Press Release Assignment DUE Feb. 24

BLOG POST RESPONSE DUE NO LATER THAN FRIDAY, FEB. 24

During this week, please review the PowerPoint on publicity and the examples of postcards for exhibitions.

You may also conduct research on your own.

Devise a draft of a press release for a solo exhibition of your work at the Student/Project Gallery. Focus on the structural elements of a press release. Do your best by emulating the other press releases and postcards you have reviewed and we will discuss in person your drafts on Feb. 24.

Upload your press release to your blog and print out your release. Bring it with you to our meeting on Feb. 24 (Your draft call may be single- or double-spaced).

EXAMPLE OF PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  October 12, 2010                         

COD’s Marks Art Center Presents Rhino Ideologies / Wild Biology

by Lauren Evans and Margaret Lazzari, Oct. 18 - Nov. 11, 2010

PALM DESERT, CA—In Rhino Ideologies / Wild Biology, artists Lauren Evans and Margaret Lazzari explore themes of biological and social structures; definitions of health and illness, both mental and physical; and experiences of struggle and survival.  Both Evans and Lazzari are classically trained artists who utilize traditional and digital media in their work, and this show includes large acrylic paintings rich with complex layers of mass and color, digital prints both large and small, drawings and video, all alongside sculptural and installation work. 

The exhibition—which is scheduled to coincide with National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and follows Mental Illness Awareness Week (October 3-9, National Alliance on Mental Illness)—opens to the public on Monday, October 18, with an artists’ reception that is also free and open to the public on Wednesday, October 20 from 5:00-7:00 p.m.; musical entertainment will be provided by DJ Nagual.  The Marks Art Center is open Monday through Thursday from 12:00-4:00 p.m. and by appointment (760-776-7278).

Lauren Evans’s work, Rhino Ideologies, addresses through various media the psychological push and pull that we all struggle with along the strenuous developmental journey of personal growth.  The metaphorical images that she uses suggest social and medical representations of mental illness, the stigma of labeling, and the isolation that often ensues.  The rhinoceros is a symbol of the powerful yet endangered inner being that resides in each of us: a prehistoric creature that, despite its strength, is also vulnerable and fragile.  The charge of the rhinoceros evokes the overwhelming force of emotional turmoil, and the animal itself carries with it connotations of both presence and absence—the absence of paternal love, personal security, and trust, alongside the excessive presence of anger, sorrow, fear, and anxiety.

Margaret Lazzari’s work, Wild Biology, embodies and communicates the robust, wild exuberance of the biological world, a world that, while apparently solid, is underneath a void filled with dispersed specks of matter animated by vibrating energy.  Her paintings have developed as visual equivalents to this fundamental quality of the physical world, incorporating natural phenomena that have an open architecture or network structure—including star clusters, aerial views of landforms, erosion patterns, waves of liquid, turbulence, entangled plants, medical imaging body, and flocks of perched birds—and is inspired by various scientific and artistic sources that include fractal diagrams, historical landscape paintings, and the line drawings of Leonardo da Vinci.  The dense compositions of her paintings, with their rhythmically repeating imagery, allude to the concept of growth—the healthy sense of flourishing growth that indicates vitality, as well as the concept of overgrowth as disease, as uncontrolled and destructive proliferation that manifests perhaps most painfully as cancer.  Lazzari has also made animated sequences based on her drawings and paintings, adding movement and creating changing points of intersection amongst all the layered imagery in order to mobilize the feelings of fear and anger that often accompany the emotional and physical disfigurement associated with sickness, and specifically with treatment for breast cancer.

Evans, who teaches sculpture, design, drawing, and art history at College of the Desert and Los Angeles Southwest College, is a visual artist who works in a variety of media.  Evans received her BFA and MFA, with an emphasis in sculpture, at the University of Southern California.  She has exhibited nationally, and has been commissioned to work on several public art projects in Los Angeles and San Diego counties.  Lazzari, whose work has been exhibited internationally, is a painter, writer, and professor in the Roski School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California.  Lazzari received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis; she has received a National Endowment for the Arts award for her works on paper, and is the author of The Practical Handbook for the Emerging Artist, and co-author of Exploring Art: A Global, Thematic Approach.