Here, here, here, here, now, now, now, oh, oh, !

Amanda Thomson may or may not be coming back to the USA specifically for the opening of her new show "A Wheen o' Timmer". I don't want to speculate, but I'm pretty sure that is the sole reason for her return.* What does that mean for us dear reader/viewer? It means that this month at the Bakery is a big, honking deal that's what!

Not only will she be here on the evening of her opening (Thursday, April 14th 6:00pm - 8:00pm) but she has generously offered to do a public artist lecture at St. Ambrose (Galvin Fine Art Center Rm 141) at 4:00 pm. Should you miss it? Probably not. What's it going to be about? Why don't you ask me what it ISN'T going to be about? (kittens, carnival rides, archetypes of golden age comic characters, rubylith, hopscotch, my uncle, and many other things won't be gracing any topic list) 

* not the sole reason... just good timing. 

bicker 

Here's Amanda's statement to help you figure some stuff out. Go ahead and speak it out loud in your movie voice.

Originally from Scotland, Amanda Thomson has a 1st class BA(hons) from the Glasgow School of Art. She completed an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008.

Her creative practice is ideas and research-led, fusing traditional and digital printmaking techniques, photography, bookmaking, video, installation and sound, and has recently expanded to include the practice of walking and using a GPS. Her work is often about how we are located (and locate ourselves) in the world, notions of space and place and absence or subtle presence. Other interests include notions of landscape, wilderness and migration, and the assertion and reclamation of 'home' coupled with the mutability and temporality of belonging.

In October 2009 she started an arts-practice led, interdisciplinary PhD based at the University of the Highlands and Islands and with the anthropology department of the University of Aberdeen. Drawing on art, anthropology and human geography in particular, and with a (walking) ethnographic element feeding into her arts practice, the PhD is entitled, In the forest, field and studio: art/ making/ methodology in explorations of familiarity and unfamiliarity, in some of the forests and landscapes of the North of Scotland.

 treeline 1

This work is what I'd eagerly call sumptuous. The contrast is amazing, the context is amazing...just good to look at and think about. Please remember that these are, in fact, etchings. Now look at them again. What? yep. Now you simply must come and see them. 

treeline 2

Here is the standard who-what-where-when-why spiel. 

What:            “A Wheen o’ Timmer” an exhibition of etchings, digital prints, artist’s books and more

Who:               Amanda Thomson

When:            Opening - April 14^th from 6:00 pm until 8:00 pm. The show will run from the 14^th of April until June 10^th.  The Bakery Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 7:00 am until 9:00 pm. (As is the delicious Eastside Bakery)

Where:             The Bakery Gallery – 1330 E. 12^th Street, Davenport Iowa 52803

Contact:          the gallery - www.thebakerygallery.blogspot.com,

joseph lappie – pepticrobot@pepticrobotpress.com,

Event:             Artist’s Talk: Work and Progress. 4:00 pm at the Galvin Fine Art

Center, Rm. 141 St. Ambrose University.

Reviews:        We’d love it. Please consider doing so. 

treescape

With an emphatic yelp I urge you to spread this information far and wide. See some great new work, support your local community, immerse yourself in one of the few galleries in the cities and the only print/artist's book gallery for many miles around. (one day I'll figure out how many miles around) 

We'd love to see you there. As always the bells are optional. 

Joseph

Where Are You!?!?!

I know, we've been lackadaisical about the update for this darn thing.

Promises in the next week (yeah Joseph? Where are the promises now?)

1) Images of Mari LaCures show.

2) Artist's rendition of the Opening for Quiet Garden (our camera was mia)

3) An announcement and plan for the super-exciting Amanda Tompson show in April --- NOT TO BE MISSED.

4) The future line up for the Bakery Gallery.

The anticipation is palpable.

Prepare.

Quiet Garden is about to get really loud

We have ourselves another Opening this Friday the 25th from 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm 

Not to make a big deal of it, but it's Mari LaCure...and she is driving up from Kansas just to be with us. That's pretty nice of her. You know what would be pretty nice of us? To come on out. It'll be a hoot. 

 #7: detail of Quiet Garden 2010 Woodblock, Colored Pencil, Pen, Watercolor, Sewing on Paper 25”x37”

Mari has this to say about her work.

