1708 Gallery

Exhibiting Artists:

Sally Bowring
www.sallybowring.com

25 things my work is about:
It’s about surprising myself, experimentation and invention, who I am … being part of the whole, the love and celebration of color and light, the stillness and quiet, making lists, art history and understanding and considering my place in it, not knowing in the beginning and discovering during the process, mediation and pray, taking chances and changing, finding poetry in shape, a private joke and/or a private moment, generosity, lushness and visual pleasure, beauty, doubt and anxiety, growing older and children growing up and friends dying, humor and laughing alone in your studio, my garden – growth cycles changing forms and mutations, the things I read, hear on NPR or the nightly news, listening to music, my love for textiles, Matisse, Joan Snyder’s paintings,Rauschenberg’s invocations, Brice Marden’s elegance, Agnes Martin’s brevity, And …. Louis Armstrong’s “En Vie en Rose”, immediacy and alchemy, shape – the abstracted – the insinuation of a shape, surface – it’s complex nature – it’s emotional possibilities. It’s about all of these – and - none of these directly.

A native New Yorker – now living in Richmond, VA– Sally Bowring teaches painting at VCU. She is active in the art community as advocate and commissioner on the Public Art Commission for the City of Richmond. Bowring’s solo shows include Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA (2010), Warm Springs Gallery, Warm Springs, VA (2009, 2008), and Deborah Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY (2007). Her group shows include Washington & Lee University (2010), Mid-Atlantic Biennial (2010), George Mason University (2009), and Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA (2009).

Don Crow
www.doncrow.net

A painter and collage artist, Don Crow has recently worked with digital media. He is assistant professor at VCU-Q in Doha, Qatar, where he teaches design and foundation courses. He has been awarded numerous grants and distinctions, including the Pollak Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts as well as inclusion in the Virginia Museum exhibition, Un/Common Ground. His work has been shown at Reynolds Gallery, 1708 Gallery, and Plant Zero as well as other venues, and he is among the Virginia artists whose work is currently featured in the traveling exhibition, Constructs. Over the years, Don Crow has worked in large-scale oil on canvas, painted paper collage, and watercolor drawings, all influenced by his training in abstract expressionism. More recently, Crow has included new media in his work: the digital processes of photography, abstract digitally rendered prints, and three-dimensional objects within his exhibition design. His fragile paper collages at one end of the spectrum and his large digital prints at the other end draw attention to objects as obvious constructions and as invisible processes.

Reni Gower
www.renigower.com

These pieces are part of an ongoing series of works on paper. I blend a fluid improvisational painting approach with a repetitively structured and analytical one to create complex images that counter visual skimming. I incorporate the circle as a repetitive decorative motif, as a metaphor for binary code, and as a cultural symbol. Through intricate patterning, I combine these references to contrast passive technological consumption with the redemptive nuance of work made by hand. While also addressing issues of beauty, my art becomes an intimate vehicle for reflection or reprieve.

Reni Gower is a Professor in the Painting and Printmaking Department at VCU. In 2008, she was recognized by VCUArts with an Award of Excellence in Research, Teaching, and Service and by the Southeastern College Art Conference in 2007 with an Award of Excellence in Teaching. In addition to her teaching and painting practice, she curates award winning traveling exhibitions. Her most recent project is The Divas and Iron Chefs of Encaustic. Her artwork has been showcased at international and national venues for over 30 years. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including a NEA / SECCA Southeastern Artist Fellowship and Virginia Commission for the Arts Project Grants. Her work is represented in various collections including the Library of Congress Print Collection; Pleasant Company / Mattel, Inc; the American Embassies in Lima, Peru and Osaka, Japan; Media General, Inc; and the Federal Reserve Bank.
She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University, a Master of Arts degree from University of Minnesota-Duluth, and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Chris Gregson

In these paintings, natural and manmade forms merge and overlap. I use organic shapes and natural references and tie them together. I combine the figurative with the organic. Multiple organic forms, lines and geometric shapes intersect. I disregard a signature style for a broader more eclectic approach to art making. All decisions are made intuitively from the mark placements, color selections and the arrangement of the visual components. I freely refer to earlier art historical styles and abandon strict art historical dogma. I use abrupt visual shifts, often a lack of formal cohesion and an off balance approach.

After graduating from the University of Arizona with a Theatre Production degree, Chris Gregson studied stagecraft at the Studio and Forum of Stage Design under Lester Polakov in New York City. He was a design assistant to Peter Wexler, and a stage artist at the Julliard School of Music and Brooklyn's Chelsea Theatre. In 1991, he co-curated Re-Picturing Abstraction, a city-wide exhibition of contemporary abstract paintings that appeared simultaneously at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Anderson Gallery, VCU; Marsh Gallery, University of Richmond; and 1708 Gallery. He has exhibited his work throughout the US and in Europe at galleries and museums. His work is represented in corporate and private collections as well as in the U.S. Embassy in Guinea, Africa. Gregson has lectured at the Southeastern College Arts Conference, VCU, and the Virginia Association of Museums. His writings on art have appeared in numerous publications. Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA and MFM Fine Art, Philadelphia, PA represents his work.

Stephen Griffin

I began painting the “Strata” series in the spring of 2007. The Strata paintings in this exhibit were completed while on a recent fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, VA. The basic horizontal stripe compositions in these paintings were initially inspired by the abundant river views in the beach town where I live, but the end result more closely resembles a cross-section of earth or the strata found in rocks. The painting process itself is similar to an archeological dig. I apply multiple layers of paint, which are eventually sanded and scraped to reveal previously forgotten colors and textures. This method of painting retains an element of chance in an otherwise very structured format.

Steve Griffin has been an active painter for over forty-five years. In 1968 he was one of twelve undergraduate students chosen from a national pool to attend the first year of the new Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum in New York City. The ISP is still active today. Since retiring from teaching in the Art Department at the University of Mary Washington in 2008, Steve has continued to work in his studio in Colonial Beach, Va. He recently received a 2011-2012 Professional Fellowship in painting from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and a residency fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, Va. Griffin’s work hangs in many private and corporate collections and has been included in over one-hundred and seventy-five exhibitions. His work is represented by several galleries including the Glave Kocen Gallery in Richmond.

Ray Kass
www.raykass.com

Although abstract, my paintings are derived from drawings and life-studies from nature, and attempt to represent the processes of nature at work rather than pictorial description. I have had the opportunity to live and paint outdoors in some of America’s most beautiful natural environments – coastal northern California, New Hampshire’s White Mountains, the Maine coastline, and the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. Most recently, I have been working with an oil emulsion mixture that I apply to wrinkled paper that has been toned with water media and mica powder; the transparent oil mixture is invisible until I dust it with powder pigments that I rub on the surface and that allows the marks that I have made to appear. These are covered with shaved beeswax and then stretch-mounted on primed wood panels.

Ray Kass, an internationally recognized painter, has works in many public and private collections. His recent publications on art include: Sounds of The Inner Eye: John Cage, Mark Tobey and Morris Graves, University of Washington Press, Seattle and London (2002), and The Sight of Silence: John Cage’s Complete Watercolors, 2011 (National Academy Museum and UVA Press). Kass is founder and artistic director of the Mountain Lake Workshop, a collaborative, community-based art project drawing on the customs and environmental and technological resources of the New River Valley and the Appalachian region. The interdisciplinary character of the workshops has focused on collaborative projects with highly specialized scientific communities.

