FULL HOUSE (west) A conversation between painters from MSP & NYC brought together by Paulette Myers-Rich & David Rich on exhibit at 436 Smith Avenue, St. Paul July 25 – August 10, 2014 Opening Friday July 25th 8-11 pm Exhibited in conjunction with Full House (east) at ethan pettit gallery Brooklyn, September 2014
Ky Anderson (NYC)
Elisa Jensen (NYC)
Amelia Biewald (MSP/NYC)
Caroline Kent (MSP)
Erik Benson (MSP/NYC)
Barbara Kreft (MSP)
Todd Bienvenu (NYC)
Emily Noelle Lambert
Katherine Bradford (NYC)
Kerry Law (NYC)
Gary Buckendorf (NYC)
Barbara Lea (MSP)
Arlene Burke Morgan (MSP)
Gili Levy (NYC)
Carol Lee Chase (MSP)
Meg Lipke (NYC)
Melissa Cooke (MSP/NYC)
Sangram Majumdar
Jim Denomie (MSP)
Clarence Morgan (MSP)
James Donohue (NYC)
Christian Nielsen (MSP)
Robert Egert (NYC)
Howard Oransky (MSP)
Mary Esch (MSP)
Marcy Rosenblat (NYC)
Jil Evans (MSP)
Patricia Satterlee (NYC)
Rob Fischer (MSP/NYC)
Eva Schicker (NYC)
Barbara Friedman (NYC)
Aaron Spangler (MSP/NYC)
Jan Holtoff (NYC)
Sara Woster (MSP/NYC
Ky Anderson
Old Comet, New Comet acrylic and ink on light brown paper 28 x 26" 2013 – 2014 “My abstract paintings are a personal narrative of layered forms, colored washes and line work. They illustrate the visible and invisible connections between the weights, pulls and supports of the landscape around us.” Ky Anderson was born in 1973 and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. She moved to Brooklyn in 1996 after graduating from the Kansas City Art Institute. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Frosch & Portmann in New York, and Dolphin Gallery in Kansas City, along with numerous group shows in the US and Europe.
http://kyanderson.com/
Amelia Biewald Untitled oil on panel 8 x10” 2011
“I have a Romantic urge to search for supernatural beauty in the natural world. What is of interest to me are the inherent visual possibilities of that supernaturalness; where the line between what is artificial and what is natural with regards to our physicality and our world becomes blurred. I am re-creating historical landscapes utilizing a wide array of materials that usually culminate in provocative large-scale installation works inhabited by unique characters.”
Amelia Biewald works with a wide variety of materials creating painterly drawings and sculptural works, which often culminate in large multi-textural installations. She received a BFA from R.I.S.D. and Goldsmith’s College, University of London and then pursued installation artwork at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design where she received her MFA. She is the recipient of several artist awards, residencies and fellowships for her work including the Skowhegan Residency, a Bush Foundation Fellowship and a Jerome Fellowship. Her studio is currently in Brooklyn, New York.
http://www.ameliabiewald.com/
Erik Benson
Northeast acrylic on canvas 14 x 18” 2014
“The feeling of the painting for me is of uneasy changing environment. It makes me think to Edward Hopper saying that “he just wanted to paint sunlight on the side of a building” Sometimes through the formal we arrive in places that are very socially relevant in the here and now like it or not. It’s an idea I’m moving through where abstracted elements occur between real forms of architecture and nature. Where shapes and spaces are changed by angle and lack of definition. Glimpses of night windows, refractions from streetlights, silhouettes of obstacles, all lend themselves to an undefined footing. Shifting shapes and spaces. Dark sided glimpses of a changing landscape.” Erik Benson is a graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, with an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. His honors include residencies at Skowhegan, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program. He received the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for Arts Fellowship award in 2011 and was a New York Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellow in 2008. His work has been exhibited and collected nationally and internationally and he is represented by Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art in NYC.
http://www.edwardtylernahemfineart.com/artists/erik-benson/selected-works/
Todd Bienvenu The Space Between Us oil on paper 15 x 13” 2014
“I make no-holds-barred expressionistic paintings.” Todd Bienvenu is a Brooklyn-based artist from Louisiana. He is represented by ethan pettit gallery, Brooklyn.
http://toddbienvenu.tumblr.com/
Katherine Bradford
Green Pool oil on canvas 15 x 30” 2013
“Green Pool” plays with shapes and color to describe a swimming pool in summer with two swimmers and some floating pool toys. The general effect is one of a large abstract shape on a dark ground with smaller shapes dotting the surface. The color is sun filled and the tone is one of buoyancy and calm.”
