THE ART +

THE ARTISTS

DOUBLE UP /
DOUBLE DOWN
JOINT CUSTODY PROJECT 1
Welcome to the
Joint Custody Project

The Joint Custody Project is an anomaly in this dreadfully polite world of

art. Working outside of our comfort zones isn’t easy. Working outside of
our comfort zone with someone we don’t know, on a piece of art, is even
harder.

The Joint Custody Project is all about giving up control, trusting

someone you’ve never met, and communicating entirely through the
artistic process. At the beginning of June, 22 artists embarked on what
for many of them would be a simultaneously frustrating, joyful,
challenging, exciting, and anxious journey. Five weeks later, those artists have created 11
amazing pieces of art – pieces of art that you, and they, now have the chance to see for the
first time.

The artistic teams were split into ‘A’ and ‘B’ groups – each artist had the piece for 3 days at a
time. Collaborator A produced the very first iteration of their piece in early June. Collaborator
B finished and installed it over the last few days.

From my vantage-point, speaking with the artists on an almost daily basis, I saw the creative
process literally unravel, be re-sown, and finally, galvanized by the pressures of time,
expectation, and inspiration. There was frustration, anxiety, apathy, laziness, passion, pride,
and brilliance all in fair measure - this artistic process is rife with emotion.

I would like to extend a sincere congratulations to every artist in this year's show. You should
be proud. Thank you to Shana and Tad for their guidance and curatorial acumen, a hearty
congratulations to the artists in Berlin who experienced this process in its own measure
across the pond, thank you to John Schwartz, Chris Cruse, Cullen Conley, and our interns -
and to Jonny Coleman for being daring enough to dream up this crazy idea and pull us all
together. Without him, none of us would be here tonight.

Welcome from me and all of us at Found Gallery,

Brady Brim-DeForest
Found Gallery

JOINT CUSTODY PROJECT 2

From the Curators:
Art-making is fundamentally an expressive act, mainly undertaken in private if not solitude.
Artists determine the viability of a work before revealing it to audiences, and are directly
invested in its meaning, in the communication of their singular vision through their objects
and images. Exhibition curating is on the whole more interpretive than creative, however
there is also a dimension of self-expression, as curators are asked to apply their own original
ideas in framing and selecting elements in the service of meaning. In both cases,
collaboration is typically a choice, partners known and invited with deliberation, with
communication lines wide open.

As everyone knows, the Joint Custody Project turns the creative process on its head, setting
up blind collaborations between strangers intended to both challenge personal and aesthetic
boundaries, to force a relinquishing of control over what matters most. To trust. What has
been more unexpected is the degree to which our experience of curating the show parallels
what we are putting the artists through. We had never met before agreeing to work together,
an artist and a critic, but like the artists, we just took the chance.

The theme for this years show is Double Up/Double Down. It has action, it references the
binary authorship situation, it reminds you of the risk, the gamble as it were, but without such
stark stakes or finality as Double or Nothing. We thought it was vague enough that no one
would feel controlled but has enough specificity to generate a range of associations and spark
a range of emotions and narrative threads in individual artists…

We hope you enjoy the show,

Shana Nys Dambrot + Tad Beck

Tad Beck is a Los Angeles-based artist, working primarily in photography and video.
He studied at Cornell, SVA, and Art Center. Additionally, he is a full time intermedia
professor at USC's Roski School of Fine Arts and has taught at Otis. Beck has had numerous
solo shows throughout the country and has participated in scores of group exhibitions as

Shana Nys Dambrot grew up born in Manhattan, studied Art History at Vassar and
worked for Leo Castelli, Larry Gagosian and the Guggenheim Museum before moving to
Los Angeles in 1995 in search of more open ranges. Since that time her fine art & design
reviews, features and interviews have appeared in scores of publications including Modern
Painters, Art Review, ARTnews, whitehotmagazine.com, Kotori Magazine, tema celeste,
Angeleno, Art Asia Pacific, Intersection, TimeOut LA, Juxtapoz and Coagula Art Journal. She
is currently the LA Managing Editor at Flavorpill and a Contributing Editor at its affiliate
publication Arkrush.com, as well as at west coast bastions Artweek and Art Ltd.

