John Davis Gallery

Renee Iacone Clearman: Figures, Forms and Fetishes with Leticia Ortega, Dionisio Cortes, Kellyann Burns and Robert Reitzfeld

2009-07-03T09:36:00.009-05:00

June 25th, a new exhibition opened at John Davis Gallery. The work of the featured artist Renee Iacone Clearman was on display in the main galleries under the title, Figures Forms and Fetishes.

An installation, when skies are hanged, by Leticia Ortega and Dionisio Cortes was in the Carriage House atrium. Paintings by Ortega, Cortes, Kellyann Burns, and Robert Reitzfeld (Che. An Exploration) were on view on the upper floors of the Carriage House.

Main Galleries:
Renee Iacone Clearman:

Figures Forms and Fetishes

"Clay has been described as the ultimate "primitive" material. It has been used for thousands of years and continues to be a substance which is inherently sensual and evocative.

For a number years my exploration of the human form involved a mixed media process utilizing rusted metals, old fabrics, glass, wire, string and numerous variations of cultural detritus. This exhibition represents my continuing exploration of the human form in clay.

Clay is a new medium for me and quite challenging.

The association of a pot to the human figure is age old. Even the identification of a pot's parts - foot, lip, body, belly, and mouth reflects this comparison. This association motivates my interest in using clay to express the human body as vessel in all its various capacities.

Some pieces imply fetishes which might be part of ritual use while others relate to the body as container. Some works are evocative of chunks of landscapes which suggest the human form to me.

For instance, the White Place figures are inspired from that area of New Mexico which haunts my imagination. It's a moonscape peopled with towering, weathered "figures" slowly deteriorating under the harsh elements.

The Tent Spikes series are a reflection of my fascination with a set of hand-carved Civil War tent spikes, some still adorned with disintegrating hemp around their throats. Each spike contains a story, a history, a soul that I strive to capture. Clay represents the primal material of life which both liberates and binds a form. In many ways, it is this paradox as it applies to the human body which keeps me interested."

Renee Iacone Clearman

2009

________________________________________

Sculpture Garden:
Mary Ellen Scherl

My defining moment as a sculptor was in 2001 when I began to work on Monumental Woman, the first of a series of life-size, classically rendered obese figures which went beyond the intention of merely achieving verisimilitude. Whereas my artistic practice previously featured realism and attention to detail, with Monumental Woman these aspects were married to emotional content; body image issues, dignity, pain, and healing. These qualities continue to influence my figurative work.

Since 2001 I have worked almost exclusively with one model. With her my intention has been to challenge the classical "Greek ideal" and today's waif-thin standard of beauty. Many have remarked that Monumental Woman, 50 DD, and Bathing Beauty are reminiscent of the ancient, ample Venus of Willendorf. My inspiration, however, comes from the mid-century Earthly Bodies photographs of Irving Penn and the more recent fleshy paintings of Lucien Freud. Corpulent and honest, my figures explore in clay what these two artists explored in paint and film.

In the last three years some of my work has departed from realism. Cellulite Series, a group of five figures celebrates the essence of the fertile, fecund, female form. Whereas earlier sculptures of my muse achieve verisimilitude, these ironically are minimalist in approach by addressing only the uniquely female anatomy, and eliminating extremities. I am intrigued by how Maiden Voyage feels at once goddess-like and pagan, it reminds me of masthead, albeit without the head. The freedom to simplify and exaggerate, as in Blue Muse and Feminine Alter has been a pleasure. The surface texture reflects how I build body-mass with layers of tiny lumps of clay until a generous fleshy form meets a sinuous line. I think of these 'lumps' as cellulite. In my realistic work the 'cellulite' gets blended together. In Cellulite Series I allow the process to show. The resulting pieces bear a resemblance to the human fragments in Penn's images and to the sensual and playful sculptures of Ken Price.

I find it meaningful that I am able to make a difference through my art. The practice of developing ideas, crafting images and objects feels as essential to me as food, water and shelter. I love making objects. I love making a difference. And I love making objects that make a difference.

Mary Ellen Scherl

2009

________________________________________

Carriage House:

There are four artists within the carriage house: Leticia Ortega, Dionisio Cortes, Kellyann Burns and Robert Reitzfeld in addition to a continuously changing group show of gallery sculptors on the first floor.

Installation:
Leticia Ortega & Dionisio Cortes
when skies are hanged..., 2009
Site-specific installation
water, plastic bags, nylon thread
360" H x 96" W x 120" L

Leticia Ortega and Dionisio Cortes join labors once again to construct a playful and whimsical collaborative installation. They used the three-story high elevator shaft at the Carriage House to install hundreds of plastic bags filled with water. The hanging bags will be grouped in clusters to create a sort of hovering clouds. The water filling each bag becomes a lens reflecting and refracting light and space.

