Mare Tranquilitatis (Sea of Tranquility)

Exchange: USA, currently at A Gentil Carioca, reveals a promising moment on the Brazilian artistic scene. It shows the beginning of a productive and enthusiastic exchange between individual artists and the national and international art scene.....Six American artists, Bruce Conkle, David Eckard, MK Guth, Emily Ginsberg, Don Olsen and Tamsie Ringler, chosen by the curators Elana Mann and Nan Curtis, exhibit in the gallery Carioca, after a group of Brazilian artists exhibited in 2006 at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in the city of Portland....

The works presented by Bruce Conkle, Emily Ginsberg, Don Olsen and Tamsie Ringler deal with contamination between nature and culture, creation and appropriation...We see an old car detonated and coated on the inside with gold leaf...These are poetic contaminations belonging, in different degrees, to contemporary life, either in Portland, or in Rio. Informality and precariousness give the tone of the presented works.

This poetic exchange and its precarious aesthetic characterize an epoch marked by crisis and the necessary search for new ways to feel and think. The absence of models and normal criteria are, paradoxically, the rule....

- Luiz Camillo Osorio, O Globo, Exhibit reveals the poetry of the exchanges, February 2007

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Receptor

I'm told that the great eleven-ton concrete funnel, Tamsie Ringler's Receptor, is a big hit with people, and I believe it. A megaphone or a funnel opening out or burrowing in, depending on the viewer's fancy, the piece demands participation. (Full Text)

- Peter Schjeldahl, Essay, Navy Pierwalk 2005, Art critic for New Yorker Magazine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fashion for the Nuclear Age

The Milwaukee Journal, And Now, Fashions for the Nuclear Age, Linda Fibich, May, 1985

Wisconsin State Journal, Fashion Show for 'Day After', Sarah Traas, Nov. 1985

St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch, Nuclear Fashions are a Blast, Georgann Koelln, 1985

Wisconsin State Journal, Fashion for the Nuclear Age, Sunny Schubert, April, 1985

Minnesota Daily, Fashion Show Satirizes Nuclear Mentality, Steven Perlstein, July, 1985

Directions, Fashions for all Times, Barbara Wolff, Fall, 1985

The Daily Cardinal, Nuclear War Becoming Fashionable, Eileen Zaffiro, February 1986

Badger Herald, Prancing Fools, April, 1985

 

 

 

Tonight I will be Happy...

The elegant trans-rational wit of Marcel Duchamp and the shamanistic spirit of Joseph Beuys flit about the gallery like ghosts. They frequently hover over Tamsie Ringler's pieces, two of the exhibitions most unforgettable works. One, a superbly crafted steel tower and boat with ceremonially positioned rocks and a mystical ring of fluorescent light, hums with a lyrical mysticism. The other, a ritualistic assemblage that includes two beautifully cast aluminum snakes and a steel basket that seems frozen in mid-air radiates a mysterious, ancient alchemy.

- Mark Smith, Austin American Statesman, Visual Arts, March, 1989

Landing on Eros

Most of the work is produced on-site, and the best reveals the challenge to the artist presented by the outdoor scale and the ways it forces a negotiation with the balances of nature and culture, urban and rural. For example, currently on view is Tamsie Ringler's 'Landing on Eros', which presents two rotting hulks of Detroit steel humping in a field of green. The insides of both cars have been emptied and fused, and the resulting shared interior space is entirely covered in gold leaf. With headlights on and radios playing, it's all about love, sex, and steel ponies. (Full Text)

- Jeffrey Kalstrom, New Art Examiner, Franconia Sculpture Park, March - April 2002

Tamsie Ringler's 'Landing on Eros' unites an '87 Mercury Sable with an '88 Chevy Corsica with gold leaf. It is very sexy, one car mounts the other, scuffed up and rusted on the outside, inside beautifully gold leafed with KQRS blaring loud sophomoric rock and roll. Definite make-out music. (Full Text)

- Clea Felien, Pulse, Franconia: Big Art...Bigger Hearts, November 2001

Across the way is Landing on Eros - a 1987 Mercury Sable and 1988 Chevy Corsica that are stacked on each other in such a way that they appear to be well, intimate. Cheesy music continuously pulsates from the bottom car's stereo, and, at night, the lights flick on. Other details need to be seen in person. Hock says it was one of the few ideas that had to be toned down because Franconia is 'a family place.'

