• Quiet Please: The Mental Game of Art and Tennis

    Quiet Please: The Mental Game of Art and Tennis

    Come see a great show all about the sport of tennis!

  • Burnet Gallery Press Release 2014

    Souvenir Evokes the Good and Bad Behind the Urge to Escape
    Andrew Witrak Solo Exhibition Opens, Sat., May 17

    OVERVIEW:
    • “Souvenir” solo exhibition by Andrew Witrak
    • Burnet Gallery, Le Méridien Chambers, 901 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, Minn.
    • FREE Opening Reception 6-8 p.m., Sat. May 17.
    • Exhibition runs through, July 6, 2014.
    • Gallery hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily

    MINNEAPOLIS – Duluth native, and current San Francisco -based artist, Andrew Witrak, returns to Minnesota, Sat., May 17th and is bringing a bit of summer with him – regardless of our rather erratic spring. But all is not sunny and bright in this show that seems to embody dark humor at every turn.

    Witrak’s mixed media solo show, Souvenir evokes several elements synonymous with luxurious tropical travel, but always with an edge or twist or some kind. A Swiss cross made from aluminum tubing and plastic webbing brings to mind both a beach chair and the iconic symbol for first aid. A blue and white drawing of a hotel hanger looks oddly decapitated without the more traditional hooked top, while another drawing of a blank door hanger leaves the viewer with the urge to fill in the blanks. A brightly striped beach towel (made out of fiberglass) appears laid out on a beach, but stiff and abandoned with no sunbather nearby.

    In his artist statement, Witrak notes that Souvenir captures the double-edged nature of vacation travel. “There are alluring and troubling aspects behind the desire to escape. There is always that literal and figurative baggage. Clichéd images of leisure and relaxation that don’t represent anywhere in particular are my starting points for exploring ideas of ambiguous success, dodging the present moment, and the longing to be somewhere—anywhere—else.”

    Souvenir opens Sat. May 17th with an opening reception from 6-8 pm. The event is free and open to the public. The show runs through July 6, 2014. Gallery hours are 11 am to 9 pm. daily and by appointment.

    Andrew Witrak is a Duluth native, now based in San Francisco. He received his BA from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn., and his MFA from Mills College, Oakland, Calif. He is a two time nominee for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Seca Award, and in 2009 received a graduate fellowship from the Headlands Center for the Arts and the Jay DeFeo Prize. His recent 2013 exhibitions include Proximities, a group exhibition at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco and Luminous, another group show at the Steven Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco. In 2012 his work was featured in a solo exhibition at Unspeakable Projects, San Francisco, as well as in Oakland Now, at Spoke Art, Oakland, Calif., and Art Pad SF at the Phoenix Hotel, San Francisco. His work is also included in the Tweed Museum of Art, Duluth, Minn.
    Burnet Gallery is a commercial gallery featuring local, national and international contemporary artists with new shows about every six to eight weeks. The Gallery is located in Le Méridien Chambers, an award-winning art hotel located in downtown Minneapolis.
    Considered one of the top boutique art hotels in the world, Le Méridien Chambers features more than 250 pieces of original contemporary art throughout the public areas as well as the hotel’s 60 guest rooms. Located at 901 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, it offers a unique combination of art, culinary, design and true boutique hotel experience. For reservations, call: 612-767-6900 or visit: www.lemeridienchambers.com/art
    # # #

    Contact:
    Jacqueline Hanson Hanson Communications 952-941-3949 Jacqueline@HansonPR.com

    Editor’s Notes: Hi-res and additional images are available upon request.

  • *PROXIMITIES: WHAT TIME IS IT THERE?*

    I'll be showing new work at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Show dates are May 24- July 21.
    Opening reception will be Thursday May 30th from 6:30-9 pm -
    see you there!

    proximities:what time is it there?