Katherine Bradford is a New York artist represented by Edward Thorp Gallery. Her work has also been shown in solo shows recently at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art (2013), the Sarah Moody Gallery at the University of Alabama (2014) and at Steven Harvey Fine Arts ( 2013) and Edward Thorp (2012) in New York. From 1997 to 2013 Bradford was on the MFA faculty at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 2009 she was a Resident Faculty at Skowhegan. Bradford received a Guggenheim in 2011 and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Award in 2012. She has also received a Pollock Krasner Grant and two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. She is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and Smith, Bowdoin, and Bates Colleges.
http://www.kathbradford.com/
Gary Buckendorf
Untitled charcoal and eraser on paper 22 x 30” 2014 “I get the materials and the marking tools. I screw the canvas or tape the paper to the wall and start like I'm doodling. It's more of a situation I arrange than a process I begin. With the first mark the rules become apparent; “ don't put it in the middle.” “ Don't put it on the side.” But lopsidedness can produce a useful dynamic in the picture. To me these are obviously the rules of the abstract expressionists, which have a place in art history but before that were part of natural history. And so my work is part of nature as are residuals of my daily life. It's up to me to make the work relevant. Beyond that I fantasize about making meaningful work. And I wonder what I mean by the production of meaning. All this is done on the spot, in the studio. It's like scientific research. But I must do it alone. When I was very young I saw a movie in which Boris Karloff played a guy made of pieces of other people put together by a very ambitious doctor. Boris was struck by lightning in a medieval watchtower at night. The lighting, the tower, the room where he came to life and all those arcing electrical appliances were so beautiful. I want a place like that. The doctor and I have some issues. I obsess about the fabulous, endlessly varied, enthrallingly beautiful paint strokes, scuff marks, and smears and gradations of charcoal. I envy the brushes. I wonder how much credit I can take. I want to be in the relationship of the charcoal to the paper. I'd really like to be congratulated for what happens on these surfaces. I think of Francis Bacon's gambling. Everybody loves a winner.”
Arlene Burke Morgan
Writing on the Wall acrylic on paper 29 ¼ x 21 ½” 2012
“During this time when the number of people know your name and how many exhibitions, grants, gallery affiliation and residences are listed on your resume determines your level of success—to this I say vanity! My practice is simply about time, process and a deeply personal path I have chosen to pursue. This path has little to do with the world of contemporary art and its’ follies. Instead, my work offers the viewer a mirror from which a glimpse of the inner self can be seen. As such, these paintings might be understood best as an otherworldly journey capable of transporting oneself to a difference place and time.”
Carol Lee Chase
Veiled oil on canvas 15 ½ x 15 ½ “ 2014 “Color, light and luminosity are primary forces in my paintings. Formal concerns have become more critical to me over time such as the qualities of space and depth in the painting itself as well as simple act of mark making. I began a series of oil paintings exploring geometric patterns before a trip to Istanbul fall of 2013 to study Islamic design. ‘Veiled’ is a response to my preconceptions that Turkish visual schemes were of a purely geometric nature when in fact they are more vegetal and floral. This series also embodies my experience to a city that is densely layered.”
Carol Lee Chase lives and paints in St. Paul, Minnesota. Chase spent ten years on the West Coast where she received her MFA in 1993 from the California College of the Arts in Oakland and later taught painting and drawing at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA. After returning to the Midwest in 2000, she taught art at area colleges and universities and in the fall of 2007 began teaching painting and drawing at St. Catherin University in St. Paul. In 2003 Chase received a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Assistance Grant. In the fall of 2006, she was awarded an artist’s residency at Atelier Höherweg in Düsseldorf, Germany. From 2005 to 2008 she served as the curator and program coordinator of Painting’s Edge, a contemporary painter’s workshop in Idyllwild, CA. She is represented by Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis.
http://www.mnartists.org/artistHome.do?rid=32959
Melissa Cooke
Slick graphite on paper 24 x 24” 2012 “My recent work acknowledges the relationship between photography, painting and drawing in portraiture. I take photographs as I paint and pour liquids onto myself, using my face as a canvas. The photo shoot references the practice of drawing and painting; then the final graphite drawing references photography. The boundaries between the mediums are broken down and the processes are interwoven. The images depart from the framing of traditional portraiture. The viewer is not given an entire bust of the subject, rather the frame zooms into up-close sections of the face. The cropping pushes the face to the surface of the paper, making the figure more ambiguous. Flesh becomes abstracted: obliterated by paint on the skin, distorted by the eye of the camera lens, or smeared by the glass of a Xerox machine.” Melissa Cooke (b. Oconomowoc, WI, 1982) received her MFA (2011) and BFA (2006) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Specializing in graphite on paper, her work investigates the relationship between photography, performance and drawing in portraiture. Cooke is represented by Koplin Del Rio. Her drawings have been exhibited at venues nationwide, including the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Wisconsin Art, the Oceanside Museum of Contemporary Art, and numerous colleges. Cooke's drawings are in collections such as the Arkansas Art Center and the Howard Tullman Collection, and have been featured in New American Painting, and Drawing magazine.
