The Losers Art Collective:
Victoria Loved Them All
August 4-26, 2018
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 4 from 5-8pm

“Canada to India
Australia to Cornwall
Singapore to Hong Kong
From the West to the East
From to the rich to the poor
Victoria loved them all”
                             – from Victoria by The Kinks

Strobel & Sands is pleased to present a curated exhibition of artwork from The Losers Art Collective. This Seattle-based collective is a group of eight artists who came together not over a shared ideology or artistic focus, but the desire to be part of a community of recent fine arts graduates seeking exposure. For this exhibition, Strobel & Sands has extracted from the group a commonality with Victorian visual culture as a point of departure: decorative pattern work similar to that of the textiles of the British Arts and Crafts movement, occult themes found in both American and British Victorian literature, and the idea that craft should be seen as art.

Waxing and waning between themes of mystical imagery and that of geometrically decorative works, Losers members Emma Adams, Grace Chakerian, Alana Crawley, Amanda Franz, Jackson Irvine, Peter Mataya, Kate Mortensen, and Mckinley Alan Smith each have a unique sense of materiality based in a 2-dimensional positive and negative space. The organically graceful cut outs of Emma Adams and Grace Chakerian turn a contemporary eye to pattern work, and Kate Mortensen’s collages capitalize on repetition leading to a sense of calm sophistication. Peter Mataya’s prints and lamps along with Amanda Franz’s exquisite puppets delve into the Arts & Craft movement’s founder, William Morris’s, goal of elevating craft and design to the level of fine art, and Mckinley Alan Smith’s prints also use highly functional items, such as motorcycle shocks, as a recurring motif in his almost Op art-like prints. Alana Crawley’s work offers a feminist lens to the dark side of Victorian spirituality and Jackson Irvine’s drawings appear as illustrations to 19th century literature, portraying macabre figures as friendly faces.

Pictured above: Alana Crawley, The Three Women, 2015, Cyanotype, 9-3/4 x 8-3/4 inches (16 x 16 inches, framed)