The Pitch Project

The Pitch Project is a gallery & artist studio space in Historic Walker's Point, Milwaukee, WI, USA.

[thepitchproject]

The Pitch Project Artist Book Fair, February 4, 11-5pm 

with lecture from 4-5pm by Mexico City based artist Mariela Sancari

706 S 5th Street, Milwaukee WI 532024

Various artist publications, independent publishers, zines, presses, collectives, and curators will be present including:

After School Special, Milwaukee, WI Brenner Brewing, Milwaukee, WI Candor Arts, Chicago, IL collect.give, Milwaukee, WI Conveyor Arts, New York, NY Donut Shop, Chicago, IL Duomo, Milwaukee, WI Further West Press, Appleton, WI Genderfail, Richmond, VA Generous, Milwaukee, WI Green Gallery Press, Milwaukee, WI Issue Press, Grand Rapids, MI ISO, MIAD, Milwaukee, WI Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, Pittsburgh, PA Latitude, Chicago, IL Lynden Sculpture, Milwaukee, WI Martian Press, Milwaukee, WI Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellows, Milwaukee, WI Mystery Spot Books, Minneapolis, MN Nomadic Bookshelf, Cleveland, OH Pink Things Magazine, Milwaukee, WI SAIC Photo, Chicago, IL Skylark Editions, Chicago, IL Spudnik Press, Chicago, IL TBW, Oakland, CA The Pitch Project Gallery and Artist Studios Yale MFA, New Haven, CT

[thepitchproject]

Upcoming Mariela Sancari

Upcoming in The Pitch Project GALLERY

Mariela Sancari 

Moisés/Landscape

December 15, 2016 - Feburary 25, 2017

[thepitchproject]

Skully Gustafson’s Plastic Alchemy in the Pitch Project LOUNGE

November 18 - December 31, 2016

[thepitchproject]

Cutting Edges, featuring Aimée Beaubien & Fred HC Liang

“Cutting Edges” featuring Artists Aimée Beaubien and Fred H.C. Liang opens at The Pitch Project, Saturday, February 6, 2016, 6 - 8 p.m.

The Pitch Project is pleased to present “​Cutting Edges,” a two-person exhibition featuring Chicago-based artist Aimée Beaubien and Boston-based artist Fred H.C. Liang. Beaubien and Liang transform the two dimensional surface of photography and drawing into delicate sculptural interventions.

Aimée Beaubien’s photographic sculptures are playfully complex. The act of collage gives amusement to the forms interweaving in space. By abstracting representational photographs, Beaubien uses a clearly defined rhetoric of logic and illogic in her creative process. The self-referential objects command an atmosphere exclusive of itself.

Fred H.C. Liang’s aerial sculptures lend terrestrial beauty to a space. Adopting Jian Zhi paper-cut techniques, Liang’s work pulls from tradition in attempt to convey the ineffable qualities of abstraction. The meditative process Liang embraces is conveyed through the elemental paper forms that feel conscious.

Together, Beaubien and Liang’s work create a fantastical environment within the walls of The Pitch Project.

Aimée Beaubien has engaged in more than 40 exhibitions national and international, venues include: TWIN KITTENS, Atlanta, GA; UCRC Museum of Photography, Riverside, CA; Marvelli Gallery, New York, NY; Castello di S. Severa, Italy; Oqbo Galerie, Berlin, Germany. Her work has been reviewed in publications such as Art in America, Art on Paper, and Art Papers. Beaubien is Assistant Professor of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Fred H.C. Liang has engaged in more than 80 exhibitions national and international. Recent exhibitions include: Matthias Küper Galleries, Beijing, China; Pure Land, Carroll and Sons Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts; Inside/Out Museum, Beijing, China; Miami Project Fair, Miami, Florida; Oasis Gallery, Beijing, China. Liang is currently a Professor at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.

Opening Reception with the artists: Saturday, February 6 , 2016, 6-8 p.m. • Exhibition Runs February 6 – May 6, 2016 Gallery Hours: Thursday 4–8 p.m. & Saturday-Sunday 12–5 p.m.

The Pitch Project is a platform for exhibiting contemporary art practices in Milwaukee’s Historic Walker’s Point Neighborhood. The Pitch Project is dedicated to exhibiting artists of diverse cultural perspectives.

[thepitchproject]

CALL FOR INTERNS: THE PITCH PROJECT – SPRING 2016

The Pitch Project, Gallery & Artist Studios is seeking motivated interns for the spring 2016 semester. This is a great opportunity for students who are looking to gain experience working in a gallery setting and meet contemporary artists who are working at regional, national and international stages. Interns will report to co-directors Will Pergl, Sonja Thomsen, and Jason S. Yi and assist in exhibition and program development, installation/execution, and marketing. To learn more about past exhibitions and programs, visit: www.thepitchproject.org.