http://melissacookeart.com/
Jim Denomie
Attack on New Ulm oil on canvas 26 x 32” 2012 “Attack on New Ulm is a painting of an ink study I did for my monumental painting, “Off the Reservation (or Minnesota Nice) 72x96” oil on canvas, 2012. Off the Reservation is about the !862 Dakota War, a very brutal event in Minnesota history. Often when I make paintings of stories with painful and emotional content, I try to tone down the harshness with humor and appealing colors. But because of my feelings of anger and pain about this particular history, I decided not to pull any punches and chose to use colors that supported a visual tension and I also decided to forego any humorous and witty depictions. And for that reason, I decided not to use the study for Attack on New Ulm in the final composition. Later, after the large painting was finished, I learned from an article about the Dakota War (published in the Minneapolis StarTribune) that Little Crow rode into battle, attacking New Ulm in a horse and buggy captured from an earlier raid.” Jim Denomie was born in Hayward, Wisconsin and currently lives in Franconia, MN. Denomie received a BFA from the University of Minnesota in 1995. He has shown extensively in the U.S. and Europe in numerous group and solo exhibitions. His work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums, public and private collections, and has been included in local and national publications. He is the recipient of several grants and awards including a Bush Artist Fellowship and in 2009, an Eiteljorg Native American Fine Art Fellowship and most recently, a 2012 McKnight Fellowship. http://www.jimdenomie.com/
James Donahue
Queue pastel, acrylic & ink on paper mounted on panel 20 x 24” 2013
“I have been gathering images from the Internet of people waiting in a queue as a starting point for these paintings. I am drawn to this because the figures presented as a group are both specific and generic simultaneously. They are generalized figure groupings and yet have a specific purpose, of standing in line. The photographer who has posted these images on the Internet has usually done so in an attempt to editorialize, on the length, or nature of the line. But for my purposes what they are waiting for is elusive. I have manipulated these images, drastically changing the colors, and adding or subtracting figures of the groupings, with the desire to confront the viewer with a perspective that is multifaceted and could allow for multiple readings.”
Robert Egert
Will You be Calling In? oil, charcoal, acrylic, pigmented glue on linen 24 x 30” 2014 Robert Egert is a visual artist inspired by information sciences, biology, medicine, and social history. Interchangeably using language, imagery, and form, Robert weaves complex visual narratives that speak to the difficulty of categorization and the elusive nature of interpretation. Over the course of his evolution as a visual artist, he has worked in oil paint, sculptural assemblage, and mixed-media and chalk to explore the uncertain terrain of the conscious imagination.
Robert was born in Brooklyn and studied art at Pratt Institute with Ursula von Rydingsvard and Ernst Benkert, among others. Robert later obtained a Masters in Liberal Studies from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York after studying contemporary European philosophy and Marxist sociology with Marshal Berman and Stanley Aronowitz.
Robert first began exhibiting his large oil paintings in NY in the nineteen eighties and most recently had a solo exhibition of text and chalk drawings in 2011. His work is represented in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art and numerous private collections. Robert Egert was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1958 and studied fine art at Pratt Institute. He is represented by ethan pettit gallery in Brooklyn. http://robertegert.com/
Mary Esch
Shades watercolor on paper 20 x 20” 2013 “This is a new body of work and I am seeking feedback. Like many other artists I am preoccupied with voyeurism as a subject in art. As an art lover I am a lost and lonely looker first and foremost. The moon paintings and the window paintings are about magnificent spectacle and the isolation I feel as an artist. Like many I am surrounded but still so alone. Woman and Stones is one of many attempts I've made to reference a favorite poem, Conversation with a Stone by Wisława Szymborska. The print is a transformed image stolen from Eadweard James Muybridge.” Mary Esch has been a practicing artist for 30 years in the Twin Cites and known for her incisive drawing style, serial narratives illustrating fairy tales, and limited edition wall-paper. She cut her teeth at Speedboat Gallery in the 80’s, she was refined in the 90’s at Gallery Rebelloso and the Walker Art Center and, had a blast exhibiting in New York especially in 2000 when her painting was used as a jumping off point for three plays, “nude in three acts” at Access Gallery in New York. Mary also spends time teaching observational drawing, and painting landscapes and portraiture from observation. Her honors include a Bush, a Jerome, and Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowships. Her works are in the collections of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Franklin Art Works, and private collections internationally. http://www.mnartists.org/artistHome.do?action=info&rid=215131
Jil Evans
Flood #13 mixed media collage on paper 12 x 9” 2013 “The series FLOOD is made up of abstract painting collages. I recorded the Cannon River flood in 2010 and am developing a large body of work based on the images I captured. In this new series, FLOOD, I explore how scale and mixed media collage can build connections, create abrupt brokenness, hold together complex spatial relationships and extreme perspectives, producing a ‘visual’ flood. The abstract compositions contrast area of atmospheric space with claustrophobic enclosures. Agitated gesture metamorphizes into gentle undulating waves. Using the white of the ground (unprimed canvas or watercolor paper) as a key element in the collages, the edges of the compositions are open and irregular. Unlike the more traditional frame for painting, as a ‘window onto the world’, the constructions appear to have come out of the ground they are built on.” Evans has shown nationally and internationally, and has work in several museum and corporate collections. She has received the Jerome Foundation Grant, Arts Midwest/ National Endowment for the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board grants, the Pew Grant to study and paint in Italy, and residencies at the American Academy in Rome and Atlantic Center for the Arts. Evans has a BFA from Calvin College, and received her MA in painting at the University of Iowa, and MFA in painting from Stanford University. Evans is a founding member of Form+Content Gallery in Minneapolis, Minnesota. http://jilevanssite.com/
Rob Fischer
Prison Prints relief woodblock prints 18.25 x 11.5" each image and sheet 2010
“For much of his work, Fischer reconfigures found material into large-scale architectural installations. The salvaged objects—old flooring, wooden cabinets, scrap metal, and discarded remnants—address concepts of past, present, nostalgia, and the nature of human experience.” -Lower East Side Print Shop
Rob Fischer was born in 1968 in Minneapolis, MN and lives and works in New York, NY. He received his BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and studied at La Escuela Salmintina, Salamanca, Spain. He has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York, NY; Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Cohan and Leslie, New York, NY; Max Wigram Gallery, London, England; Art in General, New York, NY; James Hendershot Gallery, New York, NY and Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY.
