PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: 
Emilie Heidemann, Carnelian Art Gallery marketing director
920-763-6980
eheidemanncag@gmail.com

PHOTOS: 
Email eheidemanncag@gmail.com, and you will be given access to a Google Drive link with visuals of paintings.

MADISON, Wisconsin, Nov. 2 - Carnelian Art Gallery, located at 221 King St., Suite 102, in downtown Madison, is pleased to announce its December exhibition, titled ”What’s the Point?” This is a duo exhibition with works curated and created by Evan Bradbury, Madison artist and Carnelian Art Gallery’s owner, and Emilie Heidemann, the gallery’s marketing director and Madison-based self-taught poet.

This show aims to explore the messiness of being human, as well as the clumsy ways that all people seek to add meaning to their existence. Why am I here? What is my purpose? Where do I belong? Why was I born? This exhibition also seeks to answer the aforementioned questions through the mediums of paint and pen ink.

“What’s the Point?” is slated to kick off with an opening reception at 5 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 4, The show’s end date is on Sunday, Dec. 27. As always at Carnelian Art Gallery, admission on opening night is free, and light refreshments will be served.

At 6 p.m. on opening night, Heidemann will read an original poem created exclusively for the evening. Guests are and will be encouraged to listen to the poem not just with their ears, but with their minds and hearts, as well as find ways the poem resonates with their human experience. Heidemann will craft 11 more poems to correspond to each of Bradbury’s works in the exhibition. This type of conversational art is called ekphrastic art.

Before her time at Carnelian Art Gallery, Heidemann was a full-time journalist, photojournalist, and editor in the Madison area for almost a decade. She continues to write about arts and culture as a freelance journalist for publications like Isthmus, BRAVA Magazine and Artdose Magazine.

As Heidemann honed her craft as a journalist, she also spent time writing and evolving her poetry. Until this exhibition, poetry was merely a way for Heidemann to make sense of her mental health struggles, to express herself and to create for the sake of creating. Heidemann found the writing medium when she was in high school, and discovered how she could seamlessly alchemize her pain into written photographs.

Now, Heidemann hopes that through this exhibition, she can find the confidence to explore publishing her first poetry book and come out of her shell as an artist. Heidemann also hopes that visitors to this exhibition in particular can find solace in knowing they are not alone in their human struggles. Suffering is inevitable, but it's not forever.

“The ideas and philosophies that I explore through my poetic practice involve consciousness, absurdism, nihilism, nature, and the responsibility of searching for one’s own meaning despite never asking to be born,” says Heidemann. “I am inspired by the horror and beauty of self-awareness, as well as personal mental health struggles and obsessions that come with being an organism that is capable of complex and abstract thought. My goal through my work is to solidify my purpose.

“To be a human is to create. I consider my poems an extension of a self, a soul, that lives within the confines of skin, organs, and bones. I am a self-taught poet who often uses visual and musical aids to inspire a piece – I hear a tune or see a painting or photograph and words flow through me like water. That, or my body acts as a conduit for the muse. Sometimes, she speaks in short snapshots about nature’s folly. Other times, she turns mundanity into grand declarations about finding balance, suffering, terror, joy, and wonder.”

Bradbury, when he’s not running Carnelian Art Gallery, can be found at his home studio “making a mess.” He has a soft spot for acrylic paints in particular. Birch board is his surface of choice when creating. Bradbury will sometimes start an artwork by covering the board with Gesso, which is traditionally a mix of animal blue binder, chalk and white pigment. He calls this the most “meditative” part of his process. Then, whatever comes out is whatever comes out. Sometimes Bradbury’s paintings take on an urban, geometric aesthetic. Others are emotional splashes of vibrant color. Even more are representations of landscapes and forms. He doesn’t like to box himself into any one medium.

Lately, his works have been made in response to an encounter with a brain tumor just over a half decade ago. Bradbury was diagnosed with what’s known as an acoustic neuroma, which affected many of his bodily functions on the right side, including his hearing, sight and mobility, among other things. If you see one of Bradbury’s geometric works hanging about the gallery, you’re witnessing a man trying to prove to himself that he can still do what he loves in the wake of a life-changing medical condition.

Way back before Bradbury opened Carnelian Art Gallery, he was a “wacky kid” who started “painting and drawing before memory.” He was inspired by his late uncle on his mom’s side, who was a professional oil painter who created “a lot of Florida seascapes” and other representational works.

A Madison native, Bradbury was heavily involved in the Children’s Theater of Madison doing close to 30 or “maybe more” places, both on stage and backstage. He attended Lake View Elementary School, Sherman Middle School and East High School.

After graduating high school, Bradbury went on to study poetry in Milwaukee for two years. Subsequently, he attended the Madison Area Technical College to try and become a police officer. Upon figuring out he didn’t like that, Bradbury embarked on a move to New York City to “focus on painting and see if there was a life.” There, he attended several ateliers, including the Art Students League of New York in the heart of Manhattan.

Fast forward to 2012, and Bradbury opened a small, do-it-yourself, mixed-use art space called Bright Red Studios. He often speaks about how he learned a lot of lessons as a curator there, many of which he now applies to the Carnelian Art Gallery, which opened in March 2024.

It has been an amazing adventure building and showing here at Carnelian Art Gallery,” says Bradbury. “We have been working really hard to bring to our community a space and an experience that is comfortable, inviting and exciting. Thank you so much to all of our attendees for helping to make CAG great.

“Emilie and I are very excited to invite you guys in to see the kind of messes we make. It’s been a lot of fun to hear and try to amplify your voices. Now, we’d like to add our own voices to the conversation.”