Resaw – New work by Nathan J. Baker

Summer 2023
GPS presents a new solo exhibition by resident artist Nathan J. Baker.
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From the exhibition statement:
“Sculpture has unique characteristics as a form of artistic expression.  It often brings
presence – much like sharing a room with another person – generating a space of
confrontation or contemplation.  There is much visual art that exists on a flat plane. In contrast, sculptures inhabit and command space as objects, holding weight, both literal and metaphorical. They become areas of condensed meaning – often imbued through the physicality of their making, through the choice of materials, through the movement and energy of the artist’s body, through intentional action and intervention.

The materials chosen for this exhibition – mostly common grade sheets of plywood and basic construction lumber – are the materials that constitute the spaces we inhabit. Thus they become almost invisible by way of their ubiquity and commonness. These products are all examples of tree-as-commodity, creating a tension between the tree itself and the practical building material which it has become. As is the action of the artist.  Wrapped into these pieces are confrontations with work and value, abstraction and perfection, but with the shadow of the artist always present through his tools, his time, his decisions and his labor. 

Sculptures, as containers for meaning, are also informed by their relationship with the space in which they are placed. For this show, the works are housed in a building which the artist has transformed through years of physical labor and experience. This building itself is surrounded by the Monongahela National Forest as well as vast acres of private, active timberland – much of which is at the age of harvest.” 
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Support for this exhibition is provided by the West Virginia Department of Arts,
Culture, and History and the National Endowment for the Arts, with approval from
the WV Commission on the Arts.
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Nathan J. Baker is an artist and builder who lives and works in Thomas, WV. 
He is a co-founder of Gradient Projects and Invisible – an artist-run gallery in Thomas.
nathanbakerart.com

More Images to come.

THOMAS FILM CLUB

For the winter of 2023 Gradient has transformed into a micro-theatre of sorts to host a series of screenings by Thomas Film Club.

Films are on Saturday evenings at 8pm. A weekly membership, which includes popcorn and support for the programming is available for a $10 suggested donation.

The first series was Film Noir and featured The Big Sleep, The Thin Man, The Third Man, Blade Runner, Blue Velvet and Elevator to the Gallows.

The second series is Anime Classics:
January 21st: Akira
January 28th: Perfect Blue
February 4th: Princess Mononoke
February 18th: Pom Poko
February 25th: Ghost in the Shell

The third series is called Drivers:
March 11th: Speed (1994)
March 18th: Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
March 25th: Repo Man (1984)
April 1st: Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1984)
April 8th: Night on Earth (1991)

Ravel • Unravel – Kimberly Joy Trathen

June 2022 – September 2022
Opening Saturday June 18th // 6pm – late

GPS invites you to the opening of a new solo exhibition by Kimberly Joy Trathen.

This new body of textile-based work is made by intimate, meditative wrapping of embroidery thread. It is rooted in a process of embodied healing and engages the artist’s personal experiences with loss. The exhibition includes a collaborative piece that invites the community to participate in the wrapping method as a way to process the collective grief of these past years.

Support for this exhibition is provided by the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture, and History and the National Endowment for the Arts, with approval from the WV Commission on the Arts.

Kimberly Joy currently lives and works in Thomas, WV.
She is a contemporary textile artist and founder/co-founder of three artistic initiatives: 
Backstitched Design – a solo design studio;
Gradient Projects – an artist-run project space;
Studio Holler – a collaborative textile studio.

https://kjoytrathen.com // insta: @backstitched_design

Laurel Mountain Laurel – Jake Reinhart

March 26th, 2022 – May 28th, 2022

GPS presents ‘Laurel Mountain Laurel’ an exhibition and book release by Pittsburgh-based photographer Jake Reinhart

website: www.jakereinhart.com
instagram: @jakereinhart412

From the artist’s statement:

Laurel Mountain Laurel is an imperfect palindrome. It’s an act of interpretation. It’s a body of work inspired by what is lost in translation. It’s informed by a history of erasure and exploitation. It’s an attempt to articulate the significance of place and the life inhabited there. It’s equal parts folk song compassion and doom metal riff … At the heart of all of this, it’s a depiction of the Youghiogheny (Yawk-eh-gain-ee) River Watershed. A place that has deep personal significance to me.”