http://rob-fischer.com/newsite/
Barbara Friedman
Maria Luisa’s Head (after Esteve ) oil on panel 14 x 11” 2012 “For over the last year or two I have been setting up my portable easel and painting in museums. I prefer to work from canonical paintings and sculptures in the flesh rather than from reproductions, and, when I do, I produce pieces that speak to my own skepticism about the possibility of representation. For instance I'll zero in on a Dutch Master's portrait and let my rendition teeter on the verge of disappearing; or I'll allow some features to spring into focus, often in a way that threatens to make the source unrecognizable. I think of my activity as an anxiety-fueled performance that can have a feminist reading. It takes place in public; I have to apply for a permit; the act has to observe strict regulations. I act like an artist while symbolically wearing the smock of the faithful museum copyist. I'm trying to both honor and subvert the stereotype.” Barbara Friedman has had over a dozen solo exhibitions in New York City, most recently at Ethan Pettit Gallery in Brooklyn. Others include a painting installation at the Governor’s Island Art Fair in 2011, two exhibitions at Michael Steinberg Fine Art (2007, 2009) and at Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art (2006). Other solo exhibitions include Van Brunt Gallery in Beacon, NY, The Ober Gallery in Kent CT, both in 2008, and BCB Art in Hudson, NY in 2010. She has lived and shown her work in New York City since 1983, after receiving her B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and her M.F.A. from UC Berkeley. She has been a professor of art at Pace University since 1983. She is represented by ethan pettit gallery in Brooklyn.
www.barbarafriedmanpaintings.com/index.html
Jan Holthoff
Untitled oil on canvas 12 x 12” 2013 “Comprising a series of painterly explorations, Jan Holthoff’s images chart a landscape of gestures, capturing the fluctuating light and rhythm of their urban surroundings. Stepping out from the artist’s studio, the streets of Bushwick, Brooklyn stretch haphazardly into the distance. Under a wide sweep of azure sky, lofts and warehouses dissolve into a patchwork of brick facades and metal roll-gates traced by the looping arcs of spray-painted graffiti. Nature here becomes an experience of mobility and space, a sensory landscape that unravels in all directions amidst a shimmering haze of asphalt and concrete. - William Helfrecht, independent curator and critic.” Jan Holthoff was born in 1977 Born in Duisburg, Germany and studied Visual Arts at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, Germany under professors Gerhard Merz, Helmut Federle and Herbert Brandl. After completing his initial studies there, he became a Master Student under Herbert Brandl. Jan lived and work in Brooklyn, NY from 2011-2013 and now lives and works in Dusseldorf, Germany. He has an extensive exhibition record in Germany with both solo and group shows, and had a solo exhibit at Ethan Pettit Gallery, Brooklyn in 2012. He received the Douglas Swan Art Award, Bonn, Germany in 2013 and is represented by ethan pettit gallery in the United States.
http://www.janholthoff.de/en/
Elisa Jensen
Flushing oil/canvas 8 x 10” 2014 “Over the past few years I’ve been painting and drawing images I find in my rapidly changing Brooklyn neighborhood, which is transforming from industrial and blue collar to fashion conscious and no collar. There are plenty of images on both sides of the spectrum; on the one hand there are green dumpsters and bottle collecting scavengers, and on the other there are tiled French restaurants, and post-collegiate hipsters texting on stoops. There is tremendous physical change here. Buildings disappear into dusty holes and towers rising overnight in the same spot. In response my work has become increasingly physical. I’ve been spreading ink and egg tempera on paper and rubbing white images out of the dark; I’ve been washing and scratching the paper, my paint is gravel like, with sidewalk textures. I’m interested in capturing the abandon of the inebriated bench sleepers in my neighborhood park, the raw creative state of screaming kids jumping rope, and the self reflexive hedonism of the contemporary youth who are increasingly making their home here. I want my work to echo the thudding solidity of the industrial zone. I concern myself with the movement and change and optimism and nostalgia and regret and discovery inherent in a transitioning area, and in New York itself.” Elisa Jensen lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has shown her work in a two person show at the New York Studio School, and in group shows at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, Chashama Gallery, Sideshow Gallery, Woodward Gallery and Edelman Fine Arts, all in New York City. Her work has been reviewed in Artcritical.com, the New York Sun, Painter’s Table and the Daily News. She was the 2010 recipient of the Award for Painting from the National Academy of Design, and the 2009 recipient of the John Koch Award for Figurative Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012 she was a finalist for the Basil Alkazzi Award for Art from New York Foundation for the Arts. Elisa studied at Smith College and the New York Studio School. http://www.elisajensen.com/#1
Caroline Kent With one glance, I feel it all over acrylic on paper 22 x 36” 2014
Caroline Kent is a Minneapolis based visual artist. Her practice utilizes formal strategies to explore the construction of history and biography. Working from the material culture of her youth, ranging from personal photographs, science fiction, television, film and literary narratives, she sets up metaphorical and representational scenarios that challenge quotidian thought and subjectivity. Caroline Kent is a Minneapolis based artist. She was a 2009 Jerome Fellow, a 2010 Recipient of a Minnesota Artist Initiative Grant, and a 2013 Creative City Making grant. She is co-founder of the Bindery Projects, an artist run exhibition space founded in 2012 with artist Nate Young in St. Paul, MN. Her work has been exhibited at The Soap Factory, Minneapolis, MN, The California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA., Burnet Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, The Suburban, Chicago, IL ,Rochester Art Center, Rochester, MN, and Elephant Art Space, Los Angeles, CA.