Javier Tapia

After exploring watercolors for more than 12 years now, coming from figuration to abstraction, I have come to realize that I have been engaged in trying to discover a system that would allow the exploration of any subject, from the most deeply personal to the most mundane. During this time I have been involved in a process of critique, elimination and discrimination at times. This is a process where the possibilities although narrowing, have helped uncover some essential form of simplicity. In this manner my abstract and expressive watercolors are not abstract and expressive by choice. It seems as if I have not made ‘a choice’ to choose an ‘abstract style’, but instead, abstraction and expression have chosen me.

The path of this Peruvian born artist, who became a painter after pursuing studies in Industrial Engineering and Communications at the University of Lima during the 1970’s, has been significant in the US. He studied Fine Arts (Painting) in the art program of Santa Monica College in Los Angeles, CA. He earned his Bachelors and Master’s degree at the University of Texas at Austin, where he graduated with highest honors. He has been awarded several grants and scholarships; he won the Teresa Pollak award for 2010; has participated in numerous international and national exhibitions. His work belongs in the collections of The National Museum of Peru, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, the Museum Pedro de Osma in Lima, Peru. His work is represented by Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, VA. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Painting and Printmaking at VCU, where he has been teaching for the past 23 years.

Dan Treado
www.dantreado.com

Robert Ryman’s comment about the nature of painting in the latter half of the twentieth century has always stuck with me: “It’s not a question of what to paint, but rather, how to paint it.” My paintings are process works that borrow subject matter from sources such as film and photography, physics, biology, x-ray and electron microscope images, and most recently, illustrations from anatomy books. The organic forms I tend to employ are fluid but restrained, and part of their function is to articulate the space that surrounds the form; paint is called to substitute for flesh, for air, for dust particles floating in cinematic light.

Employing unique tools, such as squeegees and scrapers, artist Dan Treado is able to manipulate solvent and oil paint into luminous, richly surfaced paintings. Treado's paintings are process works that borrow from sources such as film and photography, physics and biology textbooks, and electron microscope images. His multi-paneled canvas and mylar works explore the relationship between science and art and more recently the way in which we look at film and view a painting. Treado studied at Georgetown University, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and Pratt Institute; he exhibits in New York, Chicago, and Washington, DC.

Sally Bowring, Inside/Outside, 2011

Sally Bowring, Inwood, 2011

Don Crow, Untitled, 2010

Reni Gower, Pivot.8, 2010

Reni Gower, Pivot.13, 2010

Chris Gregson, Constructs (G 110), 2011

Chris Gregson, Constructs (G 116), 2011

Stephen Griffin, VCCA Strata #5, 2011

Stephen Griffin, VCCA Strata #10, 2011

Ray Kass, Horsetail, 2008

Ray Kass, Effort to Bloom, 2011

Javier Tapia, Untitled, 2007

Javier Tapia, Untitled, 2008

Dan Treado, In the Key of Shut Your Mouth, 2010

Dan Treado, Satan's Waitin', 2010

Exhibiting Artists:

Tom Chenoweth (sculpture)
These sculptures are from an ongoing series inspired by the idea of towers. "Untitled" is a construction in the Art Deco motif and "Tatlin Memorial Anemometer" is an homage to the great Russian Constructivist, Vladimir Tatlin and his “Monument Of The Third International”.

Tom Chenoweth born in Washington, DC in 1950 and grew up in District Heights Maryland. He received a BFA from The Maryland Institute of Art and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. After graduation he remained in Richmond, where he set up a sculpture studio, which also served as a metal fabrication shop. In 1991, he and his wife Louise Ellis (also an artist) started Astra Design, Inc., a joint enterprise to market their creative output of sculpture, art jewelry and furniture. Astra has evolved over the years, having been, at times a gallery, a retail store and now is a showroom in Scott’s Addition and an online presence at astradesign.com.

Bill Fisher (painting)
The imagery in my work is based on childhood memory, appropriated diagrams, and reflections of the visual realities of urban decay. My work expresses a continuing dynamic of time, experience, and personal perception. I believe that abstract painting has the capability to express the complex nature of the human drama we call life.  

Bill Fisher received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1981 and his MFA from Radford University in 1990. His work can be found in the collections of Erie Museum of Fine Arts, Erie, PA; Clay Center, Charleston, WV; and Flossie Martin Gallery, Radford, VA. In 2010 his work was featured in three solo exhibitions at O.K. Harris, New York, NY, Arden Gallery, Boston, MA and Main Art Gallery, Richmond, VA. Fisher was recently awarded the 2010-2011 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowship.

David Freed (etching)
"There is a modesty in Freed's work - not of ambition but of presentation - that is like the spread of light in certain Renaissance paintings. One doesn't know where it come from, but it is everywhere, enlightening, leaving us, somehow, more room to look in, a seduction of sorts that eschews excess."

-Charles Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
 
David Freed was born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1936. He received a BFA from Miami University of Ohio and in 1962 earned an MFA from the University of Iowa, studying under legendary printmaker Mauricio Lasansky. He also studied at the Royal College of Art in London, England. Freed moved to Richmond, VA, in 1966 to start a printmaking program at Richmond Professional Institute, which later became Virginia Commonwealth University. He is now a professor of printmaking and maintains his own studio in Richmond. In 2001 he was honored with a Retrospective art exhibit at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Anderson Gallery.

Travis Fullerton (photography)
Since a very young age, I have used photography as a way to explore and interact with the world around me. I grew up in a military family and we were always on the move. Photography became my way of relating to that constant change. So, ever since I started making photographs, they revolved around the idea of place, whether it is natural or manmade. The images featured here explore the ways in which the experience of a place is related to, and affected by, the act of photography.

Travis Fullerton has both an MFA and BFA in photography from Virginia Commonwealth University. He has had several solo exhibitions of his work and has participated in numerous group shows, most recently at the Glave Kocen Gallery and 1708 Gallery in Richmond, VA.; Katzen Center at American University in Washington, DC; the Wellington B. Gray Gallery at East Carolina University; and McLean Project for the Arts in McLean, VA. Travis' work has won numerous awards, and was most recently honored with a Theresa Pollak Prize for Excellence in the Arts for Photography. Travis teaches photography in the Art Education Department and the Photography Department program at Virginia Commonwealth University and is also a staff photographer at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, VA.

Lauri Luck (drawing)
"All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog”
-Franz Kafka

On a visit to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts I was surprised by my strong response to Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Venus and Cupid” and Edouard Vuillard’s “The Golden Chair”. What intrigued me was the overwhelming sense of waiting in these paintings, that dreariness of being “on hold” is something I personally abhor. The women depicted appear so serious, almost suffocated, in their heavily draped and darkened rooms, their languorous and depressed repose turned inward with endless review. My first thought was “Yikes!” - these gals need to lighten up – they need a dog. So I lent my dog Dot who gazes out calm and steady, taking on the role of “straight man” to the all the melodrama of these women’s lives – lending a little humor to the atmosphere of ennui, her peanut shaped mug daring you not to smile.

Lauri Luck’s artistic career spans over 45 years. Her work has been exhibited extensively in California, New York, North Carolina and Virginia.

Louis Poole (painting)
I try to focus the experience of visual perception through color, form, and a subject matter that contains human scale and context. Architecture and landscape provide an order- a structure- against which to manipulate color. The subject becomes a geometrical playground for me as a painter. The dynamic of line and color brings the energy to the surface of the image, illuminating its presence.

