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Ken Butler: Hybrid Visions to be Exhibited at The Art Gym at Marylhurst University
For Release: March 21, 2007** May 9 Events Cancelled **
The Ken Butler lecture/demo at Marylhurst University and performance at Lakewood Center for the Arts scheduled for May 9 have been cancelled.
Butler has cancelled the events due to illness. At this time, it is not known whether the event(s) will be rescheduled. Ticket holders with questions should contact the Lakewood Center for the Arts.
The exhibition in The Art Gym continues as scheduled.
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The Art Gym at Marylhurst University will open Ken Butler: Hybrid Visions, a major exhibition for New York based, Oregon native Ken Butler, with a preview reception on Tuesday, April 10, from 6 to 8 p.m. Admission is free. The exhibition continues through May 16. Ken Butler will give a free lecture/demonstration in Marylhurst University’s Wiegand Hall at 12:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 9. He will perform at 8 p.m. the same night in a concert sponsored by The Art Gym at the Lakewood Center for the Arts in Lake Oswego.
”It’s not just that Ken Butler knows how to bow stringed parade rifles, play dental dams like trumpets, and construct keyboards from aluminum crutches, it’s that he knows how to play them well.“ – Neil Strauss, The Village Voice
Ken Butler: Hybrid Visions is the first major presentation of New York based Oregon native Ken Butler’s work since the artist moved to New York twenty years ago. The show includes 60 of the artist’s infinitely inventive and witty ”hybrid instruments“ – film reel and tennis racket guitars, cowboy boot violins, axe cellos and Styrofoam packaging pianos. Ken will also perform while visiting the state. The Art Gym is the first stop in a two-year tour funded in part by the Oregon Cultural Trust and the Clackamas County Cultural Coalition. Organized collaboratively with John Olbrantz, Director of the Hallie Ford Museum, at Willamette University in Salem, the show will travel to that museum this summer and later to the Schneider Museum of Art at Southern Oregon University.
At 8 p.m., Wednesday May 9th, The Art Gym is presenting Ken Butler in a one-night-only, all ages concert at the Lakewood Center for the Arts in Lake Oswego. Tickets go on sale in April through the Lakewood Center for the Arts box office Call 503.635.3901 for tickets, or order online at www.lakewood-center.org.
Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for children 18 and under and $10 for groups of 10 or more. Lakewood Center for the Arts is located at 368 S. State St., Lake Oswego, OR 97034. The concert will last approximately 1 hour and fifteen minutes. Earlier that same day, the artists will give a free lecture/demonstration at Marylhurst University in Wiegand Hall, located on the third floor of the B.P. John Building. This event is co-sponsored by the Marylhurst Music Department.
Life on the other coast has been good for Butler, and his works have been featured in numerous exhibitions and performances throughout the USA, Canada and Europe including The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and The Kitchen, The Brooklyn Museum, The Queens Museum, Lincoln Center and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as well as in South America, Thailand and Japan. His works have been reviewed in The New York Times, The Village Voice, Artforum, Smithsonian and Sculpture Magazine and have been featured on PBS, CNN, MTV, and NBC, including a live appearance on The Tonight Show.
The Art Gym, Marylhurst University is located one mile south of Lake Oswego at 17600 Pacific Hwy (Hwy 43), Marylhurst, Oregon, 97036. The gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday, 12 noon to 4 p.m. The Art Gym is located on the third floor of the B.P. John Building on the Marylhurst University campus. Admission is free. (503.699.6243)
Founded in the fall of 1980, The Art Gym at Marylhurst University has a 26-year history of presenting work by hundreds of artists based in the Northwest. The Art Gym has published more than 50 exhibition catalogues and sponsored more than 100 conversations about art in the region. In 2004-2005, The Art Gym was a recipient of the Governor’s Arts Award.
MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ken Butler is an artist and musician whose hybrid musical instruments and other artworks explore the interaction and transformation of common and uncommon objects, altered images, sounds and silence. The idea of bricolage, essentially using whatever is ”at hand,“ is at the center of his art, encompassing a range of practice that combines live music, instrument design, performance art, theater, sculpture, installation, photography, film/video, graphic design, drawing and collage. He is internationally recognized as an innovator of experimental musical instruments created from diverse materials including tools, sports equipment and household objects.
Ken Butler studied viola as a child and maintained a strong interest in music while studying the visual arts at Colorado College and in France, at The Institute for American Universities in Aix-en-Provence. He completed his M.F.A. in painting from Portland State University in 1977. He moved to New York City in 1988, from Portland, Oregon. His numerous grants and awards include multiple fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The New York State Council for the Arts, and the Oregon Arts Commission, among others. Other performance and exhibition highlights in New York City include The Kitchen, where he presented a major multi-media work ”Insects and Anxious Objects“ in 1996. A large-scale inter-active audio-visual installation entitled ”Object Opera“ was presented at Thread Waxing Space in 1995, as well as The Whitney Museum, The Wintergarden Theatre at the World Financial Center, The Brooklyn Museum, The Queens Museum, The New Victory Theatre, The Great Hall at Cooper Union, C-Space at the Citicorp Atrium, Exit Art, The Drawing Center, The Performing Garage, Roulette, The Knitting Factory, Tonic, Experimental Intermedia, Location 1, BAM Cafe, The Bowery Poetry Club, The Puffin Room, ABC No Rio, Florence Lynch Gallery, The American Gallery, Test-Site Gallery, American Primitive Gallery, Sideshow Gallery. At the Franklin Furnace, he presented his New York premiere, a multi-media performance called ”Hybrid Antics“ in 1987 with multiple projections and live music performed on his hybrid musical instruments with three musicians. International music festivals include: The NY Texaco Jazz Festival, New Music America 88 Miami, New Music America 9 and The International Cello Festival in Montreal, Printemps de Bourges Festival, Aix-en-the Festival, The St. Brieuc Art Rock Festival and Music-Action Festival in France, Instants Chavires in Paris, the Cave 12 Solo Festival and Festival de La Batie in Geneva and the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle. Ken’s work was featured in exhibition and performance for the award-winning Edgefest Festival, in Ann Arbor in 2005.
Other national and international highlights include a solo exhibition and a series of performances at the prestigious Aldrich Museum in Connecticut, as well as presentations (exhibitions and/or performances) at The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Maryland Institute of the Arts in Baltimore, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Painted Bride in Philadelphia, The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Images du Futur in Montreal, The Apollohouse in Eindhoven, Holland, Archipel Urbain in Grenoble, France and a six-city tour of Germany ending at the prestigious Podewil in Berlin. In 2001, Ken was invited for a month as Artist in Residence by the city of Hamburg, Germany where he presented a series of concerts and collaborations with local artists and musicians, sponsored by The Klanghaus.
He has been featured on numerous national and international radio and television programs including a live appearance on NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno where he performed on his instruments with the Tonight Show Band in 1999, a live performance and interview on National Public Radio’s "New Sounds“ with John Schaeffer in 2000, a radio feature, "Ken Butler's Hybrid Instruments" on Studio 360 with Kurt Anderson in 2004, both on WNYC radio, and a feature story on ”City Arts“ by Harvey Wang on PBS Channel 13 in 1995, in New York City.
Works by Ken Butler are represented in public and private collections in Portland, Seattle, Vail, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montreal, Washington and New York City, including the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
MORE INFORMATION AT KEN BUTLER’S WEBSITE http://www.mindspring.com/~kbhybrid/