Night Work @ The Armoury Gallery

Night Work @ The Armoury Gallery
The Armoury presents Night Work, featuring the work of six of Milwaukee’s most established contemporary artists.

Opening Reception:
Friday, March 27th 6:00 – 10:00 pm
Show runs: March 27 – May 2
Gallery Hours: Saturdays 12:00 – 5:00 pm
1718 N 1st St 3N3, Milwaukee, WI 53212

The Armoury Gallery is pleased to announce its 8^th exhibition: Night Work. Focusing specifically on professional artists working as art professors and instructors in Milwaukee, Night Work is an exciting cross section of some of Milwaukee’s most talented and recognized artists; three of whom are featured in the Current Tendencies exhibition at the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University. Night work includes two collaborative teams, Nathaniel Stern & Jessica Meuninck-Ganger and Shana McCaw & Brent Budsberg, as well as new 2D work by Nicolas Lampert and recent work by Sonja Thomsen.

Along with teaching at UW-Milwaukee, Nicolas Lampert is a curator, a co-editor of a book on anti-war illustrations and an artist who works in a variety of media and has exhibited his work extensively across the country and abroad. Lampert co-curated a traveling political art show that toured 33 cities in Canada and the US during a five year run. He has work in the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Milwaukee’s own Art Museum.

Taking over the installation room will be a collaboration by Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg. In seven years of collaboration, McCaw and Budsberg’s work has evolved from playful performances about human interaction and rites of passage toward miniature architectural installations investigating transition, space and the passage of time.  For Night Work, McCaw and Budsberg will exhibit two new companion sculptures, exploring the space where concrete and imagined realities intersect. McCaw teaches at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and Cardinal Stritch and Budsberg is a MIAD 3-d lab supervisor. As a collaborative team, they won a 2008 Mary Nohl Fellowship in the Established Artist category.

First time collaborative duo Jessica Meuninck-Ganger and Nathaniel Stern will present a new series of works. Playfully called “Distill Life,” this series incorporates technologies and aesthetics from traditional printmaking – including Japanese woodblock and engraving circa the 1800s, present-day etching, stone lithography, photogravure etc – with the technologies and aesthetics of contemporary digital, video and networked art, in order to create new forms.

Hailing from South Africa, and currently studying for his PhD through Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, Nathaniel Stern joined the Milwaukee arts community in 2008 for his position with the Peck School of the Arts at UW Milwaukee. His work has been exhibited internationally, and he has a host of awards, residencies and fellowships to his credit. Jessica Meuninck-Ganger earned her MFA at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and currently teaches at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, also having a host of honors, residencies and exhibitions to her credit.

Earning her MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2004, Sonja Thomsen will present a series of new works. Most recently featured in the aforementioned Current Tendencies exhibition at Marquette’s Haggerty Museum of Art, Sonja has exhibited her work nationally and her photographs are included in the permanent collection at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Thomsen currently teaches photography classes at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and was a founding member of the Coalition of Photographic Arts (CoPA), serving as president until June of 2008.