JOINT CUSTODY PROJECT 3

Always Committing Some
Unpardonable Sin or Another

by Liz Acosta [A] and Kim Bagwill [B] #1 

Liz Acosta is an emerging Los Angeles artist. She works primarily in printmaking,
photography, drawing, and film. Her interests lie in questions of the body such as gender and
identity. She is currently showing in Gimme Baby Robots and her animated 8mm short, When
you dream, screened at the San Francisco Women's Film Festival in 2008. She graduated from
the University of Southern California in May 2008 with a BA in Cinema-Television Production
and a minor in Fine Arts Two Dimensional Studies. 

“My focus is on a fair collaboration and a perfectly integrated piece initially stifled me. But
the JCP is sex – kinky blindfolded sex – and my deliberation was met with performance
anxiety. I had to relinquish control and give in to the moment. I listened for my
collaborator's pleasure and responded, trying things I'd never done before. I hope the piece
is as good for my collaborator as it is for me.” 

Kim Bagwill was born in rural Illinois, received her degree in painting from Bradley
University. Now living in Los Angeles, she searches flea markets and thrift stores for old
photographs, books and magazines to use as source material for her current paintings and
collages. She rescues these images from limbo and puts these long-forgotten people into new
and sometimes bizarre situations. Kim is also working on a series of oil paintings of current
portraits juxtaposed with the same subject's childhood school photos. She recreated a double
self-portrait in billboard size for a gallery that posted it in Los Angeles and San Francisco,
where thousands of people saw it, whether they wanted to or not. 

JOINT CUSTODY PROJECT 4

No Way Out

by Saul Gray Hildenbrand [A] and Lisa Adams [B] #2 

Saul Gray Hildenbrand has been represented by LaFontsee Gallery in Grand Rapids,
MI since 2003 and his work is found in several public and private collections. 

“Obsession, language, and people inform my current work. My work has a vague and open
narrative. I use text to add context and texture to odd mundane situations.  The
mundane is a very fertile and attractive place to me with a lot of room for dark humor
and misanthropy.  I have an aversion to oblique danger. “

Lisa Adams is a painter and public artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Ms. Adams graduated with a B.A. in Painting from Scripps College in Claremont, California and
received her M.F.A. from the Claremont Graduate University.  She is the recipient of a Fulbright
Professional Scholar Award, a Brody Arts Fund Fellowship and a Durfee ARC Grant. Her work is
in the collections of Eli Broad, The Frederick Weisman Museum and the Laguna Museum of
Art. She has taught in many reputed art departments throughout the Los Angeles area and
abroad, including the University of Southern California, the Claremont Graduate University
and Otis College of Art & Design in Los Angeles. In addition to her practice as an artist, Ms.
Adams works as an independent curator, who in 2000, co-founded Crazy Space, an alternative
exhibition space, in Santa Monica. She is also the author of "FM*," (Peeps Island Press, 1999) a
How To book about painting, based on her teachings at the Santa Monica College of Design,
Art and Architecture between 1997-1999. 

Ms. Adams has been an artist-in-residence in Slovenia, Finland, Japan, Holland and Costa Rica.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She was also commissioned by
BMW of North America to paint an ArtCar. She has been included in "A Day in the Life of the
American Woman, " Bullfinch Press, 2005, and is currently working on a public art commission
for the new Fire Station No. 64 in Watts. 

JOINT CUSTODY PROJECT 5

Black Winged Golden
Nomenclature

by AnnCharlotte Tavolacci [A] and Milo Martin [B] #3 

AnnCharlotte Tavolacci Despite being born in Ohio, as a child AnnCharlotte

referred to home as many places throughout the country – the mid-west, the south and the
east coast, especially Long Island. In 1999 she moved to NYC to attend the School of Visual
Arts.   Recently AnnCharlotte has now been working with a firm representing the Southern
California Lighting Design Community. She currently resides in an artist colony in Silverlake,
painting, showing and enjoying life. 

Milo Martin is a gestural abstract painter hearkening the works of Abstract

Expressionists Motherwell, Pollack, Krassner and Twombly synthesized with the strong
influence of Asian characters and mid-century Beat design. 

He is also an international poet and spoken word artist, recently having published a collection
of poetry and ink art entitled "poems for the Utopian Nihilist" on Echo Park Press. 