This installation is based on a simple, small-town, Mexican custom, which is believed to scare houseflies away and/or stop them from entering a space. The custom calls for hanging clear, plastic bags filled with water on a window or door threshold. It is argued that the distorted and augmented reflection of the surroundings and/or the flies themselves, scare flies away as they may perceive these images as huge predators. These bags are mostly used in modest restaurants and street vending carts.

We are always mesmerized and captivated by the beautiful way these bags reflect the sky. Inspired in one of e.e. Cummings poems, our intention is to use this popular practice to create a playful and elusive piece. In the inspirational poem, images of summer are found in between a brimful of lines that make music for you before (if ever) they make sense.

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Second Floor:
Kellyann Burns

"My process is my subject. The harmonic balance of color, of light and form found in nature is constantly shifting, subordinated by nature's own process, its own need to transform.

I paint, I sand, I turn the canvas. I paint, I sand, I turn the canvas. I build with color and focus on the conceptual elements of painting, not the decorative. Over time as in nature, order and form unite, until a harmony is revealed between light within the painting and light reflecting from the painting."

Kellyann Burns

2009

________________________________________

Third Floor:
Leticia Ortega & Dionisio Cortes

Leticia Ortega - In my new work, I develop images both freely and painterly, but also with control and fine detailing. I obsessively work and rework areas to build an all-over emotional atmosphere of space and color. Although abstract in essence, the work however, evokes notions of waterscape.

Dionisio Cortes - My recent work continuous to explore the possibilities of the "gesture". I construct patterned and highly ornamental paintings. I build up my subject matter by laying rhythmic and gestural patterns over decorative designs [drawn from materials and patterns found in the decorative arts]. The work reflects my interest in the search for the "ideal beauty" in the age of surplus information.

We both develop surfaces by carefully accumulating tens of layers. Substrates are coated with dry/oil gesso, which yields a smooth, luminous surface. Veils of paint are layered in an obsessive and ritualistic process. The pieces interweave materials and methods allowing for translucency. This meticulous and laborious process is encrypted and recuperated in the finished product.

Collaborative Work - For the first time and for this show we are showing a series of collaboratively paintings. (In the past we have worked together in installation and sculpture). In our individual work, processes and materials are frequently shared. As a husband-wife team, many of our mutual experiences feed the content of our personal work.

Leticia Ortega & Dionisio Cortes

2009

________________________________________

Fourth Floor:
Robert Reitzfeld
Che. An Exploration

" On New Years Day 1959, the Cuban revolutionaries took over the island as the dictator Batista fled. Fidel Castro and Ernesto "Che" Guevara rode into Havana as liberators.

Che, in part because of an iconic image, became a folk hero as well as a source of income for t-shirt manufacturers.

The truth is that Che was notoriously homophobic and had many Cuban homosexuals imprisoned, tortured and killed.

It is well known that many extreme homophobes have buried in them homosexual desires that they subvert by over protesting."

Robert Reitzfeld

2009

Rosanna Bruno, Mary Ellen Scherl, EJ Hauser, Molly Herman, Sharon Butler

2009-06-16T09:33:00.013-05:00

May 28th, a group of women artists opened the season with a medley of exhibitions for the Main Galleries, Sculpture Garden and Carriage House. In celebration, the gallery had four solo exhibitions by abstract painters in both the front galleries and Carriage House. The sculpture garden featured a figurative sculptor, sculpting women. The exhibition was on display through June 21st.

Main Galleries:

Rosanna Bruno

"I am interested in the act of painting itself. Through the process of painting I feel it is possible to work out the jumble of constant visual stimulation through the experience of just making. It is a form of translation, utilizing the language of paint to speak to endless experiences. My paintings are seemingly direct, though often constructed with a complex network of color and line-- color being the primary structural element. I am most interested in the paintings that ultimately belie the experience of making them—offering instead a sense of falling into place or appearing without effort. Play and struggle coexist in painting and it is in this relationship that I find meaning."

Rosanna Bruno

2009

Sculpture Garden:

Mary Ellen Scherl

"My defining moment as a sculptor was in 2001 when I began to work on Monumental Woman, the first of a series of life-size, classically rendered obese figures which went beyond the intention of merely achieving verisimilitude. Whereas my artistic practice previously featured realism and attention to detail, with Monumental Woman these aspects were married to emotional content; body image issues, dignity, pain, and healing. These qualities continue to influence my figurative work.

