The Hen House presents new digital work by Will Penny opening March 6th. PLAYTHINGS will be on view at The Hen House located at The Stables (7 Rathborne Dr.) through March 22nd and features a series of interactive, sculptural and video-based installations. The show focuses on technology as a medium and is used to explore the dissonance between digital structures and physical inputs. Parameter, coding and conditions are represented by fantasy, opticality and absurdity as a means to question the nature of mediated experience within spaces, both social and digital.

Gallery hours are Friday through Sunday from noon-5PM. A reception will be held on Friday, March 13th, from 6-9PM. All programming is free and open to the public.

For more information, visit henhousesav.com

About the Artist:

Will Penny (b. 1984) was raised in Southern Ontario and currently resides in Savannah, GA. He received a diploma in Fine Art from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario and a BFA and MFA in Painting from The Savannah College of Art and Design, wheer he currently serves as a Professor of Digital Communication.

Penny’s artworks dissolve the traditional boundaries of art and design. He explores tensions between the tangible space a painting inhabits, the impact of digital technology on fabricated forms and illusionistic environments. By creating systems of interactivity with digital technologies, his art confronts the way information is generated, transmitted and received.

He has exhibited in the United States and Canada.

@willpennyart | willpenny.com

(meh-ra-kee) to do something with soul, creativity, or love; to put something of yourself into your work

Meraki, originating from both artists’ need to creatively express their inner battles, is a duo exhibition with Kelly Hymes and Maly Pel that features their recent interrelated works involving the themes of family, trauma, and coping in response to monumental life moments. Hymes’s work is a glance into her internal struggles with her mother's previous breast cancer diagnosis. She defines her work as a coping mechanism that enables her to finally acknowledge a moment that left her mentally drowning in flashbacks of specific markings. The dots in Hymes’ work references three, small, blue, dots used for radiation treatments. Pel’s work focuses on the tension between the rigid boundaries of her Khmer upbringing and modern day values. Throughout her life, some traditions and standards were imposed on her that contrasted with what she was led to believe. Her art metaphorically and literally carves a path to new beginnings and burns away pieces of herself. The use of Khmer text in her work references memories, both raw and meaningful, between herself and her parents.

The exhibition will be on display at The Stables, located at 7 Rathbone Dr., Savannah, GA 31415 on Thursday, March 12 - Friday, March 13, 2020. A reception will be held March 12 from 6-8 PM, food and beverage will be provided.

Kelly Hymes (b. 1996, North Carolina) is receiving a BFA in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in March 2020 and received an AFA in visual arts from Fayetteville Technical Community College in 2017. She has exhibited her work in group exhibitions in both North Carolina and Georgia. She was a guest speaker at Fayetteville Technical Community College after placing in the top three in a juried show. Hymes is currently living and working in Savannah, GA.

Maly Pel (b. 1998, Connecticut) is a first generation Cambodian-American artist who will receive her BFA in painting at Savannah College of Art and Design in May 2020. Pel has exhibited in several group shows, and most recently was included in the Winter 2020 edition of Under the Bridge. Pel is currently living and working in Savannah, GA.

In Radha Howard’s upcoming exhibition Catalysis, death becomes a form of life. Tones and
textures of earthly decay overtake human and animal figures in states of surrender to the
unraveling it makes of them—the catharsis of the soul when it lets go of the body to which it’s
bound. The works featured include painting, sculpture, and video, unified in the raw viscerality
they express.

A catalyst brings about or increases the rate or intensity of a reaction. This can be between
chemicals, or human emotion. Catalysis is a body of work that explores the latter. It is an
unveiling of the psyche, in which Radha dives deep into her own mental landscapes and pulls
emotions to surface and manifest in the works. Each piece is, in a way, a self portrait, no matter
if or how the figure is rendered, human or otherwise. They are her own constant death, a
reminder to herself to let go and embrace the pain of living. Radha's hope is that these works
will also stir emotion in her viewers, perhaps acting as a catalyst to them in turn.

The show will be on view at The Stables Savannah, at 7 Rathborne Drive, Savannah, GA 31415,
from Friday, March 6th to Sunday, March 8th. The opening reception will be on Friday, March
6th, from 6-8 pm. Attendance is free and open to the public.

Radha Howard (b. 1996, United States) will receive a B.F.A. in painting from the Savannah
College of Art and Design (SCAD) in March of 2020. She is an artist who works in painting,
sculpture, and new media, focusing on themes of death and rebirth, pain and ecstasy, and
the connection of earthly decay with the energy of the cosmos. She has worked and studied
in Lacoste, France; and Hong Kong, and exhibited work in a group exhibition in Dacia
Gallery in NYC in 2019, as well as SCAD’s Open Studio exhibitions in 2019, 2018, and
2017. This summer she will begin work in a newly built painting studio in a rural, nature-rich
area of central Pennsylvania.

The Hen House @ The Stables presents the work of Curtis Bartone with Ugis Berzins opening November 22nd. INKED: Concept to Commodity will be on view at The Hen House’s new space located at The Stables (7 Rathborne Dr.) through December 14th and features a wide variety of original works rooted in drawing, including illustrations, prints and paintings. The show focuses on the evolution of the sketch as the basis for artistic creation, and the relationship of value to a works’ ultimate distribution as it is mediated through different processes.

The comic is for the many, the print for the few, and the painting for the one. How this relationship affects its worth is worth considering. 

Gallery hours are Friday through Sunday from noon-5PM starting on November 22nd. A closing reception will be held on Saturday, December 14th, from 6-9PM. All programming is free and open to the public.

About the Artists: 

Curtis Bartone’s work has been included in over 100 group exhibitions internationally, and in 22 solo exhibitions, most recently at the University of Alabama, Huntsville; Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston; Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia and Alberta Printmakers in Canada. He has been awarded numerous residencies in the U.S. and abroad and has received grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and the Illinois Arts Council. In the summer of 2021, Bartone will have a solo exhibition of works on paper in North Karelia, Finland.

He received an MFA from Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois, and a BFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design, in Columbus, Ohio. Currently, he resides in Savannah, Georgia with his wife and seven cats, where he makes paintings, drawings and prints and teaches printmaking at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

@cabartone | curtisbartone.com

Ugis Berzins is an illustrator and cartoonist hailing from Michigan, but is now biscuit deep in the Savannah Gentrification Olympics. After graduating from SCAD in 2014, he decided to double down on making art for a niche audience, opting out of profitability or an upward career trajectory. No matter how questionable the concept, the goal for Ugis is to treat it seriously, with a high degree of craft.

@futurelandfillpress | futurelandfillpress.com