November 2022

Tugboat Gallery Proudly Presents “Staying Afloat” featuring David Jester, Alyssa Kobza, and Kristen Martincic opening First Friday November 4th from 7-10 – with DJ ol’ monin – closing on November 29th.

“Staying Afloat” examines the experience of pools through a feminist and queer lens as it relates to vulnerability, memory, and sensuality with works on paper integrating painting and printmaking.

David Jester

David Jester was born in Palm Springs, CA (1960) and raised in San Diego, He has always had a California esthetic. David moved back east to get his BFA from VCU and my MFA from Rutgers at Rutgers. While in grad school his work was focused on queer life, particularly in the time of AIDS. This current series of paintings of men in swimming pools is a world that exist next to and yet a part of the broader world, much like the gay community. David Jester- “For the past 4 years I have been working on a series of paintings that explore Queer identity. I loved swimming growing up, but pools have also always appealed to me in the way they isolate a group of people and become their own community for a moment in time, an “other” world. That is in some ways how I view the gay community, separate yet part of the wider world.”

Alyssa Kobza

Alyssa Kobza is an artist based in Lincoln, Nebraska. She received her BFA with an emphasis in Printmaking in 2021 and completed the Printer Training Program at the Tamarind Institute in 2022. Kobza’s work has been featured in multiple group exhibitions including at Gallery 9 (2019), Tippetts & Eccles Galleries (2021), and Eisentrager-Howard Gallery (2016, 2019, 2020, 2021). Kobza’s work is included in the Thomas P. Coleman print collection at the Sheldon Museum of Art. She participated in the Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experience (UCARE) at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln in 2019, 2020, and 2021. Alyssa Kobza- “I create art as a fill-in for language. Many times my chaotic mind is a barrier, and I can’t put words in the right order to convey the emotion happening inside me. Art has become my stand-in for those unsaid words. To me, art is essential for processing emotions through both the act of making and the tangible outcome. My artistic practice is process oriented; I find comfort and a sense of spiritual ritual through the repetitive motions of lithography: graining a stone, counteretching a plate, etching over-and-over, and printing for hours-on-end. These are the times when I feel most grounded in myself, the most at peace with turmoil happening inside and outside of my mind.”

Kristen Martincic

Kristen Martincic is a multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of printmaking, painting, and sculpture. Her artwork considers the psychological and visceral experience of swimming. Her work has been widely shown in solo & group exhibitions throughout the US as well as in Canada, France, and Egypt. She currently lives & works in Columbia, MO. Kristen Martincic- “Using a hybrid of printmaking, drawing & textiles, I make paper bathing suits & objects associated with water that draw on the sensations of swimming & floating. These impractical suits reference swimwear from the early 20th century when modesty required more of the female figure to be covered. They act as a surrogate for the body and expose vulnerabilities; reflecting shifting personal, cultural, & generational attitudes toward the body.”