The ArtsWest Gallery is launching its 2009-10 season with Altered Associations, a show featuring surreal oils on canvas by Jeff Mihalyo, Lucy Carpenter working in reclaimed plastic bags and chicken wire, and Therese Buchmiller with minimalist re-creations utilizing various appropriated materials.
 
Altered Associations was curated specifically to complement the concurrent stage production at ArtsWest, "Dead Man’s Cell Phone," Sept. 9 through Oct. 3.
 
“Just as the play crosses and recrosses the line between everyday reality and The Other Side, these three artists cross the line connecting the real to the surreal,” said Gallery Director Nichole DeMent. “Beyond the thematic connection of everyday things altered out of their expected contexts, there are also more overt connections of the visual art to the script that won’t be clear until after the performance. So the interplay between the gallery and the stage will evolve as the evening progresses.”
 
The exhibit is free from Aug. 25 through Oct. 3, noon to 7 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.

Oil paintings by Jeff Mihalyo are based on a daily ritual of sketching during travels in Italy, France and Spain for the past five years.  Quixotic coliseums are suspended above lush landscapes created from an aesthetic based in velvety realism. 

Vibrant jewel-like colors are only part of the beauty found in his oil paintings, which are filled with universal metaphors for larger than life emotions and dreams.  Jeff Mihalyo studied fine art at Otis / Parsons in Los Angeles. He has been exhibiting in the Northwest for more than two decades and is widely collected and published with numerous awards.

Lucy Carpenter recycles plastic bags in her larger than life sculptures of human organs. A heart and a kidney are on view from her series, Plastics in Our Food Chain: When We Become Our Waste. 

Carpenter explores the ways in which we are becoming quite intimate with our trash.  Recent studies on the plastics in our oceans are giving the saying, “We are what we eat” a new meaning. 

Lucy Carpenter recently graduated from University Puget Sound and worked in Milan Italy alongside contemporary artists and sculptors during her studies.

Therese Buchmiller is a contemporary artist that re-organizes found objects, such as a plastic frog, paper wings, Styrofoam pellets and a Q-tip to create out of the ordinary installations based in simplicity and nostalgic beauty. 

The space between often means more than the objects themselves as she diverts meaning and identity of objects by recontextualizing them on the gallery wall.  Therese Buchmiller holds an masters in fine art from California College of the Arts in San Francisco and a bachelor in fine art from the Art Institute of Chicago and is widely collected with many glowing reviews. 

Join the artists at their wine and cheese reception during the West Seattle 2nd Thursday Art Walk on Sept. 10 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. 

ArtsWest Playhouse and Gallery is located at 4711 California Ave. S.W.