Tag Archives: lily kuonen

Pattern Energies

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Multimedia artist Nida Bangash is featured at Clay and Canvas Studio’s Open Studio Night

[Installation shot of Nida Bangesh's work at Clay and Canvas Studios.]

[Installation shot of Nida Bangash’s work at Clay and Canvas Studio.]

Since December of 2011, artists and educators Lily Kuonen and Tiffany Leach have been presenting their Open Studio Night at their Clay and Canvas Studio located in Riverside. The events are held bi-annually, usually in December and May or November and April, and are a chance for art lovers to visit Kuonen and Leach’s working studio and check out the respective artists’ new work. Yet the pair also uses these events to showcase the work of both emerging and well-known artists. In the past two years, the artists Mark Creegan, Erica Adams, Jessie Gilmartin, and Rachel Evans have all been invited to present original work. While the pieces featured are highly contemporary, these one-night events have been consistently casual and benefit from Leach and Kuonen’s generosity in attempting to bring greater exposure to other artists.

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Class Action

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Jacksonville University now offers MFA in Visual Arts program

 Northeast Florida’s current spate of artistic activity is surely due in no small part to the art and design programs offered at local colleges and universities. The Art Institute, Flagler College, Florida State College at Jacksonville, Jacksonville University and the University of North Florida all offer programs geared towards students seeking an education and guidance in creative careers in a variety of disciplines and media. These same schools certainly benefit by featuring faculty members and instructors that are as serious about their respective artistic disciplines as they are in sharing their experience and wisdom with their students.

Jacksonville University (JU) is now stepping up their game with the implementation of a Masters of Fine Arts in Visual Arts degree, the first of its kind ever offered by a local college. Continue reading →

Temporary Residence

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Home is where the art is with “The Apartment Exhibition”

[Installation shot of the living room of "The Apartment Exhibition." All photos by Laura Evans.]

[Installation shot of the living room of “The Apartment Exhibition.” All photos by Laura Evans.]

Five local creative types are putting space to good use. Curated by Staci Bu Shea, “The Apartment Exhibition” features individual and collaborative work by Thony Aiuppy, Sterling Cox, Lily Kuonen and Edison William. Located in Cox’s 500 square foot, mother-in-law apartment behind his Avondale home, “The Apartment Exhibition” features over 30 pieces that touch on concepts of cohabitation, tenancy and ownership as well as deeper, provocative ideas such as nostalgia, impermanence and belonging. Continue reading →

Shape Shifter

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Lily Kuonen forges a hybrid breed of multimedia ideas with her “Playntings”

["Want" by Lily Kuonen.]

[“Want” by Lily Kuonen.]

While some artists might revisit their ideas, Lily Kuonen revisits, re-addresses, re-thinks and re-assembles both her ideas and very work in pieces she calls “Playntings.” Using familiar raw materials such as canvas and paint, the 28 year old Kuonen also assimilates tools such as vise grips and lumber into her pieces, blurring lines between studio/piece, installation/presentation and, ultimately, art and artist. Kuonen’s work is almost hyper-contemporary in the sense that she is perpetually changing and “upgrading” her art in an ongoing methodology and approach that she describes as “repurposing.” A singular (in her own words) genealogy is formed as Kuonen continually reassigns materials from old pieces into the new, her work forever evolving from the ancestral lineage of prior concepts and experimental approaches. Continue reading →