Renovated Flightless Devices
Sculpture by Travis Townsend
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DateJan 19 - Mar 17, 2007
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VenueWeston Art Gallery
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LocationStreet-level Gallery
Exhibition Details
The Cincinnati Arts Association’s Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts announces three new exhibitions to welcome the New Year: Renovated Flightless Devices, a new series of inventive reconstructed wood sculptures by Travis Townsend that subverts military “toys”; Please Tie Me Down, an imaginative suite of sculptures by Tracy Featherstone that examines personal habitats; and Working Groups, a new series of heavily worked paintings by Chuck Webster that transforms simple objects into richly saturated forms.
Playing off the functionality of tools, instruments and toys, Travis Townsend (professor of art at Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY) constructs idiosyncratic wooden objects that record the process of their construction. His sculptures evolve from continuous sketches and travel through many transformations that include being cut apart and rebuilt. Renovated Flightless Devices, presented in the Weston Art Gallery’s street-level exhibition space, features a new permutation of Townsend’s sculpture in a larger scale inspired by “military toys” such as ships, satellites, detectors, forts and cannons.
Travis Townsend earned a bachelor of science from Kutztown University ( Kutztown, PA) in 1996 and a master of fine arts from Virginia Commonwealth University ( Richmond, VA) in 2000. His work has been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions at Swanson Reed Contemporary (Louisville, KY); Lindsey Wilson College (Columbia, KY); Hodges Taylor Gallery (Charlotte, NC); Anderson Gallery at Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, VA); and Ann Tower Gallery (Lexington, KY). He was the recipient of an Emerging Artist Grant from the American Craft Council ( New York, NY) in 2001 and an Individual Artist Al Smith Fellowship Award from the Kentucky Arts Council in 2004. He has participated in artist residencies at Kutztown University (1997); Vermont Studio Center ( Johnson, VT) in 1998; Penland School of Crafts ( Penland, NC) in 2001; and University of Saskatchewan ( Saskatchewan, Canada) in 2002. He has served as a visiting artist at the University of Richmond (2001) and Virginia Commonwealth University (2002). He has served as an instructor of art (2002-03) and visiting assistant professor of art (2003-04) at Eastern Kentucky University ( Richmond, KY). Townsend currently lives and maintains a studio in Lexington, KY.
Gallery Talk Series: Thurs., Feb. 8, 7 p.m.
Families Create! Education Workshop: Sat., Jan. 27, 2007