Louis Poole is an accomplished artist from Richmond, Virginia. He is a 1982 graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Painting and Printmaking. He has been involved with various art projects, shows and galleries in the Richmond area, and is an Emeritus Council member of 1708 Gallery.

Diego Sanchez (painting)
This body of work continues to reflect my interest in finding a comfortable place between representational and non-representational elements in the picture plane. Initially, my approach to painting is purely intuitive. I take over the surface of my panels applying large areas of colors and developing interesting surfaces. Then I proceed to paint a single representational element. Painting to me is about process, whether you are developing a surface, mixing the right color or figuring out a different way to approach a problem - fluid activity that changes as I change. I often wonder how making a painting resembles an act of faith. Not having preconceived notions of where the work will take me or what the painting will look like in the end.

Diego Sanchez was born in Colombia, South America. He moved to Richmond to attend VCU and received and MFA from the Painting and Printmaking Department. He has taught at VCU, VUU, VMFA, and The Visual Arts Center of Richmond. He is currently the chair of the Art Department at St. Catherine’s School. His work has been shown throughout the Mid Atlantic region and he is the first recipient of the Theresa Pollack Artist of the Year Award. His work can be found in the collections of Sidney and Frances Lewis, Media General, Capital One, Markel Corporation, Federal Reserve Bank, and the College of William and Mary.

Tanja Softic´ (drawing and printmaking)
My work addresses factors of cultural hybridity that shape the identity and world view of an immigrant: exile, longing, translation, and memory. As an immigrant to the US from Bosnia, I am fascinated by questions of cultural identity or cultural belonging on an intellectual level but I experience and feel what Edward Said called “the contrapuntal reality [of an exile]” very acutely:  I have transitioned through three citizenships. In both my new and old countries, outdated notions of national and ethnic identity and belonging continue to shape the politics and the society. The visual vocabulary of my drawings and prints suggests a displaced existence: fragmented memories, adaptation, revival, and transformation.  Because I do not live and work within the comfort or boundaries of the culture in which I first learned to observe, interpret and engage the world, I have the arguable privilege of having lived more than one life. 

Tanja Softic´ grew up in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she received her Undergraduate Diploma in Painting from the Academy of the Fine Arts of the Sarajevo University.  After immigrating to the US in 1989, she received an MFA from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. She is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Grant, National Endowment for the Arts/ Southern Arts Federation Visual Artist Fellowship and Soros Foundation—Open Society Institute Exhibition Support Grant.  Her work is included in numerous collections in the US and abroad. Recently, she completed print projects at Flying Horse Press, Tamarind Institute and Anderson Ranch's Patton Printshop.  She is Professor of Art and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Richmond.

Tom Chenoweth, Untitled, 1995

Bill Fisher, Untitled, 2011

Travis Fullerton, No Trespassing, 2007

Lauri Luck, And She Waits, 2010

Diego Sanchez, Foro Romano, 2008

Tanja Softic´, You are Not Here, 6, 2009

Exhibiting Artists:

Genesis Chapman, Bottom Creek, VA (ink drawings)

My art aims to examine and investigate Bent Mountain, Virginia, which is the place I grew up, and a place I deeply love.   As a small rural community in the Blue Ridge Mountains, it is known for its natural beauty. In my art, I wish to show the respect and love I have for nature.

I choose to represent the "genus loci" of Bent Mountain in a tangible form. To me, this is embodied in the most basic elements of the land, and the processes that shape the landscape; the actions of weather, air, water, stones and rocks.

Stripping out most of the landscape allows me to concentrate on the movement of these forces of nature, and to highlight the energy, changes and flow of the water and creeks that shape the mountain in a way that reflects my emotions, observations, ideas and experiences.  I record the changing dynamics of the mountain in a historical, geological, and personal scale of time.

 The use of black and white India ink is important because of its directness and simplicity.  I focus my brushwork on the patterns across the surface of the water.  Metaphorically and literally, water carries the ink across the paper and evaporates to leave a sedimentary mark.  The improvisational nature of the spontaneous mark empowers me as an artist as who acutely observes nature.  While part of me that wants to describe the creek with scientific precision, I challenge myself to open up and pay attention to the spontaneity of my process.   Instead of literally depicting the Nature I describe its action and energy with obsessive marks that range from large spontaneous gestures to intricate detailed meditations.

I choose to depict the rest of the landscape as a white featureless void, rather than yet another romanticized version of the mountains. The trees, plants, animals, soil, rocks, light, sun, and reflections are present in their glaring and painful absence. This hollowness is further emphasized in the spontaneous shapes and voids the creek creates. While emphasizing what may disappear or is lost, this depiction also questions the transitional aspect of what we really see or experience in Nature.

Ed Dolinger, Roanoke, VA (mixed media paintings)

The longer I am engaged in the act of “making art” the more absurd and audacious it seems. Yet it doesn’t seem to dampen that invisible fuel source that moves my butt into the studio damn near every day. I suppose it reflects that ubiquitous “Art imitating life” quote. Reflecting and including all that is so wonderful and repugnant about the human experience. I seek to purge sermonizing from content and to reveal the contradictions and competing opposites that are a constant in life. Curiously and happily not resolving anything. Gobs of information, but no apparent message.

A short note on the techniques that I employ in my paintings: all are acrylic and mixed media on various board surfaces (masonite, luan plywood, medium density fiberboard) that are applied over multi-layered primed surfaces. Each layer of paint (or primer) is sanded between coats with 300-600 grit wet/dry sandpaper. All acrylic paint is mixed with water-based polyurethane floor paint, resulting in a very hard but sandable and polishable surface. Xerox transfers and water-slide decals  are introduced on most layers, as well as some drawing techniques. The end product (between 24 and 32 inches square) is somewhere around 20-50 layers that establish a rather industrial appearing surface that belies the very physical process.

Kris Iden, Charlottesville, VA (color intaglio prints)

While living in Germany from 2006–2009, I produced two multiple-series bodies of work, "Movement in Plants", and "Flora", and worked in collaboration with the printers at Grafikwerkstatt Dresden. I developed numerous etching plates that have been used repeatedly throughout my work of the last four years. The images in these plates include fragments of my work from the last eighteen years, along with plants in my former garden in Richmond, the map of Dresden’s botanic garden, and contour line maps of the state of Virginia and the state of Saxony in Germany.

Just before my return to Virginia in 2009, I began a new body of work titled "It was green there." The title comes from a book for children by Gertrude Stein titled, The World is Round, which tells the story of nine-year-old Rose who goes on a journey in search of herself and struggles to establish a stable identity in a round world of variability. The complex and labyrinthine qualities of the tale mirror her efforts, resulting eventually in a story, but in the process, move it in circularity and fold it back upon itself.

Included in this new body of work is a series of prints titled, "…the world is round". The text in these prints, excerpted from Stein’s book, was printed with collaborative assistance from the letterpress printer at Grafikwerkstatt, and completed before I left Dresden. The emblematic intaglio images, from my archive of plates, were printed after I returned to Virginia.  

This intensely personal work is a reflection of the feelings of being caught between two cultures, two dearly held landscapes, and the process of constructing an intimate hybrid-geography. However, it is intended to be non-biographical and to simply provide a poetic catalyst, from which viewers may project and dwell in their own experiences of place, identity and image.

