Altered Logistics: Redux

For this latest version of the exhibition “Altered Logistics: Redux,” I continue the emphasis on collage as it best describes the method of combining previously unrelated elements that form a new message, emotion or narrative. This can be easily seen in eleven of the sixteen artist’s works in “Altered Logistics: Redux.” By Show Curator D. Dominick Lombardi for dART International Magazine

Altered Logistics: Redux will be featured at the Clara M. Eagle Gallery, Murray State University, Murray, KY, from August 26 to September 20, 2024.

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Two Artists Put America's Gun Violence Epidemic Front And Center

An installation from artists Martha Lewis and Margaret Roleke that uses found, donated and repurposed materials takes a decisive stand against gun violence in the United States. As both artists—and the country—reel from recent mass shootings, they are working to think about the impact they can have on the dialogue around gun control in this country.

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Margaret Roleke: March on Society

Margaret Roleke: Getting a Dialogue Started

When Margaret Roleke finished her MFA, she was a sculptor and installation artist. From early on she created installations dealing with issues of water, sound and light and after becoming a mother to four children, notions of motherhood and domesticity became central in her work. As her children grew, current political events became increasingly part of her visual expression. For instance, around 2002 she started including toy soldiers in her sculptures, referencing the Iraq war, and also around this time for a public art project in Brewster, NY, she made seating for the day-laborers who were regularly gathering on that site. She continued to make work that spoke to issues that were important to her, mainly gun control, domestic abuse, and immigrant rights. She says she had no intention to be an activist artist, but became one in the course of making art and exploring her true voice — “The Trump presidency led me to march on the streets and register voters, but I feel I can be a better activist when I create work which starts a dialogue on these important subjects, as this seems to be what comes naturally to me,” she says.

CAW Makes New Shows Visible

On Thursday night artist Margaret Roleke smiled from her home in her garage studio, at an audience of 20 who had gathered virtually to hear her talk about her art practice and her show at Creative Arts Workshop — the first installment of CAW’s “Made Visible” series.

“I didn’t set out to be an activist artist,” she said. “I was creating work just to make people think.”

Roleke was talking about the large works she had installed in the enormous windows of Creative Arts Workshop’s gallery and on its walls — overtly political cyanotypes, interspersed with large bolts of mylar, so that viewers could see themselves viewing the pieces.

Mill Street Exhibit Makes It Local

“Mill Street,” a group show of over 40 artists whose work is on exhibit at 26 Mill St. from now until March 21. As the accompanying program notes, “the exhibition was instigated by OkieDokie, a social club that organizes art projects and skateboard happenings throughout New Haven, and is supported by arts patron Julie Bernblum.” Julie and Steve Bernblum manage several properties in New Haven, including 26 Mill St. The idea for the Mill Street exhibit, said artist Noe Jimenez, emerged from a previous event at 770 Chapel St. in the summer of 2019.

…From the moment exhibit seekers entered the building, they were greeted with Margaret Roleke’s End Gun Violence, enormous, draped sculpture made from spent shotgun shells. It functioned almost as a welcoming bead curtain, even as it reminded viewers of its intent.

Critical canvas: behind the year's most political art show

At this year’s Spring/Break in New York, artists are addressing political unease in a carefully chosen space next to the Trump World Tower.

Text-based artwork is prevalent throughout the show, including a piece by Margaret Roleke that reads “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. The artist brought the artwork to be shot at a local shooting range in Danbury. Roleke, a mother of four, got involved in gun control after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. “I lived near Newtown and knew the grandfather of one of the children killed,” she said. “It’s an epidemic in this country and is killing more people than ever.”

Spring/Break Fair Removes Artwork From Its Windows, Fearing Shutdown

“Margaret is a passionate advocate against gun violence,” explained Ellen Fagan, director of the artist’s gallery, ODETTA. “She’s seriously invested in being a true activist-artist.” Based in Connecticut, Roleke has a direct connection to the families who lost children in the Sandy Hook massacre. According to her website, the artist has donated a percentage of her artwork sales to gun control advocacy for the last several years.

The Island of Emerging Art: Governors Island Nourishes Rising Talents With Its Latest Art Fair

Governors Island, a former Coast Guard base home off the southern tip of Manhattan, has long been known primarily for its two crumbling military forts and the part it played in the Revolutionary War—but nowadays it’s becoming more famous as a hub for contemporary art. This weekend marks the opening of the 10th edition of the Governors Island Art Fair (GIAF).

Margaret Roleke‘s cheerfully colored Gun Club, actually made from spent shotgun shells strung on a massive steel wire armature, and Heinrich Spillmann‘s Celestial Heroes’ Totem Marker Group, stacked columns that were reminiscent of a smaller, wooden version of Ugo Rondinone’s Seven Magic Mountain, but in sky blue, white, and brown.