthia Norton and Nico Jorcino.

Hudson, who lives on Cherokee Road near downtown, likes Portland a lot.

"I was looking for a great place to work that I could afford," he said. He bought and renovated a sturdy 1920s brick medical clinic at Portland Avenue and 24th Street last summer.

With Ché Rhodes, head of the glass program at the University of Louisville, also moving to Portland with a home studio, that makes at least three art studios in the area.

"I want to prove to myself and prove to others that not only is it possible (to connect with Portland), but it's the direction the city needs to move," said Hudson. "This neighborhood has more choices (than other parts of Louisville). It just seems more real and unique to me. I'd rather be here than on Hurstbourne Lane."

Hudson said he sees it as a "great financial decision" with resale possible in five or 10 years. He said he makes a good living at Web design and his other artwork sells well, too, so "I don't have to be a commercial success (at Plexus)."

Hudson is a former psychology major at Kent State University who moved to Louisville and took up social work. When he burned out on that, he got a degree in graphics and Web design at Sullivan University and began to pursue art seriously.

"Through all that, I got to figure out that networking, that was really what works. Plexus means a network. It's more or less a contemporary idea of exhibiting and introducing people to art and artists to other artists."

The space is like the show, he said. It's not necessarily commercial but is about discussion and discourse.

"I've always strongly believed that if I have the opportunity I should assist others in finding collectors, making sales," Hudson said.

He embraced the cubicles used for medical exams in the former clinic and saw that they would solve the problems most museums and galleries have in showing digital arts and time arts that require intimate dark spaces instead of vast, open galleries.

The first show is a perfect fit.

The artists are of the coming generation of digitally literate creators who will help define the future of contemporary art.

A signature work is "slow rave (last minutes of trance energy)" 2006 by Damon Zucconi of New York City. He took 10 seconds of a real rave and stretched it to three minutes and 24 seconds, using a software that fills in what would otherwise be "blanks" between stills. This creates a very slow motion with rational-looking but artificial, computer-based movement. It is a crown jewel of "Build a Fire" because it shows the increasingly deep layering of different and equally valid realities in the Internet age and shows off the computer's ability to combine and integrate images based on its own internal binary functions.

Another gem is the touching visualization of impossible self-discovery with gay and burlesque-hall overtones. The figure, dressed in two different white bodysuits, is shown in a diptych format. Jacolby Satterwhite of New York City gestures and vamps to a song written and sung by his mentally ill mother about her longing to pull her life together and discover herself.

Reporter Diane Heilenman can be reached at (502) 582-4682.

-- Diane Heilenman

November Issue of Louisville Magazine
Photos by John Nation | Text by Jack Welch
Bryce in his new studio, November 2007. Photo by: John Nation/Louisville Magazine

Studio Quality: Artists in their studios
From wall-to-wall immaculateness to variably managed clutter, here's a look at the studios of five of the city's veteran or up-and-coming artists.

If you find Bryce Hudson's Portland Studio to be a bit too antiseptic, it goes beyond the lab-coat-white walls and obsessively strait, clean lines of the minimalist painter's work. The building is a former medical center erected in 1926 and retains its tight corridors and crisply designed examining rooms.

Hudson, a 28 year old who grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and attended art school at Kent State University, says he is "one of those strange cases who balances creativity and mathematics."

His geometrically patterened paintings — which are first mapped out on a computer, then outlined, masked off and spray-painted with acrylics on canvas — often tell a kind of coded story in which colors and color-block thickness and placements symbolize racial and cultural divides between people. Hudson, who is biracial, says he's been mistaken for white, black, Latino and Asian, causing "all of my work to be based on identity."

Other non-painting avenues for his art include his "Kentucky Gentleman" photographic series — in which he changes garb and makeup to become a street punk, a forklift operator, a Hasidic Jew, a disco dancer, a Native American and several other identities — as well as digitally manipulated computer-scanned print images of obscure magazine ads.

Plexus Contemporary and Consuming Louisville's Neighborhood Project

by Michelle on February 15, 2008 for Consuming Louisville

Perhaps what I like most about Plexus Contemporary though is where it's located. I'll totally confess that I never before had cause to head to the Portland neighborhood. Isn't that shameful? Yes, yes it is. I had to print some Google maps directions to even find the place. I love that Hudson has built this fantastic art space somewhere other than downtown, Frankfort Avenue or the Highlands. As much as I love those neighborhoods there are other neighborhoods in this city and I'm all for anything that pulls us out of our cozy neighborhoods that we know so well. As a photographer I'm so grateful that Hudson got me to Portland because that place is a photographer's paradise and I can't wait for a chance to go shooting down there.