"…the world was round and you could go on it around and around."
-Gertrude Stein

Greg Kelley, Richmond, VA (mixed media sculptures)

   I am seeking to express the piece that describes perfectly the relationship between the apparently “artificial man made world and the “natural preexisting world. I take inspiration and challenge from my lineage of  object and image makers reaching into the archives of our energetic history. At some point the time of a distant shaman making a rattle with which to guide a lost soul and my activity as contemporary American artist coincide in a unique  definitive, purpose filled way. I seek to express that meeting point.

Joshua Poteat and Roberto Ventura, Richmond, VA (mixed media and installation)

Location factors largely in our poems (Poteat) and designs (Ventura). Site embodies a complex system of visible and invisible factors, influences and echoes.

In Illustrating the Construction of Railroads, Poteat considers the undefined areas that link what we recognize as places.

Partially we dismiss this edge because it exists unnamed. Without a label, places and people recede from consciousness.

However, the spaces between places teem with life. Despite their lack of definition these stories and landscapes shape our community.

Erasure poetry is a form of found poetry created by erasing words from an existing text in prose or verse and framing the result on the page as a poem. The results can be allowed to stand in situ or they can be arranged into lines and/or stanzas. This erasure originated with an exhibit at the Flippo Gallery at Randolph-Macon College.

Genesis Chapman, Bottom Creek January 2010, 2010

Genesis Chapman, Sketchbook 24-149, 2005

Ed Dolinger, Compression, 2006

Ed Dolinger, Crux de Belair, 2007

Kris Iden, ...the world is round (anything can happen), 2009-10

Kris Iden, ... the world is round (it was green), 2009-10

Greg Kelley, Fatherland, 2011

Greg Kelley, Mother of Space, 2011

Joshua Poteat and Roberto Ventura, for lucy and yardsale detail, 2011

Joshua Poteat and Roberto Ventura, for lucy and yardsale detail, 2011

Joshua Poteat and Roberto Ventura, for lucy and yardsale detail, 2011

Exhibiting Artists:

Hetty Baiz, Princeton, NJ (mixed media paper)

There are several images/thoughts/ideas that have remained with me from my sojourn to Tibet and inspired my artwork. One was the Chinese characters -- "to the Great Chairman Mao" -- painted onto the wall of a Tibetan monastery. Another was seeing devout Tibetans on their religious pilgrimages, kowtowing on the streets as they slowly made their way to religious sites in Lhasa. And finally it was the word "liberation" that our Chinese tour guide used to describe China's actions toward Tibet.

Irene Barberis, Melbourne, Australia (mixed media vinyl and paper)

"Tibet Self Portrait" is worked upon punctured material - meandering and sewn textural lines. In coding theory, ‘puncture’ is the process of removing some of the bits in a data stream – these three elements reflect well the slow dismantling present in modern Tibet. The Tibetan language is now banned in Tibetan higher education, thus making it nearly impossible for true Tibetan youth to have an education. Chinese is the incoming language; the Tibetan tongue is slowly being punctured. The Tibetan newspapers in these works took another trip back into China in order to bring them into the studio: Depending on the context, the newspaper and the cross become political statements rather than objects in the everyday.



Mark Bryant, Buckingham County, VA (work on paper)

I’m interested in the question of where images come from, why human beings make images, and what these images that come out of us really mean.  I don’t have the answers to these questions but I think that investigating them is essential for us, artist or non-artist, to have any understanding of ourselves. As such, I don’t normally work from any particular idea.  Instead, my intention is to put ideas aside and in an open and attentive way, simply investigate, as images arise and form, where they come from and what they are.  It seems to me that if art-making is approached with great care, with openness and affection, and with a touch of humility, it can communicate a great deal about ourselves, our relationship with others, and our relationship with the rest of the universe.



Melissa Chimera, Hawaii (mixed media paper)

There is endangerment for all forms of life throughout the world. And despite this, sensuality, grace and humility shine in native peoples and places. I want to explore that interaction, between what is lost and what is possible to nurture and save. I want to close that gap.
Melissa Chimera’s inspiration as an artist is rare plants that she and her husband, a botanist, encounter in remote places. That Chimera’s family left a war-torn Lebanon also brings a unique insight into life and death for the artist. Chimera’s work also explores the similar fate of Middle Eastern peoples, as well as the Hawaiian environment, all of which are at once endangered yet resilient in the face of change. The real Hawai`i–a place of forgotten flowers and people, of devastation and recovery–is truly veiled by the myth of paradise.



Sarah Duyshart, Melbourne, Australia (fabric and bells)

"Displacement" – the distance of an oscillating body from its central position or point of equilibrium at any given moment.  Natural and artificial displacement. Sands on rolling dunes, shifting slowly over time. During our journey over the undulating Tibetan landscape, I collected sands, carried them back with me on the train from Tibet to Guan Zhou, China, where I sifted them onto the Orange Gallery floor forming an artificial landscape. Similarly we felt sampled, contained and transported. In a bus we were persistently artificially relocated. Not free to move yet at the same time moving constantly. Countless hours spent gazing through the bus or train window at the landscape passing by. Many hours to reflect, consider, remember. Physically, mentally and emotionally dislocated. Tracing the horizon line with our eyes. Imprinted by the thoughts that possessed our gaze. The tracing of absence. Upon our own trajectories, we will all depart.

Matt Green , Belfast, Ireland and Sarah Duyshart, Melbourne, Australia (sound)

Tibetan Bells, 2009, Sound installation, visit http://metasentamovingcultures.blogspot.com

A web of bells was strung up throughout a sleeper carriage within a train traveling between Tibet to Guangzhou. "Tibetan Bells" is the sound of these bells striking one another. The stimulus for these collisions was afforded by both the vibration of the train upon its tracks and fluctuations in the inclination of the land over which the train passed. Hence, the presented recording can be understood to be a primitive, aural, and therefore temporal, mapping of the terrain that was traversed between Tibet to Guangzhou. 

Hugh Makin and Selby Ginn, Melbourne, Australia (wax collaboration)

Hugh Makin and Selby Ginn studied their undergraduate degrees at R.M.I.T. University, Melbourne, Australia. Their personal practices encompass sound, installation, drawing, soft sculpture, mixed media and watercolour. This collaboration has been an exploration into the idea's of the scroll and the western perceptions related to and around Tibet's political, historical and religious situation. Hugh traveled with the Metasenta Team to China and Tibet on the 'Moving Cultures' project in 2009. During this time Hugh documented sounds and images which have helped inform this collaborative process. Impermanence in Wax aims to express idea's related to history and time, censorship and language.

Jia Liang (Helen), Guangzhou, China (video)

Untitled, 2009, Streaming video, visit http://metasentamovingcultures.blogspot.com

Liu Ke, Guangzhou, China (ink and paper)

Born in the ancient land of southern China, Hunan painter Liu Ke's young life was saturated by Taoism.  My paintings strive to discover this vital spirit, which is embodied by rolling clouds, wrinkles and lines. Text, figures and diagrams crisscross through variations on borders and the outlines of matter, as mysterious to me as the ancient mysteries of Taoism.

Andre Liew, Melbourne, Australia (mixed media and hair)

Andre Liew is a Melbourne based artist. He completed a B. A. Fine Art at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in 2005. He has exhibited at Esa Jaske Gallery (Sydney), Span and Area Contemporary Art Space and First Site Gallery.  A recent Andre Liew artist statement describes his work as "A story of giving form to cultural workings by adopting models from the neurosciences and phenomenology writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, on how the individual constructs image or perception of body. A dialogue between drawings and installation."