From the artist’s bio:

Jake Reinhart is a photographer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He earned a B.A. in Sociology and a Juris Doctor from the University of Pittsburgh.

His photobook Laurel Mountain Laurel was published by Deadbeat Club Press in November 2021, and has already been recognized as a notable photobook for the year by the likes of Chris McCall (Executive Director of Pier 24), Ed and Deanna Templeton (Artists/ Photographers), and Tim Carpenter (Winner of the 2019 Silver Eye Fellowship Award).

He recently received an honorable mention for the Silver Eye Keystone Award, and was previously awarded a Flight School Artist Fellowship in 2017 and the Pittsburgh Filmmakers emerging photographer grant in 2015.

Over the past two years Jake’s work has received frequent international attention after receiving a year long commission with Germany’s Die Zeit in 2020where he published a weekly photo article in ZEITmagazin titled Pittsburgh, 2020 and was featured in their international edition alongside artists, politicians and cultural icons such as: Willem Dafoe, Angela Merkel, Malcolm Gladwell, and Dua Lipa. His work was recently exhibited in Ulm, Germany and he also has an upcoming solo exhibition at Commune Gallery in Tokyo, Japan scheduled for April of 2022.”

Effervescent Hypnotics – Joshua Challen Ice

December 2021 – May 2022

GPS presents ‘Effervescent Hypnotics’ a site-specific installation by Pittsburgh-based artist Joshua Challen Ice

website: www.joshuachallenice.com
instagram: @joshuachallenice

Gradient Project Space has transformed into a futuristic street scene composed of reclaimed construction materials, assembled to abstracted, anachronistic telephone booths and MRI machines of sorts. Inside, thrashing kinetic elements bounce around in a chaotic clamor, evoking a simultaneous sensory overload and hypnosis, as each moment of rotation puts the viewer in a trance. The structures are created from found windows, scrapwood, and metal; the mirrored highlights and tech elements transport the viewer to a flashy and futuristic world. Inspired by industry and architecture, the process of building the work is improvisational, and drawn directly from reclaimed materials.

Appalachian Ghosts – Raymond Thompson Jr.

May – August 2021
GPS presents ‘Appalachian Ghosts’ a solo exhibition by Morgantown-based photographer Raymond Thompson Jr.

schedule a visit | view the works for sale

website: www.raymondthompsonjr.com
instagram: @raythompsonjrphoto

Raymond Thompson Jr. – Appalachian GhostsFrom the artist’s project statement:
In the 1930s, migrant laborers came from all over the region to work on the construction of a 3-mile tunnel to divert the New River near Fayetteville, WV. During the process, workers were exposed to pure silica dust due to improper drilling techniques. Many developed a lung disease known as silicosis, which is estimated to have caused the death of nearly 800 workers. Up to two-thirds of those workers were African American. Besides a small plaque at the Hawks Nest State Park, which lists a significantly lower number than the actual number killed, there is very little to mark the site. There is also sparse visual documentation available about the event. There has been an effort to erase this tragic moment in history from the memory of West Virginia. 

In Appalachian Ghosts, I explore visual possibilities of what that time and place looked like, using primary-source materials to recreate the workers’ experiences in photographs. I have also recontextualized and re-presented archive photographs, originally made to document the construction of the Hawks Nest Tunnel dam and powerhouse. The few people caught in the photographic archive were often nameless and voiceless workers. Specifically, I’m looking at what has been left out of African-American visual history, which to date has mainly been documented with a colonial gaze. From this standpoint, I have sought to re/create work that has been informed by and made from historical documents and photographs.

My research also focused on working with non-visual resources that inspired the creation of new works. I researched news clips, letters, poetry and other cultural resources looking for information that described the experience of working in the tunnel. I was particularly struck by a poem from Muriel Rukeyser’s book The Book of the Dead called “George Robinson: Blues:”

As dark as I am. when I came out at morning after the tunnel at night
with a white man, nobody could have told which man was white.
The dust had covered us both, and the dust was white.
-Muriel Rukeyser “The Book of the Dead”

Rukeyser’s book, along with other primary-source documents, inspired a series of images that focuses on the silica dust that covered everything at the work site.”

schedule a visit | view the works for sale

website: www.raymondthompsonjr.com
instagram: @raythompsonjrphoto

Émilie Clepper

January 8th, 2020
8pm – $10

GPS Starts the 2020 season with a night of music by Émilie Clepper.

