September 23 - November 11, 2017

Our exhibition Transition of Power: 2017 responded directly to the surprising events of the 2016 presidential election and the uncertainty many people felt in the wake of its unforeseen results. The work in Transition of Power: 2017 highlighted the issues most urgent in the minds of the American public, from immigration and health care to the Electoral College, raising many questions that would hopefully be answered after the inauguration.

Nine months into the new administration, those answers remain largely unknown. With political divisions growing increasingly stark, many Americans have been struggling with the realization that as a country we do not know ourselves as well as we had thought.

With political chaos threatening to become the new normal, 13FOREST has decided once again to turn to artists for help in understanding this time of unrest. State of the Union captures the spirit of the United States in 2017, revealing the internal lives of Americans during this period of increased social and political upheaval. The artists featured in State of the Union give shape to the turbulent emotions that dominate our historical moment, providing some much needed perspective on the reality of our political situation.

State of the Union features the work of Andrew Fish, Joe Keinberger, Ted Ollier, Cory Munro Shea, Dorothea Van Camp, and James Weinberg.

Related Events:

Sat 9/23, 4-6 pm: Opening reception

Sun 9/24, 2-4 pm: Outside|In: Down the Wormhole, artist talk with Skunk

Sat 10/21, 4-6 pm: Outside|In: Ripple, Adria Arch and the Arlington Knitting Brigade and Current, Frank Vasello

Sat 10/28, 3:30-6 pm: Arlington International Film Festival post-screening reception with Kristi Zea, director of Everybody Knows...Elizabeth Murray

Sun 10/29, 4-6:30 pm: Día de los Muertos - In the Presence of Absence, installation by Allison Maria Rodriguez; events throughout Capitol Square

Sat 11/4, 4-6 pm: State of Awareness: a conversation with the artists of State of the Union and Baruti KMT-Sisouvong, Director, Transcendental Meditation Program: Cambridge

13FOREST Gallery's Día de los Muertos installation grant project is funded in part by a grant from the Arlington Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

About the Artists

Andrew Fish studied at the School of Visual Arts, New York and Middlebury College. He lives and works in Somerville, Massachusetts. Fish is interested in depicting and responding to his surroundings as a documenter of contemporary life. As an artist living in an Instagram world, Fish reacts to the ephemeral nature of digital photography by celebrating its popular motifs and rejecting its immediacy.

Joe Keinberger grew up in Hingham, Massachusetts, before attending Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. He now lives in Somerville where he paints and illustrates out of his hidden studio deep below the earth's crust. Keinberger works primarily in ink and acrylic, doing loose ink drawings on top of built up texture of acrylic and assorted dry media.

Ted Ollier is a printmaker and conceptual artist working in Medford, Massachusetts. Ollier teaches letterpress and design through the Harvard Extension School at the Bow & Arrow Press in Cambridge, and is the Pressmaster of Arbalest Press in Charlestown. Ollier's work is concerned with consensus reality and how it is affected and shaped by data.

Cory Munro Shea is an artist and arts administrator living and working in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She primarily works in digital media, but has recently expanded her work into the third dimension. Here Shea's work explores themes of security, and the cyclical nature of its presence and absence in all of our lives.

Dorothea Van Camp studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and the College of Design, Architecture, Art & Planning at the University of Cincinnati. She currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Van Camp focuses on the printed mark in her work, using vector-based computer drawings to suggest the intersection of the body with technology.

James Weinberg is a designer, illustrator, curator, and artist based out of Somerville, Massachusetts. Weinberg creates silkscreen prints inspired by natural history, folk art, printed ephemera, op-art, and old advertisements. His work has been featured on book jackets, posters, and music packaging, as well as the AIGA BONE show and 50 Books/50 Covers.

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