KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN’s nature based mural at Penn State

 

 

Campus

An inside look at the new mural in the HUB-Robeson Center

• Ashley Hayford | The Daily Collegian
• Jan 13, 2020

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Katherine Mann’s mural “Small Planet” in the HUB-Robeson Center on Sunday, Jan. 12, 2020.

Lindsey Toomer

The HUB-Robeson Center will look more colorful this semester as the HUB Galleries commissioned Katherine Mann to create a new mural for the space.

Mann, an independent artist and Washington, D.C. local, prepared a few potential pieces for selection for the HUB’s newest mural. A work entitled “Small Planet” was chosen, and she worked on the collage elements of the piece throughout the semester in her studio.

“This piece was chosen, I think, because it combined free floating, verdant and textured painting technique with fluid dynamics, maximalism and an interest in the local landscape,” Mann said via email. “Each of the flowers, leaves or branches in the mural is a depiction of a plant or tree that is endemic to Pennsylvania and the region directly around State College.”

Plants scattered throughout the mural include magnolias, fringe trees, tupelos, redbuds, dogwoods and maple leaves, along with other twigs and flowers native to Central Pennsylvania.

“I wanted to take details from the daily scenery of the region – mostly, tree leaves – and use them to populate a fantastic, immersive and imaginary world,” Mann said.

Along with paying attention to the State College landscape, Mann said the mural holds personal significance to her.

“The mural represents, to me, a joyful celebration of the mess of matter that make up the world around us,” Mann said. “The local maple tree on the meridian in the middle of the street might not be given a second glance, but recontextualized into this kaleidoscopic landscape it becomes alien, invites a new appreciation.”

Installed during the final week of the fall 2019 semester, Mann signed the mural with 15 minutes left to spare before the HUB closed for holiday break.

Curator of HUB-Robeson Galleries Lindsey Landfried said she hopes the piece not only touches the Penn State community, but those who visit, as well.

Katherine Mann’s mural “Small Planet” in the HUB-Robeson Center on Sunday, Jan. 12.

Lindsey Toomer

“The HUB-Robeson Center commissioned this work by Katherine Mann to share high quality contemporary art with our students in the spaces they work and engage in during their Penn State experience,” Landfried said via email. “This artwork enriches the University community and its visitors by deepening a sense of place and the experience of space, stimulating viewer curiosity and wellness and ensuring that art engages the educational, cultural and historical dimensions of our environments.”

Landfried praised the mural for being “rich, complex and dynamically and visually arresting” and hopes each student resonates with artwork in their own way.

“We anticipate that students will each have their own response to its physical presence and transformative potential,” Landfried said. “The HUB-Robeson Center is a cultural destination at Penn State, and we activate the arts here in the Union to address today’s complex questions and serve local and global communities through access to the arts.”

Campus Arts Associate Tamryn McDermott helped Mann carefully install and hammer the mural, alongside HUB Galleries staff and student interns.

“Katherine was wonderful to work with,” McDermott said via email. “While we nailed, Katherine added more layers of paper and paint to the mural to integrate her work into the architecture and surrounding space.”

According to McDermott, students would stop by the mural throughout finals week to watch the installation process and ask about the piece. Students thought it added energy to the space.

“One student told us how grateful she was that we were installing the mural for the students to enjoy,” McDermott said. “Another brought up something she learned in one of her psychology classes. She said she learned that plants help to increase productivity.”

McDermott added that the HUB team is looking forward to the student body “seeing new things within the dense and layered surface over time” and enjoying the mural.

 

Available Artwork by KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN

 

Contact the gallery for artwork and commissions.

Morton Fine Art

52 O St NW, #302

Washington, DC 20001

(202) 628-2787

mortonfineart@gmail.com

http://www.mortonfineart.com

Concurrent solos by KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN and ASTRID KOHLER presented by Morton Fine Art & *a pop-up project at Gallery B

 

KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN

Echoing Green

April 3 – April 27, 2019

 

ASTRID KOHLER

Conflux

April 3 – April 27, 2019

 

Opening Reception

Friday, April 5th from 6-8pm

 

EXHIBITION LOCATION

Morton Fine Art at Gallery B

7700 Wisconsin Ave, Ste E

Bethesda, MD 20814

 

HOURS

Wednesday – Saturday 12pm – 6pm

 

 

KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN, Leaves into Birds, 2019, 60″x36″, acrylic and sumi ink on stretched paper over canvas

