TWIST ART GALLERY PRESENTS an Exchange with Atlanta’s Beep Beep Gallery

TWIST ART GALLERY PRESENTS an Exchange with Atlanta’s Beep Beep Gallery


NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Twist Art Gallery located at 73 Arcade in downtown Nashville presents an exchange of artists with Beep Beep Gallery in Atlanta. The opening reception takes place Saturday, May 2, 2009 from 6 until 9 pm. The event is free and open to the public. The show runs through May 28th.
Last year, Twist proprietors Beth Gilmore and Caroline Carlisle met up with some like-minded folks in our friendly city to the South. James McConnell and Mark Basehore are running a space very similar to Twist in Atlanta. We found our missions so closely aligned that we decided to swap artists. In May, Beep Beep artists Ann-Marie Manker and Jason R. Butcher will show at Twist and Twist artists Duncan McDaniel, Erin Plew and John Whitten will show at Beep Beep.
Beep Beep artists Ann-Marie Manker and Jason R. Butcher’s opening at Twist will be held on Saturday, May 2 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m

In Atlanta, Twist artists Duncan McDaniel, Erin Plew and John Whitten will open their show on May 9th. The Beep Beep Gallery is located at 696 Charles Allen Drive, Atlanta GA 30308.
Background on Beep Beep:

Beep Beep Gallery was started in January 2006 by three local art enthusiasts, James McConnell, Steven Rauber and Mark Basehore. The first art show debuted at James' and Steve's house in Oakhurst Village, an Atlanta neighborhood just outside of Decatur. Their first opening was a group show featuring mostly their friend's artwork. After holding four art openings out of their house, they rebirthed the gallery in a commercial space.
Beep Beep Gallery re-opened in August 2006, coincidentally the very same month Twist Art Gallery was opening in Nashville. Finding success with their first show in the new space, the gallery owners continued holding monthly art shows with their vision of creating a place for local artists, writers, musicians, and zinesters to show and support each other's work.




The gallery has, since then, exhibited original works by many emerging and established Atlanta-based artists. The gallery also now proudly displays locally-made zines, buttons, t-shirts, records, books, stickers, Evereman merchandise, tables and other crafty treasures for sale.
Twist is part of a collective of art studios and galleries known as Art at the Arcade. The First Saturday Gallery Crawl is held the first Saturday of the month from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. These events are free and open to the public.

Twist Art Gallery is located at 73 Arcade on 5th Ave. North. Please visit www.twistartgallery.com or www.artatthearcade.com for more information or call (888) 535-5286. Regular gallery hours at Thursday and Friday 11:00 a.m. to

5 p.m. and Saturdays 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.





Information on the Artists:

Ann-Marie Manker
Ann-Marie Manker is a visual artist with experience curating and directing an alternative art space. Based in Atlanta, GA, Manker teaches drawing and painting in the School of Fine Arts at SCAD Atlanta. She received her BFA at The University of Southern California, Los Angeles (1992) and her MFA in Drawing and Painting at Georgia State University, Atlanta (2004).
Manker has exhibited widely in Atlanta at a variety of spaces, such as such as The Museum of Contemporary Art of GA, Marcia Wood Gallery, Youngblood Gallery, Eyedrum, Beep Beep Gallery and she is currently represented at Whitespace Gallery. Manker has also exhibited in Los Angeles at Sabina Lee Gallery and Ruth Bachofner Gallery. In 2005 she formed Golden Blizzard art collective with fellow artist Alex Kvares, leading to its 8 member status which includes co-exhibiting artist Jason Butcher as a member.
Manker founded and directed ArtSpot gallery from 2001-2004 where she organized and curated a variety of exhibitions. The gallery was awarded "Best Alternative Art Space 2003" in Atlanta, by Creative Loafing. She was awarded the Forward Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award grant for 2006. She was also selected for Transatlantic 2006, Artists in Residence International, exhibiting in Berlin, Germany.
Statement

Ann-Marie Manker’s current drawings explore the psychological narrative between a single female surrounded by animals in a fantasy setting. Subversive elements of desire and flirtation play out their role in an environment of mid-century inspired nature, design and motifs. For this series, Manker was inspired by a drawing she created as a child that depicted heterosexual critter couples and their offspring. Manker chose to revisit this theme as an adult, tapping into the sexual elements, which were masked by childhood naiveté, idealism and innocence.
The setting for these drawings were derived from a variety of early 1960’s pop culture, including the Southern California neighborhood where Manker grew up, Hong Kong pop YouTube videos, the lyrics from Rebecca Pan’s early 60’s hit “Bengawan Solo” and Disney’s It’s a Small World ride.
In addition to her drawings, Manker sculpts bringing her drawings to life using three-dimensional landscape elements to support her imagery. She works with a variety of materials including sanded and painted foam, cast plastic and plaster gumdrops that are painted and coated in glitter, cut painted paper and fabric.









Jason R. Butcher

Butcher teaches courses at The Art Institute of Atlanta and also works in interactive software design and programming, computer illustration and animation, multimedia editing, authoring, and distributing, custom circuit design, and A/V Integration for museum exhibits. Recent projects of note include the Center for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife, Sanibel Island, FL, GSTC Kiosk at Hartsfield-Jackson Intl. Airport, Atlanta and the Ocmulgee National Monument, Macon, GA.
He received his Master of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in Electronic Art from the University of Cincinnati in 2006. In 2003, he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with concentration in Printmaking and Painting from the Georgia State University in Atlanta.
Recent exhibitions include a performance with Don Hassler on Buchla Electric Music Boxes at Kavarna in Oakhurst, GA; Fiat Lux, an installation at Castleberry Lofts for the Le Flash Art Event, and subsequent Castleberry Hill Art Strolls in collaboration with Scott Carter and Mario Schambon in Castleberry Hill, Atlanta, GA and A Paradise for Couples Only a two-person exhibition with Ann-Marie Manker at Beep Beep Gallery in Atlanta, GA.
Statement

A Short Report Regarding My Work

The majority of my artistic output is derived from the construction of a personal mythology based on three distinct states of self (the shameless lothario, the ardent geek, and the angry rocker). These figures serve as narrators for a variety of subjective explorations that often rely on “freezing” the dynamic techniques normally associated with animation, film, and sound to suggest vague and fragmented spaces that form impressions of a larger whole in which the self and space often tangle into a single instance. Imbued throughout are explorations and transpositions of concepts which are not entirely evident upon cursory examination, but through their amassed natured create a sensation of purpose beyond their individual parts. Action is most often unresolved; the narrative unclear, as if the entire structure may be a projection of how particular events may unfold. The characters are trapped by a variety of circumstances; conjoined physically to other characters, in sexually compromising positions, witness to actions or events of horror and danger. Although grotesque, they command the viewer to empathize, feeling a range of emotions and require the viewer to determine context in regard to the direction of the narrative and connection between characters, objects and space within the scene. The strong visual content coupled with the viewer’s control of the narrative reigns and personal determination of context should allow them to walk away with new considerations of identity, individuality, humanity, and environment.