Annika Haas: Observing with a Photographic Eye

December 12, 2014 Touchstone Gallery

Annika Haas, Estonian Photographer

Photographer and Touchstone Gallery Guest Artist Annika Haas lives and works in Estonia, a small country located between Latvia and the Gulfs of Finland and Riga—a cool, but fertile land. Annika grew up there and received her BA from the University of Tartu in Finno-Ugric languages. Subsequently she studied photo journalism in Tartu. Traveling to London provided her with the chance to continue studies at the Photo Opportunity Studios and foto8 gallery.

Paula Lantz: Designer of Plans and Paintings

December 7, 2014 Touchstone Gallery

Paula is one of those rare persons who can make and follow a detailed plan of action and yet act spontaneously in the next moment. For the first half of her professional life, she focused on corporate jobs as a "structural planner" of employee self-improvement programs. In the second half she became an abstract painter. Perhaps these seemingly contradictory abilities are innate, or perhaps she learned them along the way.

David Alfuth: Bohemian Builder

November 8, 2014 Touchstone Gallery

"You are on your own now," said David Alfuth's father the day of David's graduation from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. David had a double major in drawing/painting and art history, and was equipped with teaching credits, so he was good to go. David took up the role of elementary art teacher in the Sheboygan school district for three years, enjoying the exuberance of children receptive to art - and, contrarily, putting up with the hard winters and enduring small town ordinariness. But the longing to travel finally caught up with him after his Triumph Spitfire sports car got stuck in the snow one too many times.

Touchstone Artists Shine at 2014 (e)merge DC Art Fair

September 28, 2014 Touchstone Gallery

The (e)merge art fair presents an extensive line-up of special projects and performances. Three Touchstone Artists join the fray: Leslie Nolan, Pete McCutchen and Ai-Wen Wu Kratz. (e)merge also engages curators, gallerists, collectors, artists and other art world innovators in panel discussions during the fair.

Bill Mould : The Art of Allusion

September 4, 2014 Touchstone Gallery

Bill is a ceramic sculptor — one who works at taking clay from the earth and transforming it into sculptures, which recall ancient myths. The clay, heavy to begin with, becomes light and intensely fragile as he works with it.

Newton More and His Photographing Tools

August 14, 2014 Touchstone Gallery

When it comes to cameras, Newt More has a hard time choosing his favorite. It might be the pinhole camera or the now extinct Polaroid. Or a digital camera which enables him to use the high dynamic range (HDR) process. Then again, it might be the Holga toy camera, which he is having a lot of fun with these days.

Steven Fleming: Artist on the Move

July 8, 2014 Touchstone Gallery

Steven Fleming is a runner and a cyclist, moving happily through the landscape in all seasons. A feeling of wanderlust is part of what keeps Steven moving, both physically and artistically. Maybe it's because he grew up in a Navy family that relocated every 18 months or so. Maybe it's because he has a zest for exploring new landscapes and new ways to make art. Maybe it's because he is "never content to rest in one place and repeat the formulas of the past."

Charles Goldstein: Painting His Way Through Memories

June 19, 2014 Touchstone Gallery

Natalie Portman once said," Everyone dreams of living in Paris," a city both beautiful and severely scarred by periods of cruelty, revolution and war. Artist Charles Goldstein doesn't just dream of Paris. This is where he was born and near where he lives now. However romantic the Paris of our dreams is, reality is different for Charles. The memories he paints in Les Chemins de Memoire (The Paths of Memory) currently on exhibit at Touchstone Gallery, are rooted in the Holocaust and the disappearance of 84 members of his close family in France and in Poland.

Colleen Sabo: Exploring the Wildlife

May 26, 2014 Touchstone Gallery

If one is open to the unexpected, life may take astonishing twists and turns. Colleen Sabo knows about this first hand. She grew up in nearby Arlington, Virginia, and planned to attend James Madison University after finishing a post high school summer job with NATO at the Pentagon. However, Colleen loved the job so much that she shelved her college plans and stayed at NATO for three more years. At age 21, she headed off to Brussels and Paris with the whole NATO staff. During her five years in Europe, travel was the name of the game--sandwiched in between writing and editing on the job, studying French and English at the University of Maryland overseas program, and absorbing art ideas everywhere she went.

Aileen Beringer: Not Your Ordinary Snapshot

April 21, 2014 Touchstone Gallery

Eileen Beringer 2014

Touchstone Gallery intern, Aileen Beringer lays her life on the floor in her senior thesis at the Corcoran's 2014 NEXT Exhibit of student work. Titled "I Only Cry in the Shower," the installation is located in a darkened space about 12 feet by 12 feet on the second floor of the museum. It is constructed of broken sheets of glass, a video, written stories, and a suspended field of crystals and jewelry elements. An overhead video projects portraits of Aileen through this rain of hovering crystals onto shattered mirrors resting on the floor. The images are fleeting, changing quickly so that no coherent picture emerges either on the ceiling or the floor - just flickers of a face transformed into colored light by the prism on the floor.

Shelley Lowenstein: Painter of Crowds and Spaces

April 16, 2014 Touchstone Gallery

Shelley at the opening of Quotidian: The Art of Interaction

As a 7-year-old living in Connecticut, Shelley Lowenstein rode the bus downtown with her best friend to explore the stores on Main Street, and to spend their allowances in Woolworth's five-and-dime. The shopping was fun but Shelley loved watching people and making up stories about them in her mind. What did they do? Where were they from? Where were they going? Around the same time, Shelley discovered movies. Once a week she settled down into the dark recesses of the local theater and escaped into other worlds which sparked her imagination even more. Ever since these youthful experiences, Shelley has been fascinated by how people are in public spaces.

Rosemary Luckett: Uncovering the Unseen

April 4, 2014 Touchstone Gallery

Rosemary Luckett has been on good terms with the earth since she was a young girl weeding sugar beets and caring for the animals on her family’s farm in the desert plateau of south central Idaho. These earliest experiences of taking care of the environment that then, in turn, took care of her, were the seeds of Rosemary’s sense of this relationship as vital and mutual. Over time, she has developed a visual language--plastic ducky's, bones, tree forms, maps, and birds to express her love and worry for the earth through her artwork. The techniques used varies with what she is exploring. Sometimes collage. Sometimes sculpture. And more recently photography.

Charles St. Charles: Coming Face to Face with Creativity

March 17, 2014 Touchstone Gallery

Charles St. Charles toggles between working as a lawyer and expressing his creativity through art and the improv stage. In other words, he lives life to the fullest, a Renaissance man with a broad range of intellectual and artistic interests.

Wheeler, Shaw, Luckett, Frazier, Brotman: Creating in 3-Dimensions

January 5, 2014 Touchstone Gallery

Touchstone sculptors Wheeler, Shaw, Luckett, Frazier and Brotman transform earthen materials and detritus into elegant sculptural forms using fire, colorants, adhesives, carving tools and imaginations keyed into limitless possibilities of three dimensional construction. They share a love of materials, storytelling, and an internal inclination to build--to transform one form into another form.