 

 

About Echoing Green

My work’s abstractions arise from the subjects I portray: ecological and geological cycles, processes of chemical corrosion and natural efflorescence. With roots in traditions of Chinese landscape painting, my monumentally sized paintings and installations evolve a fantastic, abstract vision of the natural world. My latest work confronts the challenge: the resuscitation of landscape painting in a world where “landscape” is represented and defined through an ever-widening field of digital, graphic, and visual forms. How can a painting capture flux, abundance, waste, fertility, and the collision and collusion of diverse forms? How can it respond to the pressure we place on our era’s fragile ecosystem? My paintings explore both questions by sustaining tension between what is artificial and what is natural, between what is chemical and what is biological, between organic and inorganic. The paper on which I paint is not only a recognition of a tradition of Chinese painting; it is also a medium of vulnerability and expansiveness, susceptible to crease and tear as well as to collage and collation. My own role in the creation of the paintings strikes a balance between the purposive and the protective. I trust to process, chance, and change, but I encourage, direct, and facilitate all of these. In my most recent work, I hope to live in the tradition of landscape painting, experiencing it for what it has always been: an occasion for radical experimentation and confrontation with the world, in the broadest sense of the term, that sustains us.

-KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN, 2019

 

 

 

About KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN

Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann received her BA from Brown University and MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is the recipient of a Fulbright grant to Taiwan, the AIR Gallery and Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Fellowships in New York, NY, and the Individual Artist Grant, Arts and Humanities Grant, Mayor’s Award and Hamiltonian Fellowship in Washington, DC. She has attended residencies at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Blue Sky Dayton, Vermont Studio Center, Salzburg Kunstlerhauss, Triangle Workshop, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Bemis Center for the Arts, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Facebook, and the Jaipur, India Carbon 12 Residency. Some of the venues where Mann has shown her work include the Walters Art Museum, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Rawls Museum, the US consulate in Dubai, UAE, and the US embassy in Yaounde, Cameroon. Mann is currently an instructor at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is represented by Morton Fine Art in Washington, DC.

 

 

Available artwork by KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN

 

 

 

 

ASTRID KOHLER, fucking Vogelkonig 2, 2018, 4.75″x4.75″, watercolor and acrylic on paper

 

 

 

About ASTRID KOHLER and Conflux

 

German painter ASTRID KOHLER combines old and new in her latest series Conflux. Artwork includes 19th century German portraits which have been over-painted with Kohler’s imaginative and playful images of perched birds and jumping baby ducks. Antique pastoral backgrounds have been layered with contemporary additions of leafy shoots of bamboo, and outlines of stylized, gold clouds.

 

Her still life paintings, some of which are layered with epoxy, are visually accentuated with dramatic pops of color, unexpected narrative elements and oftentimes contain animated wildlife. Her ten piece series “fucking Vogelkonig” features delicate birds masterly painted with a three-haired brush and then crowned with neon orange headdresses which juxtapose the artist’s incredible technical ability as a realist painter with fluid, gestural lines and attitude.

 

Kohler seeks new ways of arranging space and blending old and new to create tension for her creative inspiration. Conflux marks her first solo exhibition in the U.S. She is represented by Morton Fine Art in Washington, DC.

 

Available artwork by ASTRID KOHLER

 

 

About Morton Fine Art 

 

Founded in 2010 in Washington, DC, Morton Fine Art (MFA) is a fine art gallery and curatorial group that collaborates with art collectors and visual artists to inspire fresh ways of acquiring contemporary art. Firmly committed to the belief that anyone can become an art collector or enthusiast, MFA’s mission is to provide accessibility to museum-quality contemporary art through a combination of substantive exhibitions and a welcoming platform for dialogue and exchange of original voice.

 

Want to view artwork in DC? Come by our permanent gallery space:

 

Morton Fine Art

52 O St NW #302

Washington, DC 20001

Hours: Wed – Sat 12pm-5pm and Sun-Tues by appointment

(202) 628-2787

mortonfineart@gmail.com

http://www.mortonfineart.com

 

 

About *a pop-up project

 

Redefining the traditional gallery model, Morton Fine Art (MFA) replaces a single gallery space with two locations: MFA’s permanent fine art gallery space and *a pop-up project, a temporary mobile art gallery of curated group shows. Morton Fine Art established it’s trademark, *a pop-up project, in 2010.

ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY Featured in the James Renwick Alliance Craft Quarterly, Winter 2018!

