Laura Ruth Bidwell - Daily Vanitas

Exhibition Receptions: Friday, April 5th and Friday, May 3, 5-8pm

Gallery Hours: by appointment only through May 26, 2024

Click here to inquire

Deep Dive Art Projects is pleased to celebrate a Spring re-opening in the Viewing Room Gallery with Daily Vanitas, works on paper by Laura Ruth Bidwell. The exhibition will run through Sunday, May 26th at the Deep End's Viewing Room in the Waterloo Arts District.

As part of a regular daily practice, Laura Ruth Bidwell composes collages and paintings using clippings from The New York Times. An Ohio native, Bidwell grew up romanticizing New York City and all of its trappings. Even now, having spent many years traveling regularly there, the iconic sights and legendary locales still thrill Bidwell. From the thriving cultural scene represented by art museums, Broadway, and classic film houses like the Paris and Angelica theaters, to the concepts of out-of-reach real estate, couture and luxury items, Bidwell is familiar with the tropes that define New York City as a unique place. Using the Times as a visual toolbox, she deftly combines images, text and painting to translate her own reflections about mortality, current events, art, and history. The collages are spontaneous and reactive, and reveal humor and social criticism all at once. Like the 17th century Vanitas paintings she often references in her photographs, Bidwell's consistent practice of creating relationships between disparate images through collage suggest a desire to commemorate and communicate, in spite of the ephemeral nature of her materials and messages.

Laura Ruth Bidwell was born in Akron and received a BFA in Painting from the University of Akron in 1976. She worked at the M. O'Neil Company in the Advertising Department before becoming a Graphic Designer at Malone Advertising. She has been on the boards of the Akron Art Museum, Akron Symphony, Akron Zoological Park and West 17 Foundation. She was the first curator of Summit Artspace Gallery. Laura and her husband, Fred, founded the Transformer Station in Ohio City in 2013 and gifted it to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2023. Her creative practices include photography, drawing, painting, collage, sewing, video and on-demand book projects. Bidwell's work has been seen throughout Northeast Ohio, including The Cleveland Print Room, Photocentric Gallery, Zygote Press, the Massillon Museum, and is on now view at Abattoir Gallery through April 14th. This is her first exhibition at Deep Dive Art Projects.