Since 2001 I have worked almost exclusively with one model. With her my intention has been to challenge the classical “Greek ideal” and today’s waif-thin standard of beauty. Many have remarked that Monumental Woman, 50 DD, and Bathing Beauty are reminiscent of the ancient, ample Venus of Willendorf. My inspiration, however, comes from the mid-century Earthly Bodies photographs of Irving Penn and the more recent fleshy paintings of Lucien Freud. Corpulent and honest, my figures explore in clay what these two artists explored in paint and film.

In the last three years some of my work has departed from realism. Cellulite Series, a group of five figures celebrates the essence of the fertile, fecund, female form. Whereas earlier sculptures of my muse achieve verisimilitude, these ironically are minimalist in approach by addressing only the uniquely female anatomy, and eliminating extremities. I am intrigued by how Maiden Voyage feels at once goddess-like and pagan, it reminds me of masthead, albeit without the head. The freedom to simplify and exaggerate, as in Blue Muse and Feminine Alter has been a pleasure. The surface texture reflects how I build body-mass with layers of tiny lumps of clay until a generous fleshy form meets a sinuous line. I think of these ‘lumps’ as cellulite. In my realistic work the ‘cellulite’ gets blended together. In Cellulite Series I allow the process to show. The resulting pieces bear a resemblance to the human fragments in Penn’s images and to the sensual and playful sculptures of Ken Price.

In 2005, in an effort to try to help heal on a larger scale, I asked myself, “What if my art could help fight breast cancer?” The result of my query was Mamorial; a breast cancer awareness installation that has grown into a project echoing the AIDS Awareness Quilt. Mamorial provides therapeutic healing for breast cancer survivors and a visceral awareness experience for the general public. Two-hundred-fifty survivors from twenty-three states have made molds of their cancer affected chests and have written about their breast cancer experience. The resulting life-casts and soundtrack of testimonials comprise the traveling multi-media Mamorial installation. Creating Mamorial and witnessing its powerful and healing benefits recently inspired Hallowed Ground; a new direction intended to combat systematic genocide.

I am neither a breast cancer survivor nor a relative of a victim of genocide. Yet, I find it meaningful that I am able to make a difference through my art. The practice of developing ideas, crafting images and objects feels as essential to me as food, water and shelter. I love making objects. I love making a difference. And I love making objects that make a difference."

Mary Ellen Scherl

2009

Carriage House:

There are three artists within the carriage house: EJ Hauser, Molly Herman, and Sharon Butler in addition to a continuously changing group show of gallery sculptors on the first floor.

Second Floor:

EJ Hauser

"It seems I’m always trying to find a way to bring my notebooks into the world…my notebooks serving as a kind of personal repository for holding images and words that I think of as energy and force…while working in the notebooks, I also make drawings, clip images from the newspaper, and write down strings of words…these drawings and lists become the origin for my paintings…and, I basically develop the heavy paint paintings similarly to how I develop the word paintings…it is a kind of semi-free associative process, where an idea (word or image) goes up on the panel, and I react to it…building layers, adding and subtracting, looking for something resonant.

And, the paint and color of my thick paint paintings has become more resonant to me since embarking on the purely word paintings…the landscapes, geological arenas, and oceans where semi-fierce animals, heads, and weird creatures roam has become more unencumbered since making these word paintings …it’s as if the structure and text dreaming within the word paintings has created a kind of extreme position to push against…one in which the paint has become freed up as a kind of sculptural tool for my imagining."

EJ Hauser

2008

Third Floor:

Molly Herman

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.”

-- Theodore Roethke

“This sing-song incantation from a Theodore Roethke’s villanelle, “The Waking” could be taken as my mantra for the tangent in my new work.

I began by asking: “How to reduce the act of painting to its most elemental?”

I decided to build a painting from a sequence of obvious and repeatable marks and focused on a particular pigment in each piece.

Quickly, this process evolved and broke from a methodical printed pattern into a kind of layered and textured “Free Verse.” Compositions are arrived at through an open-ended search; a process embedded in the painting.

As with my previous work, I continue my interest in exploring the physicality of the paint. The “flesh” of these paintings is dense and mottled, made of scraped-into and scumbled-on stratums of color, while the simplicity of the stamped image reaches toward a more earthy metaphor.