- Ashley Grant, Associated Press, Sculptors Find Gallery in Minnesota Cornfield, December 21, 2001

Oddball Minnesota, Jerome Pohlen, "Franconia Sculpture Park" (p. 81, photograph), 2003

Minnesota Monthly, The Art of Fun, David Mahoney, August 2003 (Full Text)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Iron Rodeo

Sculpture instructor Tamsie Ringler was blessed with the kind of name Tom Robbins loves to bestow on cowgirls. So, last year, when she organized a 10-day iron-casting residency at Eastern Washington's in-the-middle-of-nowhere Maryhill Museum, she cast herself as 'the Wrangler' and dubbed the event 'Iron Rodeo.' The drama of iron casting is like rodeo she claims: Casters wear chaps, and the work they do is 'exciting, dangerous, showy and fun.'

Ringler selected 12 applicants from around the country to participate in the workshop, many with no experience casting iron. During the course of their 10-day roundup, the artists poured a ton of bubbling 2,800-degree iron into prepared molds to make pretty much anything they thought the material could accommodate.

The results are on display this month at the Center on Contemporary Art in a show called 'Iron Rodeo.' ...Ringler's 'Baby Boat,' a 16-foot lattice vessel, stands as the centerpiece of the exhibit. It's like an oversized version of the biblical reed boat that carried baby Moses down the Nile. The cast-metal baby curled in its center is hopelessly tiny by comparison, and the open mesh of the boat is the antithesis of the tight-woven reeds it presumably mimics. The piece is all about incongruities. It could never float, even if you don't consider the daunting weight of the cast iron, and its awesome size would surely draw attention - especially from those seeking to kill Hebrew babies under the Pharaoh's decree. The utter impossibility of it is exactly what makes the sculpture so effective. It emphasizes the miraculous nature of the Bible story and its archetypal imagery.

- Sheila Farr, The Seattle Times, Iron Rodeo isn't solid all the way through, May 16, 2003

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living Room

Earlier this month, Tri-Met's art committee chose Tamsie Ringler, a sculptor and Mt. Hood Community College art instructor, to make her mark on a 6,000-square-foot triangle at Gresham Central...Her preliminary proposal is for a living room without walls: concrete furniture over a multicolored mosaic 'rug,' with patterns designed by students from nearby schools. She wants to give transit riders a sense of leaving and arriving at home, a sense of relaxation and intimacy....

- Catherine Trevison, The Oregonian, Tri-Met Tackling Public Art Disparity, April 29, 1999

The Sandy Post, Sandy Resident Sculpts 'Living Room Without Walls' for MAX Station, Rob Oster, April 19, 2000 (Full Text)

Gresham Outlook, Living Room With a View, Anne Endicott, June 23, 2001 (Full Text)

The Oregonian, Easy Living: MAX Art Finally Fits In with Riders, Catherine Trevison, July 5, 2001 (Full Text)

Sculpture Magazine, Commissions, (photograph), December 2001

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greenhouse Effect

So, what's with the junk on the lawn of the art building? The temporary additions to the landscape are part of an exhibit named "Environmental Issues" at the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery this month. Tamsie Ringler, former art instructor at the College of St. Catherine, installed her original artwork in front of the art building. Once the shack and car were located and moved to the site...the pieces were assembled within a week ...Students will maintain the exhibit, watering the plants and checking the temperature inside the car...

- Sarah Cady, The Wheel, Environmental Issues: Expand beyond Gallery Walls, March 12, 1999

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thomasina's Tea House

And She Serves Tea. A moveable feast is experienced in Minneapolis artist Thomasina Ringler's 'Traveling Tea House.' The tin-ceilinged, canvas-on-wood, 8'x8'x8' structure with two windows, a door and tea cup-lined shelves, provides an intimate place within the hugeness of the city - or a school. Ringler herself will serve tea in the house during two afternoons and evenings of the exhibit; in the remaining time the structure will be moved to various sites within the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.

- The Sheboygan Press, Milwaukee Exhibit probes concept of "Place," April 5, 1994

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carp

Sculptor Tamsie Ringler's installation features materials not normally associated with her discipline. Working in a bronze foundry led to health problems for the artist, so she learned to create with less toxic materials....Ringler's lily pads are made from cast toilet paper, and starch with a wax overlay, and she welded her work only when absolutely necessary.

- Todd Mouton, The Advertiser, Julia Street meets Hubtown: Visual Art Exhibits and Stores Celebrate Openings, September 12, 1997