“1 + 1 = 11”

JOINT CUSTODY PROJECT 6

Spam Alert

by Paul Pescador [A] and Britt Ehringer [B] #4 

Paul Pescador Paul Pescador is a performance artist working in photography and video.
He lives in Los Angeles.

Britt Ehringer lives and works on a fifty-acre ranch nestled in the hills of the San
Bernadino Mountains near the town of Yucaipa, California, an hour east of Los Angeles.  He
does this because the paintings he makes require that he be sufficiently removed from the
bustle of the city to be able to think clearly about what it all means. The clash between worlds,
islands, chambers of marvels, biotopes and ideas – the subatomic weather of everyday life.  In
Ehringer's work, he investigates the layers of perception in a search for what is real. 

“To paraphrase Philip K. Dick, we live in a society in which spurious realities are
manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, and
by political groups. Unceasingly, we are bombarded with sophisticated pseudo-realities.”

JOINT CUSTODY PROJECT 7

Untitled

by Marissa Underwood [A] and Michael Hayden [B] #5 

Marissa Underwood was born and raised in the City of Angels but lives and breathes
in Purgatory. She floats about in limbo, grasping onto anything creative - but it seems that her
true calling keeps slipping through her fingers. She's done everything from working with
children to working for Scientologists, and now works with architects - all have tried her
patience.  Marissa is the happiest when she's using her hands, her heart, and her mind to
affect the world around her.  Whether it be with pen, pencil, paint - or carving soap, stitching
fabric, and burning wood for that matter - she's consumed by art and craft. 

Michael Hayden No info is available for Michael Hayden.

JOINT CUSTODY PROJECT 8

Fragile: Handle with Care

by Joe Wall [A] and Marisa Mandler [B] #6 

Joe Wall was born and will die and in between will make things happen. Currently he is
developing the clothing company 7Lightningbolt, a fashion movement based on Revolt
Reclaim Revolution. 

Marisa Mandler was born and raised in Los Angeles, received her undergrad in Studio
Art from NYU,  and her Masters in Fine Art from the University of Southern California.  She
works in many mediums, including paint, sculpture, installations and found objects. 

JOINT CUSTODY PROJECT 9

Rauschenberg's Stalker

by Amy Kaps [A] and Gretchen Rollins [B] #7 

Amy Kaps was conceived in Columbus, Ohio, born in Brooklyn, NY, lived in Germany and
Japan and currently resides in Venice, CA.  The camera is essentially a circle within a rectangle;
a circular lens imbedded in a rectangular body.  Working within the constraints of this
reduction, Amy embarked upon a study of circles.  Hundreds of circles emerged as she
encountered them everywhere on walks the city, the jungle and the neighborhood.  Nature
repeats itself and we follow. 

Amy Kaps works primarily with digital photography, video and live-multi-media performance. 
The nude is a favored subject for Ms. Kaps – our perception is challenged when objects are
taken out of context.  She is currently working on an ever-expanding portrait series. In
isolating circular forms found on every human body, the portraits consist of photographs of
three images: the eye, the nipple, and the navel. Features specific to each body, like a
thumbprint, are a unique and intimate portrait representing the essence of that individual.
Printed on fine cotton, they retain a certain fragility. 

Gretchen Rollins earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. While
maintaining a studio practice and exhibiting in New York City, Ms. Rollins used her training
and experience as a painter to enter the world of advertising, which beats breaking rocks in
the hot sun.  Ms. Rollins relocated her studio 12 years ago to Venice, California where her
painting has benefited by the regional tradition of light and space. Her work is graphic in
nature, referencing the California costal topography and/or employing text as a conceptual
component. 

JOINT CUSTODY PROJECT 10

Treadmill

by Leora Lutz [A] and Dominic Quagliozzi [B] #8 

Leora Lutz is a contemporary artist working predominately in the realm of abstract

expressionistic urban landscapes and their outlying themes.  She is currently working on a
series entitled DUALS. These are paintings presented in diptychs - one dark/"black" and one
pale/"white" - which are then shot with a 45 caliber hand gun, back to back.  Each pairing
visually and verbally describes extreme emotional or social dichotomies and the
communicative dynamics that ensue between people, such as: Sycophantism/Degradation -
Degradation/Sycophantism.  What is not shown are the "grey - areas" in the middle of these
opposing views, linked by the action of the bullet that has passed between them.  The holes
that are left behind in each canvas are marked indicators of the flaws found in taking sides or
being too rigid in one's beliefs. 

