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Press Release: Michael Costello | Lost on the Off-Ramp Solo Exhibition | January 6 through February 27, 2011 The Original | 300 SW 6th (Downtown PDX) Opening Reception - Thursday, January 6th, 5-9pm Elroy Artspace Gallery Announces ‘Lost on the Off-Ramp’, a Solo Exhibition of Fine Art Pastels by Michael Costello at The Original in Portland, OR Portland, OR (December 10, 2010) -- Elroy Artspace Gallery is pleased to announce Lost on the Off-Ramp, a solo exhibition of fine art pastels by Michael Costello. In the artist’s first exhibition with Elroy Artspace, Lost on the Off-Ramp, Costello presents a series of pastels featuring cross-sections of vintage hotel and restaurant neon signage, in their current states of decay, with a realism approach. An active artist in varying medium for two decades and PNCA (Pacific Northwest College of Art) graduate, Costello applies hard pastels to his passion for “the preservation of a past not so far away,” he says. Raised in the Northern California hills of Monterey County but off to the road in pursuit of his artistic education at 16, Costello is “driven by long road trips and the unique stops they have to offer,” Michael shares, “and with the works in Lost on the Off-Ramp I strive to preserve the ever-so-quickly disappearing feeling of ‘Americana’ that once filled the highways.” Training and working in commercial, sculptural and fine art pottery as well, Costello also ran a surf shop in Hawaii and is still an avid skateboarder. He’s made his way across the United States and even France to build his education and practice of art. The endless band of highways traveled in this enduring journey (which led him to Portland for art school in 2003) has brought Michael a love for their stories. “Maybe it comes from a broken light or a rusty sign,” he shares, “but most of all my inspiration comes from the road.”View pictures here: http://bit.ly/OffRampElroy
Michael Costello has been a professional artist since the age of 16, when a children’s book he illustrated was published (Island Heritage), inspiring him to Hawaii for furthering his artistic studies. In 2003 he moved to Portland to attend the Pacific Northwest College of Art. He was the first recipient of Nike-sponsored Global Studios Scholarship to the Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art in France. Upon return he graduated from PNCA with a BFA in painting. Today he works primarily in hard pastels out of his studio in Portland, OR. Elroy Artspace is curating this show at The Original (located at 300 SW 6th Ave. in downtown Portland, OR). Elroy Artspace is a gallery whose mission is to enhance the human experience by introducing fine, fun art to design professionals and others concerned with bringing color and beauty into the home and workspace. For Media inquiries, additional information regarding Elroy Artspace Gallery, Elroy Art Agency or Michael Costello artwork sales and leasing, please contact: Joe Staskerz, Owner, Elroy Art Agency: Joe@ElroyArt.com (503) 609-0503 www.ElroyArt.com.
Atomic Tiki
Group Exhibition | August 1 through August 27, 2010
Opening Tiki Party - Sunday, August 1st
Client Reception (Private) - Wednesday, August 4th, 4-7pm
Opening Reception - Thursday, August 5th, 5-10pm ATOMIC TIKI – Portland, Oregon gallery Elroy Artspace will present for its August 2010 exhibition “Atomic Tiki”, a group show of wall-hangable tiki-inspired art. The show will feature art which contains Tiki imagery and evokes the gilded age of lust for Polynesian design, palette and mystery as approached from an Americana mid-century sensibility! The ‘Atomic Tiki’ exhibition will serve also as the art show for Portland’s ‘Tiki Kon’ festival, and will be a featured stop on the Tiki-Kon bus tour, bringing rabid tiki fans into the gallery for partying and purchasing of the artworks! Elroy Artspace enjoys a large fan and buying base, and the gallery’s opening receptions are also part of the much-hyped monthly First Thursday Pearl District Art Walk. The exhibition will continue for the month of August as a show exclusively of this genre. Gallery commission on sales is 50% of the art sale amount. For the purpose of this show, ‘Atomic Tiki’ is considered as any wall-hangable art of the Tiki genre. Authentic and creative representations are encouraged and heavily weighted. Submissions are fee-free and shall be received on or before the July 18th, and limited to only one email containing no more than 5 images in .jpeg format, and must include details of the works including printed sizes, expected retail price, artist’s website, etc. Send submission via email to: AtomicTikiElroyArtspace@gmail.com - no snail-mail or phonecalls, thank you. Art accepted into the exhibition will be announced on July 19th, and must be shipped by the artist as completely ready-to-hang and sell, and received in Portland, OR on or before Monday, July 26th. Open to U.S. based artists at least 18 years old, both amateurs and professionals are encouraged, as we wish to showcase all talents in our shared love of this genre!