http://www.carolinekent.com/carolinekent.com/Home.html
Barbara Kreft
JCH oil on canvas 8 x 8” 2014 The world has been amputated of a part of its truth, of what makes its permanence and its equilibrium: nature, the sea etc. -Albert Camus Notebook III “Barbara Kreft seeks beauty and balance in her paintings. Reacting to a consumer driven excessive present her practice becomes a metaphor. Solitary labor-intensive handwork makes man-made time meaningless. The grid structures striations and motifs are anti narrative. Repetition and ordering refer to the larger patterns, the security of the repetitions of existence.” Barbara Kreft received her MFA from the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Berlin. She is the recipient of artist fellowships from both the McKnight Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board. She has had solo exhibits nationally and internationally including the MAEP program at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Rochester Art Center and Galerie Herrenhaus Colborn in LüchowKolborn Germany. She teaches painting at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and is represented by Circa Gallery in Minneapolis.
http://barbarakreft.com/home.html
Emily Noelle Lambert
Balancing Action printed paper, acrylic & ink 10 x 12" 2014 "I see my work as being about vulnerability,” says the artist “About running towards what you are scared of -- because that's where the important stuff is. I like to cannibalize elements of my past work and keep a sense of freshness and energy. All the pieces, in a way, are forming and reforming because I'm obsessed with freedom. I never really want this puzzle to be solved." Emily Noelle Lambert has exhibited in numerous group and solo shows, and, for the last eleven years, has been based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Her art -- a sprawling, exuberant mix of 3- and 2-D mediums that sport a bright, juicy, and hard-to-pin-down color palette -- is sensitive to notions of both movement and placement. Lambert's sculptural works tend take the form of stacked, totemic constructions, largely composed of found objects (light fishing buoys, heavy cinderblocks, irregular scraps of wood). Her paintings tend to include diverse imagery 'found' in the artist's imagination (bric-a-brac resting on shelves; faces and masks; tangles of color that accrue like yarn or webs). All feel a bit like joyous puzzles that have arrived with no instruction sheet. They tease us with their near imbalance. There is tension, but also a keen sense of play. Emily Noelle Lambert received a B.A. from Antioch College and an M.F.A. from Hunter College. Currently, Lambert is a keyholder at the Lower East Side Print Shop and has expanded her practice into the making of multiples.
http://emilynoellelambert.net/home.html
Kerry Law
from the Empire States series oil on canvas 12 x 12” 2013 “The Empire State Building is an icon of continual fascination and mystery to me. For years I painted the Empire State Building during the daytime, often with a view through trees. I'd travel throughout the boroughs looking for interesting vantage points. In this recent series, each painting is made in one evening from direct observation alla prima. I love the fact that I can paint the same thing every night, and every night it is different. Every night the same, every night different. The colors of the building lights change frequently and the weather and the color of night are never the same. I look for opportunities to take subtle formal variations. Lately, I have been photographing the finished painting and posting it instantly on Facebook, sharing my experience in real time with friends around the globe.” Kerry Law is a New York artist and art teacher. He received his MFA from SUNY Purchase and his BFA from SUNY at Binghamton (summa cum laude). He has had solo shows in the United States and abroad. His paintings are in collections in the United States, Korea and Germany. He lives in Ridgewood, Queens.
http://www.kerrylawart.com/Kerry_Law_Art/Home.html
Barbara Lea
Illicit Lunch oil on canvas 16 x 16” 2011 “When my son was very small and I tucked him in at night he would say, “Mom, pray that God will fill up my room with angels, but don’t let me see them.” I work from observation. I paint what I see. I look, choose and begin. My eyes move from what I have chosen, to the pallet, to the canvas and back. From my eyes, through my arms to my hands to the canvas… A repetitive circle, a trinity of movement. I find sometimes the painting will slip away and become foreign and unconnected to what I see. Then I return to the object and how it occupies space: how the light falls, how the shadows gleam. I try to look at the painting, the object and the angels between with the same eyes. This calls back the beauty every time. I want to let myself love this life, this time passing, this light falling, my heart beating. I want the world shown to me again in a new way. This is why I paint what I see and perhaps more. Because it is difficult and joyous. …and because I am alive. I am deathbound. I am here.” Barbara Lea lives and works in Minneapolis and Toronto. She has a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MFA from the Burren College of Art, Ballyvaughan, Ireland.