Molly Herman

2009

Fourth Floor:

Sharon Butler

Beacon Paintings

"For four months last summer, I spent Mondays in Beacon, NY, working quietly in a solitary 4’ x 5’ shack. I had heard of a project called “Habitat for Artists” from Chris Albert, a blogger I met during the Blogger Conference at the Red Dot Fair back in March. “Habitat For Artists” was organized by artist Simon Draper, who built twelve small sheds on the grounds of Spire Studios and invited a group of artists to use them for the summer. Traveling to Beacon was more time-consuming than working in one stationary location, and I painted less on days spent there. But by expanding my world, the shack helped enrich my work.

At the beginning of the summer, I was entering a transitional phase, unsure where I was going but confident that the discipline of daily practice would lead somewhere. Though known mainly for Flavin, Lewitt, and Serra’s resolutely intellectual brand of minimalism, Dia:Beacon, just a few blocks from my little shack, was featuring installations by colorists Blinky Palermo and Imi Knoebel, which impelled me to consider color more intensely than I ever had before. As the summer unfolded in my shack, I extended the limited, austere palette I’d been using for years to include the entire spectrum.

This series of small paintings is the result of my time spent in Beacon. Their scale, handmadeness, and intuitive form constitute an emotive and spontaneous counterpoint to the cerebral and exhaustive exploration of mathematical and geometric constructs and the meticulous experimentation with industrial materials predominantly showcased at Dia."

Sharon Butler

2009

Lois Dickson

2009-05-08T07:19:00.002-05:00

Lois Dickson:

Paintings

April 30 – May 24, 2009.

The new work reflects the artist’s ongoing exploration of the natural world. While earlier paintings explore subject matter monumental in scale--glaciers and geysers of Chilean Patagonia-- Dickson now considers a sphere of radically inverse proportion: the micro cosmos of butterfly wings. Barely legible as lepidoptera, moths and butterflies morph into organic forms that emerge from dense, thickly painted surfaces and/or thin washes of iridescent hue. The butterfly provides the artist with endless metaphoric and pictorial possibilities. “Butterflies change shape, reading as volume one moment, line the next. Variations of color and form are infinite. The metamorphic cycle of butterflies’ lives is a symbol of decay and renewal, a theme I’ve always been interested in.”

Several paintings take as a departure point the wing pattern of various species. The prominent eyespots on the ventral hind wings of the Caligo Owl Butterfly have special implications for the artist. As complications with her own eyes have developed, Dickson has searched for equivalent forms appropriate to her art. Intended to disorient predators, the Caligo eyespots also disarm viewers of these paintings with their deeply felt gaze, both plaintive and defiant.

In contrast to the ephemeral quality of their primary motif, many of the paintings have a tough touch which the artist ascribes to the physicality of her painting process: “I work with a brush in one hand, and a palette knife in the other--troweling on and scraping off until the image is ‘excavated.’ ” The new work also demonstrates a kind of synergy between pictorial “order” and “chaos” ; tangled knots of organic form play against a rigorous grid, evoking both Apollonian and Dionysian intent. “I want to balance the intensity of my emotional response with a rational, more measured quality. One hopes the paintings engage the viewer in a way that invites multiple readings and a wide range of personal responses.”

Fran O'Neill

2009-04-19T14:16:00.003-05:00

The work of Fran O'Neill will be on display at the John Davis Gallery from April 2nd through 26th, 2009. There will be a reception for the artist on Saturday, April 4th, from 6 till 8 p.m. This will be the first featured exhibition in the main galleries of Ms. O'Neill’s work. She previously exhibited in the Carriage House in 2007.

Here are some of the artist's thoughts about her work:

“Growing up in a small rural town in Australia is quite a contrast to my present living situation here in New York. My vivid memories of the Australian landscape compelled my need to find a visual language particular to me. I have a deep interest in sewing and have always had a connection with various “fabric/pattern”, as this began to enter my work; I began to think about my connections to different countries, in particular their crafts and the various ways they tell their stories. I have been exploring patterns, and color, the repletion and saturation of the mark, breaking sometimes abruptly the mark itself, to explore themes of isolation and absence while preserving a symbolistic ambiguity, an openness of meaning for the viewer.

The fabrics that I have been using come from Asia, Japan, India and Africa: batik, woodblock prints, and others. This has fueled my interest in fabric and patterning in the history of Western and Eastern painting, Islamic art, Dutch Still life & interior painting, Persian miniatures and African art—investigating the ways in which intricately patterned fields can work as a veiled entry into another world.

The idea that a pattern and fabric, so artificial in its representation, can still take on a range of emotions and personas, also acting as a metaphor to explore cross pollination of cultures and countries that I have traveled to and now live in. The more I explore these links I feel I am getting a deeper understanding of both myself and the richness the language of painting can bring to my subject: painterly surfaces, the sensuality of color, line, form and marks combining to bring about images, which are sometimes difficult to decipher."