July's Tilt Shift America - dual gallery show artist Bryan Solarski is in contention for a Hey, Hot Shot! award... HHS! Contender: Bryan Solarski By Stacy Oborn * as published on the Hey, Hot Shot! photography competition blog, a Jen Beckman ProjectThe first words that came to my mind when viewing the work of Bryan Solarski were "constructed photography." Just thinking this provoked a meta-response of, "Well, isn't all photography essentially constructed?" While there are photographers that actually physically construct dioramas or stage scenes in miniature, and still others that might utilize the vastly kitsch appeal of lomographic action sample sequences, or photographing in 3-D, what we have here is someone that shows us the world made smaller, more colorful and appealingly more manageable. Bryan utilizes an in-camera technical manipulation known as " Tilt/Shift" in order to create these colorful, miniaturized versions of actually experienced scenarios and events. Cartoonish, and alternately soft and then sharp-focused, looking at a world rendered through this lens induces not only perspective shifts but psychological ones as well. The viewer is cast back into a period of childhood, when everything one experiences feels larger-than-life.  Tuscany, May 2008 by Bryan Solarski
While largely sticking to immediately recognizable places in our collective, global consciousness, Solarski depends upon our familiarity with these scenes in order to playfully manipulate our picture-perfect mental images of places like the canals of Venice or a hockey game at a major sports center. Instead, he presents these scenarios to us in toy-like technicolor, devoid of any actual personalized or otherwise contextualized meaning. You might thank him, really, if having been to one of these points-of-interest yourself, you had an emotionally complex experience or one fraught with personal "growth," and can now look at this collection of images as a tabula rasa of the place. Here you need only to recollect the color, the light, the sensory waves of the place, and enjoy being unencumbered by any of that pesky, grown-up contextual baggage.
For July's show, Elroy Artspace is teaming with our new BFF's next door, Benjamin|Benjamin Gallery, in their "Tilt Shift America Project" kick-off with a dual-venue exhibition of this amazing art! So, do YOU know tilt-shift photography? Admittedly, I didn't until last year. Scott and Myah so love this genre of art that Myah's gallery business card for their gallery when in Hood River featured a tilt-shift photo by Myah (a talented photographer and artist) of the gallery on it...I loved it! Because it looked like a miniature diorama or toy of the street and gallery I really thought it was just a photoshop trick...and essentially it was...tilt-shifting is accomplished with either a special camera lens or via digital manipulation. Some folks even refer to the technique as 'miniature faking'. Life is busy and I'd forgotten about it entirely until the couple talked with me a few months ago about their idea to bring this genre out of the niche chatrooms and into the open for all of us to enjoy! Their goal is grand, and it starts with a gallery show of this beautiful art. They wanted further reach than Hood River and asked if Elroy Artspace would be interested in doing a concurrent show with them, and I jumped at the invite! Now that they've moved their gallery to Portland, and right next door to Elroy, this will be a show which makes a statement, for certain!
Please subscribe to and keep up with Scott's "Tilt Shift America Project" BLOG, as he's about to begin pumping relevant tilt-shift info into it regularly, thanks! So here's a few links to tilt-shift photography images for those of you who may not be familiar with the genre, or to whet your appetite for our July show if you are. I hope that you fall as deeply in love with it as did Benjamin|Benjamin and Elroy! Enjoy and Cheers!... 1. 80 gorgeous tilt-shift photos to see! 2. A few more great examples! 3. Wikipedia knows all - here's their tilt-shift page! 4. How-to tilt-shift in Photoshop! 5. A bunch of links to galleries and more tilt-shift info!6. And, of course, the new TIlt Shift America BLOG!
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