Press Release

Gallery 414 presents Blue-ing Blowbonnets featuring Charles Coldewey, Kazuko Goto, Paul Greco, Erin Guy, tesa Morin, Dan Tossing and Erik Tosten. This exhibition is curated by Paul Greco. Blue-ing Blowebonnets opens Saturday, March 6 with a reception for the artists from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. The reception is free and open to the public. Guest curator Paul Greco brings together an eclectic group of local artists who are unafraid of expressing themselves through their art.

Blue-ing Blowbonnets is a reaction to advice he received from family members to mass-produce watercolors of bluebonnets in order to be a successful artist and suggestions that he seek psychiatric help because of his own imagery. In Blue-ing Blowbonnets, Greco attempts to blow to smithereens the idea that art is only successful if it doesn’t have meaning beyond being pretty.

Charles Coldewey is trained as a three-dimensional artist using a variety of materials including wood, collected objects and metal. Coldewey creates human looking sculptures with a Hieronymus twist. His sculptural portraits of friends and colleagues include odd objects and bizarre composition. A bird on a branch protrudes from a carved head and eight contorted legs support the work suggesting movement in multiple directions, creating a visual spectacle well worth seeing.

Kazuko Goto is a printmaker whose elegant work is a witty expression of everyday life with a hint of her Japanese heritage. Goto uses traditional printmaking techniques and materials to produce images that cross smoothly over cultural boundaries.

In addition to curating Blue-ing Blowbonnets, Paul Greco incudes his own art in this exhibition. Greco’s mixed media collages are contemporary images that express his childhood nostalgia using cutouts taken from old children’s books.

Erin Guy is an abstract painter working primarily in water-based media. Her work focuses on one’s relationship to their surroundings.

tesa Morin’s paintings and photographs examine issues of interpersonal relationships. Her work combines images of hands with other aspects of nature and isolates them in empty backgrounds.

Photographer Dan Tossing is exploring the loss of his father after discovering a roll of undeveloped 35 mm film with images taken prior to his death in 2004.

Erik Tosten uses non-representational images with contemporary technology: computer animation, digital frames and large-screen projection. Tosten graduated from the University of North Texas with a MFA in Ceramics but has successfully transcended into the technological area of art.