#Julie Schenkelberg

[jordi-gali]

JULIE SCHENKELBERG http://www.julieschenkelberg.com/#/snow/

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Julia Schenkelberg, “Blue Ocean”, 2020, Blue dye, resin, rusted metal from Detroit factory floors, plaster chips, vintage china, glass from Brooklyn beaches

Malone University Art Gallery’s exhibition Healing Spaces features work by Northeastern Ohio artists Julie Schenkelberg, Chen Peng, Yiyun Chen, and Emily Bartolone. Although the mediums differ, the work flows together in the room. Below are some selections and more about each artist from the gallery’s documentation.

Julie Schenkelberg, "Modern Memorial", 2020, Found screen, plaster, acrylic paint, vintage leather and fabric, jewelry box interior, glass gathered from Cleveland and Detroit auto and steel factory abandoned floors, vintage glass slide of the Parthenon Frieze

Julie Schenkelberg grew up in the post-industrial landscape of Cleveland, Ohio. Her mixed-media installations start with furniture, dishware, textiles, and marble, combined with concrete, resin, and construction materials, to transform notions of domesticity, and engage with the American Rust Belt's legacy of abandonment and decay. Using the home as a playground for formal and conceptual subversions, the work aggressively disrupts cohesion within the physical sphere. Familiar furnishings rekindle memories or premonitions of collapse, suggesting both the utter destruction of war, calamities, or urban decay, but also the uncanny juxtapositions of fragile substances such as cloth and china, with industrial materials such as rusty metal, heavy concrete, and tool-made marks such as drilled holes and chain-sawed indentations.

Chen Peng, Paintings from the "Mountains at Night" series, 2023, gouache, acrylic, and oil on canvas

Deriving from a desire to find stillness and grounding as an immigrant, Chen Peng explores the connection between landscape and the complexities of identity and belonging. She creates foreign landscapes from a combination of past experiences, memories, and imagination, delving into the disorienting sense of not knowing where home is. The moon, particularly in its fullness, becomes a symbol encapsulating emotions and metaphors associated with loneliness, reverence, and even terror. Her ceramic pieces extend this exploration of landscapes, featuring textures and marks that convey the essence of mountains, clouds, and the moon.

Photographs from from Yiyun Chen's series "Velleity", 2016-2018

The photography of Yiyun Chen is about the process of self-reflection and self-discovery as an Asian immigrant, exploring the relationship between people, environment and society, turning its personal experience and empathy into gentle conversations between humans and nature, capturing the poetic and distance of the environment around us. Through photography, we can take the essence of life seriously again and treat the people and things around us tenderly. Through his lens, they often have similar structure, people look tiny in nature scenes, creating an intimate visual experience. Most of his photographs are captured outdoors, with soft light and harmonious colors often used.

Stemming from her infatuation with the formal elements of painting, the work of Emily Bartolone pairs down simple, anthropomorphized shapes in an effort to explore paint and color theory while simultaneously creating tension and humor through color, edges, and texture. The playful, human qualities of painting are incorporated into the work through the use of amorphous shapes animated within the picture plane. Further informed by ideas of the mundane, the awkward, and the jovial that surround everyday life, the complexity of human relationships are mimicked by the shapes interacting on each painting's surface. In acknowledging that life is not always cordial, moments of tension are placed within the satisfying surfaces in the form of an abrupt mark, a disparate color, or a shift in scale. These ideas are used to take viewers outside of themselves for a short period of time, hoping to offer a break from the bombardment of distractions, notifications, and news we encounter so often on a daily basis.

This exhibition closes 4/9/24.

[moniameluzzi]

Julie Schenkelberg - TRANSMIGRATION

wood, plaster, fabric, paint, concrete, lighting. 25’x20’x25’—2016

Conrad Shawcross, -After the Explosion, Before the Collapse.

Building Dwelling Thinking - I idea

[yourdrinkanddraw-blog]

More on recycled art to come...

