Alex Anthes Sandbox Residency

Alex deep within the process in creation. Welcome. Aug - Sept - Oct

Artist Statement: 

Loss is a major component of my lived experience. I use my practice as a means for examining my personal and familial relationships to this subject matter. I use a working narrative of symbolic, metaphoric and literal interpretations of grief to call attention to addiction, childhood, and ephemerality. I am interested in addressing avoidance as a means of coping, wherein I pair imagery containing smoking, drinking, and television to touch on my family's culture around intimacy. I also employ abstracted figures, objects, idioms, and Polish / personal symbols to further communicate my experience. Most glaring, however, is the use of party ephemera. Its significance enlivens a contrapuntal read of this body of work; and connects the seemingly oppositional concepts of loss and celebration as interdependent melodies. In this spirit, I offer the viewer a visual analysis of this sardonic concept, one that demonstrates how I engage with loss and where I locate it socially. 

Bio: 

Alex Anthes is a non-traditional printmaker and mixed media artist living in Erie, Pennsylvania. She has A BFA in printmaking from the Cleveland institute of art and an MFA in studio art with a print media and photography concentration from Kent State University. Anthes has two permanent public art works displayed in Erie, Pennsylvania; one in the West Bayfront Mini Mall, and the other on the Erie Center for Art and Technology building. Additionally, she had work featured in Cleveland, Ohio's Rapid Transit Authority. These works were supported by the Erie Arts and Culture: Creating with the Community project, EAC’s Views Festival; and Cleveland's Land studio, Inter | Urban: The Onboard Project. This fall she is the Sandbox Resident Artist at FEED Media Center in Erie, Pa. Currently, she serves as the Education Manager for the Erie Art Museum where she develops and connects visitors and teaching artists to educational opportunities and programming. 

Sandbox Residency: 

I plan to use the Sandbox Residency at feed to expand a current body of work that integrates a range of mixed media materials. Central to this project is the theme of light, both as a literal medium and as symbolic reference. I intend to reimagine light through experimentation with analog TVs, projectors, reflective surfaces, and other media. 

My practice is rooted in layering, physically, visually, and conceptually. Typically, I work across printmaking, sculpture, and collage, often incorporating actual light between layers of materials such as mylar. Techniques like hole-poking act as marks while also serving as carriers of light. Through curated and fractured compositions, I aim to control visibility, what the viewer can and cannot see, and test how legible or obscured information becomes. 

I am also interested in (possibly) incorporating sound as an additional dimension of the work. Much of my process begins with a personal archive of family photographs and videos, where I search for recurring symbols to build upon a visual language I utilize. These symbols and

objects, such as party ephemera, chairs, cigarettes, TVs, teardrops, text, light, or hands, become layered into compositions that oscillate between abstraction and representation.