Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg, The Amaranthine Room

The Alice Wilds is beyond thrilled to announce the opening reception for Shana McCaw & Brent Budsberg: The Amaranthine Room on Friday, SEPT 20 from 5-8PM. This will be their first exhibition at The Alice Wilds. This exhibition will be on view through Saturday, NOV 2, 2024. The artists will be in attendance at the opening reception and also on Friday, OCT 18 for the fall installment of Gallery Night with a reception from 5-8PM.

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Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg have been collaborating and contributing to Milwaukee’s art culture since the early 2000’s, producing and participating in exhibitions and happenings ranging from Rust Spot and The Wearable Sculpture Fashion Show to the Nohl Fellows Exhibition and Sculpture Milwaukee. Known for their work with architectural miniatures and two characters based on their imagined ancestors, the couple also runs a design/fabrication studio that helped create important local exhibitions like Mrs. M__’s Cabinet, Knowledge Beings, and Eliza’s Peculiar Cabinet of Curiosities.
 
For The Amaranthine Room, McCaw and Budsberg have created a large scale installation made from remnants and surplus materials from their studio production. Like amaranth, a flowering plant that self-sows through a prolific production of seed, the components of the installation are also “generative objects.” A bespoke drawing table and a screened meditation hut are designed to support the creative process and produce the conditions necessary for new ideas to emerge. The installation imports into the gallery a representation of a landscape near Iola, Wisconsin, where this architectural experiment will ultimately be installed, representing an initial gesture toward transforming an inherited parcel of land into an open-air studio and incubator for creative exploration.

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McCaw and Budsberg are co-founders of Current Projects, a design and fabrication studio that draws influence from the tools and techniques of the past while maintaining a conceptual perspective that is informed by their work as artists. The two received the Mary L. Nohl Fellowship for Individual Artists in the Established category in 2008 and 2014, and a Fellowship.art accelerator grant in 2018.
 
Solo exhibitions include “A Tenuous Framework” at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, FL; “Remnant” at the Proxy Gallery in Culver City, CA; “The Cleft and Shimmering Hour” at Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee, WI; “A Tenuous Framework” at the Caestecker Gallery at Ripon College in Ripon, WI; and “An Inventory of Absence” at SPACES Gallery in Cleveland, OH. Notable group exhibitions are “Dwellings” at the Rockford Art Museum in Rockford, IL; “Sculpture Milwaukee”, an outdoor public art exhibition in Milwaukee, WI; “The John Riepenhoff Experience presents: Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg’s Sub-Suburban featuring Grace Marie Keaton at Kyle Seis’ Chamber” at the Suburban in Milwaukee, WI; “The Wisconsin Triennial” at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art; “Living Rooms” at the Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, WI; “Cargo Space” at INOVA Gallery in Milwaukee, WI and A+D Gallery in Chicago, IL; and “The Museum of Rooms” at the Chipstone Foundation in Fox Point, WI. 
 
Their work is owned by The Chipstone Foundation, the Saint Kate Arts Hotel, the Nevada Museum of Art’s Center for Art and Environment, and several private collectors.



EVENTS:
Opening Reception: Friday, SEPT 20, 2024 from 5-8PM
Gallery Night Reception with the Artists: Friday, OCT 18, 2024 from 5-8PM