[contemporaryartdaily]

Edra Soto is Awarded the Inaugural Foundwork Artist Prize

Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist Edra Soto has been awarded the inaugural Foundwork Artist Prize. In recognition of her outstanding civically-engaged practice, Soto will receive an unrestricted $10,000 grant and studio visits with each of the 2019 jurors: artist DeWitt Godfrey, Outsider Art Fair Director Becca Hoffman, Esopus Magazine Founding Editor Tod Lippy, Embajada Gallery Director and Independent Curators International (ICI) Director of Development Manuela Paz, and Stoneleaf Retreat Artistic Director and IFPDA Fair Director Helen Toomer.

The jury has also named three short-listed artists for special mention: New York-based Christian Ruiz Berman, Queens-based Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., and Detroit-based Julie Schenkelberg. In conjunction with the Prize, Foundwork has launched a new artist interview program, Dialogues, starting with an interview of Soto conducted by guest editor Scott Indrisek. Ruiz Berman, Brown Jr., Schenkelberg, and other artists will be featured in Dialogues interviews by other visiting editors in the coming weeks. The Foundwork Artist Prize is a new juried grant awarded to recognize and support outstanding artists on Foundwork. For more information visit foundwork.art. (Sponsored)

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Surviving Scientology's suppression. Actor shares her story about life after religion

A few years ago, actor Cathy Schenkelberg was considered enough of a celebrity that she warranted an audition to be Tom Cruise’s new girlfriend in the wake of his breakup with Nicole Kidman.

That’s the theory anyway, recounted at the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival in Schenkelberg’s Scientology survival show Squeeze My Cans, performed at the Platform Centre (Venue 24).

At some point, she was ushered into a room in Los Angeles’s Scientology "Celebrity Center" and invited to talk about Scientology’s most prized celebrity without knowing why.

By Randall King     Winnipeg Free Press    07/23/2018

THEATRE REVIEW

Squeeze My Cans

Written and performed by Cathy Schenkelberg

Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival

Platform Centre (Venue 24), to July 29

Suffice to say, she blew that audition.

It probably wouldn’t have lasted anyway. As an actor, she was literally invisible, earning most of her revenue as a voiceover artist for commercials, to which she would lend her warm, expressive voice.

And anyway, after spending close to a million dollars at the church to achieve one of the highest ranks possible — an OT VII — she effectively chucked it all when she realized her continued participation in the church would risk not only her sanity but her relationship with her only daughter.

That story is recalled in the one-woman show Squeeze My Cans, a bawdy-sounding reference to the metal cylinders attached to an e-meter, employed to measure electrodermal variations in a Scientologist’s body during "audit" sessions.

It’s a hair-raising story, but it’s told in an entertaining and engaging manner that transcends the subject of the religion started by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard.

"The show isn’t just about a cult and Scientology," Schenkelberg said. "It’s about: what did you survive? Did you have a job you hated? Were you in an abusive relationship?"

“I was brainwashed. I think back and I get choked up because, emotionally, it’s hard for me. I have to relive it, but every time I tell the story, it’s the first time you’ve heard it."

Schenkelberg makes her journey so relatable, it’s not unusual for her to receive consoling hugs from audience members after the play’s emotionally charged conclusion.

"We all have our crosses to bear," she said. "Why don’t we leave something when we know it’s not good for us? Because we think: if I leave, I’ll lose my family or I’ll lose my insurance. I’ll lose my child.

"So I do get a lot of hugs and I’ll tell you, the hugs I get from 20-somethings and teenagers are the best hugs ever," she said. "Because I’ve had people tell me, ‘Oh, I walked down Hollywood Boulevard and they wanted to give me a stress test,’ or ‘I picked up this flyer but I didn’t know it was Scientology, so I went in.’

"So this is what makes me incredibly happy, to reach that demographic."

That helps, given that two decades with the church bring up bad memories for Schenkelberg, not only of her treatment by the church but of her beloved family.

"I was brainwashed," she said. "I think back and I get choked up because, emotionally, it’s hard for me. I have to relive it, but every time I tell the story, it’s the first time you’ve heard it. That means I get to tell you how much I loved my dad, and how close we were, and how my brother’s death affected me.

"So my journey, getting through two decades and a million dollars, has been a long one," she said.

"I still relive it, but I’m functioning and I’m happy. I make very little money, but I’m happier than I was when I made a lot."

