Too Many Dinner Parties
Too Many Dinner Parties
Maddie Butkovich and Claire Szeptycki
New City Arts Welcome Gallery
Charlottesville, VA
Friday, November 3, 2023 - Wednesday, November 22, 2023
Too Many Dinner Parties is a visual exploration of the artists’ inner lives and experiences. Emphasizing the process-based techniques of printmaking, this exhibition explores the individual’s relationship to the environment, others, and itself. Selfhood is ever-changing, and the boundaries between the self and the other are permeable. This work makes visible the daily intimacies of existing alongside others, and considers how environments, communities, and relationships form one’s sense of identity. Maddie’s work revolves largely around drawing and line, consisting of lithographs that approach relational aesthetics and humor without necessarily depicting concrete physical forms, but rather an abstracted visual vocabulary. In turn, Claire’s work uses scans and impressions of collected objects, including farm tools and personal keepsakes, to create a material archive of her memory. Through repetition, she hopes to give these objects a life of their own.
Stepping into the gallery, visitors encounter wood framed prints hung on the walls. Featuring the work of two artists, Claire Szeptycki and Maddie Butkovich, this exhibition includes lithographs, etchings, and woodcuts on paper. Each artist emphasizes process-based techniques of printmaking while exploring their own personal histories, communities, and relationships. Their prints interact in the space: Claire’s prints feature lithographs of scanned and layered farm tools, as well as one piece containing personal text, while Maddie’s prints are crayon-drawn lithographs printed on handmade paper.