My recent work has been contemplative of the micro and macroscopic in nature.


In my drawings I layer and juxtapose images of both large scale and the minute to set up harmonious relationships between different structures. Dots, dashes, and repeated lines allude to sequences in nature such as branching systems, weather patterns, cellular structures, and constellations. 


The process of drawing for me is a meditative one. I work on thin paper that records and responds to my drawn marks by bending, stretching, and crinkling. The imagery is built up through layers of different media, including woodblock printed motifs, watercolor, pen, colored pencil, and sewn lines. The interaction of many different delicate materials in my work encourages the viewer to experience a heightened sensitivity and awareness to the visible and seemingly invisible in the world. Finding beauty in the connection between the living and the inanimate in the world inspires my creative process, and I hope that viewers will experience a part of this when looking at my work.

#4: detail of Waves 2009 Colored Pencil, Pen, Watercolor, Sewing on Paper 25”x37"

Team Nerd Opens During The Day Everyone Forgets How To Drive

This was our big Anniversary event. One year folks! One whole year of Baked good mixed with different types of art things. It has been awesome. 

We had some special guests - Ben and Josh from Ragged Records were kind enough to come on over and spin some pretty great tunes. Go visit them at 418 E. 2nd Street in D'port. It was an amazing addition to the Opening scene...much better than my Ipod Nano, which I have managed to leave behind at every Opening so far. I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did because I am going to desperately try to get them to come back, when possible, to continue the DJ music orgy. 

Please feel free to encourage them as well in whatever manner you deem suitable. 

dj's, dancing and first guests. That Beadel... he's got fire in his pants.  

These posters are amazing and I want them right now.

Unfortunately the Opening also coincided with the first snow of the season - which was a doozy. We later found out that two of the roads to the Gallery were blocked off due to accidents. Joseph managed to barely get up a hill with the ol' trusty Van because some overly excited kids who had been sledding decided to stop and dance a jig in front of him. The slowing of momentum started to cause a bit of a slide. 

Anyway, for the first hour there were only nine of us. We were a bit depressed and pissed off that the weather had decided THAT day to take a dump on us. In fact we had resigned ourselves to closing early and drinking our sorrows. 

Alison somehow made it and back to Iowa City. That look she is giving... that's determination folks. 

The man himself in a very natural pose.

It was kind of amazing though. About an hour and fifteen minutes into the darn thing people started showing up. Not just a few, but dozens. Old regulars, St. Ambrose folk and as exciting as always some new faces to, hopefully, be inspired by what we're doing. We ended up with a good run of about 60 people. Which isn't so bad when you think that the first hour was only nine.

The power of the nerd

Because this is a show we believe in and Adam is the first artist we have shown who is local we have decided to add a Closing into the mix as well. You should come. Come on over even if you were around last time. Definitely come if you weren't. We'll be waiting for you. Smiling. Big like. 

Closing Info: 

Who: N. Adam Beadel and A Great New Start

When: Friday, January 28th from 7pm until 9 pm

Where: The Bakery Gallery at 1330 E. 12th Street in Davenport, Iowa 

Why: It's damn good

What else: More music, more food, buy the art and take it with you RIGHT THEN... Oh yeah it's also really cheap. 

Finally, we were having camera issues that night. Sorry for the lack of action shots and straight shots. We promise to try harder next time. 

Let us know what you think. 

Thanks. 

One Year Old Feels Older Than It Should

Happy Birthday to the gallery. What a special day for it. We remember when it was but a mere consideration in the backend mind of three little heads.

What does it mean. I think it means onward and upward. We've had a great first year with as top notch artist as I could ever hope for. Brett Colley, Liz Wolf, Matthew Hoffman, David Johnson, B. Ingrid Olson and Jonathan Stewart. A swath of art from different areas of the country and different areas of the genre. We owe a giant debt to these artists for supporting us by agreeing to have their work shown in a small, out-of-the-way place. A place that, while we love, was VERY lucky to get the likes of them.