"My journey, getting through two decades and a million dollars, has been a long one."

She has experienced some mysterious, petty acts of sabotage against her once she left Scientology. In one instance, a person walked up and down the aisles during one of her spoken-word performances.

In another, she found the air had been let out of her and her daughter’s car tires at their home.

Still, she said she has not endured the abuse suffered by other "apostates."

"I was declared a suppressive person in 2011," she said, referring to the religion’s designation of a known subversive.

"I took a picture of the letter and posted it on Facebook," she said. "It is kind of a badge of honour because you’ve survived something. But everybody has a story to tell. I think of the story of a girlfriend who just got divorced after 17 years in an abusive relationship.

"That was her cult."

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/arts/surviving-scientologys-suppression-488938631.html

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Julie Schenkelberg (@julieschenkelberg), “Reliquary” (2018), at @asyageisberggallery. 🙏 (at Asya Geisberg Gallery)

[steelcityreviews]

Squeeze My Cans

Performances at:  The Staircase Theatre Main Stage (27 Dundurn Street North, Hamilton, ON)

In a no-holds barred look at surviving Scientology, Cathy Schenkelberg explains her decent down the “rabbit hole” and her eventual emergence out of a flabbergasting wonderland. It is a legitimate wonder she survived with her humour, grace and profound sense of self intact.

There’s so much to take in throughout this storytelling experience. There’s a giant projection screen that helps to envelop us all into her tale and it actually helps a great deal to have visuals as she explains things. We learn just what “squeezing the cans” means, how the grasp of Scientology took hold of everything and the techniques they use to prey on those who need to feel accepted and special. It cost Schenkelberg....and more than just the astounding financial roundup.

You have to really listen to even grasp a sense of understanding what Scientology is all about and Schenkelberg does it well. The flow, the physicality, the transitions all work wonders here. She redefines what it means to have energy on stage. The audience is absolutely enticed and bated waiting for “what happened next? TELL us!” We are shown how twisted this “Church” is and how it, to pardon the pun, alienated Schenkelberg from her dreams, her friends and her family.

There is a real feeling of Wizard of Oz meets Close Encounters or Body Snatchers. It’s oddly dreamy and then very unnerving. What’s scary is that her story doesn’t seem real and yet, it is. It really is.

The audience stood at the finale with tears in their eyes and raucous applause. It was liberating for both Schenkelberg and ourselves. Go and see this one. Go early to The Staircase to ensure yourself a seat.

AND....attend the Squeeze My Cabaret which Cathy performs on Thursday July 25 and Friday July 26 at 9 p.m. at The Staircase. It is additionally hilarious and eye-opening...plus there’s a T.C. marionette. I mean, come on.

For more information, please visit:

http://hamiltonfringe.ca/shows/squeeze-my-cans/

[artyoucangetinto]

Julie Schenkelberg, The Color of Temperance: Embodied Energy, 2015 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ “The forgotten space plays a critical role in my work as it nearly always serves as either my canvas or palette, or both. In neglected homes, abandoned buildings, or even in the gallery space, my installations bring together familial memory, transformation and healing. My works examines the psychology of abandonment, seeking to bring compassion to the no longer desirable pieces of domestic lives. Strongly influenced by theater and my years as a master set painter, my sculptures act as small sets or environments within a larger space, often interacting and disrupting the established physical structure. My work draws on my personal story and imagery of the post-industrial ruins of my hometown, Cleveland, Ohio. By collecting these fragments of a decaying legend of America's Rust Belt, my dynamic sculptures bring new life to a forgotten past.” - @julieschenkelberg ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ #MFArchives #julieschenkelberg #tbt (at Mattress Factory - Museum of Contemporary Art) https://www.instagram.com/p/BsdzbZAhbdb/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=z2uy05zz54xa

[hyperallergic]

For 10 weeks in a disused church basement somewhere in the Midwest, Julie Schenkelberg built a turbulent installation of broken furniture, found objects, and housing rubble anointed with blue and gold paint. It now fills Asya Geisberg Gallery for Embodied Energies, the Brooklyn-based artist’s third solo show with the Chelsea gallery, inspired by the corroding of her Rust Belt hometown of Cleveland.