Artist ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY is featured in the upcoming print and online editions of the Winter 2018 issue of the James Renwick Alliance Craft Quarterly. You can get a sneak peek below. To see available work by Rosemary, please visit our website or stop in and see us at the gallery!

New Arrivals by KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN

Private Domain, 52″x53″, acrylic and sumi ink on stretched paper

 

Nursery II, 60″x36″, acrylic and sumi ink on stretched paper

 

The Fall, 45″x85″, acrylic and sumi ink on stretched paper

 

Blue Black Water, 60″x90″, acrylic and ink on canvas

 

About KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN:

“My work’s abstractions arise from the subjects I portray: ecological and geological cycles, processes of chemical corrosion and natural efflorescence. With roots in traditions of Chinese landscape painting, my monumentally sized paintings and installations evolve a fantastic, abstract vision of the natural world.

The paper on which I paint is not only a recognition of a tradition of Chinese painting; it is also a medium of vulnerability and expansiveness, susceptible to crease and tear as well as to collage and collation.

In my most recent work, I hope to live in the tradition of landscape painting, experiencing it for what it has always been: an occasion for radical experimentation and confrontation with the world, in the broadest sense of the term that sustains us.” – KATHERINE MANN, 2017

Click HERE to view available artwork by KATHRINE TZU-LAN MANN.

ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY reviewed in the Washington Post

In the galleries: Digital and traditional media join forces

By Mark Jenkins

Museums

Review

June 30, 2017

 

 

Rosemary Feit Covey’s “Gingko,” mixed media on canvas, on view at Morton Fine Art. (Rosemary Feit Covey/Morton Fine Art)

Rosemary Feit Covey

Nature teems in Rosemary Feit Covey’s large mixed-media paintings. Hundreds of pink and red fish school in spirals, and uncountable yellow ginkgo leaves cover most of a deep blue background. Yet the Washington artist has doubts about the fecundity she depicts. Her Morton Fine Art show is titled “The Planet Is a Delicate Thing.”

Covey’s skills include woodblock printing, whose carving technique she incorporates into low-relief pictures that are partly engraved and partly painted. This array’s epic, “Black Ice,” is an immersive eight-panel tableaux; it fills the gallery’s longest wall with blue-and-white ice floes on a darker-than-wine sea. The dramatic Arctic oceanscape, like the polar bear on the adjacent wall, was inspired by a trip to northern Norway.

The artist doesn’t directly portray ecological disasters, although this show includes one of the bone-pile pictures she has exhibited at Morton before. But global warming menaces the polar scenes, and those fish are fleeing the oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout. Covey’s responses to such disasters are both expansive and exquisitely detailed.

Rosemary Feit Covey: The Planet Is a Delicate Thing On view through July 9 at Morton Fine Art, 1781 Florida Ave. NW. 202-628-2787. mortonfineart.com.

Please click HERE to view available artwork by ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY.

View images of ANDREI PETROV’s exhibition “Sedition of Sound”

SEDITION OF SOUND

New Oil Paintings by ANDREI PETROV

March 28 – April 22, 2014

 

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EXHIBITION LOCATION  Morton Fine Art (MFA) 1781 Florida Ave NW (at 18th & U Sts) Washington, DC 20009 HOURS  Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 6pm Sunday 12pm-5pm About the inspiration for Sedition of Sound: In the 20th century music has served as a medium to express injustice, lack of freedom, loss of love and opposition to war. The blues from the field recordings from the Delta in the twenties or the protest songs from the sixties both evoked unjust circumstances that demanded change. Power from song extended the messages, of speeches and protests, through records played on the airwaves or at home and shaped imagination. This series of paintings is a reflecting pool of the shifting moods and sentiments captured in those recordings. – Andrei Petrov About ANDREI PETROV’s process (New York, b. USA): The production of a painting begins with a pencil or ink drawing on paper which I extrapolate from and edit as I work the canvas. First with pencil or charcoal and then with color washes done with acrylic or ink, I map the raw canvas and allow it to be ingrained with the materials. Once satisfied with the composition and balance, the surface is sealed with a clear acrylic so as to allow the use of oil based pigments. Handmade tools are used to drag, apply, scrape and blend the paint across the canvas plane. Sandpaper and rags also propel the evolution of the work. The addition and subtraction of paint are meant to act as a metaphor for the intentions and motives for which the paintings are based. – Andrei Petrov