Dayton Artists Take Flight Celebrating Centennial of Wright Brothers Achievement
by Shane Cartmill
Imagining Flight: Explorations by Dayton Artists will be on view at the Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery July 24 through October 19, 2003. The exhibition includes 39 works by 12 Dayton-area artists inspired by the concept of flight. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, July 24, from 5-7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
Curated by Kay Koeninger, Imagining Flight celebrates the centennial of Orville and Wilbur Wright’s remarkable achievement. The legacy of Dayton’s Wright Brothers is evident in the western Ohio city even today. As a result, the artists in the exhibition take highly personal approaches to the theme of flight, employing a wide range of inspiration and media, including painting, drawing, video, photography, bookmaking, fiber art, sculpture and performance.
The artists in Imagining Flight are: Mary Borkowski, Will Davis, Diane Fitch, Anne Hubler, Katherine Kadish, Ron Kaplan, Jean Koeller, Ray Must, Yasue Sakaoka, Andy Snow, Diane Stemper and Jud Yalkut.
Two events will be held in conjunction with this exhibition; both are free and open to the public:
Thursday, July 24, 2003, 4:30 – 5 p.m.
Exhibition Tour with Kay Koeninger
In addition to the Wright Brothers, many other creative people call Dayton home. Curator Kay Koeninger will discuss how Dayton artists explore the fascinating theme of flight – in fact and fiction, reality and myth, past and present – during this centennial year of the Wrights' invention.
Sunday, September 28, 2003, 2 – 4 p.m.
Imagining Kites! Family Day at the Riffe Gallery
Children of all ages and their parents are invited to let artistic expression soar to new heights as they create real, flyable kites. Imagining Flight artist Yasue Sakaoka will demonstrate three different types of kites – Origami, Delta and Tetrahedron. Celebrate the centennial of the Wright Brothers’ flight and the art it has inspired by flying a masterpiece of your own. Children and parents are encouraged to work in teams. Each kite takes approximately one hour to complete. Materials will be provided.
Mary Borkowski is a self-taught artist of Appalachian heritage who expresses her personal vision in both traditional quilts and “thread paintings,” large fabric pieces covered with embroidery. Her work is nationally known, and her fabric art is represented in the collections of the Dayton Art Institute, the Ohio Historical Society, the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library and others.
Will Davis is an emerging artist specializing in sound and spoken arts. He has performed at varied venues throughout Ohio. Davis studied the extensive Wright Brothers archives at Wright State University in Dayton while creating his performance piece for Imagining Flight.
Diane Fitch is an associate professor of art at Wright State University who has exhibited widely in Ohio and the United States. She has won numerous awards for her painting and has also received grants for exhibition and art history research projects. Fitch often paints the sinister side of subjects that at first appear commonplace. One of these is the Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.
Anne Hubler is a well-known Ohio fiber artist whose work has been exhibited in such venues as the White House and the Ohio Governor’s Mansion. Her work includes a variety of techniques and media, including quilting, photo transfer, hand stamping, batik, silk screen and painting. Hubler spent many years as a noted costume designer for the Dayton dance community.
Katherine Kadish is a painter and printmaker who has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad. Her work has been shown at the Whitney Museum, the National Museum of American Art and the Library of Congress. She has also received numerous awards and fellowships, including fellowships at Yaddo and the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland.
Ron Kaplan is a nationally recognized aviation artist who is an artist member of the American Society of Aviation Artists and the United States Air Force Art Program. He has been awarded commissions for the National Air and Space Museum and the George Bush Presidential Library. Kaplan is known for his paintings of World War II insignia, which are often painted on scrap metal from the type of aircraft that they originally adorned.
Jean Koeller is a painter who has exhibited throughout the United States, receiving numerous awards and grants. She is currently on the faculty of the University of Dayton. Her current work focuses on “bird’s eye” views of Dayton cityscapes.
Ray Must is an emeritus art professor at Wright State University and one of the founders of the Dayton Printmakers’ Cooperative, one of the most active print groups in Ohio. His prints and drawings have been exhibited nationally. Must’s whimsical drawings explore his long-standing love of flight and pilots, juxtaposed with his concerns about increasing global armament and the threat of nuclear weapons.
Yasue Sakaoka was born in Japan and received her undergraduate and graduate art degrees in the United States. She has exhibited widely in the Pacific Northwest and in Ohio, and has been awarded numerous commissions for sculpture. Sakaoka is an art consultant and currently teaches at Stivers School for the Arts in Dayton. Her large sculptural pieces are often of paper and bamboo and are inspired by the Japanese art of origami.
Andy Snow is a noted national commercial, corporate and editorial photographer. He is also known for his photographic documentation of performing artists including a recent series focusing on the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, one of the leading African American dance groups in the United States.
Diane Stemper has exhibited widely on the West Coast and in Ohio and has been very active in art education in Ohio. She creates small-scale books focusing on the effortless instinctual flight of birds and insects. Stemper calls her artist books “exploratory volumes in which the layers of meaning surface as I place image with text.”
Jud Yalkut is an internationally known filmmaker and video artist, known for his pioneering efforts in the interfacing of film and video media. He has collaborated for many years with Nam June Paik. His video installation Flash Video uses digitally manipulated excerpts from the 1930s’ Flash Gordon science fiction rocket serials.
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