Don't Mention It (back)

featuring:
Dana Depew, Liz Maugans & Joel Ross

June 10-27, 2009

About the artists

Joel Ross

http://www.ashortwestern.com/

Joel Ross is an artist living in rural east central Illinois. He is represented by Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago.

Joel is currently working on a series of sculptures that take the form of roadside signage. These objects are made and then sited at locations ranging from single-lane gravel farm roads to major highways. Most of these installations are not formally authorized, so the work's engagement with its initial audience, travelers on the road, is often rather brief. A series of photographs of these installations and the related works on paper become a record of these events as well as the primary point of engagement with their second audience, the art-going public. Monique Meloche Gallery will present the first solo show of this new work in May 2009.

Joel received his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1992 and his BFA from Tufts University in 1990. He received a discharge from the United States Marine Corps in 1984. He was born in Port Arthur, Texas in 1966. He is the son of a police sergeant and the grandson of a Baptist preacher. He has gone to great lengths to return lost wallets to their rightful owners. He has been known to turn around in movie theaters and tell unsanctioned commentators to shut up. He still has the nametag he was issued at his first job, and he doesn't spend a lot of time on his hair. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and lives in a farmhouse with his wife and two daughters.

Liz Maugans

http://www.lizmaugans.com/

Liz Maugans is one of Zygote Press' cofounders and has been the Managing Director since 1995. She is a native of Lakewood, Ohio, and received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from Kent State University. She received her Masters of Fine Arts in Printmaking from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She teaches drawing and printmaking at the Cleveland Institute of Art and Lorain County Community College. She has taught at several of the local universities including Kent State University and Cuyahoga Community College (Metro). She has exhibited her work nationally and is in several collections including B.F. Goodrich Collection, The Print Club of Albany and The Vern Riffe Center for Government and the Arts. She received an Individual Artist Grant (Excellence Award) in 2000 from the Ohio Arts Council and several other project grants (Artist in Communities Grant, Project Grant- Reverend Albert Wagner portfolio) from the Ohio Arts Council and The Cleveland Collective. She has curated several shows at Heights Arts, Cleveland Artist Foundation (Print Biennials), Cuyahoga Community College and Zygote Press. She is married to John Bando and has three children.


Dana Depew
http://danadepew.asteriskgallery.com/

Visiting Dana Depew’s labyrinthine basement-studio is a lot like wandering through an old thrift store. Hundreds of paintings, sculptures and found objects are piled high everywhere you look. Some are finished. Others stand like bits of memorabilia in a museum with no discernable theme.

One of nine children who grew up on a farm in Medina, Ohio, Depew isn't exactly a pack rat. His mother was an antiques dealer and left her vast collection to him. He's been tinkering with it ever since.

But even before that, Depew was the kind of artist who was inspired by objects of all kinds, and accordingly, he made work in a wide range of styles. Though he studied sculpture at Kent State University, he often makes paintings.
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