Dominic Quagliozzi

“As a visual sociologist, I attempt to question the nature of human interaction within
the infinite dichotomies that exist in life.  Some of the dichotomies that entered my
creative process during the JCP were good/bad, ugly/beautiful, king/slave, effort/lazy,
black/white, man/woman, visual/conceptual...  The Joint Custody Project was a dialogue
between two anonymous artists with the overall goal to create a harmonious piece of
artwork.  Or not. The achievement of goals is subjective; we simply played visually on
the same two picture planes for a month.  Each pass created a new tension and
changed the dichotomies at question and therefore forced myself and my partner to
assimilate into new roles. 
“To me, that is the basis for any human communication.  In every duality presented, my
partner and I struggled for the right to be king.  In the end, however, what did I really
accomplish?”

JOINT CUSTODY PROJECT 11

Untitled

by Ashley Tibbits [A] and Michelle Liu [B] #9 

Ashley Tibbits Until of late, Midwest-bred Tibbits was spending more time writing about
art than creating it. The recipient of a bachelor's degree in Art History from Bradley University,
the freelance art critic/curator has recently reprised her interest in creating beautiful,
reflective objects.  With a penchant for the low-fi medium of Polaroid photography, Tibbits
aims to solve her own questions about identity and ambiguity, her images often teetering on
an uncomfortable line between romanticism and voyeurism.  Her vintage-inspired photos are
often combined with found objects, resulting in a body of work that feels both nostalgic and
intensely personal.  

Michelle Liu was born in China and lived there for six years. She then moved to
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and lived there for four years, finally moving to Denver where
she lived for eight years before coming to Los Angeles for college. 
She speaks three languages, (Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese and English), and knows a few
phrases in Japanese, Korean, and French.  She has been obsessed with Japanese anime and
manga art since she was in the 4th grade and adores stores such as Giant Robot. Ms. Liu also
became obsessed with the camera in 8th grade and started buying disposable cameras (as
well as a polaroid and stick film camera) in large quantities and taking albums full of pictures. 

JOINT CUSTODY PROJECT 12

 Untitled

by Renée Martin [A] and Grace Oh [B] #10 

Renée Martin is a senior BFA student with minors in bioethics and gender studies. 
Renée is the recipient of the Handtmann Prize in Photography, and this exhibition is a
culmination of that body of work. 

Grace Oh has spent her years growing and cultivating herself as person and artist in and
around Southern California.  An artist since childhood, her mediums were originally pencils,
pastels, oils, and now photography. Her journey has taken her out of the classroom and into
life experience that lend to her style and free form. The absorption of information through
these life experiences has inspired much of her work as a nude, portrait, and nature
photographer. 
Exhibiting since 2004 with her first nude series 'Naked', she has developed a recognizeable
style with her nude photography. The merging of human and nature inspired her to take her
subjects outdoors to symbolize the need for a collective awareness of untouched beauty, and
places in our own backyards that we so often forget to see and appreciate. Her first viewing of
'Humanature' was at ArtFront Gallery in 2007.  She is currently working on her solo exhibit in
October '08. She is represented by Edgar Varela Fine Arts.

JOINT CUSTODY PROJECT 13

 The Furnished Room

by Alexandra Wetzel [A] and Joe Merrell  [B] #11 

Alexandra Wetzel earned her BFA from USC in 2008. 

So I take it you've decided you're not calling me back? 

From: the other side of the story 
Received 3:30 am 2/6/08

Ok then, maybe it's best just don't at all anymore 

From: the other side of the story 
Received 3:37am 2/6/08

I was really quite fond of you too 

From: the other side of the story 
Received 4:24am 2/6/08

Joe Merrell was born in Seattle and grew up in Olympia, Washington. He studied
Philosophy and Literature at the Evergreen State College in Olympia and later received his
Masters degree in Film at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. He currently resides in
Los Angeles where he makes installations and experimental films and exhibits them in various
festivals and galleries in Europe, Canada and the U.S. 

JOINT CUSTODY PROJECT 14

1903 Hyperion Avenue,
Los Angeles, California, 90027
www.foundla.com

JOINT CUSTODY PROJECT 15