Featuring works by:
Michael Mahalchick (Brooklyn, NY)
Julia Oldham (Eugene, OR)
Jeffrey Grunthaner (Berlin, Germany)
Masaru Suyama (Nagoya, Japan)
David Kramer (New York, NY)
Eduardo Navas (University Park, PA)
Cabin Contemporary is thrilled to present “The Devil Made Me Do It”, a group exhibit featuring an international line-up of multidisciplinary artists. “The Devil Made Me Do It” is a call to disturb a field for the better and perhaps the betting. A random gamble that reads more like a well-timed gambit. Each artist offers something benevolent yet mischievous. A purpose manifests within a process and r(e)merges as a new purpose. The devil as mischief maker might hide in the details.
An opening reception will be held on 04/02/23 from 2pm-8pm. Light refreshments will be available. BYOB is encouraged.
Michael Mahalchick (b. 1972, Pottsville, PA) was bred in Pottsville, PA and is now the toast of New York City. He earned an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA and completed his BFA in sculpture at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. Mahalchick has exhibited and performed extensively throughout the USA and Europe. Recent exhibitions include Skin Game at Canada, New York; Here Today, Gone Tomorrow at the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT. In 2010, Mahalchick received a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for PURO DESEO, a collaboration with luciana achugar.
Julia Oldham (b. 1979, Frederick, MD) is an artist living and working in Eugene, OR and New York City. Using a range of media, from animation to graphic storytelling, she gives voice to the animals, ecosystems and scientific phenomena all around us. Her narrative works explore the complex relationships between nature and technology, humans and animals, and science and creativity. Oldham’s work has been screened/exhibited at Art in General in New York, NY; the Queens Museum, Queens, NY; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, NY; the Northwest Film Center at the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; the San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, CA; PPOW in New York, NY; The Drawing Center in New York, NY; The Bronx Museum of Art in the Bronx, NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, IL; Disjecta, Portland, OR; the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA; the Dia Foundation at the Hispanic Society in New York, NY; the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC; and Nunnery Gallery in London, UK; and she was included in the 2016 Portland Biennial curated by Michelle Grabner. She has been supported by Artadia, the Fund for Art and Dialogue, New York, NY; NYC Urban Field Station, Queens, NY; Artist in the Marketplace at the Bronx Museum of Art, Bronx, NY; Art in General, New York, NY; the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in New York, NY; Outpost Artist Resources in Ridgewood, NY; Artists in Residence in the Everglades, Miami, FL; Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest, Clermont, KY; the Oregon Arts Commission in Portland, OR; and the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, Chicago, IL. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and the Village Voice, and has been featured on the NPR shows “State of Wonder” on OPB and “Inquiry” on WICN
Jeffrey Grunthaner is a writer, artist, musician, and sometimes curator currently based in Berlin. Essays, articles, poems, and reviews have appeared via BOMB, artnet News, The Brooklyn Rail, American Art Catalogues, Drag City Books, and other venues. A poetry pamphlet, Aphid Poems, was recently published by The Creative Writing Department (2022). Some recent art exhibitions include For Every Crypt There’s A Passion. For Every Pension There’s A Prisoner (Espace Maurice, Montréal), and Random Thoughts (The Wrong Biennale).
Masaru Suyama (b. 1974, Aichi, Japan) is a self-taught painter based in Japan. He attended Nagoya University School of Engineering. Suyama initially had his sights set on cartooning, applying to numerous cartooning prizes and was selected as a GARO prize finalist by the prestigious GARO cartooning magazine. Cartooning was his first experience in art making. Suyama is now a skilled mixed media painter. Suyama has exhibited in Tokyo, London and New York.
David Kramer (b.1963, NY, NY) received his BA in Fine Arts from The George Washington University and his MFA in Sculpture from Pratt Institute. He has exhibited widely both internationally and domestically, including solo and group exhibitions at Freight & Volume, New York; Aeroplastics, Belgium; Galerie Tanit, Munich; and Galerie Lauren Godin, Paris; including a collaboration with the Celine store in Paris. He has participated in several residencies in both the United States and Czech Republic.
Eduardo Navas is the author of Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling ( Springer, 2012), Spate: A Navigational Theory of Networks(INC, 2016), as well as Art Media Design and Postproduction: Open Guidelines on Appropriation and Remix (Routledge, 2018). He is co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies (Routledge, 2015), and Keywords in Remix Studies (Routledge 2017). He implements methodologies of cultural analytics and digital humanities to research the crossover of art and media in culture. His production includes art and media projects, critical texts, and curatorial projects. He has presented and lectured about his work and research internationally.
