artwork by Johnny Gialanella

Do you ever feel like you want to tear it all down and start over? This July at Make.Shift Gallery, five Bellingham-based artists explore the process of beginning again. Lurm (aka Adrien Converse), Johnny Gialanella, Karen Hanrahan, Jess Molnar, and Monica Ramey each bring a unique approach to the process of breathing new life into old objects and images.

Lurm’s “Art Breeding” series involves cutting up and reorganizing the artist’s older works into a brand new creation -- each “child” piece comes from the materials of two “parent” works. Gialanella’s digital collages historical images into a modern narrative exploring themes of inadequacy, longing, and mental health. For Hanrahan’s “Inspirit-Form Quilted,” the artist has sewn together a previous magazine collage series into several new amalgamations of human/animal hybrids. Molnar’s 15-year project “Forest for the Trees” is a sculptural rearrangement of the artist’s personal diary and journal entries. And Ramey’s photoshopped worlds imagine everyday objects in a dreamy otherworldly landscape.

Join us for the opening reception on First Friday Art Walk July 5th. During this celebration, we will also be auctioning the interactive art piece created during June Art Walk in partnership with RagFinery. Proceeds will be split between Make.Shift and RagFinery.