The King Street Gallery at Montgomery College presents Crosscurrents, an exhibition of works by Emma Barnes, Madeleine Speicher-Willis, and Billy Friebele. The exhibition will run from November 28, 2022 – February 3, 2023. An artist talk will be held via zoom on Thursday, February 2, 2023 from Noon to 1 pm EST. For details on how to attend the artist talk, visit https://www.montgomerycollege.edu/special-programs/arts-institute/index.html.
Employing a broad range of media from traditional painterly processes to cast concrete to video, each artist presents works that address topics reflective of the complex relationship between humans and the natural world. Barnes and Speicher-Willis have collaboratively produced a group of highly tactile, painterly works on cast concrete surfaces, impressions of natural forms and a nod to the nostalgia of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Billy Friebele presents a series of hybrid sculptural and photographic works which combine images of the Anacostia River embedded in resins and juxtaposed with soils, algae samples, and other natural materials from the river.
About the Artists
Emma Barnes is a multi-disciplinary artist born in South Carolina in 1992. From 2008 to 2010, Barnes attended the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities to study visual art. In 2014, she graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a BFA in Painting & Printmaking and a double major in Gender Studies. After graduating she co-founded Guard n’ Flags, a custom screen-printing business in Richmond, VA. In 2019 she attended Athena Standards, an art residency in Athens, Greece. Barnes recently graduated with an MFA in Painting, Drawing and Photography in the Alfred/Düsseldorf program. Growing up in rural South Carolina continues to influence her investigation of materials and motifs.
Billy Friebele is an artist working in the Washington, DC region. He has exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Orlando Museum of Art, the Art Museum of the Americas, the Katzen Center for the Arts, and the Kreeger Museum among other venues nationally and internationally. Billy was a Hamiltonian Artist fellow and one of the first makers-in-residence at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. Central to his research and teaching are a concern for the tension between our mediated digital experience and the materiality of the environment. He earned a BA in Philosophy from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Friebele is an Associate Professor of Art at Loyola University Maryland.
Maddy Speicher-Willis is a multimedia artist focusing on alternative painting processes and materials. Her background includes 4 years teaching art in public schools, community arts settings, and workshops in and around Philadelphia. She holds an MFA in Painting from Alfred University in Alfred, NY and a BS ed in Art Education with minors in Community Arts and Art History from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, PA.
About the King Street Gallery
The King Street Gallery’s exhibitions compliment the academic programs of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Montgomery College Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus. The gallery is on the ground floor of The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Arts Center on the west side of the Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus. The center is located off Georgia Avenue at 930 King Street. Parking is available in the West Campus Garage, located immediately behind the center. For more information, visit http://cms.montgomerycollege.edu/arts-tpss/exhibitions/. Gallery hours are 8am to 5pm Monday – Friday. The Gallery and College will be closed December 24, 2022 to January, 2nd 2022. Admission is free and open to the public.
Contact: Mieke Gentis, 240-567-1374, mieke.gentis@montgomerycollege.edu
Gallery Website: http://cms.montgomerycollege.edu/arts-tpss/exhibitions/
Gallery Address: The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Arts Center
930 King Street, Silver Spring, MD 20910
