X. A. Li has invited the Performance Art Lab of Iowa to conclude the exhibition with a closing performance of Typedancing.

Join us for this special performance, and the penultimate chance to experience Li’s exhibition Terminal Care.

Typedancing is a collaborative interdisciplinary performance featuring musicians, poets, dancers and visual artists making music with and dancing to obselete office equipment. With audience participation, it also includes live-produced zines from the artifacts of the performance.

The Iowa City community is invited to participate in Hold On/Let Go, a collaborative project and exhibition led by local artists Heather Steckler and Harper Folsom.

The artists are seeking donations of objects you have held onto for sentimental reasons. If you are ready to let go of these things, but it doesn’t feel right to throw them away, we welcome your contributions!

Participants may share their future wishes for donated objects on collection days by filling out an optional form, detailing their “conditions of letting go.”

Collected objects will be part of an exhibition at PS1 in October 2024.

We welcome donations that you can easily carry. Larger donations must be arranged in advance. Contact Heather and Harper at holdonletgoproject@gmail.com with any questions!

Join the PS1 gallery team and some special guests for a bingo party celebrating love at PS1 Close!

Welcome to the eclectic "Alternate Realty" by artist Dana Telsrow, nestled at 229 N. Gilbert St. This uniquely curated space invites you to step into a world where the quirks of home buying are examined through Telsrow's distorted portraits of local realtors. Challenge your perspective as familiar faces transform into captivating and enigmatic narratives, providing a playful commentary on the absurdity of using personal images to sell homes. Immerse yourself in the heart of Iowa City, where this unconventional experience not only redefines the traditional housing market but also encourages you to reconsider the role of personal branding in real estate. Mark your calendar for the open house on Jan 21, from noon to 2 pm, and be ready to delve into the intriguing, weird world of "Alternate Realty." Meet the faces of your new future.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

After careers in marketing for higher-education and audio-visual post-production, Dana Telsrow founded Alternate Realty in 2022 as a way of serving residents of the greater Iowa City area. Alternate Realty maintains an unparalleled roster of agents that are eager, willing, and ready to open the doors to your new future. 

Join us for the opening of Observed Changes and Their Causes by Allison Rowe and Tille Currington-Rowe in PS1’s Northside gallery.

This installation explores the intersections of early childhood, caregiving, and the climate crisis through video, painting, and interactive sculpture. Read more at the link above.

Observed Changes and Their Causes welcomes children as an important part of the Iowa City art community and warmly invites them to attend all public program which has been designed to support their participation.

Website: allisonroweart.com
Instagram: @allisonvrowe

Kenzi Rayelle is an interdisciplinary artist, gaining recognition for her fascination with the body and its organic materials as well as her exploration of the absurd. Rayelle, deeply inspired by practical effects and psychosocial development theory, has developed a unique and tongue-in-cheek approach to representing the impact of trauma.

Rayelle possesses a keen sensitivity to the versatile and unrestricted potential of textiles, film, and the written word. She views them as additional gateways from the subconscious mind to the hands. Through transcendental creation, her work serves as a form of personal healing, and her aspiration is for it to be transformative to those who encounter it.

Rayelle continues to work on her lifelong thesis, "Innerconnectivity," which comprises of a series of expansive installations that delve into what the body has kept hidden from present consciousness. In addition Rayelle will be releasing her short film “caake”, an absurdist autobiographical exploration about the creative process in 2024.

Kenzi Rayelle received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Printmaking from the University of Iowa and currently lives and works in Milwaukee, WI. She also likes frogs. Follow Kenzi on IG: @riotrayelle

Kenzi Rayelle was awarded the Mary Nohl Suitcase Fund to support this exhibition.

reception with the artist: Saturday September 9, 4-6pm

STATEMENT:
As an artist, I immerse myself in the dreams I weave every day, constructing a so-called self-consistent artistic logic. This logic is constantly being tested and revised, tirelessly advancing until it comes close to the longing in my heart. I embrace the solitude, wrestle with uncertainties, and find joy in the process. I am on the road, always on the road...

Painting as my lifestyle records my understanding and attitude towards life. This group of artworks is the re-imagination and re-creation of the photography of the fragmented moments in life. I express my perception and insights into art from my own perspective, while also aiming to make color, lines, and forms my personal signature...