Luo Ling, Guangzhou, China (painting)

Amie Oliver, Richmond, VA (mixed media)

Primary to my aesthetic is an experimentation with media. The power of symbols, objects and a vocabulary of human form are the language of this dialogue. Timeless imagery and modern iconography motivate me to create art that embraces conflict, revision, passion, reason, beauty and discovery. As a hill walker and traveler, journals and agendas are a big part of my creative process. Hence, my work catalogues the passing of time and experience, and possesses an inherent motion. I like to think of it as a mobile museum/library, which I could take on my bicycle, or float down the James River if I wanted to... a message with and sometimes without - a bottle.

Thomas Papa, Manchester, Richmond, VA (oil on canvas)

Tom Papa is an attorney, artist and one of the founders of Plant Zero based in Richmond, VA. He is also a developer in downtown Richmond and a supporter of the arts and artists in Richmond.



Feung Li Poi, Guangzhou, China (painting)

Anne Savedge, Richmond, VA (photography)

For the past few years I have been creating images of dancers.  The goal of these images is to show the color and motion of the dance. Dancers are always aware of the body’s position in space, as a sculpture would be created, but they also are dealing with time and motion which adds extra dimension to the image. The goal of this work is to create the feeling of the dance; to show the movement, the grace and swirl of the dancer. The shot was done using a slow shutter speed to capture and create unique shapes and swirls where the clothes and flags would move.    During the summer of 08, I was privileged to go to Xi’An, China for an art exhibition.  During that trip, I saw the Tang Dynasty Dancers and was inspired to create this work which shows some of the color and motion that I experienced then.

Heeja Sung, Chesterfield, VA (collage)

My experience working with different cultures led me to form the Artificium of Humanitas, whose mission is to promote a wider understanding and a deep appreciation of our common humanity through cultual exchange exhibitions of artists from diverse cultural backgrounds. I have been the director of eleven exhibitions in four countries, featuring artists from all over the world, including Europe, the United States of America, Asia, and Africa. In addition to my work with the Artificium of Humanitas, I am member of Art6 Gallery in Richmond Virginia and also the Virginia Collage Society. I actively exhibit my work in the US.A. and Asia. My artwork is a direct reflection of these experiences.

Translations by Hetty Baiz

Tibet: Self Portrait: Traced Wanderings by Irene Barberis

humm by Mark Bryant

Reconstruction by Melissa Chimera

Displacement by Sarah Duyshart

Tibetan Bell Artists Matt Green and Sarah Duyshart, photo by A.Oliver

Impermanence in Wax by Hugh Makin and Selby Ginn

Untitled by Jia Liang (Helen)

Untitled II by Liu Ke

Lhasa with Love by Andre Liew

Potala Palace by Luo Ling

Wheel of Life by Amie Oliver

Untitled by Thomas Papa

China Travel Services by Feung Li Poi

Flag by Anne Savedge

Untitled 6 by Heeja Sung

Breathing Machine by Pam Anderson

Conundrum by Mary (Ginna) Cullen

detail of Beam by Tim DeVoe

ERIK GONZALEZ
Paint, in its most basic material existence, is a means of covering. Understandings of reality, again in their most basic material existences, are also methods of covering. As the persistent and ubiquitous existences of religion, science, art and philosophy can attest, the exact and full nature of reality is far from perceptible. Like a small child attempting to throw a blanket over the ghost in his room, humans have been covering existence with all manner of blankets since the beginning of communication. History, science, music, art, math... languages of all kinds act in a similar fashion as do layers of paint: always occupying a simultaneous relationship between both revelation and deception. It is within this conceptual framework that my most recent work has developed.

Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, Gonzalez received a BFA in Painting and Printmaking from VCU in 2008 and will earn his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University in 2010. His works have been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in Richmond, Virginia since 2003.

The Solipsist Practices A Square Dance by Erik Gonzalez, courtesy of Page Bond Gallery

Over Under Spark and Ember by Christine Gray

Construct 508 by Chris Gregson, courtesy of Reynolds Gallery

Blossom by Barbara Tisserat

Bazooka by Harry Winfiele

Ruth Bolduan (painting)
http://washingtonart.com/Bold.HTML

"A Bay Horse Got By the Leeds Arabian," 1715
John Wootton
The Paul Mellon Collection

I am drawn to history, horses, and people. Eighteenth century paintings portray a time when beauty of form and phrase was linked to intellect, desire, fashion, and taste. A period of glitter and doom, the 18th century resonates in our lives today. John Wootton’s magnificent painting of a horse and groom in the landscape reminds me of why I make paintings.

Ruth Bolduan, Wootton’s Horse, 2010, 16” x 20”, Oil on canvas, $2,000

Sally Bowring (painting)
http://sallybowring.com

"Egyptian Garden"
Ancient Art Collection

“Green Garden” references the plan of Sennufer’s Garden, the most famous illustration of an Egyptian garden and the world’s oldest accurate plan of a garden. I became interested in this particular image after working with the “garden” as subject matter for several years. The previous garden paintings were about domestic behavior of planning, arranging and enforcing order or constant chaos- both the garden and home-life. Prior to these paintings the physical format of my work was putting small paintings together to make one large one. This semi-grid structure has always intrigued me and once again I found an ordered format to hold my chaos.

Sally Bowring, Green Garden, 2009,
60” x 60”, Acrylic on birch panel, $8,000
courtesy of Reynolds Gallery

David Choi (sculpture)

"Portrait of Mrs. French's White Lap Dog"
George Stubbs
The Paul Mellon Collection

“The useless is beautiful because it is less real than the useful that extends and prolongs itself, while the marvelously futile, the gloriously infinitesimal, remains where it is- doesn’t stop being what it is, lives free and independent.” Fernando Pessoa

In my work, I try to emphasize the importance of play and the freeness of frivolity.
Without direct or strictly guided ambitions, creation is to exploit the baseness of materials in a process that liberates and allows them to nobly mutate and transform into something more fantastical than the imagination holds.
The transformation of useless materials is an alchemical process of creation. When something is declared useless, it has more strive to be, making it non-complacent in the endless search for definition and meaning.
One should not have expectations or a purpose in the act of true creation. I am most interested in a story-less narrative that in turn, is endless in conclusion. My art is a mythology that has no era and has yet to be unturned.

Dave Choi, Miss French's lapdog, 2010,
15 x 7 x 7, Glass, taxidermy, fake fur and hot glue, $2,800
courtesy of The Hogar Collection

Sonya Clark (mixed media)
http://www.sonyaclark.com/

"A Ride for Liberty- The Fugitive Slaves," 1862
Eastman Johnson (American, 1824-1906)
Paul Mellon Collection

Cloth speaks and so does hair. Like textiles, hairstyles express politics, heritage, and culture. This piece juxtaposes the two. The traditional African American Hairstyling techniques of cornrows and Bantu knots become the stars and stripes of the American flag against a backdrop of the Confederate flag. And so these complicated histories coincide. This work was inspired by Eastman Johnson's 1862 painting, “A Ride for Liberty-The Fugitive Slaves”. Johnson was one of very few American painters in the time period to depict this complicated history.

Sonya Clark, Confederate Hair Flag, 2010, 52” x 26”, Paint and thread on canvas, $7,500

Don Crow (mixed media)

"Wall Drawing #541"
Sol LeWitt
Sydney and Francis Lewis Collection

Sol Le Witt’s geometric paintings are an inspiration for the directness of the imagery, the lack of artifice and the sentiment that the - merely visual- is enough to create a significant aesthetic experience.

