Make.Shift’s Virtual Gallery presents “Home-Sick,” a reflection of domesticity, the homes we carry in our hearts, and the objects that create our material worlds. We are proud to feature work from Ellie Bacchus, Corinne Barber, Neil Berkowitz, Lindsay Breidenthal, and Mackenzie Carter.

LINDSAY BREIDENTHAL

Lindsay Breidenthal“Engine” Oil on board 35"x 35"2020 NFS — **Lindsay Breidenthal**
“Engine”
*Oil on board*
35"x 35"
2020
NFS

Artist Statement:

Spending more time at home has been a real journey in self-discovery. The theme for this show, ‘Home Sick’, helped direct my painting process toward a real hot spot. The focus has been brought home and I see relationships with family and neighbors representing how I relate to the rest of the world and to myself. Lately, my imagery has included female figures, often dressed in a blue waitress or service uniform, doing some task in a surreal domestic scene. The blue dress has come to represent a more or less constant state of service a lot of women find themselves in both in the workplace and at home. How much of this work is necessary? Does this quiet, invisible labor resemble the same labor that built my cheap goods and conveniences? How can this place of safety, rest, and love also represent something I want to set on fire? Will I always resent the imbalance of domestic responsibility?

The creative process allows time to boil down the big issues, letting the details evaporate and leaving the elements of an emotional response to come through in the work. I hope to make something that evokes a response in you as well.

Thank you.

Bio:

My name is Lindsay Breidenthal and I am a painter from Wenatchee, Wa. I have been creating and exhibiting my work for over twenty years. My subject matter usually includes the figure or other animals, storms, fire, and pattern. I build up the foundation for my pieces with thin, transparent layers of imagery, pattern, and tinted washes creating a dreamy, atmospheric quality. I leave hints of the complex underpainting as a reminder of the process of discovery.

The ideas behind my work start out feeling very personal, often focusing on ‘women’s work’ or my perceptions of stability, safety, and instinct. What starts out as a personal response to say, dirty dishes, evolves along with the development of a painting to reveal how I feel about broad concepts like imbalances in our value system or the power of a million small decisions to affect big change. This transformation is one reason I continue to make art.

lindsaybroadvalley.com

ELLIE BACCHUS

Artist Statement:

My paintings explore themes of memory, nostalgia, childhood, and the difficulties of growing up. In the works I present a personal history, with some of my own belongings starring in the compositions alongside universal objects. A well-loved Beanie Baby lays next to an empty pack of birth control pills. A cherubic porcelain figurine is jarringly placed next to a Suboxone wrapper. I am interested in the false dichotomy between childhood and adulthood. In truth, these lines are often blurred due to premature childhood exposure to the harsh realities of the adult world, through the media or a direct lived experience. Instead of a smooth transition from childhood to adulthood, the transitions through life can leave a messy trail behind on the psyche of the still-forming individual.

In my paintings, areas of thickly applied paint jut off of the surface and contrast with thin drippy rendered objects that nearly disappear into the background. Some items are believable, and others are rendered with a childlike crayon scribble. These conscious formal decisions serve as a visual exploration of memory. Our memories of our childhood and adolescence evolve as we age. When we reflect on the past, do we tend to remember the good through rose-colored glasses, or do we focus more on the traumatic? This series is an attempt to see both sides at once; the good and the bad memories, the forgotten and remembered moments, the innocent and mature, all through a carefully curated archive of personally symbolic objects.

Bio:

Ellie Bacchus is an oil painter and mixed media artist currently living in Bellingham. She grew up on Vashon Island, a community with a thriving artistic community, and pursued a BFA in painting and a minor in Arts Enterprise & Cultural Innovation at Western Washington University, and graduated in 2020. In her work, she explores themes of memory, nostalgia, trauma, and childhood, often through still life or studies of personal keepsakes. While much of her work has roots in her own personal experience, she hopes that the visual metaphors she uses and some of the more recognizable motifs in her work give the viewer a bit of a universal access point to understanding her work and allow an emotional response to it.

elliebacchus.com

MACKENZIE CARTER

Mackenzie Carter (she/her)“Mason Road”Mixed media on paper13"x10"2020NFS — **Mackenzie Carter** (she/her)
“Mason Road”
*Mixed media on paper*
13"x10"
2020
NFS

Artist Statement:

As of late, the idea of “home” has been burdensome. Private dwellings are no longer a place for friendly gatherings. Social anxiety and other mental illness weigh heavy on much of humanity, most of it dealt with within the walls of our homes. Carter’s interior illustrations study living spaces where friends and family of hers resided through the initial lockdown of COVID-19. The illustrations have a human quality but are void of the people who inhabit them. Originally beginning the project as a meditative practice, Carter is interested in creating a visual “memory” for viewers and a joyful fresh take for the people these homes belong to. The highly personal work invites the viewer to spend time in someone else’s private space, something we’ve been unable to do for quite some time. Despite this, a sense of longing still exists. The empty rooms still lack the thing we truly crave: human connection.

Bio:

Originally from upstate New York, Mackenzie is an emerging artist and illustrator living and working in Bellingham, WA. After obtaining her Bachelor's degree in Photography and Digital Media from SUNY Albany, Carter moved in an analog direction in all areas of her life, which included picking up painting again. Mackenzie resides with her partner and dog and works part-time as a Bartender. She likes to spend time outdoors, learn new things, and grow food.

mackenziecarter.net

CORINNE BARBER

Corinne Barber“Haunted”Mixed Media5" x 13" x 10" 2019NFS — **Corinne Barber**
“Haunted”
*Mixed Media*
5" x 13" x 10"
2019
NFS

Artist Statement:

“Instead of, or perhaps in addition to, the supernatural, old buildings are haunted by their memories: memories of those who once inhabited them, and the memories we bring to them. We’re conditioned, after all, to conflate memory and physical space.”

-Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, 2014

As a mentally ill and chronically ill artist, my home has always been my main environment and so has had to become my primary site for creative exploration. This excess of time spent at home has made it integral for me to create a space that I find beautiful and has led to an obsession with artifacts of the home, specifically the textiles that make up our lives: our clothing, quilts, towels, and upholstered furniture, as well as precious little objects like keys and charms and saved childhood drawings. When I work with these items, I feel they imbue my pieces with a special spirit granted by the decades they lived before coming to me. They are evidence of life and of play. I feel connected to the daily rituals of the people who held these objects dear and to our greater human story.

I combine discarded fabric and sewing notions with collected photographs to create fabric collages that map my personal experiences. I work intuitively and let the pieces take on a life of their own, honoring them as a kind of heirloom. In stitching together these forgotten fragments, both fiber and image, I feel I am preserving the holiness of the everyday.

Bio:

Corinne Barber is a mixed media artist who lives and works in Bellingham, WA. She received her BFA in Studio Art from Western Washington University in 2018. She stitches together discarded fabric, found objects, and photographs to explore themes of childhood, lineage, home, and illness. She is inspired by nature, folklore, and antiques.

corinnekenlybarber.wixsite.com/mysite

NEIL BERKOWITZ

I wanted a setting more than a story, a situation laid out for viewers to build their own meaningful narrative about relationships, the parameters of domesticity, and the making of lives within them, and how public appearance interacts with that domesticity. I hope that I have put enough into the piece so that attentive observers can connect to it with narratives more complex than its surface might suggest since any beauty there may be here is the beauty of mining joy out of the real and the challenging.

Neil Berkowitz“Fresh Air”  (two-sided print)Two-sided multilayer photographic archival pigment print on paper, Mylar30 x 44 x 162020This back-to-back print is to be suspended, unframed, 16” from a wall on which is hung a slightly larger reflect… — **Neil Berkowitz**
“Fresh Air” (two-sided print)
*Two-sided multilayer photographic archival pigment print on paper, Mylar*
30 x 44 x 16
2020
This back-to-back print is to be suspended, unframed, 16” from a wall on which is hung a slightly larger reflective sheet Mylar sheet. The right side image is to show outward and the left toward the wall.
Edition of 5
$995 (Contact: Gallery@Makeshiftproject.com)

Neil Berkowitz“The Great Divide”Multilayer photographic archival pigment print on paper24 x 52, unframed and unmounted to accentuate the precariousness of home, magnetic hanging solution provided2020 Edition of 5 $475 (Contact: Gallery@Makeshiftpr… — **Neil Berkowitz**
“The Great Divide”
*Multilayer photographic archival pigment print on paper*
24 x 52, unframed and unmounted to accentuate the precariousness of home, magnetic hanging solution provided
2020

Edition of 5
$475 (Contact: Gallery@Makeshiftproject.com)

Neil Berkowitz“The Artist as Homebody” Multilayer photographic archival pigment print on paper26 x 44, unframed. 2020Edition of 7 $425 (Contact: Gallery@Makeshiftproject.com) Visual portraiture is a unique form of biography. Even when the subj… — **Neil Berkowitz**
“The Artist as Homebody”

*Multilayer photographic archival pigment print on paper*
26 x 44, unframed.
2020
Edition of 7
$425 (Contact: Gallery@Makeshiftproject.com)
Visual portraiture is a unique form of biography. Even when the subject is well known the portrait is as much about a life, a person, as it is about a specific, named life. So the detailed presentation of the person need not be central to portraiture but merely one of many elements whose inclusion may help the observer form a subject identity and connect it to his or her understanding of human lives. Although this portrait does include two facial images and several of other parts of the body in its 43 layers they situate the subject in the home, where we are currently redefining both our own lives and those of others.

Neil Berkowitz“Welcome, Have Some Fruit”Multilayer photographic archival pigment print on paper30 x 44 x 162020This back-to-back print is to be suspended 16” from a wall on which is hung a slightly larger reflective sheet Mylar sheet. The left side … — **Neil Berkowitz**
“Welcome, Have Some Fruit”
*Multilayer photographic archival pigment print on paper*
30 x 44 x 16
2020
*This back-to-back print is to be suspended 16” from a wall on which is hung a slightly larger reflective sheet Mylar sheet. The left side image is to show outward and the right toward the wall.*

Edition of 5
$995 (Contact: Gallery@Makeshiftproject.com)

Artist Statement:

My art is driven in conception, execution, and presentation by how we shape understanding from our unique connections made between the new and the known. So my current work uses layers of my own imagery to present opportunities for the observer to draw those new connections into their own stories. The layers are most often photographic but may also include traditional printmaking and collage. Layering expands aesthetic possibility in transparency, texture, and color that would be unattainable in most single-layered work and inserts intentionality into the process earlier and more critically than is usual with photography. This helps me balance social and artistic considerations in the work.

Increasingly in presenting my work I use presentation to enhance the observer’s options for incorporating additional connections through the work. I have used several approaches to achieve this, such as adding a spatial or temporal dimension to the experience of the work or to offer observers to recreate the exhibition. I have taken the former approach with two works in this show “Fresh Air” and “Welcome, Have Some Fruit.” Both are two-sided prints that are intended to be suspended 16” from a wall, with a sheet of slightly larger reflective acrylic hung on the wall.

neilberkowitz.com