A Tribute to the Rust Belt, Carefully Crafted from Domestic Decay

[moniameluzzi]

Julie Schenkelberg 

COLOR OF TEMPERANCE: EMBODIED ENERGIES THE MATTRESS FACTORY MUSEUM

The Mattress Factory Museum of Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh, PA

2015

Building Dwelling Thinking - II idea

[nycartscene]

opens tonight, 6-8p:

“Embodied Energies”  Julie Schenkelberg

Asya Geisberg Gallery, 537B W23rd St., NYC

[hyperallergic]

SITE:Lab Raises the Bar for ArtPrize

Stephen Hendee, “The Last People” (2013). (image via site-lab.org)

GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — In a…

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[svamfafinearts]

Julie Schenkelberg |  HEARSAY   

March 14 - April 20, 2013

Opening Reception: Thursday, March 14, 6 - 8 pm

Artist Talk: Saturday, April 6, 1 pm

Julie Schenkelberg, Welcome Home, 2012.  Wood bureau top, tinted concrete, Carrera marble, glass, resin, silk, found wood, 37" x 15" x 3"

Asya Geisberg Gallery is pleased to present Julie Schenkelberg's "Hearsay", an exhibition of sculpture and installation. "Hearsay" continues the artist's material investigations into the home's symbolism, the city's tall tales, and buried personal histories. Schenkelberg indulges in the paradoxical plenty of disuse and decrepitude. As with her first exhibition "Bad Blood", she takes inspiration from the Rust Belt's legacy of abandonment, conjuring houses in disrepair, defunct industries, and found shabby furniture imbued with years of memories, equally decaying and still alive. Schenkelberg invents new ways of disassembling and recombining the lived-in furniture with disembodied parts. Teal, yellow, and washed-out pink suggest the Art Deco palette that covered Cleveland in its prime, while shards of white marble echo the trickle-down luxury of middle-class bathrooms from that era.  

   While the claustrophobic "Bad Blood" took over the gallery space, "Hearsay" shows a shift in Schenkelberg's practice towards a stripped down and concentrated density. Her current work traps tension, as entropic elements are pulled together in a small entity. Half-buried shards jut out, and mummified objects struggle. Schenkelberg combines broken-down markers of home - doors and windows, chair legs and dresser tops, and their undercarriage- nails, wire, plaster - constantly asking the viewer to shift scale. Within the recontextualized debris, the work exhibits a macabre aesthetic of hardened sediment seeping through the cracks, drilled holes, and repetitive gashes. Intentionally dirty and primitive, raw and complex, layers of rot are scraped away to reveal the original unsullied surface. Soft and feminine material such as silk is hardened, preserved in resin, effectively trapped and prevented from movement. Broken cups and dishes, familiar tropes of the artist's work, hint at a dysfunctional dainty aesthetic, while cement and plaster connote heft and strength.

  In the gallery's central installation, a Miss Havisham mansion transforms into piles of wood or a shanty of rusty metal. Marble chunks appear as rubble around black stair spindles rising out of the pile, tied with draping black strips of silk. Furniture is severed, splintered, and recombined almost beyond recognition. The conflict of prescribed gender roles expresses itself in material juxtapositions and fraught relationships of rusty nails and flimsy cloth trying to contain ungainly parts in vain. Schenkelberg's oeuvre reinterprets domesticity as a contemporary position, while plunging into the meaning of decay, towards a reinvention of common material's everlasting fascination and depth.

  Julie Schenkelberg lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Schenkelberg received a BA in art history at the College of Wooster, and an MFA at the School of Visual Arts, NY, with additional studies at SAIC at Oxbow, MI, Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art, France, and the Institute of European Studies, Vienna. She has been included in exhibitions in New York, Chicago, and Ohio, and has an upcoming exhibition at the Sculpture Center in Cleveland, Ohio. She was awarded a residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and has been named one of the "30 Artists to Watch in 2012" by NY Arts Magazine.

Asya Geisberg Gallery 

537B West 23rd Street 

New York, NY 10011 

(212) 675-7525 

info@asyageisberggallery.com 

www.asyageisberggallery.com

Gallery Hours are Tuesday - Saturday, 11 - 6.