WAC presents visual art exhibitions by Sue Johnson and Jennifer Levonian

(Fayetteville, AR) Walton Arts Center is pleased to present two concurrent art exhibitions: Sue Johnson: Ready-Made Dream, an installation of found objects and printed images on vinyl, and Jennifer Levonian: Her Slip is Showing and Other Stories, a series of stop-action video animations created from numerous drawings and watercolors.

Sue Johnson and Jennifer Levonian have received national recognition for their entertaining commentaries that look both critically and affectionately at the way we envision our domestic lives. Both Levonian's videos and Johnson's installations share a wry sense of humor. Like contemporary comedians David Sedaris and Jon Stewart, they simultaneously celebrate American values and critique the aspects of our culture that reflect excess superficiality, disparity, or disingenuousness.

Sue Johnson's American Dreamscape series features digitally collaged domestic interiors printed on 10-foot-tall vinyl panels, some measuring more than 30 feet long, including a "dream" kitchen, replete with the type of gadgets and appliances that became popular after WWII. Johnson has long been fascinated with consumer products and designs that became emblems of post-war security, prosperity and affluence. She looks not only at technological innovations and designs, but also the corresponding aesthetics that helped people associate technology with ease and comfort instead of war.

Born in San Francisco, California, Sue Johnson earned a BFA in Painting from Syracuse University and an MFA in Painting from Columbia University. Her work has been the subject of over thirty one-person exhibitions at venues that include the Tweed Museum of Art, Eleanor D. Wilson Museum of Hollins University, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Pitt Rivers Museum, Midwest Museum of American Art and the University of Richmond Museums.

Jennifer Levonian is a stop-action animator whose hand-drawn images provide satirical perspectives on issues ranging from gentrification and materialism to joblessness, life's turning points and alienation. Levonian's watercolors are disarmingly simple. She purposefully stylizes the movement of her flat mobile cutouts, encouraging us to look beyond the abundant imagery of street scenes, domestic interiors and consumer goods to imagine the interior worlds of her characters.

Her deliberate skewing of perspectives and awkward distortions of anatomy also contribute to the confessional intimacy of her narratives. The halting, staccato pace of her stop-action technique is also perfectly suited to her poignant stories about ordinary people experiencing doubt, vulnerability and unrealized desire. 

Born in 1977, Jennifer Levonian received a B.A. in art and Spanish at William and Mary in 1999 and received an M.F.A. in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2006. Her work has been screened and exhibited nationally, including at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibits; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Sarah Lawrence College, New York; Exit Art, New York; the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Penn.; and Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico.

The exhibitions are on display in the Joy Pratt Markham Gallery through Monday, June 1, 2015. The gallery is open Monday-Friday, 9am to 6pm, Saturday, Noon to 4pm, and one hour prior to most performances at the WAC. Admission is free.

May 10, 2015 @ 9:20am.