  • Solo show, September 2012

    Hope to see you Thursday, September 6th at the opening reception : 6-9pm.
    Hours:
    Thursdays 6 - 8 PM
    Saturdays 1 - 4 PM
    and readily by appointment

    www.unspeakableprojects.com

    Unspeakable Projects
    735 Tehama Street
    San Francisco 94103

  • Oakland Now SPOKE ART

    Happy to be part of a Ken Harman production this August, check out my piece at SPOKE Art pop-up show at 1423 Broadway, Downtown Oakland, CA...

  • the LAB auction

    I have donated an "Andrew Witrak Complete Works" mailer to the LAB auction, taking place on May 12, 2012.

    The Lab
    2948 16th Street
    San Francisco, CA 94103

  • ART PAD SF

    I will be showing work with the Unspeakable Projects Gallery at the
    2012 ART PAD SF, May 17-20, 2012.

    ArtPadSF at the Phoenix Hotel
    601 Eddy St.
    San Francisco, CA 94109

    THURSDAY, May 17th

    4:00PM – 6:00PM Press Preview

    6:00PM – 8:00PM VIP Preview

    8:00PM – 10:00PM Opening Benefit Party


    Friday, May 18th
    12:00PM – 8:00PM

    Saturday, May 19th
    12:00PM – 8:00PM

    Sunday, May 20th
    12:00PM – 5:00PM


  • New Studio Space!

    I have moved from my Emeryville, CA studio over to a bigger, better equipped space in San Francisco. I currently share the space with 6 other artists: Annie Vought, MIke Arcega, Jesse Houlding, Anthony Ryan, Hannah Ireland, and Josh Warren. I have been working on many projects since i've moved in, and am excited to get the new work into the world!

  • EVER AFTER show in Oakland- September 18, 2011

    Dear Friends and Colleagues--
    come check out my piece in this pop-up show at the Chapel of the Chimes.
    I've built a dixie-cup phone for my installation...
    Would love to see y'all there for the opening. It's a great space.
    Info below:

    OFF Space, with guest jurors Lauren Davies (Kala Art Institute) and Robert Wuilfe (diRosa Foundation) are very pleased and excited to invite you to the opening reception for Ever After.

    Where: The Chapel of the Chimes Columbarium, 4499 Piedmont Avenue, Oakland, CA 94611
    When: Sunday September 18th, 5-8pm
    Featuring Work By: Maggie Simpson Adams, Glenna Cole Allee, Rachel Dawson, Victoria Heilweil, Elyse Hochstadt, Karrie Hovey, Phil King, Marya Krogstad, Yuki Maruyama, Emmanuelle Namont Kouznetsov,Jessica Pezalla, Luther Thie, Linda Trunzo, Andrew Witrak & Kathrine Worel.

    this event is free and open to the public

    Voted Best of the Bay’s, "Best Place to Spend Eternity", the Chapel of the Chimes is playing host to living artists with this first ever exhibition of visual art in the Julia Morgan designed chapel and columbarium in Oakland.

    Most stories end with "happily ever after" --but the stories being told by artists in this show are using Ever After as a starting point.
    Poignancy, playfulness, and sharp insights into the nature of the Eternal are the common threads used to weave a series of site specific mini-installations through chapel niches.
    From the minimal to the Baroque, artists use these unique spaces to reflect upon notions of ritual, remembrance, loss and celebration with critical alacrity and humor.

    There will be an evening of performance & sound works on Sunday November 13th from 5-8pm--more on this later!

    OFF Space is a curatorial collective directed by Emmanuelle Namont Kouznetsov and Kathrine Worel. For more information about this show and other OFF Space projects visit us on off-space.org –or on facebook; http://www.facebook.com/pages/OFF-Space/189594970611

  • East Bay Express Party/Show

    I will be collaborating with my wonderful studio mates, the amazing artists Meagan Donegan, Gina Tuzzi, and Annie Vought, to make an installation for the East Bay Express Party- August 6, 2010- look for our studio moniker GAMA. hint: light, mason jars, cube. I think it will be pretty great. come if you can.