Gili Levy
Untitled gouache and oil pastels on canvas 30 x 25” 2014 “The first thing I ask when I look at a contemporary abstract painting, is whether it is really an abstract painting, or just another presentational dodge in the “style” of abstraction. I look, in other words, not for artifact, not for “color” or “composition” or “balance,” and certainly not for cheeky references, but for character and intelligence. And then for a process that is convincing on some level. I am convinced by the work of Gili Levy. She has introduced me to the work of most of the new abstractionists, and it is her work that satisfies more than most what I have come to value and expect in this kind of painting. Levy is a relentless painter. One has the sense of paint being heaved and deployed almost violently, to trump our habits of viewing and get to the bones of a psychological process. What distinguishes her work, her signature style you might say, and what makes her paintings real abstraction and not stylized abstraction, is that Levy does not settle on novelty. The paintings “hide from the first viewer” as a philosopher once said. The impulse to “newness” for its own sake is denied, or put in abeyance, in the interest of directing the viewer to a genuine experience.” — Ethan Pettit (5.18.2012) Gili Levy was born in Herzliya, Israel and has lived and worked in Brooklyn since 2005. She received her MFA from the New York Studio School in 2008 and has been included in numerous group shows including Ethan Pettit Gallery, Valentine Gallery, Centotto, Norte Maar and English Kills, all in Brooklyn, NY. She is represented by ethan pettit gallery, Brooklyn, NY.
http://gililevypainting.com/home.html
Meg Lipke
Untitled muslin with beeswax & fabric dye 8 x 10” 2014 “The shapes that emerge within the free floating worlds of my paintings are suggestive without being literal; linear events and the application of beeswax-resist and fabric dye washes imply texture and spatial depths that I find mysterious and compelling. My work is derived from specific moments of observation and experience, coded and transformed so as to read on a symbolic rather than a figurative level. An initial observation is followed by a progression of varying stimuli or events that affect the work. But in the end it is the internal relationships of forces and even the “errors” within the frame that make the painting work or fail. An interactive relationship between the viewer and the painting will raise questions that can't be answered in any finite way, and yet, if the work succeeds, there remains an aesthetic of pleasure that is found within the sensory experience of looking at the painting.” Meg Lipke received a BA in Art from the University of Vermont and an MFA in Painting from Cornell. Her paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally and reviewed in Art in America, the New York Times and Village Voice. She resides with her husband and three children in Ghent, NY and in Bushwick (Brooklyn, New York) where she is co-owner with her husband Paris Smeraldo of the restaurant “Northeast Kingdom”. http://meglipke.com/
Sangram Majumdar
Red Door oil on linen 20 x 24” 2011
“As a studio based painter, my paintings begin at the point where nature is interrupted. My source material is often a combination of existing and identifiable objects mixed with fabricated sources. This process allows me to build a fictional space that explores the line between the factual and experiential nature of reality, and the gap between seeing and naming. I use the tools, devices and tropes of naturalism to create hybrid images that resist the traditional binaries of figuration/abstraction. To me, a painting is a place of meditation and surprise, openly contradictory, and yet generous to a fault.” Born in Kolkata, India, Majumdar has an MFA from Indiana University and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally and has lectured on his work at RISD, PAFA, SUNY-Purchase, Princeton University and the New York Studio School. Solo exhibitions include Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, NY; Rothschild Fine Art, Tel Aviv, Israel; the Jerusalem Studio School, Israel, and the Kresge Art Museum, MI. Recent selected group exhibition venues include Tracey Williams Ltd, NY; Alpha Gallery, MA; the 2010 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, American Academy of Arts and Letters, NY; US Embassy, Sierra Leone; the International School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, Montecastello di Vibio, Italy and the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya, Japan. His awards include a MacDowell Fellowship, a residency at Yaddo, the 2009-10 Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio Space Program Grant, a MICA Trustees Award for Excellence in Teaching, two Maryland State Art Council Individual Grants in Painting, and two Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grants. Majumdar lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Since 2003 he has been teaching painting and drawing full time at the Maryland Institute College of Art. He is represented by Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, NY.
http://www.sangrammajumdar.com/
Clarence Morgan
A Thought in Passing acrylic, collage and drawing on canvas over panel 20 x 20” 2013 “I am interested in an approach to art making that explores the often-conflicted relationship between the decorative traditions in geometric patterns found in other cultures and western modernism. However, the recent paintings, prints and collage-drawings avoid culturally specific subject matter in favor of a more elusive pictorial terrain of contemporary abstraction. Inasmuch, my work attempts to reflect a broader generational curiosity where the familiar and unfamiliar converge. There is a view about art that seems intractably fixed in tradition and history. However, counter to this view is another mindset that understands art very differently. This way of seeing works of contemporary art is not so much new as simply different. Art has always possessed a malleable character and the ability to conceptually as well as materially stretch its boundaries and adapt to evolving cultural circumstances and technological innovation. By the same token, I think it is a curious paradox that art can be so entrenched in tradition, yet remain supple enough to withstand centuries of very complex (albeit gradual) changes to reach where it is today. As a catalyst for the imagination, speculation and unscripted modes of knowing, I find art to be extremely useful and necessary to the health and well being of society. However, as we know, health is a relative term based on whether we experience it ourselves as good, moderate or failing. The relationship between our spiritual well being, physical bodies and our state of mind is paramount- so it should be with our approach to art.”
