Iole Alessandrini
Julie Alpert
Ellen Ziegler

A to Z: New Members Show

January 6 – 30, 2010

SOIL begins its 2010 exhibition schedule with photography and site-specific installation from SOIL's three newest members. Iole, Julie, and Ellen bring their diverse backgrounds, experiences, and artistic processes to the 15-year-old artist-run gallery, with their own personal reasons for applying for membership.

For Iole Alessandrini SOIL is a laboratory of art and people—she thrives in this environment. Both out of necessity and genuine curiosity, she has been photographing time-based installations for over a decade. These photographs document a process and reveal a passion for working with this fleeting medium. Part reporter and part lucky spectator, Iole has been capturing "lightprints” of people as they move through light in fluid moments that would otherwise pass unobserved.

Julie Alpert chose SOIL because it consistently exhibits emerging art driven by investigation, experimentation, and discovery. She is excited to have opportunities to reinterpret the gallery space with multiple ideas over the course of her membership. Coming from a painting foundation, Julie’s work is concerned with color, shape, texture, and space. Using recycled objects and building materials she responds to the space in which she is installing. In this process Julie explores the overabundance of contemporary consumer waste aiming to create something beautiful, humorous, and theatrical.

Ellen Ziegler joined SOIL because of its history of consistently strong exhibits as well as its culture of mutually-supportive, highly-committed artists. She thrives on collaboration and synergy, which fuels and balances her work as an individual. Her current work with mirrored glass has begun an arc of investigation into reflection, light and shadow. Ellen asks herself: Can I enhance the conceptual and sensory input and outgo of those who see my work? How do I enhance my own? These questions drive her work.