Ms. O'Neill received a Joan Mitchell grant/award in 2008.

Constance Jacobson: Above the Neck

2009-03-22T15:44:00.011-05:00

The work of Constance Jacobson will be on display at the John Davis Gallery from March 5th through the 29th. There will be a reception for the artist on Saturday, March 7th, from 6 till 8 p.m. This will be the first featured exhibition in the main galleries of Ms. Jacobson’s work. She previously exhibited in Hudson in the Carriage House in 2008.

Here are some of the artist's thoughts about her work:

"Much has been written in recent years about the brain’s structure and about how it functions to create memories and states of consciousness. I have been trying to read as widely as I can on these topics, as I reflect on my family’s experience with dementia, the death before death, and on the relationship of human beings to nature.

The prints and drawings in this exhibit are an outgrowth of these contemplations. Many use a printed lotus leaf as a homologous structure to a horizontal slice of the brain. I felt this relationship to be a healing and soothing metaphor for my own reflections, and a way of connecting the human animal to the world of plants. The brain in other prints and drawings becomes transformed into a medusa-shaped jellyfish with long tentacles, another humble and beautiful aquatic species, and in this case, a nod to our marine origins. In still other work, I have depicted human heads in a water environment, barely floating above the rising waterline. This vulnerability is felt on a personal level--a fear of loss of self, but it also reflects the tenuous immersion of humanity in an increasingly human-threatened natural world. Only when humans see themselves as part of nature, connected to and dependent on all other living things, will they do everything in their power to preserve it.”

Kristin Locashio

2009-02-21T14:31:00.005-05:00

The work of Kristin Locashio will be on display at the John Davis Gallery from February 5th through March 1st, 2009. There will be a reception for the artist on Saturday, February 7th, from 6 till 8 p.m.

"The paintings develop from an exploration of mark making. I do not begin with any imagery in mind. I work intuitively to develop a composition. Each layer is made by working with, or against, the last. One compositional approach that I have been exploring is composed of short, choppy, vertical or horizontal marks, which suggest an agitated ground that strives to contain a structure attempting to emerge from a flurry of brushstrokes. Another approach is built from long, interwoven marks, rising and falling across the canvas, intertwining with one another in a ropy physicality of paint. Ultimately, the work evolves from the act of seeking, with the knowledge that the possibility of editing always exists."

Kristin Locashio, 2008

Dale Emmart: Paintings

2009-01-12T11:13:00.009-05:00

The work of Dale Emmart will be on display at the John Davis Gallery from January 8th through February 1st. There will be a reception for the artist on Saturday, January 10th, from 6 till 8 p.m. This will be the first featured exhibition in the main galleries of Ms. Emmart’s work. She previously exhibited in Hudson in the Carriage House in 2007.

Here are some of Dale's thoughts about her work:

“My ideal for viewing painting is up close and slow. And this is the way in which I develop my pieces: with scrutiny, examination, re-assessment, and consistent adjustment. The paper and oil panels exhibited associate entirely with the quality of time in still life, where an inert, singular moment hangs, suspended and sustained. The oil paintings use observation as an operative to twist, bend, or wrestle form and space away from fact into an alternative essence. The drawings on handmade paper are delicate, and are intended as a diaristic exercise. Surface manipulations, on both paper and panel; suggest evidence of the painting process: bumps, bleeds, folds and cuts under the surface or inscribed on the top, connect the image with its source. All share common references: drawings of a palm plant in Bermuda, oysters and muscle shell clusters in Brittany, market place rabbits and wizened trees in Portugal, dead tree roots from Pennsylvania. The references suggest visual equivalents of ecological and psychological discomfort. The works are personally and environmentally cathartic. Pervasive rusty warm color recalls flesh and earth. Flakey mollusk shells, brittle wood, roots imply arterial pathways, and nerve endings. Contrasts of color temperature, soft to hard shapes, opaque weights layered against transparent marks map out rhetorical questions of sustainability, disappearance, vulnerability, and regeneration.”

Dale Emmart, 2009

2008-12-30T07:30:00.002-05:00

Archibald (age six)

Wishing you

Happy Holidays, 2009!

Jean Feinberg: Paintings

2008-12-22T10:14:00.005-05:00

The work of Jean Feinberg was exhibited at the John Davis Gallery from December 4th through December 22nd.

"This work, representing a new direction for me, merges minimalism, construction, and my ongoing interest in abstraction, with some of my deepest experiences of color as it relates to place. It has been decisively influenced by my move to the Hudson Valley with its ever-changing light and color. Though I am not interested in expressing this grandeur as the Hudson River painters did a century ago, I am attempting to capture and hold in a modern way, through color, that light and beauty.