This is an unpaid internship, eligible for college credit.

If interested, please submit a letter of interest, resume and available times for an interview to: [email protected] & [email protected].

Expected hours per week / Preferred duration of internship: 8 -15 hours per week / Early January 2016 to May/June 2016 (Spring Semester)

Preferred qualities of an intern for The Pitch Project: • Strong interest in arts & contemporary artists • Effective writing and communication skills; affinity for engaging with the public in gallery setting • Highly responsible and dependable with ability to effectively problem-solve • Enthusiasm to learn new skills and share information with team-members and public • Digitally savvy; skills in design software/photography a plus • Weekend availability (gallery hours Thursday – Sunday)

Duties and Responsibilities: Marketing & Communications • Assist in development and execution of marketing strategy for The Pitch Project • Manage a schedule of regular posts on website and social media platforms (Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) that balance promotion of The Pitch Project, promotion of artists and engagement in dialogue about the arts in Milwaukee and elsewhere • Assist in publicity of gallery events (photography, documenting events and delivering publicity materials) • Manage email mailing list

Gallery Management • Oversight of gallery during assigned hours (gallery sitting) • Pro-actively communicating/engaging with the public • Gallery and studio related correspondence with artists and others • Maintain cleanliness of reception and gallery area • Attend and assist in exhibition openings and events • Attend scheduled meetings

Curatorial • Gallery related research - artist and other exhibition research and keep a database of the information on Google Docs • Research links relating to: artists in the gallery / artists in the studios • Assist in exhibition installation (patching/painting walls, hanging work) • Coordinate gallery related events with programming coordinator and other interns

[thepitchproject]

The Pitch Project Platforms: Carpool - Route 1, Saturday, December 12, 7-10pm

Carpool encourages collaboration between independent artists and communities through programming that begins with a shared car ride. The Pitch Project artist, Kyle Seis, is working with MFA candidates Eileen Rae Walsh, Jeanne Donegan, and Jessica Pierotti for Carpool - Route 1, a collaborative exhibition experience that will be conceived and produced during the group's trip from Chicago, IL to Milwaukee, WI. The one-night exhibition will take place in The Pitch Project's second floor Platform Space.

Carpool is an offshoot of Wavepool, a contemporary art blog dedicated to sharing interviews with both established and emerging artists who engage with the medium of photography.

Reception: Saturday, December 12, 2015, 7-10pm in The Pitch Project's second floor Platform Space

[thepitchproject]

The Pitch Project Talks: Jenna Knapp

Jenna Knapp will present an artist talk on Sunday, December 13 beginning at 1pm followed by an open studio until 3pm. This program is free and open to the public and is presented in conjunction with 'How To Make Liar's Pie', a site-specific exhibition by Brooklyn-based artist Kambui Olujimi on view through January 10, 2016 in The Pitch Project Gallery. 

Jenna Knapp is an artist and activist living and working in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Knapp is a recent graduate from Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, founder of Highway Excursion Agency of the Midwest, and studio resident at The Pitch Project. She is a 2014 recipient of the Mary L. Nohl Suitcase fund, and currently included in The Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund: Fellowships for Individual Artists 2014 exhibition at INOVA on view through January 9, 2016.

[thepitchproject]

Ethan Rafal's Shock and Awe Performance Next Monday, November 9 at 7pm

Pie served at 7pm with performance beginning at 7:30pm followed by an open discussion about the issues explored in the project.

A twelve-year, autobiographical project examining the relationship between protracted war and homeland decay, Shock and Awe is a meticulously crafted image, text, and found object journal that blurs the line between author and subject, and personal and authoritative histories. Completed over countless years traveling the United States, the project pulls from the traditions of documentary photography and writing set on the American road.

The

Shock and Awe Book Tour

returns the journal to the people and places depicted, bringing author, subject, and viewer into an exploration of the total meaning of the work. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the project, the performance of Shock and Awe is equal parts story-telling, show-and-tell, and group discussion, presented with ample cast-iron pie, whiskey.

Borrowing from American folk traditions, Shock and Awe is a performance of first-person authorship. Balancing sincerity, humor, the project unfolds in real-time, foregrounding the fraught transformation of memory into document, providing a vehicle to revisit this shared period since 2001 - simultaneously fading from memory, yet not cleanly historicized - and radicalize agency over emerging, dominant Histories.