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    2009/2010 Graduate Fellows Exhibition

    Sunday, May 16, 2010
    Noon-1PM Members' Reception and Tour
    Members RSVP to afranco@headlands.org
    2PM - 5PM General Reception
    Mess Hall Café open 12PM - 4:30PM

    The 2009/2010 Graduate Fellows Exhibition is open May 9 - June 6. Gallery visiting hours are Tuesdays through Fridays and Sundays, Noon - 5PM.

    Each year, Headlands awards a Graduate Fellowship to an exceptional graduate from each of its partner academic institutions. These awards, intended to help emerging visual artists segue from academia to the life of a working artist, provide a free studio space for one year and the opportunity to participate in Headlands' creative community. This exhibition, guest curated by Misako Inaoka and Heather Marx, celebrates these artists and the work made during their year at Headlands.

    2009/2010 Graduate Fellows
    Michael Arcega, Stanford University
    Patrick Gillespie, California College of the Arts
    Vera Kachouh, San Francisco Art Institute
    Aaron Maietta, UC Berkeley
    Michael Namkung, San Francisco State University
    Tyson Washburn, San Francisco State University
    Joshua Short, UC Davis
    Andrew Witrak, Mills College

    DIRECTIONS
    Headlands Center for the Arts is located in Fort Barry in the Marin Headlands. This event will take place in Building 944 on the 3rd Floor. Our street address is 944 Simmonds Road, Sausalito, CA. For directions, visit headlands.org or call 415-331-2787 x2.

    MORE INFORMATION
    415-331-2787 x28 or
    info@headlands.org
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  • *************************************************************************************************
    MFA SELECTIONS Artists Panel Discussion

    Seven artists and faculty from Bay Area Masters of Fine Arts Programs discuss the role and influence of graduate art programs in their work and artistic development. Moderated by Executive Director Kathryn Reasoner with exhibition artists Aaron Maietta, MFA UC Berkeley; Andrew Witrak, MFA Mills College; Sandra Ono, MFA Mills College, and Patricia Patterson, MFA San Francisco Art Institute, and faculty members Annabeth Rosen, Graduate Advisor, Department of Art & Art History, UC Davis; Gail Wight, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Art Practice at Stanford university, and Glen Helfand, Adjunct Professor, Fine Arts, California College of the Arts and Lecturer, Mills College.



    $5 Members / $10 General – RSVP by e-mail or call 707-226-5991-x27
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  • ***************************************************************************************************
    Mirror Images

    April 28, 2010, 5-8PM

    Silverman Gallery



    “Mirror Images” is an exhibition organized by Charles L. Moffett around Ian Burn’s Mirror Piece, 1967, a single work of art from the collection of Steven Leiber. In conversation with Mirror Piece, the exhibition will include three identical books, which contain all of the submissions that were received following the curator’s call for responses to Burn’s work. The exhibition will take place at Silverman Gallery on April 28, 2010, with a reception from 5-8PM.
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  • ************************************************************************************************

    The jury for the MFA Selections exhibition chose my work for the exhibition at di Rosa March 6- June 5, 2010. I am very excited and honored to be included alongside 9 other artists, including the great Gina Tuzzi!

    Please save the dates March 6 (for the opening reception) and April 7 (for speaker panel)
    Opening reception time 6-8PM

    here's the blurb:

    MFA SELECTIONS
    A salute to emerging artists from Bay Area Master's of Fine Arts Programs
    March 6 through June 12, 2010

    An exhibition showcasing the work of artists who recently completed their Master’s of Fine Art degrees at Bay Area art schools and colleges. The artists included in the exhibition were chosen by a jury of arts professionals, from a pool of artists nominated by faculty from regional institutions. Artists include Joanne Hashitani, Leigh Merrill, Sandra Ono, Gina Tuzzi and Andrew Witrak from Mills College; Carina Baumann and S. Patricia Patterson from San Francisco Art Institute; Jina Valentine from Stanford University; Aaron Maietta-Dehaven from UC Berkeley; Josh Short from UC Davis. Reflecting the diverse voices of young artists working today, MFA SELECTIONS will include works in a broad cross section of media, from painting and sculpture to video and installation. The works on exhibition are chosen with the artists, who may create and/or select works especially for the show at di Rosa’s Gatehouse Gallery.





