![Helen Hawley, Come If You Won’t Stay Long [installation shot], 2017, artist’s book 11 1/2” x 9 1/2” x 1/2”, ed. 40; litho on rubber cover, inkjet on polymer paper, aluminum slipcase, rain jacket made from TPU fabric](http://www.wisconsinacademy.org/sites/wisconsinacademy.org/files/styles/spotlight_880x495/public/Hawley_rainbook_cropped-for-web.jpg?itok=0iPfVS_H)
Location
Helen Hawley: The Blues of the Rain
"The books, sculpture, and paintings in my exhibit pose questions that are as poetic as they are ecological. They are about the flow of water, the ground we walk on, and our sense of the fleeting moment. My projects map potential relationships between ourselves and the world at large. I am wondering what it means to have a place in the world, especially relative to our environment. Many of the pieces are process-oriented, emphasize transience, and give special consideration to mark-making. One project, for example, uses participation from the rain to create a kind of meteorological journal.
"I am interested in how rainfall, which makes a global impact, also makes us feel so much. Just as feelings are immeasurable, so is the ebb and flow of water, even as we quantify it and count it among our greatest resources."
Gabriel Pionkowski: Touching—Self—Touching
This collection of works directly addresses the subjectile, the idea that a painting’s subject is inextricable from its physical ground or support. Pionkowski constructs his paintings through a laborious process of repetitively deconstructing, hand-painting, and reconstructing canvas using multiple weaving processes. Within the dense, colorful weave, loose brushstrokes delineate flora and languid, desirous, solitary figures. These canvas works can be understood as an erotic dance of warp and weft, alternating exposure and withdrawal. They reflect Pionkowski’s hypothesis that to touch something or someone is always a form of self-touching.
