Contemporary Artists Featured at Metcalf Gallery

The Taylor University Art Department is hosting an exhibit of artists who specialize in contemporary art. Titled Fresh Teaser, the show is currently installed in Metcalf Gallery through December 8.

Fresh Teaser features the work of three artists who work, or have spent a significant time working in, New York City. Leah Tacha, Karen Schifano, and Jon Lutz provided works of art to Taylor University for the show.

“We’re excited for this opportunity in the Metcalf Gallery to bring their invigorating work to campus, to inform our practice as artists, and to grant perspective on contemporary art,” said Jeremie Riggleman, director of the Metcalf Gallery and Associate Professor of Art. “They are making thoughtful, transcendental work about the world around them as they live and move through the planet.”

About the Artists

Jon Lutz

Jon Lutz is an independent curator and artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He began a curatorial project entitled Daily Operation in 2005, and was a director at Sardine (Brooklyn, NY) from 2013-2015 and then at 106 Green (Brooklyn, NY) from 2016-2018. Lutz earned a BA in Art History from Southern Illinois University and an MA in Art History from Hunter College.

“My submission features five works from my “50 Works” series in which I made 50 small works during the first two months of the pandemic,” said Lutz. “This selection reveals the backbone of my painted language and technical approach: the layered use of landscape imagery, loose lithographic techniques, text, human figure collages, and gouache.”

Karen Schifano

Karen Schifano is a painter living and working in New York City. She received a BA in Art History from Swarthmore College, an MFA from Hunter College, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She has exhibited widely in this country, Europe, Australia and Japan. Recent exhibition venues include Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, DC Moore Gallery, Deanna Evans Projects, Rick Wester Fine Arts, MoMA PS1, New Jersey Center for the Visual Arts, Alfred University, CB1 Gallery, and Transmitter Gallery. Karen was elected to membership in American Abstract Artists in 2018.

“I like the sense of ambiguity, and therefore, the resulting variety of possible readings,” said Schifano of her work. “It’s all mutable, all energy, all subject to the flow of the moment in front of the canvas. Mortality is very much on my mind, and the pain and sorrow of the world we share, along with the sheer joy in being alive with all our senses and histories. I hope that these seemingly simple shapes and spaces lead to complex and emotionally resonant conversations.”

Leah Tacha

Leah Tacha lives and works in Lawrence, KS. She received her BFA in Painting from The Cleveland Institute of Art and her MFA from SUNY Purchase College, with additional years spent in New York City. She has shown with Morgan Lehman Gallery, SSD (Shrine & Sargent’s Daughters), Deanna Evans Projects, Daily Operation, Underdonk, RARE Gallery, New Baroque, and the Torrance Art Museum, among many others.

Fresh Teaser is open to the public from 8 am to 4:30 pm Monday through Friday.

The Taylor University Art Department emphasizes opportunities for students to visit venues where they can view artwork firsthand, whether through a visit to a local ceramic studio in Muncie, Indiana, a January term trip to New York City, or a semester abroad in Orvieto, Italy. The Metcalf Gallery hosts three shows a year from visiting artists.