Art House 310 First Friday – Jennifer Larsen & Brandon Larsen

Opening Reception | First Friday November 5th, 2021 | 6-10pm

This event is free to attend and open to the public. Show hangs through November 21st, 2021.

Art House 310 is located at 310 S. Laura. Two blocks SE of Douglas & Washington in downtown Wichita.

JENNIFER LARSEN Artist Statement: My current body of work is an examination of identity through psychological portraiture. I am exploring how psychology is connected to portraiture through symbols, patterns, colors, and design. This investigation has led me to reflect on my own rites of passage and struggles with mental health using autoethnography as a starting point.

The pill motif, domestic imagery and use of sewing and fabric have carried itself throughput my work and seem to be way of working that lends itself to therapy through the process of layering. My main take away is the need to leave my own mark on the world and tell my visual story like having the satisfaction of keeping a journal or as a means of therapy which art has always been for me personally.

My thoughts began to go back to mental health and daily routines to start my reflections. I began to concentrate on what habits I have developed in the past two years that have been affecting my mental health, that is when I embarked upon my series about dreaming, sleeping and daily routines. I decided to document myself in my most tired moments and portray those in portraits. These daily expressions of exhaustion always overcome me at the end of each day.  I kept trying to capture the feeling of being overcome by something, as if I can’t get enough space and my troubles and responsibilities keep mounting. The scissors represent the feeling of falling apart or losing something important. The single image of each pill is a in itself a portrait of the medication I consume daily as a way to document my journey towards whatever lies ahead.

See more of Jennifer’s work online at jenniferlarsen.wordpress.com

BRANDON LARSEN Artist Statement: Myth, dreams, and memory are key components in the thematic content of my work. I reflect on these reoccurring themes of sadness, nostalgia, death, and rebirth. These forces come to play in the creation of the images. Alchemy and transmutation whether literally as in the cyanotype process or conceptually as in the thematic content of work are important components to the image making process. The cycle of creation and destruction is employed to create a feeling of uneasiness.

Jungian ideas of archetypes and transmutation are explored in this body of work. The paintings have figures emerging or receding into atmospheric space relay the internal struggles of the individual and the psyche, the reduction of things to lowest common denominator or the search for truth. Some works have patterns that are inspired by images taken from experiments done at the Cern super collider; where particles are smashed together in an attempt to break particles into the smallest pieces.

The cyanotype works have been created using many years of photographic source imagery that I have created; these sources have been combined into new compositions altering the original images to create new myths, dreams, and memories.

The images are created using photo editing software with hard and digital media which lends itself to the falseness of memory and the creation of mythology. The end result is imagery that has a dream like ethereal quality. These works create a new representational space in which unlikely events are possible.

See more of Brandon’s work online at bwlarsen.wordpress.com and on Facebook at facebook.com/Blarsen71

www.ArtHouse310.com

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LEARN ABOUT WHAT ART HOUSE 310 IS DOING TO PREVENT THE SPREAD OF COVID-19.

As the CDC relaxes the mask recommendations for fully vaccinated individuals, we ask that anyone entering Art House 310 use your best moral judgement on masks. We will continue to have masks on hand as well as hand sanitizer. We do ask that individuals who are not fully vaccinated continue to wear a mask when entering Art House 310. We follow CDC recommendations on masking.

– All events at Art House 310 are subject to change.
– Hand sanitizer will be on site for use.
– Art House 310 will disinfect the public areas before and after any events.
– There is no public restroom at Art House 310.
– Properly worn masks are strongly recommended when entering Art House 310 and we strongly encourage you to practice safe social distancing.
– We ask that any purchases be done so with card payment in order to reduce the spread of germs.
– Anyone showing symptoms or feeling ill or have been exposed to Covid-19 should NOT enter Art House 310.

We appreciate your understanding and efforts to keep everyone safe and healthy.