More than just being excited about photographing in a new neighborhood this is a wake up call to me to explore neighborhoods in Louisville that I don't know well or at all. I'm willing to bet you don't know a lot of these neighborhoods either. You've known me long enough to know that when I get inspired there's sure to be a new project coming soon. I've been inspired to explore more of Louisville's neighborhoods. Naturally the Louisville Neighborhood Project will be coming soon.

I'll be digging in to neighborhoods new and familiar (Portland, Highlands) general ( Germantown, Old Louisville) and specific (eg Belknap neighborhood and other tiny little sub neighborhoods that I don't even know about yet). I'm ready to dig into this project on my own but I'd really like some help. If you currently live in or grew up or just really love a particular neighborhood I invite you to be my neighborhood ambassador. Tell me about cool and interesting things in your neighborhood, you know that one hole in the wall restaurant that everyone needs to eat at, that really cool building or artwork (where is that giant bunny?), cool businesses and artists, the general neighborhood vibe, neighborhood history, community projects, etc. In other words: give us the scoop. I'd also like to organize photowalking tours of various neighborhoods and it'd be great to have knowledgeable guides for those as well.

I'm asking nicely, with sugar on top, for your help. No matter what neighborhood you live in in Louisville I'd love to explore it on Consuming Louisville. Even though I know the Highlands well I'd love to explore the neighborhood through someone else's eyes as well. So I say again no matter what neighborhood you live in I'd love to explore it with you for my and Consuming Louisville's readership's edification. So drop an email (info AT consuminglouisville.com), a comment, a carrier pigeon or use some other method to get in touch.

Art Features in Portland’s Effort at Neighborhood Renewal

By Elizabeth Kramer on April 23, 2008 for WFPL, Louisville | Listen to this radio broadcast

One of Louisville’s oldest neighborhoods is working to revitalize itself and art is playing a role. WFPL’s Elizabeth Kramer explored Portland for this report.

Historian Rick Bell points to features along the Ohio from the cupola atop the Marine Hospital in Louisville’s Portland neighborhood.

“If you look straight across you see the falls of the Ohio and every bridge,” he says. “You can see every bridge in the city of Louisville from this one room. And I think it’s the only place in the city you can do that.”

Bell is head of the foundation that is helping renovate this National Historic Landmark, which was built in 1852, during Portland’s heyday. In that era of steamships, this neighborhood was a hub of the nation’s river trading economy. Today, I-64 cuts through Portland where, according to the 2000 census, more than 30 percent of residents live in poverty and 13 percent of its housing is unoccupied.

Despite these numbers, there is artistic activity in this corner of the neighborhood just west of 22nd Street.

“Places,” calls a member of a local theater company called Specfic Gravity.

In the hospital’s basement, the theater company is performing new plays. The performances bring out locals and attract audiences from outside the neighborhood.

Across the street of Portland Avenue, there is the Portland Museum and, two doors down, a former medical clinic that local artist Bryce Hudson recently transformed into a contemporary art gallery. Here he creates his own work and displays art by regional artists. Hudson is optimistic about Portland’s rich history and its potential for revitalization.

“If I can slowly but surely build something that helps build a community, and maybe helps get some more artists and art types down here,” he says. “Then you never know. Maybe this will become the next hot spot. I mean, of course, it’s years and years and years down the line, but it’s a start.”

Hudson’s idea of revitalizing community through art dovetails with the views of sociologist and Vanderbilt University assistant professor Richard Lloyd. In his book “Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City,” Lloyd writes about how urban neighborhoods have attracted young creative people who grew up in suburbia and helped transform economies. Lloyd says these areas attract creative types for specific reasons.

“Artists are very attracted to urban neighborhoods for the sense of history and the aura of authenticity that that confers,” he says.

Members of the neighborhood group called Portland Now say they definitely hope that more people like Bryce Hudson open businesses and make homes in their neighborhood. Still, they recognize there are many other components to renewing Portland.

“We’ve got Bryce. He’s moved in. That’s wonderful. But what else is going to be there?” asks Deb Mercer, a member of Portland Now. She led the group in putting together a neighborhood plan, a process that began in 2004. In March, the Louisville Metro Council approved the plan, which recommends zoning changes designed to promote the neighborhood’s history while encouraging residential and business development that could alleviate poverty.