Join this event on Facebook

About Ethan Rafal:

Ethan Rafal is an artist and photographer based in San Francisco. His work deals with the individual and collective experience of violence, and the ways in which subsequent representations of violence inform personal and national mythologies. Photography is an essential ingredient in his practice, due to the unique relationship between image and violence, but his work employs performance, installation, video, new-media, and social-practice methodologies. He teaches, mentors, helps run an art space, and collaborates with Art For a Democratic Society in the Bay Area, where he has been based since 2007. More info about Ethan and the project at ethanrafal.com.

Performance: Monday, November 9 7-9pm

The Pitch Project's second floor 'Platform Space'

[thepitchproject]

HOW TO MAKE LIAR’S PIE ­ AN INSTALLATION BY VIDEO ARTIST, KAMBUI OLUJIMI

The Pitch Project is pleased to present H​ow To Make Liar’s Pie,​ an installation by Brooklyn ­based artist Kambui Olujimi o​pening with a reception from 7 ­to 10 pm on October 9th, 2015 with gallery talk from the artist at 8pm. 

Formerly included in the group exhibition, Performing for Cyclops,​which was on view at The Pitch Project in 2014, Olujimi returns for a solo exhibition to showcase his newest video work. H​ow To Make Liar’s Pie will feature six constructed situations that synthesize the conventions of everyday environments and complicate the inevitability of autobiography in the 21st­ century. The work gains inspiration from the proliferation of short form communication, such as the classic 30 second advertisement, Twitter's 144 character limit, and Instagram's 15 second video limit. The videos employ an autobiographical narrative and reveal the incongruities of social, historical, and cultural tropes through an atypical narrative structure. 

Kambui Olujimi was born and raised in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Olujimi received his MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts, and a BFA from Parsons School of Design. He has also attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Olujimi is an artist who works within the realm of ideas, rather than working within an exclusive medium. He crafts potent social commentary from delicate wisps of myth and whimsy mixed with real world narrative. Olujimi is interested in “​the seamless process of synthesizing invisible constructs into inevitabilities. I excavate the language and aesthetics of social, historical, and cultural conventions and bring them out of the world of the implicit. Once given gravity, weight, and shape it becomes possible to reveal their incongruities and their illusory nature.”​ His work has been exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally, at institutions such as the Museo Nacional Reina Sofia, Madrid; Art in General, New York; the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.; the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. 

The Pitch Project is a home for contemporary art practices in Milwaukee’s Historic Walker’s Point neighborhood. The Pitch Project is not only a gallery for bringing contemporary global practices and exhibitions to Milwaukee, but provides studios for 23 artists who are active on a national and international level. The Pitch Project hosts diverse exhibitions, artist talks, screenings, and events. Founded by Mike Brenner, in conjunction with Brenner Brewing Company (in the adjacent building), the gallery and studios are run by its four co­directors: Brewer; Mike Brenner, and artists; Will Pergl, Sonja Thomsen, and Jason S. Yi. For M​ore Information and to view work of past and future exhibitions of The Pitch Project, you can visit; w​ww.thepitchproject.org​, or contact the gallery at [email protected].​ 

 How To Make Liar’s Pie ​will run October 9, 2015 ­ January 10, 2016

[thepitchproject]

Join us in the gallery on Saturday September 19 4pm  for an Artist Talk with Aspen Mays. 

[thepitchproject]

The Pitch Project Talks: Wisconsin Rocks with Rob Graziano Thursday, August 20, 6pm at The Pitch Project

The Pitch Project is pleased to present a conversation on the geological history of Wisconsin, with a discussion of the geology of pyrite with Rob Graziano, lecturer in the Department of Geosciences at UW-Milwaukee.

Thursday, August 20 6pm

This event is in conjunction with Aspen Mays' Pyrite Suns, Miner's Dollars, now extended through Sunday, September 20!

For More Information and view work of past and future exhibitions of The Pitch Project, you can visit; www.thepitchproject.org, or contact the gallery [email protected].

[thepitchproject]

Great opening. 

Aspen Mays

Pyrite Suns, Miner’s Dollars

runs through September 13, 2015

[thepitchproject]

Installation of loan items from Milwaukee Public Museum for Aspen Mays “Pyrite Suns, Miner’s Dollars.” June 12 - September 12, 2015

[thepitchproject]

Opening this Friday, Aspen Mays at TPP

[thepitchproject]

Aspen May's Pyrite Suns, Minerʼs Dollars Opening on June 12,2015 5:30-8pm

The Pitch Project is pleased to present Pyrite Suns, Miner's Dollars, a site-specific installation by artist Aspen Mays (San Francisco CA) in collaboration with the collections of the Milwaukee Public Museum and the Yerkes Observatory in William's Bay, Wisconsin.  Representation and facsimile are at play in this installation of 300+ photographs and artifacts that interweave Mays' ideas and meditations on the sun, fool's gold and value.