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  • From the Heart

    Ninth biennial "From the Heart," a collection of artwork by members of The Hamlin School faculty and staff.

    Feb. 5, 2010
    5-7 PM
    Hamlin School
    2120 Broadway
    San Francisco

  • Headlands Fellowship

    I am very lucky to have been selected for a Graduate Fellowship Residency at The Headlands Center for the Arts starting July15 2009 - July14 2010: my studio is up the hill in building 960- come visit!

  • YOUNG AMERICANS MAY 2nd 2009

    YOUNG AMERICANS
    May 3, 2009 through May 31, 2009.
    Opening reception, Saturday, May 2, 2009, 7 to 9pm.

    Come experience Young Americans, the 2009 MFA Thesis Exhibition at Mills College in Oakland, California.

    Featuring work by 10 emerging artists:

    Andrew Witrak, Annie Vought, Brian Caraway, Esther Traugot, Gina Tuzzi, Joseph Berryhill, Kate Pszotka, Leigh Merrill, Modesto Covarrubias, and Steuart Pittman.

    The Mills College Art Museum is proud to present Young Americans, featuring works by the 2009 Master of Fine Arts degree recipients. This exhibition provides an opportunity to see works in all media created by a promising group of emerging artists eager to share what they have been developing during their graduate program with a broader audience. This year’s exhibition is curated by Terri Cohn, Bay Area writer, independent curator, and faculty member at the San Francisco Art Institute.

    In the brochure accompanying the exhibition, Cohn observes that the ten artists who will receive their MFA degrees this year are unusual in their choice to name their MFA show Young Americans. The title situates them as citizens emerging within a national context, and suggests that in addition to their collective experiences as youthful Americans—with the burden of history this implies, this identity also affords them an intrinsic right to personal freedom. A desire for a sense of security—articulated in various metaphoric and formal ways—is one fundamental concern expressed through their work.

    Kate Pszotka’s fascination with the idea of home and stability has motivated her consideration of family members, which she represents iconographically with everyday objects, realized as paper cut out line drawings. Gina Tuzzi’s seemingly simple, naïve structures—houses, barns, huts—stacked on trucks to become rolling homes, or represented as drawings, underscore a sense of safety and comfort in the mythic past of coastal California.

    In related ways, Esther Traugot’s knitted tree sweaters and forest of trunks with projected flower pattern coverings suggest the utopian potential of the natural world, as well as her desire to protect and preserve it. By contrast, Leigh Merrill’s large-scale photographs explore the relationship between fantasy and reality in our constructed environments, blending urban and suburban architecture and landscape styles, or cut and artificial flowers. Modesto Covarrubias has spent much time creating rooms and shelters as means to define and express his fears, insecurities, and sense of vulnerability, while Andrew Witrak’s sculptures pose slightly ridiculous solutions to the question of what can provide some fleeting impression of safety or exit: lifejackets sewn together; a beeswax boarding pass. Annie Vought translates found handwritten letters to wall-mounted versions created with cutout text, fragile portraits of each author that are reminiscent of silhouettes.

    Joseph Berryhill’s paintings express a tension between order and chaos, proposing ways that animate experience can be distilled into visual experience. Steuart Pittman’s abstract paintings reflect what he calls a “longing for quiet beauty in a chaotic, high-speed age,” while Brian Caraway creates tools and rules to implement his mixed media works, relating his process-based investigations through texture as they change over time.

    As artists who have come of age in the extraordinarily volatile circumstances of the 21st century, these individuals focus on singular modes of expression as a way to make sense of and stake a claim in their separate and collective futures. Their works express a sense of hope and possibility, going forward into their lives as young Americans.