Clarence Morgan teaches painting and drawing in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota. He served as chair from 2004 to 2010 and is Head of Drawing/Painting in the Department of Art. He is the recipient of grants and major fellowships from the Bush Foundation (1998), Jerome Foundation (1998-99), McKnight Foundation (2000), and the Minnesota State Arts Board (1998). Morgan lives in Minneapolis with his wife, artist Arlene Burke Morgan, where they share studio space. http://clarence-morgan.com/
Christian Nielsen
Untitled oil on canvas 30 x 30” 2007 “Christian Nielsen’s paintings exist in the optic pleasure zone between literal and abstract expression. Their imperfectly repeating patterns and three-dimensional colors are familiar, yet alien. They subtly psychedelicize the windowpane geometries of Malevich and color interactions of Albers with an op-art emphasis on contrast. Astonishing near-photographic details trail from the tightly controlled squeegees Nielsen uses to lay down the paint. No more than two layers of oils, with one color on each, are ever used. These self-imposed binary limits exponentially build their optical fervor. The eyes undulate and pulse along translucent edges and scalloped shadows. Oil thinner and thickener help create peaks and valleys on super-flat Masonite or canvas stretched over board. These pieces bear no titles, just exploration that roams to fill the plane, working its void.” -Excerpted from Sean Smuda's related article on Christian Nielsen's tricky, gorgeous body of work, "Interzone: The Paintings of Christian Nielsen." Christian Nielsen was born in Baldwin, Wisconsin. He received a BFA from MCAD in 1994. Over the past five years he has had exhibitions at the Phipps Museum in Hudson Wisconsin; Franklin Art Works and Weinstein Gallery in Minneapolis; Macalaster College in St. Paul and St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud Minnesota. He has work in many private collections. http://www.mnartists.org/artistHome.do?rid=175605
Howard Oransky
A Natural Measure of Time oil on paper 20 x 14" 2013 “This drawing opened the way for A Natural Measure of Time, a series of about 50 drawings based in equal measure on structure and improvisation. The structure consists of a uniform size sheet of paper, a 4-inch brush, one oil color, and the time it takes to create an image with a single continuous movement of the hand, without editing the image or lifting the brush off the paper. The improvisation consists of a spontaneous unplanned composition, the result of the variations in pressure, speed and direction of the hand, the movement of the brush and the density of the paint relative to the texture and color of the paper. When the process works, the image appears to exist as a pictorial fact of its own making. When the process doesn’t work, the drawing is discarded.” Howard Oransky was born in Los Angeles and completed his MFA in painting at California Institute of the Arts. His work has been shown in 100 exhibitions nation-wide and is included in the permanent collections of Carleton College, the Minnesota Historical Society, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Walker Art Center and the Weisman Art Museum. He received grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation Travel/Study Program. Reviews and articles on his work have appeared in numerous books and publications, including the New York Times. His studio is located at the Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art in Minneapolis.
http://trafficzoneart.com/index.php?id=98
Marcy Rosenblat
Moonshade oil on canvas 16 x 16” 2012 “When looking through a curtain or screen from one space into another, there is a desire to see more, to see through to the other side. Focusing on something behind a drape engages a different thought process. The conscious act of bringing something into view agitates the mind as it tries to grasp the content of what is being revealed. Paying attention to the obscured shapes brings up questions of what is real and what is only imagined. I am interested in making paintings that agitate the viewing mind in the same way, where; in addition to being looked at the paint becomes something the viewer tries to look through. My painting process functions in the same way. As I coat the canvas with layers of paint then lift them off there’s a feeling that I’m covering an object with a fluid material and uncovering it again and like the person trying to see something through a curtain I continue to paint until I find some clarity through the painting. I also use a household pattern like the pattern of a paper towel, as a structural device to suggest the layer between viewer and object. The pattern is just familiar enough not to get looked at directly and the pictorial illusion it creates causes another kind of blurring or obscuring, by problematizing the boundary between photographic illusion and abstraction. I want my paintings to exist at the point where the viewer has just enough clarity to want to see a little bit more.” Marcy Rosenblat is a native of Chicago living and working in Brooklyn since 1981. She teaches painting in the Fine Arts Department of the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York. She has an MFA from the Vermont College of Arts and a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute. http://marcyrosenblat.com/
Patricia Saterlee
