On the near east side of Madison, Gallery Night was alive and prosperous, despite the biting breezes sliding down connoisseur’s jackets. On the extensive list of art galleries participating in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art’s Gallery Night this past Friday night, ArtSpace Twenty-Two Eleven, on the quaint and artistic Atwood Avenue, provided an intimate art viewing experience that attracted a continual stream of excited Madisonians.
The art of Alison E. Mader, ArtSpace Twenty-Two Eleven’s owner, took up most wall space in the two-room studio. After developing black-and-white photographs, Mader then applied color to the surface of the prints with colored pencil. This allows the artist to create a realistic image with the use of colors originally found in the space, or a surreal image by applying unique colors that would not be found in the natural world. Some images are instantly recognizable areas of Madison, while other abstract works demand time in order to figure out what lies within the frame.
Also featured in ArtSpace Twenty-Two Eleven was the artwork of Barb and Tom Easton. With Barb displaying and selling her handmade jewelry on one side of the gallery, Tom stood next to his facial caricatures made out of northern Wisconsin wilderness materials at the opposite wall. The juxtaposition of the natural and the metallic on either side of the gallery was a display of the marriage of humans and the wild, the marriage and discourse of two people.
Tom Easton’s tree faces—small to large faces made out of crosscut branches and things found on the ground of a forest—showed how nature can emulate human life. Barb Easton’s jewelry then embellished on the human nature to emulate other humans.
Walking around the small gallery, a piece of artwork itself, it was difficult to not feel connected to the art. As the continual stream of visitors swayed and flowed through the room, they themselves made art, the culmination of a successful Gallery Night on a crisp fall evening.