The lyrical translations of color, value, and intensity represent what became a growing interest in the intricacies and subtleties of the color/light experience. Initially notated as landscape watercolor sketches done during a period when I was not working in the studio, I did not have any particular intention or way of using them or a thought as to how this activity might influence my studio work. However when I resumed working, I found I was able to bring the color observations made in direct response to the light in the landscape into a non-objective form. This delight in the play of value and color intensity manifests itself whether I am using the landscape notations, or “found” color in the form of paint chips and colored papers, which I also use while working.

My intention in making the oil paint very matt and light absorbent is to give it a more physical presence and intense saturation. In contrast to the found wood, the color is often a decisive reiteration and/or elaboration of the colors imbedded in those wooden pieces.

The fascination with using salvaged wood pieces also began with my move to West Taghkanic. My house was built two generations ago and when I moved in I found a basement full of tools, the property full of old out buildings, and a house pretty much intact as it was left. Little by little the salvaged wood, old windows, and found colors, began to creep into my work.

I think there is a sparse sense of geometry and a lush, rich, and complex color sense to this work. Though the term “constructions” probably best describes what I am doing, I consider the pieces more related to painting than sculpture because of the relationship to the wall plane and the frontal orientation characteristic of traditional painting."

Jean Feinberg, 2008

Mark Tambella: Paintings - November, 2008

2008-11-30T09:01:00.010-05:00

Mark Tambella’s new work captures moments and the depth of moments with direct oil painting.

"With plein air, all light and flora move and transpire. As photography freezes a moment, painting will extend and develop one.

With portraiture, a sitting person's mood fluctuates, their comfort level rises and falls. The body, though held still, is constantly moving.

With recollected and imagined narrative scenes of kitchens and groupings of people, there is a kind of synthesis of this nature painting and portraiture using movement and drama as underpinnings of light and color; using light and color to capture a moment with a mood."

Mark Tambella, 2008

The new work in this exhibition encompasses the past 20 months of painting both inside (New York City) and outside (Canaan, New York).

Gabriel Phipps

2008-10-19T14:08:00.003-05:00

Gabriel Phipps exhibited paintings in the main galleries from October 9th through November 2nd, 2008.

"The central focus of my painting is infusing human presence in geometric structures. I use color vibration and pattern as a pulse or heartbeat to give images frontality, immediacy and life. Light and form reside on the picture plane and push out from it into the viewer’s space, confronting him/her as an actual person would.

In most cases the paintings are overtly imbued with a figurative presence. In others the figurative qualities are discrete. These beings are born out of the paintings’ structures and merge with urban architecture; simultaneously the figures are those architectural structures.

The paintings’ architectural qualities, their scale, density, and translucent passages are intuitive responses to Manhattan and the visual experience of city life. When gazing upon a skyscraper one is struck by its scale and mass. One is simultaneously taken by the building’s reflective qualities, which seem to subvert the structure’s solidity. The building becomes a canvas, of sorts, which one can visually enter, creating a sense of openness where there is none.

-Gabriel Phipps

Sculpture Garden:
Anthony Garner

"Art is an effort to study and to communicate the tactile and visual experience I have of the world around us. Sculpture affords me the best opportunities to combine those tactile and visual experiences. I enjoy the complex possibilities for revelation and contemplation that sculpture offers: sculpture may be both sensual and cerebral, both process and product, both space and form. My recent work combines the sensual aspects of carved wood with the conceptual ideas of articulated and compressed space."

-Anthony Garner

The Carriage House:

This was the final show of the season in the Carriage House.
There were five separate shows for this last exhibition: Ground Floor - Group of Gallery Sculptors (Ben Butler, John Van Alstine, Renee Iacone Clearman, Andrew Dunnill, Jon Isherwood, Caroline Ramersdorfer, John Ruppert) / Second Floor - Sara Jane Roszak / Third Floor - Martin Bromirski / Top Floor - Brenda Goodman

Sara Jane Roszak

"The source of this group of images comes from memories of three different places. Two groups are from living in the city and are ironically interconnected. The third references the landscape of my childhood, Cape Ann, Massachusetts - one of crashing ocean and dramatic storms.

On 9/11/2001 I had an appointment to look at houses in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. That morning I watched from the corner of my block on Hudson St, a plane fly into the second tower of the World Trade Center while the other was billowing white smoke and shortly after see the two come crumbling down. I, like everyone who lived in lower Manhattan, was overwhelmed by the trauma and tragedy of that day. I also witnessed the months of seeing and smelling the smoldering wreckage and hearing the iron chains and grinding wheels of the huge semis as they dragged the wreckage up Hudson street to the docks and barges that would take that giant crumpled mass away.