Don Crow, Untitled 1, 2010, Collage and mixed media on panel, $350

Diana Detamore (drawing)

"Cycladic Female Figure"
ca 2400 BC
Ancient Art Collection

It is not unusual to find me wandering the galleries of the Virginia Museum in the middle of the day. I was introduced to the wonders and mysteries of spending time in art museums at an early age. My high school art teacher frequently took us to visit his "girlfriend" Rogier van der Weyden's “Portrait of a Lady”, c. 1460, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. I found the museum to be a place for introspection, intellectual curiosity, creative inspiration, as well as a respite from my everyday travails.
The Cycladic figure depicted in my painting is believed to be a fertility symbol. and evocative of the power of the feminine, the wisdom and mystery of the universe's cyclical regeneration. She has a timeless quality. It is not coincidence that I stumbled upon her in my museum wanderings for these evocative themes continue to intrigue me.

Diana Detamore, Muse 2010, 15” x 19”, Encaustic and oil on panel, $625

Aimee Joyaux (sculpture)
http://web.mac.com/reddogpress

"Beaded Crown" 19-20C,
Yoruba culture, African art collection

I am drawn to and inspired by African art in general and this Yoruba headpiece specifically because of the patterns and rich surfaces. Whether embellished as a form of decoration or as the result of function, much of this work seems like a direct conduit of power and spirituality. These totems are my attempt to embody these influences by creating objects of enough grandeur to wear one of those Yoruba beaded crowns. I was challenged here to adorn the figure, not something I deal with often as an artist. I’m also playing with a postmodern pastiche of cultural, aesthetic, and religious references. I see my background of Catholicism, Hawaiian deities, and the totems of the Pacific Northwest, places I have lived, and more recent references from Petersburg and Richmond, a history I am learning, meld into this visual exploration.
I have named my figures St. Benedict the Black and St. Lucy. Through them I have come closer to my past and my present.

Aimee Joyaux, St. Lucy (left), 2010, 80” x 12” x 8”, Papier maché, wire, paint, wax, $2,400

Aimee Joyaux, St. Benedict the Black (right), 2010, 98” x 13” x 6”, Papier maché, wire, paint, wax, $2,400

Andrew Kozlowski (printmaking)
http://www.andrewkozlowski.com

"Soup Tureen, Cover and Liner," 1736
PAUL DE LAMERIE (English , 1688 - 1751)
From the English Silver collection

Perhaps it was the time I spent working in a museum that helped cultivate my interest in those objects that share space with masterpieces, but are often relegated to the status of supporting cast. Objects of the decorative art departments feature the unique characteristics of at times being, functional, ornamental, grand, or ceremonial, often sharing one or more of these characteristics. I see these objects not in terms of the allegories depicted on them or periods that they were crafted in, but as a whole, a representation of class distinctions, privilege, and extravagance. While those works of English Silver that reside in the safe confines of the museum are representative of the pinnacle of craftsmanship and certainly have their provenance, I imagine many others fated to be the spoils of wars, the casualties of revolutions, sold as antiques for medical care, or becoming the victims of breaking and entering. Here the objects of lesser fortunes glimmer while they cascade down against a brilliant sky, a collapse forcing their owners and commissioners to part ways prematurely due to an unexpected exchange of currency or power. Throughout their history objects such as these are stolen, surrendered, plundered, left behind, buried, and occasionally melted down, but never are they discarded.

Andrew Kozlowski, Untitled, 2010, 22” x 15”, Screenprint on paper, $400

Karen Kincaid

"The Abundance of Nature"
Severin Roesen
(American, born Germany , ca. 1815 - ca. 1872)
ca. 1855
Oil on canvas
56.125 x 40.125 in.

I love looking at pictures of flowers especially the Dutch tulip paintings of the 15th century. This piece is similar but different in a quirky way.
The lushness of the subject material as well as the application of the paint look surreal.

Karen Kincaid, Untitled Plants from the Garden of Earthly Delights, 2010, Dimensions variable, Packing popcorn, caulk, nails, glue, 3 large pots of nail flowers: $150 ea., 1 pot thistles: $100, clay flowers not for sale

Michael Lease (photography)
http://www.michaellease.com/

"Funerary Image of Woman," AD late 200s early 300s
beeswax and pigment on wood panel, 13x8.25". VMFA #55.4
Roman, Egypt

"Mazeppa Held by a Jockey," painted late spring, 1835,
Edward Troye (American, 1808-1874),
Oil on canvas, 21-1/2”H x 27”W
Mellon Collection 86.77

“Reading Blues” is a collection of obituary photographs of individuals from Richmond, VA and Washington, DC newspapers. The color, and black and white photographs are clipped from the papers' obituary sections, scanned, and outputted larger than their original size. Enlarging the images emphasizes the now antiquated beauty of the newspapers' half-tone printing process.
In the pictures, these people smile and gaze at the camera --often framed by idyllic backgrounds-- locked forever in the moment the image was made. A daily perusal of the obits affords me the uncommon and unlikely opportunity to look into the eyes of these strangers and wonder in which ways we are the same.
I read, snip, and collect not only to know, but to love.

Michael Lease, Reading Blues, #1, 2010, 24” x 24”, C-print, wood, glass, $300

Michael Lease, Reading Blues, #2, 2010, 24” x 24”, C-print, wood, glass, $300

Lauri Luck (drawing)
http://www.lauriluck.com/

"The Golden Chair"
Edouard Vuillard (French, 1868-1940)
Paul Mellon Collection

"Venus and Cupid"
Artemisia Gentileschi (Italian, 1593-1652/3)
European Art Collection

"All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog” Franz Kafka

When I first looked through the Virginia Museum’s collection to select my reference images for the “Reflecting and Collecting” exhibition I was expecting to choose images containing animals. Animal imagery, especially that of dogs - which I prefer to paint and draw - brings a unique spirit to the work I do and I am continually inspired by the immediacy of their animal presence, their enviable lack of self-consciousness and their boundless joy of spirit. So I was surprised by my strong response to Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Venus and Cupid” and Edouard Vuillard’s “The Golden Chair” which contain no animals at all. What intrigued me though was the overwhelming sense of waiting in these paintings, that dreariness of being “on hold” is something I personally abhor. The women depicted appear so serious, almost suffocated, in their heavily draped and darkened rooms, their languorous and depressed repose turned inward with endless review.
My first thought was “Yikes!” - these gals need to lighten up – they need a dog. So I lent my dog Dot who gazes out calm and steady, taking on the role of “straight man” to the all the melodrama of these women’s lives – lending a little humor to the atmosphere of ennui, her peanut shaped mug daring you not to smile.

Lauri Luck, And She Waits, 2010, 14.5” x 10”, grease pencil on paper, $475

Lauri Luck, Venus Waits, 2010, 14.5” x 10”, grease pencil on paper, $425

Jeff Majer (painting)
http://www.jeffreymajer.com/

"Lemons May 16 1984"
DONALD SULTAN (American , born 1951)
1984

When choosing a piece I tried to think of one that made a large impact on me from memory. It ended up biting me in the back side because I remembered it too well and felt like I was repeating what I liked about it. I had to try to take some things from it and toss away those things that were not me.