Émilie Clepper brings an incredibly unique sound mixing Quebec with Texas, folk with country and gospel. Her inspirations include Edith Piaf, Cat Power, Lhasa and Portishead.

Americana/country/folk artist Emilie Clepper brings one of the genre’s finest new voices and an eclectic musical background to present music that is fresh, moving and memorable. Since her young teens, Emilie has travelled back and forth between her native Quebec and her father’s Texas and counts folk, bluegrass, gospel and roots country among her most enduring influences. She was a repeat performer in several major festivals in Canada and the US, including the Montreal Jazz Festival.

Group show with Gina Mamone, Emily Prentice & Kimberly Joy Trathen

For the January Thomas Art Walk we will add work from Emily Prentice and Gina Mamone to the ongoing exhibition by Kimberly Joy Trathen.

Trathen, Prentice, Mamone group show

Gina Mamone

Gina Mamone is an audio engineer & maker living in the coalfields of West Virginia. Mamone engineered and produced some of the first Riot Grrrl albums to come out of the PNW. Up until 2014 Mamone was President of Riot Grrrl Ink. the largest queer record label in the world, with an artist roster of over 200 that ranged from the Gay Ole Opry to Andrea Gibson. In 2014, in an act of solidarity with the emerging #BLM movement and in an intentional act of reparations & redistribution of wealth, Mamone gave RGI to Awqward, the first queer POC/indigenous talent agency. As the Creative Director of the Queer Appalachia Project, they communicate with over a quarter of a million queers & allies daily who call home below the Mason-Dixon through the project. Mamone is also an Editor at the looking at Appalachia Project & is currently collaborating with Nan Goldin’s PAIN project.

instagram: @queerappalachia

Emily Prentice

Emily Prentice is a forever novice, a devotee to beginnings, and the Zine Queen of Randolph County. Her work focuses on the meeting place of the natural and the supernatural (the ways in which we’re of this world and beyond it), and it exists in the form of quilts, zines, drawings, and teaching. Find Emily’s creative practice online at www.emilyprentice.com.

instagram: @_emily_prentice_

Kimberly Joy Trathen – Dutchman’s Puzzle – November 2018

Solo Exhibition of reclaimed leather quilts by Kimberly Joy Trathen

Opening November 10, 2018  – 6-9pm

Dutchman's Puzzle by Kimberly Joy Trathen

The textiles and garments that surround us silently accompany us through the unfolding experiences of our lives. New stories are gathered. New histories are created. The materials become charged with a spirit that is not reproducible – a kind of social life or aura created by its own unique history.
I create new work from old things: new bags from discarded leather coats, wallets from unwanted jackets, quilts from textile and leather remnants. For this body of work, I have woven scraps from previous projects into new works. The result is a charged piece of art, activated not only by my own hands, but from the material’s previous lives. Another layer is added to its history.
The humble roots of this practice – mostly utilitarian work-clothes quilts – fascinate me. They have helped inspire and guide my work in its present direction. The current exhibition explores variations on the traditional quilt pattern, Dutchman’s Puzzle.

The Unknown with Stephanie Nilles & Thomas Deakin

October 13th, 2018.

Gradient transforms into a Prohibition-era art house theatre as Stephanie Nilles and Thomas Deakin perform a live, original musical score to Tod Browning’s 1927 silent horror film The Unknown (Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford).

“On the run from the law, Alonzo (Lon Chaney) hides in the circus as The Armless Wonder — a performer who uses his feet to hurl knives. Alonzo actually has the use of his arms but keeps them concealed so that his true identity remains under wraps. Meanwhile, Alonzo falls in love with another performer, Nanon (Joan Crawford), who has a phobia against being touched by a man. But when the circus owner (Nick De Ruiz) discovers Alonzo’s true identity, the performer makes a tragic decision.”