I went to Brooklyn a few weeks later and found a house, an old house, barely renovated, untouched by time and covered with the dust of that disaster. From the rooftop I could see lower Manhattan and eventually the twin shafts of light that marked the twin towers. The work on 328 Clinton St was a labor of love but overwhelming and totally exhausting. Finally, too much, I let it go. I now live on Cape Ann, the summertime home of my childhood.

So I think of these pictures as poetic impressions of places I have loved that have been lost or transformed into a different reality that is now the present. Illusive, dreamlike, they haunt me."

-Sara Jane Roszak

Martin Bromirski:
Circus on Mars

"I'm not sure where I read the phrase recently - maybe it was on a blog - "Circus on Mars"... keep thinking of that. I'm (often) thinking of circus stuff and cosmic stuff (Jack Kirby)... but this has struck a chord. Maybe it has been since I finished that baby-blue painting I posted, the one with the cuts, and the red circle... like a clown. A Pierrot.

And then I saw Kenneth Anger's otherworldly Rabbit Moon recently and that all related... the moon and space, the distraught Pierrot, the longing for the unattainable, the Japan references.

And I am reminded of what was intended as a negative criticism that I got when my painting was on the PaintersNYC blog two years ago... someone said it was like "an Easter egg that didn't get found until Halloween".... loved that. This show is up in October so I keep thinking of these "rotten easter eggs" hanging up there in that cool concrete space for someone to discover on Halloween.

-Martin Bromirski

Brenda Goodman:
Painting

"I decided to just have fun with these small oil on paper pieces. Starting with many marks and colors I started seeing shapes, forms and images I resonated with. They in turn started to play off each other and I let myself go with the flow until the composition became clear. I love to work that way because each piece is a surprise. I start with a white surface and magically my unconscious brings me a visual gift."

-Brenda Goodman

Laurel Sucsy, Geoffrey Miller, Abel Ramirez, Linda Mussmann, Robert Morgan

2008-09-19T13:03:00.007-05:00

Laurel Sucsy

"I paint as a way to believe in something. The process of making a painting provides the time and space necessary to forge a bond with a fledgling idea. Through an accumulated history with the work I learn what to keep and what to discard and ultimately what to trust. Formally I am concerned with marking space in a way that hovers between the languages of realism and abstraction, borrowing from both and at times conflating the two.

I approach each painting without a preconceived plan, simply with the goal of finding a believable presence. I am as invested in the personality of the painting as I am in the nuanced surface of the paint. I work with balance and movement to create a complex resonance of recognizable, and not so recognizable, situations. Ultimately the paintings have to do with seeing, not what it means but rather the experience of it."

Laurel Sucsy, 2008

Sculpture Garden:
Sarah Draney

This installation will be Sarah Draney's second installation in the Sculpture Garden of the gallery. It reflects her ongoing artwork that comes out of memory and experience of and in nature. "I've been working on a garden installation for the past 15 years - that is an ongoing, always changing 'installation' of plants, rocks, sticks and my sculpture - always changing, as in nature with the passage of time"

Sarah Draney

Draney produces books using photographs and painted, drawn line to code her garden and her journeys abroad. She created a green and white garden of moss and native plants designed to flow around her ceramics, found objects, and constructed buildings and house metaphors In varying scale, from sheds to small whitewashed wooden houses, ghost houses, and memory catchers. She still has the fanciful bird houses she watched her grandfather make out of wood. She often made small ceramic houses, glazed matte black or Ice white.

Her garden containing many plants native to the Hudson Valley, has grown to encompass almost an acre, with constructed tepees and lattices serving both as fence and as forms over which her plants grow in summer and leave behind vine traces in winter. These vine traces are examples of nature drawing its tracks and form, another layer of her evolving collage art. The traces also find their way into her journals and onto the surface of her collages.

-Excerpt from the writings of artist Ann Wilson

The Carriage House: There are five separate shows within the carriage house: Ground Floor - Group of Gallery Sculptors (Ben Butler, John Van Alstine, Renee Iacone Clearman, Jon Isherwood, Caroline Ramersdorfer, John Ruppert) / Installation - Paintings by Geoffrey Miller / Second Floor - Abel Ramirez / Third Floor - Linda Mussmann / Top Floor - Robert Morgan

Geoffrey Miller: Paintings

Geoffrey Owen Miller is a painter and image maker.

