Sensitive Assault is a fresh assembly of young local artists who are University of Rhode Island seniors, or recent alumni of URI. The show is curated by emerging artists Cat Ganim and Kirk Snow, who formerly served as interns in the gallery while students at URI.

Former Hera Gallery Director Katherine Veneman says, "Hera aims to encourage the vision of artists at all stages of their careers. Serving as interns for Hera, as well as for Judith Tolnick at the URI gallery, preparared the curators for the challenges involved in presenting their artistic vision in a professional setting. " This is the second student exhibition at Hera in recent years, the first being Crossroads/Illusions, held in March 2001.

The title of the exhibition, Sensitive Assault, alludes to a shared sensibility: The artists employ the formal strategies of multiple media installation with traditional approaches to photography, printmaking and sculpture to create expressive and introspective art works. The artists grab your attention, assault you, through brash applications of color, sensitive subject matter, unexpected materials, or bold graphics, so that they may relate to you their layered and often highly personal narratives.

Collaborative sculptors Jacob Begin & Ian Sexton use sprayed flocking material to camouflage objects; in this case: rocks. Rocks are the pair's metaphor for evolution, extinction, and the little things in life that often turn out to be quite important.

Tara Cavanaugh uses various digital media ( graphic design , animation, and experimental video) to explore urban culture, aesthetics and interactivity.

Photographer Sean Johnson's photography becomes three dimensional in his fragmented and emulsion-coated casts of bodies captured in moments of intimacy.

Justin Lang attempts to overcome the alienation of being displaced in the impersonal atmosphere of the big city with his expressively painted and personalized found curbside objects.

John Mehlenbeck's photographs are intended to convey the nostalgic feelings he has about the South Branch of the Raritan in Hunterdon New Jersey - his childhood home.

Printmaker Katie Truskoski creates linoleum and woodcut prints of Afghan women and children to be pasted as flyers in Providence, Rhode Island. The project is meant to investigate the public reaction to independent media in an urban environment.

Mike Viele creates graphic linoleum cut prints of muscles, using red overlays to add movement and tension.

-By Cynthia Farnell

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Curators' Remarks, Cat Ganim & Kirk Snow

Sensitive Assault is a collaboration between Hera Gallery and the students, alumni, and faculty of the University of Rhode Island. The artists featured in this show represent the brightest and most talented that our university has produced in recent years. We felt these individuals, our peers, have a great deal of potential to become successful and productive artists in the coming years.

#15 Katie Truskoski
"Meena - 1956 - 1987"
Linocut
200

In a state university, where funding can often be limited for the arts, these young artists are continually advancing their goals despite financial constraints through the help of amazing faculty and their own personal drive. Often times the consensus is that successful artists do not usually come out of the underfunded state system. Sensitive Assault addresses this issue, presenting young artists from the state university that excelled within their media, warranting more recognition from outside the URI community.

The Artists Featured are:

Sean Johnson, productive and introspective photographer in his senior year at URI. Sean’s work delves deeply into issues of intimacy with varying aesthetic approaches including Polaris, black and white photographs, and photosensitized plater casts.

Tara L. Cavanaugh, a URI senior, working videographer, and installation artist who's work leans towards the conceptual and anti-art of the Dada and Fluxus movements.

#29 Tara Cavanaugh
" Untitled, " Condensation of Intimacy, In Which Daydreams Accumulate - Bachelard"
Plastic and water

Recent graduate Justin Lang left his mark on Rhode Island as a founding member of its first long form improvisation troupe, The Unexpected Company. After his Recent move to Brooklyn, the assemblage paintings he created as an undergraduate have taken on new meaning within the loneliness and detritus he has found in his new home.

Jacob Begin and Ian Sexton bring their elegant touch to the exhibition with their “Rock Flock” installation. Both artists harbor Surrealist tendencies, as seen in their individual pieces, such as “Box #1” and “Tizzy Woke Up”. Their combined subtlety is expressed through “Rock Flock” in which they added small rayon fibers to the surface of worn beach stones, making a slightly unsettling change to there appearance.

URI senior John Mehlenbeck, a successful printmaker and photographer, brings images of rural New Jersey, reminiscent of a home he knew as a child. John, a father of a young son, brings a new perspective on the place he spent his youth and has examined this with in his dramatically composed landscapes.

#10 Mike Viele
Foot Study #24
Multicolored Linoleum Reduction
2003

Finally, Katie Troskoski and Mike Viele, both recent graduates and printmakers, share a refined technique and a love of relief print mediums. Katie brings the sensitive subject of the plight of Afghani women and children to light in her dramatic prints. Mike, tending towards more formal ideas, has worked with a body of anatomical studies in his own unique graphic style.

We the curators feel this exhibition strongly displays the success of several University of Rhode Island artists, and we hope that it proves to be a good start for these individuals.

-Cat Ganim and Kirk Snow

Special thanks to Hera Gallery and Educational Foundation, Barbara Pagh, Alexandra Broches, the faculty and students of the University of Rhode Island Art Department, Jacob Lee, the Hope and Heritage Fund, and all the friends and family that donated time and resources.

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