    In addition to an essay by Cohn, the illustrated catalog for Young Americans contains an essay by critic Glen Helfand. This publication will be available in the gallery during the course of the exhibition.

    The Mills College Art Museum, founded in 1925, is a dynamic center for art that focuses on the creative work of women as artists and curators. The museum strives to engage and inspire the diverse and distinctive cultures of the Bay Area by presenting innovative exhibitions by emerging and established national and international artists. Exhibitions are designed to challenge and invite reflection upon the profound complexities of contemporary culture.


    Mills College Art Museum
    5000 MacArthur Boulevard
    Oakland, CA 94613
    510.430.2164
    http://www.mills.edu/museum/
    directions to Mills College
    directions to the Mills College Art Museum
    Mills College Art Museum

    Museum Hours:
    Tuesday-Sunday 11:00-4:00pm
    Wednesday 11:00-7:30pm
    Monday Closed

    Admission is free for all exhibitions and programs.

  • upcoming exhibition

    IMMEDIATE FUTURE: THE 2008 MURPHY AND CADOGAN FELLOWSHIPS IN THE FINE ARTS
    September 6 - October 18, 2008
    Location: SFAC Gallery (Van Ness and McAllister) San Francisco
    Opening Reception September 6, 6-8 pm

    Artists: Bren Ahearn, Michael Arcega, Elisheva Biernoff, Tom Borden, Modesto Covarrubias, Eilish Cullen, April Grayson, Claire Jackel, Anthony Marcellini, Robert Minervini, Robert Moya, Michael Namkung, Moses Nornberg, Daniel Ochoa, S Patricia Patterson, Hilary Pecis, Jeff Ray, Gina Tuzzi, Jina Valentine, Annie Vought, Sara Wanie, Andrew Witrak, Imin Yeh, and David Yun

    The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery is proud to present Immediate Future, featuring works by the recipients of the 2008 Murphy & Cadogan Fellowships in the Fine Arts. This exhibition provides a first-glance at what is being produced by promising artists within regional graduate programs. For many featured artists this exhibition marks their first major exposure, and for all participants it represents an opportunity to share what they have been developing in their graduate studios with a broader audience.

    The Murphy & Cadogan Fellowships in the Fine Arts are annual awards sponsored by The San Francisco Foundation to assist art students in funding their final year of graduate studies. In partnership with the Foundation, the Arts Commission Gallery is committed to showcasing works by outstanding Bay Area art students through the annual fellowship exhibition. The jurors for this year’s awards were Lisa Dent, Charles Mobley, Denise Ruiz and Meg Shiffler.

    Bay Area colleges and universities represented by the twenty-four 2008 recipients are the Academy of Art University, California College of the Arts, Mills College, The San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco State University and Stanford University. Media represented in the show includes drawing, film & video, installation, mixed media, painting, printmaking, performance and sculpture.

  • BREAKING NEWS

    Duluth is a seaport city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of St. Louis County. The city had a total population of 86,918 in the 2000 census and the metropolitan census including outer suburbs and villages was estimated to be roughly 184,000.[3] At the westernmost point on the north shore of Lake Superior, Duluth is linked to the Atlantic Ocean 2,300 miles (3,700 km) away via the Great Lakes and Erie Canal/New York State Barge Canal or Saint Lawrence Seaway passages and is the Atlantic Ocean's westernmost deep-water port.[4]
    Duluth forms a metropolitan area with Superior, Wisconsin. Called the Twin Ports, these two cities share the Duluth-Superior Harbor and together are one of the most important ports on the Great Lakes, shipping coal, iron ore (taconite), and grain. As a tourist destination for the Midwest, Duluth features America's only all-freshwater aquarium, the Great Lakes Aquarium, the Aerial Lift Bridge which spans the short canal into Duluth's harbor, "Park Point", the world's second longest freshwater sandbar, spanning 6 miles, and is a launching point for the North Shore.[5]
    The city is named for Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut, the first known European explorer of the area.