Jeff Majer, Fruit or VMFA Memories, 2010, 20” x 20”, Water-based paintings on birch panel, $1,200

Amie Oliver (painting)
http://amieoliver.net

"Sacred Diagram of the Universe" (Mandala of Hevajra)
Tibetan, 1400-1600
Opaque watercolor on cloth
32 by 28 1/2 inches

"Wheel of Life"
Tibetan, late 18th-early 19th century
Opaque watercolor on cloth
54 by 42 inches

An artist statement I drafted years ago has proven to be relevant to my work in general, but in particular to my current work, The Dharma Diaries. My experiences observing Tibetan Monks work at the VMFA and enjoying the Himalayan Collection preceded my recent project in Tibet.
Primary to my aesthetic is an experimentation with media. The power of symbols, objects and a vocabulary of human form are the language of this dialogue. Timeless imagery and modern iconography motivate me to create art that embraces conflict, revision, passion, reason, beauty and discovery.
As a hill walker and traveler, journals and agendas are a big part of my creative process. Hence, my work catalogues the passing of time and experience, and possesses an inherent motion. I like to think of it as a mobile museum/library, which I could take on my bicycle, or float down the James River if I wanted to... a message with and sometimes without - a bottle. The Sacred Diagram and Wheel of Life seemed for me exactly that - a timeless message conveyed using universal form.

Amie Oliver, Dharma Diary Series: Sacred Diagram, 2010, 12” x 12”, Collage, flashe and acrylic on birch panel, $900

Amie Oliver, Dharma Diary Series: Wheel of Life, 2010, 12” x 12”, Collage, flashe and acrylic on birch panel, $900

Craig Pleasants (site specific installation)
http://www.craigpleasants.com

"Family Portrait," 1945
Robert Gwathmey (American, 1903-1988)

"Meritatio," 1978
Brice Marden (American, 1938- )

My sculpture practice has been architecturally scaled for more than a decade, it is often meant to be experienced from inside as well as outside employing or refering to materials that have been utilized for millennia to shelter people. I am not an architect, but I am interested in structure and building and what human beings do to house themselves, especially when they have no resources. Consequently, I feel the need to explore and posit alternative methods, alternative materials and alternative solutions by employing them in objects that have a life in the public realm. You could say that I believe in an aesthetics of necessity. I am less interested in tasteful, or “sculptural” buildings. Instead, I draw inspiration from the vernacular builders that I have studied for thirty years. They are all about truth to materials, a deeply felt and deeply learned relationship with the earth, imaginative uses of cheap or free materials, beautiful proportion learned through years of trial, and remarkable energy efficiency and sustainability.
I have drawn on my own sculpture and my experience creating a hand-built house, and working with a company in Virginia that has developed a highly energy-efficient building component and an architect familiar with the physical properties of the material, I have designed and engineered an octagonal, 500 square foot living unit that can be produced as a sculptural multiple. These sculptural living units will integrate well into the existing built environment and will offer an aesthetically coherent alternative to the ubiquitous mobile home that is the default first home or poverty home in the American rural landscape. At the same time, its proportions, both outside and inside, are remarkably harmonious and capacious, given its small size. The result of this aspect of my plans will be a do-it-yourself kit house at a price well below current costs for either new construction or existing house.
Having begun my art career as a conceptual artist, I now find myself drawn to the physical world, and want my work to be experienced not only with the eyes, or with the mind, but also with the body, and at the same time I want to make an art that does more than bear witness to tragedy and deprivation. I am seeking real-world rather than art-world engagement with these ideas. I would like to create sculptures that can realistically be lived in, and that don’t rely on ornament for their power. While the Octagonal Living Unit is where I started, this is a miniature version of that piece inspired by the multiple crises in housing that have recently occurred in Haiti, Chile, and China. This unit, which can be assembled in a few hours, benefits from being still quite useful years on, unlike much emergency or transitional housing. For about $50,000, it is possible to manufacture, crate, and ship ten of these units, (complete with roof) to Port au Prince.
I have drawn upon two paintings in the collection of the VMFA as well as my own past work to create a visual and conceptual mash-up. The unifying construct in all three is an idea expressed by the German word heimat, for which there is no English equivalent. The writer Joel Agee speaks of it as “the welcoming warmth and sheltering intimacy of an origin to which one can return...the place where one feels at home, and that home need not have political or even physical boundaries.” In the case of Gwathmey’s Family Portrait, it is both a literal home as well as a family, in the case of Marden’s Meritatio, it is more of a spiritual place: meritatio, the feeling of “merit” that Mary finally comes to in her sequence of emotions felt in response to the Annunciation. As in much of my earlier work, I want to put the viewer in either the real or the metaphorical place of heimat.

Craig Pleasants, Octagonal Living Unit 2.0, 2010, 112” x 115” x 115”, Styrofoam, steel, latex paint, $50,000

Charles Ponticello (sculpture)

"Moves from the New River"
John Cage
VMFA Collection

John Cage once said "When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic—here on Sixth Avenue, for instance—I don't have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound.... I don't need sound to talk to me"
I am personally touched by Mr Cages approach to creating his watercolors. His use of unorthodox tools such as feathers, rocks, sticks etc simply add dimension to this enigmatic artist. Although he is most famously known for his prepared Piano works, These watercolors in his New River series strike a cord in me. His Ebb and Flow, his existential meander throughout life is perfectly summed up in these paintings. In this piece "Whirling Krestle" I honor Mr.Cage, In "appropriating" piano key imagery with the souls of unknown individuals.
And As Mr. Cage made his watercolors? I as well have approached to creation of this meditative piece....tools and materials readily at hand, acting on inspiration.

Charles Ponticello, Whirling Krestle, 2010, 50” x 70” x 40”, Steel, leaded Glass and plastic, library cards, paint, $5,500

Jon-Phillip Sheridan (photography)
http://www.jonphillipsheridan.com/

"Four Panels: Green Black Red Blue," 1966
Ellsworth Kelly
acrylic on canvas
Sydney and Francis Lewis Collection

In my photography, I am curious about the awakening of a sense of place, and how this relates to an opening up of perception, like one’s eye adjusting to the dark. Shifting around the edges, I collect an accumulation of visual impressions to articulate traces of human interactions with their surroundings: borders define interiors, debris outlines the invisible.
Ultimately, my work recreates a sensation of the physical and sometimes metaphysical presence that one encounters when occupying a lived in place. To me, the present is created by immutable events, and yet our understanding of these moments changes over time as memories and histories are continually re-arranged and re-narrated. I am interested in exploring this shifting awareness of space and the human patterns that mark it.

Jon-Phillip Sheridan, Residual #10, Winter, 2010, edition 24” x 20”, Archival Pigment Print on Plexiglas, 1/5, $750

Javier Tapia (painting)

"Still Life"
Giorgio Morandi
European Art Collection

Morandi has been an ongoing inspiration for my work. His bottles evoke a sense of 'is'...they seem to be bottles you can't take apart...maybe expressing the things we can't change of ourselves..?? I guess I have always been interested with this concept. In my watercolor the protagonist is a 'black lemon'..very central and at the very bottom of the paper's lower edge...still on, and unmovable.

Javier Tapia, Reaction to Morandi, 22” x 30”, Watercolor, $2,000
courtesy of Reynolds Gallery

Kendra Wadsworth (painting)

"Stadia III"
Julie Mehretu
2004

I'm inspired by Mehretu's creations because they remind me of the confluent and dissipating nature of relationships.
She has described her works as, 'story maps of no location, seeing them as pictures into an imagined, rather than actual reality.' By exploring globalism and using architecture, grafiti, corporate and national logos, as well as histories, wars, and geography as inspiration , Mehretu creates wonderfully charged gestural fields of expression.