Note: All works in this portfolio are created with acrylic on paper, with dimensions within 90*60cm. Artwork dates: 2020-2021

ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Jun Shi was born in Luohe City, Henan, China in 1963. In 1988 he graduated from Oil Painting Department of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. He currently lives and works in Beijing, China.

opening reception with the artist: Friday September 8. 4-8pm

The Year of the Seldom Sun is an immersive, multisensory experience that highlights an emotional journey each year as the seasons change, and the Sun travels away from my world and returns again. Everything is affected: The colors and energy; the days, nights, and light; the sights and the sounds; life, death, silence and rebirth. It is a cycle, and the 2020-2021 cycle was particularly dynamic. As we (all) endured wave upon wave of uncertainty, tense civil situations, pandemic, and isolation, I turned to writing music to process. The music came out in the form of a full length, home recorded concept album: The Year of the Seldom Sun. 

I wrote the album to tell the stories that I was watching unfold around me, and embedded a host of extra sounds, clips, and special textures that provide more to dive into for listeners who want to go deeper than surface level. And while the finished product was conceptual, and flowed thematically and intentionally from start to finish, I still wanted more. I wanted this album to capture people's imaginations and engage their senses. So with the help of my colleague and friend Kelly Moore, and a handful of other local contributors, I have created and curated a physical space to extend the experience. To give visual representation to the imagery, and more storyline to the characters in the songs. To more fully immerse listeners into an environment, and to attempt to re-create that time in history the way that I saw it: from my stool looking out at the beautiful, if not inherently isolated, East Amana, Iowa.

about the artist

Not an artist, really. Not formally trained or practiced enough. Just a maker. A re-creator. For most of his life, Will Kemple-Taylor has been doing his best to mimic and capture the things that inspire him through songs, visual art, and more recently, immersive environments. When he followed his partner to Iowa 9 years ago, he left behind the mountains of Northern New Mexico, and much of the natural beauty that once fueled his creativity. But Iowa brought new inspirations. He found a creative calling working at The Iowa Children’s Museum. And that new path, along with the birth of his children and a move to the countryside, sparked something in him. A newfound urge to tell the stories around him. A need to create, and to do so in as many ways as possible.

Instagram | Spotify

featuring:

Stanzy Scheetz • Ariane Parkes-Perret • Harper Folsom • Carrie Guenther • Emma Hodges • Shana Kaska • John E & David D • Brianna M Riedel • W. Michael Sinclair • Daniel Smith • Leslie Musser Aka The Blank Page Artist • Sydney Miller • Sarah P. Dirks

open hours:
Mon. 6/19 11a-1p
Tues. 6/20 6-8p
Thurs. 6/22 6-8p
Sat. 6/24 6-8p (reception)

or by appointment: john@publicspaceone.com

artist website

Featuring Tit for Tat in our Northside gallery space!

The Iowa City Gallery Walk is back for another year! For over 20 years, this event has taken over downtown and filled your favorite businesses with wonderful works of art. Make a day of it and grab a bite to eat, shop, and gallery walk in beautiful downtown Iowa City! The 2023 Downtown Summer Gallery Walk is Friday, June 2nd from 5:00 – 8:00pm. This FREE event is open to everyone to enjoy a self-guided tour of shops, galleries, and other locations that have curated featured artists and pieces of art.

Visit various venues during the Gallery Walk for a chance to win a $50 gift certificate to one of the participating businesses! In order to qualify, participants will have to print out the Gallery Walk postcard or map and have it stamped at each location visited. Simply present the mailer card for a “punch” at the Gallery Walk locations. Completed cards may be dropped off at any participating venue. A winner will be selected and notified the following week once cards have been collected.

Join Dorian Dean & Adam Farcus for a tea party at which you are invited to make your own phrases or sayings to add to the Tit for Tat exhibition in our gallery.

Materials provided; free and open to all!

Pass the milk please. / Get me the broom and sweep up this mess. / Why don’t you kiss me goodnight anymore? / Feed the dog in the morning. / Will you be my friend again? / Meet your maker. / Can we lay down?

Tit for Tat is an invitation for creative correspondence with makers through letter writing and decoration of phrases/sayings in the form of fragments, equilibriums, humor, conversations, and sparks in the air.