Gloria 07 Flashe paint on linen panel 26 x 23.5” 2012 “As this group of paintings developed, they took on a strong sense of voluptuousness which transcended gender. The name “Gloria” attached itself as the group was being finished, a remembrance of one of those common names that has fallen out of favor. It's the power of the dame and the glory of robust passion.” “Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine” – Patti Smith Patricia Satterlee works in Brooklyn, NY. She has shown frequently in New York as well as nationally and internationally. She has had solo shows at Norte Maar in Brooklyn, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Washington, DC, The Kitchen, NYC, and Watkins Gallery at American University in Washington, DC. Satterlee has been included in group exhibitions in recent years at Parallel Arts, Centotto, Phatory, CollectiCo, Valentine Gallery, and the New York Center for Art and Media Studies, as well as Salon Zurcher in Paris. She has an MFA from American University and received a BFA from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
http://www.satterlee.com/pub/index.html
Eva Schicker
Portrait of the Young Man watercolor on paper 11 ¼ x 15” 2014 “I draw, paint and make short experimental movies from reflection. These endeavors are my daily writings. They form a narrative that is somewhat random, and yet, structured around the environment of NYC where everything changes constantly. The drawings become statements of personal meditations, impressions and patterns. They are conceptual and philosophical, but also highly personal. I always draw what see or feel at that very moment. I often draw while going places. Similarly, the watercolor paintings are about the motifs found in the drawings. They are more surreal though, more of a dream-scape. I’m interested in exploring a subconscious state of expression, a rendering of flux.” Eva Schicker was born in Zurich, Switzerland. She studied fine art and film at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Münster, under Jochen Zellmann, and moved to Williamsburg in the early 80’s. She has participated in exhibitions at the Kunsthaus/Kunstszene Zurich, the Bronx Museum, Artists Space, FFA Gallery, Minor Injury Gallery, and most recently, at ethan pettit gallery, Fred Valentine Gallery, the Rubin Museum in NYC, and The David Rich and Paulette Myers-Rich Studio in St. Paul. She has received a NYFA Fellowship, a residency at the Video Arts Center in Oswego NY, and engagements in Japan. In the 1990’s, Schicker also studied at experimental film at Film Video Arts (FVA) under the renowned filmmaker Shirley Clarke. Schicker's films were screened at the Kitchen, Anthology Film Archives, Filmmakers Collective, Film Crash, and Artists Space and many other venues. She is the founder of the Avant Brooklyn Film Noir Festival as part of Minor Injury Gallery. Eva lives and works in Brooklyn and is represented by ethan pettit gallery in Brooklyn.
http://ethanpettit.blogspot.com/p/eva-schicker.html
Aaron Spangler
Untitled graphite rubbing on mulberry paper 11 x 17” 2014
"Over plentiful years of an intensely sustained, self-taught practice, Spangler has mastered the ability to create physical objects that become markers of personal and collective consciousness. With most of these works, Spangler starts with the idea of form, at times touching flame to wood and sanding the char away, achieving smoothness, and arriving at a shape. After this shape was fixed, he applied low relief woodcuts; with very free and loose chisel marks, traced from patterns that he laid out indiscriminately on the wood. He described how this body of work, and his process, do in fact seem more free in comparison to previous works, which were often pictorial, narrative vessels driving forth stories of fallen away small towns, rural solitude, community, subculture, and resistance. His past sculptures seemed like holding places for the motifs and symbols of the everyday, such as local vegetation, a boot, a car, a cabin, tangled trees, a telephone pole, a radio tower, and so on. “ Excerpted from essay by Kari Adelaide, "Homeschool", Horton Gallery exhibition catalogue, September 2013.
Aaron Spangler Minneapolis, MN) lives and works in Park Rapids, MN. He received a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis, MN. He is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the McKnight Foundation for Visual Artists, Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Jerome Foundation. He is represented by Horton Gallery, where he has been featured in two solo shows, a group show, and an art fair. His work will be featured in the gallery's booth at Art Rotterdam in February 2014. The artist has co-curated a group show Wrong's What I Do Best with Hesse McGraw opening in April 2014 at the San Francisco Art Institute.
http://hortongallery.com/artist/aaronspangler/bio
Sara Woster
Sky animation 3:55 minutes 2014 “Sara's eight books explore what it means to be a child in two different worlds: the city and the country. Exciting experiences that children can relate to are at the core of every book, allowing young readers to see themselves in this series. The themes in Sara's books all originate from her interest in how children observe and transform their environment…Her use of thick, beautifully messy oil paint is a signature of her work. Ultimately, her subjects really lend themselves to her painting style-- her books are filled with exciting, playful images, and her brushstrokes mirror that...” – excerpt from review by Jessica Brown, Home Grown Books.
Sara Woster was born and raised in South Dakota. She studied painting at the University of Minnesota before moving to New York City. She has exhibited her paintings and animation internationally and has written collaborative multimedia performances that have been performed at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and Franklin Art Works in Minneapolis. A set of eight early reader books illustrated by Sara was released by Home Grown Books in 2013. Sara also received a degree in creative writing from The New School in New York and has had several non-fiction essays included in popular anthologies including The May Queen and Because I Love Her. Sara divides her time between Brooklyn and Northern Minnesota where she and her family live in a cabin so deep in the woods that she is glad she never saw The Blair Witch Project.
http://www.sarawoster.com/
