Art Gym Denver is excited to exhibit Keeping House in the Art Gym Gallery with an opening reception August 9 from 5 – 8PM. Created by Austin, TX based artist Veronica Ceci, Keeping House is a traveling exhibition consisting of printmaking, installation and sculpture exploring the issues with labor in our country.

In Keeping House, Veronica Ceci brings together the three parts of her vocational identity – Artist, Housekeeper and Master Printmaker – to discuss the many issues our country faces concerning poor labor practices. Beyond the obvious differences within these three identities, Ceci focuses her practice on their similarities to propel her concept for the exhibition. She uses her role as an artist to explore the repetitive nature of Printmaking and Housekeeping, as well as them both being invisible except in failure. This allows for these two seemingly different aspects of her career to exist together in an art context.

Stepping off from the overall concept of American labor for the exhibition, Ceci concentrates on specific aspects of this idea for each individual piece. From Spit Shine, a piece comprising of 144 lithographs exploring the idea of female labor supporting male success, to WorthLess a sculpture made of different sized mops gilded in gold, examining the wage inequality, Ceci is willing to fully explore and criticize the issues we face concerning labor and the workforce. Writing about ‘WorthLess’ in her artist statement, Ceci states:

​“WorthLess is a sculptural work that targets pay inequality. It consists of two gilded mops side by side, one standard sized and one miniature. Statistics from the IWPR show that in 2017 a Latina woman only earned $0.62 cents for every dollar earned by a white male. In response to this, the small mop is being crafted to 62 percent scale of the standard mop … The full sized mop has been gilded in imitation leaf, while the smaller mop shall be gilded in 22 karat genuine gold leaf.”

Veronica Ceci is a working artist, residing in Austin TX. She received a BFA in Printmaking from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, an MFA in Printmaking from Kent State University and is a certified Tamarind Institute Lithographer. Ceci currently works as a Master Printer at Flatbed Press. She has completed many artist residencies, including the Venice Printmaking Residency in Venice, Italy. She is also included in collections worldwide including work in the National Gallery of Portraiture in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Join us for the opening reception of Keeping House on Thursday, August 9 from 5 – 8PM as well as an artist demo with Veronica Ceci on Friday, August 10 from 4 – 6PM where she will demonstrate the polyester lithography process.

Also opening at Art Gym Denver is Black and White on the Surface in the Common Space Gallery with an opening reception August 9 from 5 – 8PM. Black and White on the Surface combines Hannah Leathers’s ink drawings of genderless creatures of her own making with Peter Stevinson’s charcoal drawings depicting human lust and passion. On the surface, Leathers’s and Stevinson’s work is seen in a similar light. Both are producing black and white drawings which incorporate patterns to create very visually graphic pieces. More importantly however, each artist uses their respective medium, composition and subjects to lead to further conversation and exploration that go beyond the images in the work.

Both exhibits are free and open to the public Monday through Friday, 9AM – 6PM. They will be on display from August 9 through August 31, 2018. Veronica Ceci’s artist demonstration is also a free event.