Then, on June 10, from 4-7pm, you can also join us for aa farewell to pick up original works. Each person who contributed will receive a zine made with documentation from the exhibition at the Closing Tea Party.

ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS:

Dorian Dean (she/they) was born in Baltimore, Maryland and currently lives and works in Iowa City, Iowa. In 2022 Dorian completed a MFA in Painting and Certificate of Book Arts at the University of Iowa and received their BFA from Tyler School of Art. Collaboration and community engagement through building relationships is an essential part of their art practice. Teaching for over 16 years, Dorian uses art as a tool for social change, with the belief that sharing experience in non hierarchical models empowers people to get curious and question whose “rules” really serve them. As curator for the Times Club at Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City, curation and collaboration has become a way to put this engagement into action. Dorian has taught and developed curriculums at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of art and the Barnes Foundation. Dorian's writing has been published in the Brink Literary Journal and her work has been shown at the MDW Chicago art fair with Stop Gap Projects, Charles City Art Center, Iowa, Bisignano Gallery at the University of Dubuque, Iowa, University of Central Missouri, James May Gallery, Milwaukee, and has a forthcoming exhibitions at Soil Gallery, The Vestibule and Das Schaufenster galleries in Seattle.  @dorianstelldean

Adam Farcus is an Illinois-based activist, artist, curator, feminist, organizer, poet, quasi-linguist, teacher, and writer. Farcus received their MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago, BFA from Illinois State University, and AA from Joliet Junior College. They currently serve on the FATE board, as well as participate in the Climate Psychological Alliance, organize with the Utopian Megaproject, and teach with the Education Justice Project. Their work has been exhibited at numerous venues, including the Modern Museum of Art Fort Worth; Vox Populi, Philadelphia; the American University Museum; and the Advance Art Museum in Changsha, China. Farcus’s academic writing has been published in Art Education and the Journal of Second Language Writing (in collaboration with Allison Yasukawa, forthcoming) and their creative writing has been published in Rattle and Funny Looking Dog Quarterly among others. Farcus is the director of Lease Agreement, an alternative and nomadic curatorial project, and they are an Instructional Assistant Professor of Art at Illinois State University. https://adamfarcus.com/ @toubab_adama

The artists of Come Stay a While are hosting a s’more roasting crochet workshop at their fiber arts installation at PS1’s Northside location! Join us to watch the sunset shine through the tent, learn to crochet, and drink hot drinks!

Learn more about the installation, which is on view through April 29, here!

In his teachings, the late Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh uses a sheet of paper to explain how, in his words, “nothing can exist by itself alone.” “If there were no clouds, there would be no rain. The plants would not be able to grow. Without plants, we cannot make the pulp for the paper,” Hanh says. “So really, the clouds are in here,” he continues, pointing to a tiny sheet of paper. The sermon finishes with Hanh imagining the piece of paper burning, returning to smoke and ash, and thus to the very earth it came from.

Cladis will host a series of “paper pulls,” wherein participants will “pull” a single sheet of handmade paper. When each sheet of paper is made and dried, it will then be placed within the gallery space as a progression that has been situated to seated eye level. He hopes for each participant to become a piece of this communal oneness, while also developing a basic feel for the interaction between fiber and water, and the interrelationships of time, land, material, community, and choreography inherent to the hand papermaking process. 

Each day, Cladis will add a little bit more black pulp (dyed with soot, to reference the eventual return of the paper to the earth), thereby creating a subtle tone shift in the paper as it wraps around the space. Within the space, participants can sit on handmade paper cushions, contemplating the communal, collaborative work we have all made together.

ARTIST BIO:

Nicholas Cladis is an interdisciplinary artist and papermaker who lives and works in Iowa City, IA. He is the papermaking specialist at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, where he lectures and manages the Oakdale papermaking research facility. Nicholas is an active researcher and practitioner of traditional and non-traditional papermaking processes. His studio work responds to the discipline of hand papermaking itself, thereby engaging with references to aesthetics, time, raw materials, choreography, and culture. For many years Nicholas lived and worked in Echizen, Japan — an area with over 1,500 years of papermaking history — and continues to maintain an active relationship with the papermaking community there.