Kendra Wadsworth, Bunnies reflect on Stadia III, 17” x 18”, Mixed on paper, $900

Aggie Zed (mixed media porcelain)
www.aggiezed.com

"Noble, a Hunter Well Known in Kent," 1810
Benjamin Marshall (English, 1768-1835)Oil on canvas
48-1/2”H x 58-1/2”W

From earliest times man has wanted to fly.
Having a horse was a start.
A good hunter could fairly fly over fences.
Of course man made the fences.

Further note: ‘ Ullnnnk, an owner etc. ‘ is an anagram of the title of a painting the artist, Benjamin Marshall, made to celebrate a regionally famous horse, Noble. Sometimes one wonders with these landscape painters if they actually ‘see’ the faces in the clouds.

Aggie Zed, Ullnnnk, an owner he knew to be lit, 2010, 14.5” x 18” x 9.5”, Ceramic, mixed metals, paint, $2,200

FEATURING:

Mixed media by Hetty Baiz
Our body is a physical manifestation of impermanence and the transient quality of all of life. It is in a constant state of flux and transformation. Whether the coming and going of the breath, the ebb and flow of ideas, the birth and death of living beings, this moment by moment unfolding is a mysterious and integral part of our existence.
Inspired by these ideas, I have created a body of work in which I use the figure as a vehicle for expression. I work intuitively and directly without plans or preconceived notions of what the final outcome will be. Experimenting with a wide range of materials -- from paint, tissue paper and canvas, to plaster, floor tiles, wood and fire -- I put down materials and peel layers away until the piece is resolved.  I equate the way I work to jazz, improvising and responding as the work unfolds. For me, creating is a process of discovery.

Photography by Regi Franz
The Dreamtime is the Aboriginal understanding of the world, its creation and great stories – it is the beginning of knowledge, from which came the laws of existence.
I am interested in the impact specific places and surroundings have on our psyche, and how memory, dream and illusion are guiding where I choose to photograph. In some sense, the quest for self discovery becomes a journey in every sense of the word.
Having left my native land as a young adult a long time ago, the search for home is a central topic in my work at this moment. I feel that I can physically hold on to the places I photograph, literally gather them as keepsakes, even declare them as ‘home’.
I find solace to leave the fast-paced, anonymous life of the urban environment behind – it neither offers the time nor space for a comforting place where I can belong.
Dreamtime also refers to Buddhist philosophy which does not distinguish between reality and dream states – all is one, in the here and now. I am manifesting this concept in my photographs, and welcome the specific freedom it holds.

Fiber work by Colleen Judge

Paintings on paper and canvas by Megan Marlatt
For the last seven years, my work has drawn inspiration from the multitude of quirky characters and funky forms produced in plastic toys. Most of the toys I have chosen to paint are products of children’s packaged fast food meals thrown away and found in thrift stores and yard sales. The paintings I have created from these discarded playthings often fall into two opposite categories: one being critical of our consumer society, the other being complicit to it. Colorful and glossy, I sometimes painted these small toys in densely packed piles that spoke to me of mass consumerism, chaos and cultural vertigo. Like Maya Lin’s recent sculptures of “asteroids” and installations created from the same kinds of plastic toys, we both see these as “everyday objects whose use-value is ritualistic, emotional, consumerist.” Yet at other times, I have handled them as if they were forgotten treasure. I have set apart special toys and with the eye of a child, focused on them as endearingly as he or she would a favorite plaything, animating them through paint.

Metals by Cindy Myron
Ordinary, mundane, and common spaces act as expressive vehicles for the human body and mind.  Because of this, I create a dialogue between humans and their intimate architectural spaces, usually the home.  “Home” often times acts a symbol of safety and shelter.  I use this idea of home and translate it into packaged form, stripped down bare and forced into a portable and playful form, much like a collage, curiosity cabinet or relic.
Within these pieces whether sculptural, functional or wearable, seemingly ordinary spatial elements such as moldings, cedar shakes or windows become materialistically empty yet narrative when view together as specimens.  As homes and people grow and change in form, the idea of “home” easily becomes a part of everyday consumerism much like society’s convenience or material compulsions.
Homes are recycled and devoured as spaces for safety, comfort and even self worth. 

Paintings by Jody L. Symula
Gnarled broken umbrellas, discarded on the side of the street.  A shiny barn rooftop in the middle of a freshly plowed brown field, long cast shadows on the side of a tall window-filled building, colorful jaunty window displays in stores.  I’m surrounded by visual cues that unexpectedly spark, stay with me, and somehow translate into painting.  Along with these visual cues I embrace experimentation as each painting is a ride of its own full of stops, starts, layers, and directions before finally arriving at a finished destination.

Bookworks and collage by Grace K. A. Teeples
After working in a diptych form for years, it seemed a natural lateral move to the book. Considered formally (sans words), a book with its central spine also elicits comparisons between two sides. Book or bone construction and repair are explored more obviously in some and less so in other works. The issues of compression, joinery, contrast between hard and soft, and shifting layers of meaning are fundamental to each piece.
Relationships between process and media engender content. Some of the media used include: handmade paper, cast paper, book spines, plexiglass, wood, and cataloging cards. Book pages and unwanted student work comprise much of the handmade paper.
The visual effect of repair is a fundamental concern. The physical results of restoration relate to my encounters with orthopedic repairs. “Preservation” exposes the crash used to support the spines. Other works explore the effect of metal or wood piercing paper (like metal would flesh). The confined vocabulary of imagery evokes a reflective response from the viewer, like a whisper in a crowded room.

Photography by Jennifer Watson
These works are from a series titled “The Vernacular Backyard: Sheds of an American Community” and were funded by a grant from the Graham Foundation for the Advanced Studies of the Fine Arts. Each shed was photographed with a 5x7 view camera and printed using an antiquated contact process called Printing-Out Paper. Instead of printing in the darkroom, the photographer uses the sun as the enlarger. This process was popular during the 1920s, when many of the sheds were being built. Each print is fixed in a bath of gold chloride and has a 350 year archival life.
Excerpt from “The Vernacular Backyard: Sheds of an American Community”
A real estate agent I know advises that any house going on the market have a brass kick plate put on the front door. You will see no brass kick plates in the following photographs. Sheds are spared the humiliations of pretension. They escape the tyranny of fashion. They make do. They are proportionate to need. Although not void of ornament or design, they report to no aesthetic committee. They have slipped through the cracks.
They are allowed to tell the truth about time and gravity, wind and sun. The outside comes in, and sometimes the inside falls out. They are left alone, away from the nervous attention of human desire.
I want to be a shed

Not Knowing, Hetty Baiz

Steintreppe [Stone Steps], Regi Franz

Investigations in Revealing (Onset), Colleen Judge

Investigations in Revealing (Passage), Colleen Judge

Portrait of a Dumb Bunny, Megan Marlatt

Portrait of an Angry Beaver in a Cracked Capsule, Megan Marlatt

Carry Me, Cindy Myron

Imbalance, Cindy Myron

String on Your Balloon, Jody Symula

Landing Pad, Jody Symula

Elementary Diving, Grace K. A. Teeples

Preservation, Grace K. A. Teeples

518 W. 29th Street, Jennifer Watson

3108 Porter Street, Jennifer Watson