We want to take the briefest moment and profess the sincerest THANK YOU that we can muster. As you all well know there isn't much of anything that means a whole lot of anything without the interest and support and girders of you, the people. You're the ones with the interest, you're the one with the desire to show up every other month or to drop us a note or just to LIKE us on Facebook and I promise you each and every one of those things means as much as a fistful of gold.

So what's next...

What is next.

How about some N. Adam Beadel.

Adam recently returned to Davenport after an absence of almost a decade. We take great pride and pleasure in being able to show the work of our first local artist (of which we hope there will be many more) Here is the postcard for Adam's show "A Great New Start"

and how about a little insight about the man himself:


Team Nerd is the hand-carved linoleum, woodblock, and letterpress printing of N. Adam Beadel.  Excessively bullied as a teenager in Iowa, Beadel set out for Seattle Washington in 2001 to find his feet.  He found a home in the world of self-publishing and graffiti, which morphed into a love for letterpress and relief printmaking. At 27 years old, Beadel set out for Knoxville Tennessee, to intern at the world famous Yee-Haw Industries, the best education of his letterpressing life.  Today, he’s scheming towards the future, carving woodblocks, and acquiring equipment to start his own press in the Midwestern United States.

Check out more of his stuff at www.flickr.com/teamnerd.

We are a year old. I hope we get older. Your continued support helps us do that. We're providing these exhibitions with only a 10% commission that goes to the owner of the East Side Bakery - Nikki. We're not here to make money, only to provide the Quad Cities with a space that presents the best Printmaking, Book Arts, Textual Arts and Paper Works that we can. This is a passion project. Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell your frenemies, but please tell.

Here's the technical info:

What: "A Great New Start" opening
Where: The Bakery Gallery at 1330 East 12th Street, Davenport Ia 52803
When: Opening is Friday December 3rd from 6-8 and the exhibition runs until February 4th. 
Why: I think you know why.
How: Shear sweat baby. 

Of note: We'll have a DJ on board for the Opening. Hear some great tunes.

Thanks again. Let us know what you think.

The Bakery Gallery.

The True Tale of a Tardy, Tawdry Trip

Hello.

This has been a long time coming. We did Mr. Stewart a wrong by not getting this up quicker, so for that we heartily apologize. That being said the Opening was great. We sold more pieces than we ever have in the past (with 90 percent of those proceeds going back to the artist and 10 percent going to the lovely East Side Bakery for allowing us to host in their establishment)

The day was comfortably warm, the response was charismatically swell and the food was quickly consumed. We did learn that the fancier the cheese the less likely it is to be eaten.

the throne: sat in by the invisible representation of Jonathan Stewart. I insisted all questions 

be directed to that chair throughout the night. 

WE LOVE BEANS!!!

Signing and looking. Dirty jobs for clean causes. 

Throughout the months we had several of the same questions pop up. The first one tended to be "Are there actual toys inside" and the second was "Did he print these on a computer" So here are the answers.

There are no toys inside. A few of them have magnets, but that is unrelated to anything that concerns anything really.

Jonathan did not print these on a computer. He screenprinted them on a flat surface and then cut them and scored them to allow the box forms to be made.

 the voyeur's view. Quit staring and come on in. 

Many artist's wept upon seeing these little boxes containing the dreaded form letter. "My work is to good for you anyway Connecticut College of Craft and Kreativity!!!" whoooaaa...

shaky bits and a baby

The east wall.

So there you have it. Our sixth show in the bag. You know what that means? We've made it one year!

Hoozah. I'd write more, but really I'm going to post something else in like a half an hour. (Months of nothing and then SHABAM... I know. ) 

Keep coming and we'll keep showing. 

It's a Behind!!!

Yes I'm late... I know. I want to show you the opening for Jonathan Stewart's show. It was awesome with sales and everything.

But I cannot find my camera. This is not the excuse for a failure to post for the last month, but it is an excuse for failing to post at this very moment. I looked everywhere. I promise.

Anyway, prepare for a deluge of updates this week. We're up to our year anniversary, we're having a show with Team Nerd, We have some updates of previous exhibitors.

OH BOY It's going to be a week of awesomeness... assuming I can stick with it.

Thanks for following and supporting this endeavor. Please come to the Big Year Opening.

More news soon.

In the meantime.