Mercer says land use is a major issue in the neighborhood.

“It’s a big ol’ circle,” she says. “If you can improve your housing stock, maybe get a few people to appreciate it, get people more concerned with the neighborhood. Then you get people in who maybe then have kids and then are concerned about your schools and then your schools improve. Because it takes, it, you know, takes a lot of people to make big changes.”

While those changes promise to be slow in coming, architect and history buff Steve Wiser says they will come. As a member of the American Institute of Architects’ Louisville chapter, Wiser worked with Portland Now in considering how to make the I-64 exit ramp area near the Marine Hospital more inviting to passers by. That experience helped him form ideas about how the neighborhood will play in the city in 25 years, as outlined in his recently published book “Louisville 2035.”

“I realized that here was a phenomenal, affordable district near downtown that is on the cusp of revitalization,” Wiser says. “And so with the increases of gasoline prices, people wanting shorter commutes to work, younger professionals and the affordable housing that the Portland district has, I really do see over he next 25 years as Portland being a hot place — people wanting to live and work.”

Portland Now’s Deb Mercer and artist Bryce Hudson say they want to believe in Wiser’s predictions. They caution the community to approach that future in baby steps that will allow it to improve existing housing, preserve historic housing, create attractive areas with artists and parks, and, of course, attract business. They say the development of Portland will benefit Louisville overall.

Hudson suggests the next step.

“What I think Louisville needs is somebody opening up a really nice business on Portland Avenue,” Hudson says. “I think just getting people down to Portland that normally would never step foot west of Ninth Street — that’s what I think Louisville needs.”

Velocity Magazine Selects its 2007 List of Movers and Shakers
by Javacia Harris

Bryce Hudson :: 28 :: Experimental Artist

Bryce Hudson has been battling racial issues nearly all his life.

He was adopted by a black family and raised in an upper-middle-class predominantly white environment. Hudson, who is biracial, identified more with being African-American, but growing up, many black kids told him that he sounded too white. Others mistook him for Latino or Asian.

Needless to say, Hudson struggled with identity issues. But instead of lashing out at the world, he handled his frustrations through art.

"It's a very abstract way of dealing with issues," Hudson said. "As I tried to find ways of dealing with who I was, it was so easy to express things (through art)."

Now Hudson is known for his paintings, digital art prints and experimental pieces that explore issues of race. The Columbus, Ohio, native has lived in Louisville nearly 10 years. He's had his work shown at the Swanson Reed Contemporary gallery, the Water Tower Art Museum, the 21C Museum, the Speed Art Museum and more. His work has also been exhibited in Seattle, Chicago and Atlanta.

In his paintings, Hudson often works with simple shapes and unpredictable lines and uses colors to represent races or groups. Sometimes it takes a glance at the title to get what Hudson wants to say to you. One painting, for example, consists of a green background that's crisscrossed by several white lines with a small black line jutting out from the side of the piece. If you don't get it at first, just read the title: "There Goes the Neighborhood."

This year Hudson broke new ground with the photographic print series "Kentucky Gentlemen." The pieces feature Hudson, who, with the help of Actors Theatre of Louisville, had been transformed to represent several different races and nationalities. There is a black bellman, a Chinese student, a Jewish man and many more. The series was presented at Gallery NuLu on Market Street as part of Hudson's first Louisville solo show.

Gallery NuLu owner Gill Holland said Hudson has just what an artist needs to succeed -- "a distinct artistic vision and iconographic style. Bryce's controlled paintings could be done by no one else. Even his sometimes tongue-in-cheek titles for them show a certain character."

Hudson has also made a name for himself as an in-demand web designer. Holland feels Hudson's new media skills will only further propel his art career.

"Bryce is really a great promoter of his images, and the brand that is Bryce Hudson," Holland said. "He knows new media and works it. I am sure many people know some of his images without knowing his name."

Now Hudson is turning his hard work and creativity to a new project -- refurbishing an 80-year-old abandoned medical center in Portland with the hope of turning it into one of the city's hottest galleries.

"I have to start an entire scene and get people to recognize not only this part of town, but to recognize the potential of this part of town," Hudson said. "But I know I'll be successful in getting people down here, because if you have the energy to do it and you don't stop you will get people."