Pyrite suns, also known as miner’s dollars or sun dollars, are found only in coal mines where the pressure of coal formation has flattened the pyrite into coin-like disks. A pyrite sun, named for the radial symmetry of its shape, appears to have beams growing outward from its center, which Mays likens to a drawing of the sun. Miner’s dollars were originally thought to have significant monetary value, but now are valued only for their beauty and their relative scarcity. They remain a fascination for Mays, “I love the thought of a sun that is found buried in the earth, in the blackness of a coal mine.” Pyrite Suns, Miner's Dollars conflates the study and images of a false sun with those of the "real" one. Mays developed the installation for The Pitch Project with a visit to the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay WI and the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) in late April. Following her visit, Mays stated, "The Milwaukee Public Museum has been incredibly gracious to open its doors and its collection to this collaboration with The Pitch Project. For me, the Museum as a repository of curiosity and curiosities was an exciting point of departure for this exhibition."

Pyrite specimens from the Museum's geology collections, exhibition design molds and security footage on loan from MPM add another layer about observation and artifice to Mays' installation at The Pitch Project. Over the course of the exhibition Mays will also install a pop up display in MPM's planetarium that will explore the rare experience of the solar eclipse. “I’m incredibly excited to see MPM partner with Aspen Mays and The Pitch Project,” said Dennis Kois, President of the Milwaukee Public Museum. “I had the opportunity to show Aspen's work at my previous institution (deCordova Art Museum), and imagined then what a natural she'd be to partner with a science museum. Art and natural history inform each other wonderfully, and I'm pleased we are in a position to help a talented artist and one of Milwaukee's best young galleries."  

Don’t miss out on Pyrite Suns, Minerʼs Dollars opening at The Pitch Project June 12, 2015. Aspen Mays' views of the sun(s) is a cause for a visit and return visit to behold the view.

Opening Reception: Friday, June 12 , 2015, 5:30–8 p.m. 

Exhibition Runs June 12 – September 12, 2015 

Gallery Hours: Thursday 4–8 p.m. & Friday–Sunday 12–5 p.m.

About the Artist Aspen Mays (born 1980) was raised in Charleston, SC. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009 and a BA in Anthropology and Spanish from The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 2004. Aspen uses her investigation on light, gravity, nature and astronomy to drive her works. Her solo exhibitions include Every leaf on a tree at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Sun Ruins at Golden Gallery, New York; and Ships that Pass in the Night at the Center for Ongoing Projects and Research (COR&P) in Columbus, OH. Mays was a 2009-2010 Fulbright Fellow in Santiago, Chile, where she spent time with astrophysicists using the world’s most advanced telescopes to look at the sky. Mays lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and Columbus, OH where she is an Assistant Professor of Art at Ohio State University.

About the Milwaukee Public Museum The Milwaukee Public Museum is a natural and human history museum located in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The museum was chartered in 1882 and opened to the public in 1884. MPM has three floors of exhibits that encompass life-size dioramas, walk-through villages, world cultures, dinosaurs, a rain forest and a live butterfly garden, as well as the Daniel M. Soref National Geographic Dome Theater and Planetarium. The museum houses more than 4.5 million objects and hosts nearly half a million visitors each year. The MPM is operated by Milwaukee Public Museum, Inc., a private, non-profit company and its facilities and collections are held in trust and supported by Milwaukee County for the benefit of the public.

About The Pitch Project The Pitch Project Gallery & Artists Studios is a platform for exhibiting contemporary global practices in Milwaukee’s Historic Walker’s Point Neighborhood. The Pitch Project hosts diverse exhibitions, artist talks, screenings, and events.:

The Pitch Project / Gallery & Artist Studios 706 South 5th Street Milwaukee, WI 53204

[thepitchproject]

Join us on June 12 for Aspen Mays opening 5:30-8pm

[thepitchproject]

Artist Panel: Framing the Participatory Object and Environment

Kelly Kaczynski Scene from ‘Olympus Manger’

What happens when a viewer becomes a participatory element of an artwork? The Pitch Project is pleased to bring together four interdisciplinary artists who explore the fluid relationship between artist (or artwork) and audience.  Join artists Kelly Kaczynski, Miguel Ramirez, and Jenna Knapp in conversation about framing the participatory object and environment at The Pitch Project Gallery, 706 S. 5th Street, Milwaukee WI.  Moderated by Monica Miller, multidisciplinary artist and Operations Director of the Milwaukee Artist Resource Network.

Monday, April 20, 2015  doors open at 6:30pm, panel discussion from 7-8pm

In conjunction with the exhibition Relativity Suite by Gail Fitzgerald and Carl Ostendarp on view through May 6.