Navas collaborates with artists and institutions in various countries to organize events and develop new forms of publication and creative production. He has been a juror for Turbulence.org (Boston) in 2004, Rhizome.org (NYC) in 2006–07, and Terminal Awards in 2011. Navas was a consultant for Creative Capital (NYC), 2008–09, and for The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (LA), 2014-2015. He was founder and contributing editor of Net Art Review (2003–05), and was co-founder of newmediaFIX (2005–11). Navas was Gallery Coordinator, Researcher, and Senior Writer for gallery@calit2, UC San Diego in 2008. He has lectured on art and media theory, art history as well as studio practice at various colleges and universities in the United States, including Otis College of Art & Design, San Diego State University, the program of Culture and Media at Eugene Lang College as well as the MA Media Studies Program at The New School for Public Engagement, NY.
Navas currently researches and teaches principles of cultural analytics and digital humanities in The School of Visual Arts at The Pennsylvania State University, PA. He is Research Faculty in the College of Arts and Architecture’s Art & Design Research Incubator (ADRI), and a 2016–17 Center for Humanities and Information Research Fellow (CHI) at Penn State. He was a 2010–12 Post Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. He is an affiliated researcher at the Software Studies Lab, Cuny (2010–present). He received his Ph.D. from the Program of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the University of California in San Diego.
Cabin Contemporary encourages dialogue about contemporary art in the Appalachian Mountains of rural east central Pennsylvania. The project space focuses on installation, new media, painting and outsider art. Multidisciplinary artist and educator Lance Rautzhan established Cabin Contemporary in June 2022.
Cabin Contemporary is open by appointment only.
Cabin Contemporary
357 Manheim Rd
Pottsville, PA 17901
410-493-9724
Future Projects:
BOB MCCORMICK
5/07/23 – 06/04/23
Bob McCormick (born. 1952 in Ashland, PA) began painting on his 50th birthday, while enrolled in an evening class at the Schuylkill County Vocational-Technical School. Primarily a landscape painter, he worked in watercolor for the first fifteen years. In recent years, he’s been discovering the power of pigments, using acrylics and oils.
At age 70, McCormick continues to use paint to reflect what he’s witnessed throughout his Baby-Boomer lifetime: from childhood memories of his family’s life in Big Mine Run (an anthracite coal ‘Patchtown’), to scenes that surround him out on the farmland where he now resides, to imagined vistas that reflect his understanding of the social and cultural evolution we are currently experiencing.
EDWARD WOLTEMATE
6/11/23 – 7/07/23
Edward (Eddie) Woltemate (born. 1944 in Pottstown, PA) is an award winning Outsider/Visionary artist livng and working in Pottstown, PA. He is a self-taught artist, though deaf, his silent world speaks with joy and brilliant creativity. He uses colored pencil, but often acrylic mixes to give a blended image. His art has been shown worldwide. He has displayed twice in the annual show of the prestigious American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Md., and is in their permanent collection.
YENNA HILL
7/16/23 – 8/13/23
Yenna HiIl (born. 1985 in Reading, PA) is a self-taught, synesthetic artist known for her unmistakable and unpredictable “pop-infused ancestral hieroglyphics.” Consisting of striking line work, bold color, and unabashed social justice themes, Hill seeks to connect people through awareness and to provide a meditative experience for her viewers.
Born of artistic heritage, Hill’s earliest influence was her grandfather, Al Haring, a cartoonist and illustrator with whom she would draw at the dining room table surrounded by the work of her world-renowned pop artist uncle, Keith Haring. She received early exposure to Aztec and East African artwork, West African wax print, Indian block print, and Polynesian patterns, all of which became foundational influences to Hill’s style. Hill lives and works in Reading, PA.
FREDERICK WRIGHT JONES
8/20/23 – 9/17/23
Frederick Wright Jones (born in Kimberton, PA) has spent much of his adult life traveling between the Philadelphia area and Hamburg, Germany. Pushed by a responsibility to initiate conversation and critique about nation, history and culture, Jones’s hybrid practice works as both a mode of research and a method to communicate. He builds tools, toys and totems fusing craft with performance, sound-clash and video. Jones is currently an assistant professor of sculpture at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA. He received his MFA from SUNY Buffalo.
BETHANN PARKER
9/24/23 – 10/22/23
Bethann Parker (b. 1984 in Montgomeryville, Pa) Parker received a BFA and Certificate of Fine Art from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and a Certificate from the Barnes Foundation. She was the recipient of The Kittredge Fund, The Fred and Naomi Hazel Art Scholarship, The Richard Von. Hess Travel Scholarship and twice awarded Venture Fund Grant for large project proposals. Her work has been featured in the New York Times and the Voice of America. Parker lives and works in Saylorsburg, PA.