Show Dates: May 2 - May 30
Gallery Hours:
Friday - Saturday 12-6 I Sunday 1-4
PYRO’s new exhibition, RECONFIGURATION, featuring work by Bette Levy and Kathleen Loomis, opens on May 2 and runs through May 30. The gallery is open Friday and Saturday, from 12 to 6 PM and Sunday from 1PM to 4PM, and by appointment. The gallery is located at 1006 East Washington Street in Louisville, KY. There will be an outdoor opening reception on May 2 from 1PM to 4PM, with masks required. Rain date is May 16.
Bette Levy views the creation of her art as a continuum where every work is influenced and enhanced by previous artwork. With each successive piece of art, she is incorporating gained knowledge and capabilities. She also believes her understanding of her artwork only becomes clear after the work is completed. Levy has no pre-conceived interpretation or meaning of her work other than its form. And this often changes over time as a result of life experiences and perceptions.
The exhibition “Reconfiguration” is an example of this reimagining or re-understanding. Many pieces in this exhibition consist of earlier work that has been changed in some way to reflect an alternate perception of the work, or changes in Levy’s art practice. She says, “It is exciting to examine past work and to see it in a different way, with a different eye, to have an opportunity to re-form or re-arrange the past. I have always endorsed the concept of “what if” in creating art. This exhibition gives me the opportunity to demonstrate this concept in action. Not all of the work is reconfigured; some of it is new, but it too has the possibility of being reconfigured at a later date.” The display of artwork includes crochet, wire knitting, spun paper, and gut.
Kathleen Loomis thinks of “reconfiguration” slightly differently than Bette does – for her, it’s the finding of old things and giving them new life in art. She is a world-class pack rat, acquiring stuff from the street when she walks, checking out other people’s junk on trash pickup day, accepting discards from friends, even tearing apart old books that she know nobody will ever want to read. Loomis likes to reassemble these disparate things and see what happens when they get into small groups and start to talk to one another.
Loomis gives special thanks to Pamela Mattei, who enabled much of the work in thisshow by cleaning out her garage during pandemic lockdown and findingfive big cartons of old cigar boxes which she divested to Loomis. And to former PYRO member Kim Huber, who several years ago gave two huge boxes of vintage Japanese kimono to Louisville Area Fiber and Textile Artists, from which Loomis gleaned the silk for her embroideries.
Open Fridays and Saturdays,12-6 pm, Sundays 1-4 pm
1006 E. Washington Street, Louisville, KY 40206
pyro.gallery@gmail.com www.pyrogallery.com
We ask all visitors to wear masks and social distance.
We have plenty of room to keep visitors safe including 5 galleries, an outside art garden and an adjoining boutique.