Born in the Manhattan Project City, Los Alamos, New Mexico, he has created and understood his world through drawing since he can remember. His father was a physicist and his mother was a History and English as a Second Language teacher. Geoffrey inherited a manner of searching for logic structures from his father and an interest in cultural understandings from his mother and is especially interested in the interplay between the two, specifically how this comes to play in our construction of our internal and external realities.

"We have come to recognize, as the unknown world continues to shrink with new technologies, how our internal systems of understanding are externalized and reflected in how we perceive, create, and structure our world. I depict “psychological spaces”— visual depictions and de-limitations of sociological and psychological concepts"

(Oil) Reflections:
"These images are taken from appropriated photographs of destruction: Images of weapons testing in the Nevada desert, Clouds of smoke billowing from destroyed navy ships in Pearl Harbor, and oil derricks set alight when Saddam left Kuwait . By simply reflecting the images, I transform what most would consider irrational, random, and chaotic acts of destruction into a stable and ordered image structure.

In the same way a Rorschach test uses symmetry to allow, out of a random act of ink, the viewer to see all sort of images from their own understanding and imagination, these images allow for the viewer to reflect what they themselves already understand.

However, there is a second level of understanding once the viewer comes to comprehend the dichotomy of the source image and the final object of art. In the space between the first understanding and the second is hopefully a third level of comprehension: a revelation about understanding.

I have painted these images with a painstaking process of layering: painting, pressing, and scraping off, in order to hide what was the original starting point but also to let the development of the painting process show through. With the obliteration of the brush strokes the painting becomes rendered so it appears almost photographic, as with Gerhardt Richter's works, referencing the predominance of photography in our understanding and archiving of the visual world: these images are manipulated, but not made up."

Geoffrey Miller, 2008

"Janus also has a temple at Rome with double doors, which they call the gates of war; for the temple always stands open in time of war, but is closed when peace has come. The latter was a difficult matter, and it rarely happened, since the realm was always engaged in some war, as its increasing size brought it into collision with the barbarous nations which encompassed it round about.

[Plutarch, Life of king Numa 20.1-2 tr.Bernadotte Perrin]

Abel Ramirez:
Paintings

"I am a painter. I live in New York City. Recently, I moved to Hudson part-time and am enjoying the influence of nature and it’s affect upon me.

My Inspiration:
Words and images, print, text, signs - especially the ordinary and everyday - Pop art, logos, abstract images, lines, all things around me, new and old.

My goal:
-Combine, juxtapose, edit, add, replace, alter and play with Imagery to infuse new meanings and a new context in which my paintings can live.

- A story on the canvas - loose, free, dark, deep, hidden, graphic, bold, sexy, humorous, and fun. Painterly splashes of light - washes of color, spontaneous.

- I like it when different materials are combined and I don't know the outcome. I am able to react to that. I like to obscure the image and then bring it back out, creating a new history.

Medium:
Paint, charcoal - almost anything that will leave a mark. I use acrylic and oils together, pencil, canvas, paper.

Media:
Paintings, Paper collages, Textiles, Large screen-prints, Video"

Abel Ramirez, 2008

Linda Mussmann

Linda Mussmann is a designer of space (sometimes called theater sets) and lighting instruments. She has built spaces and arranged happenings in these spaces. Linda is a writer and a thinker and one who tinkers in the workshop using materials in non-traditional ways. Linda is political and an artist -- two ideas not easy to separate. She has made art work for herself, strangers, and Claudia Bruce.

Last exhibited at the John Davis gallery in 1998 she returns with some new works for the Carriage House. Here are some of her thoughts about the work:

“I will be using inner tubes as the material for this show; black rubber that I cut from large truck inner tubes - found in Hudson, New York. The tubing is cut, stretched into patterns, similar to ways that I have worked with cloth/string/or "line" in the past. I have taken this material and created shapes that are often braided like one would braid hair or woven together as one would fabric.

When I work with this material I think of women's work and man made material. I think of the rhythm of the gesture and the loss of the ego while making the work. I think of the future and wish to locate this work there. I think of Malevich and the revolutionary BLACK SQUARE that he painted in 1913 only a few years before the Russian Revolution of Oct. 1917. This is about hope for another revolution as I think about the black square that Malevich called absolute space for "feeling" or the "full void". I work with this rubber inner tube material and think of Duchamp and the chess board. I think of patterns, and "black" and what it means to work in reverse--instead of working with white on black == I work with black only - absent of white.

As Renoir said "I've been 40 years discovering that the Queen of all color is black." And so it is my pleasure to use the rich blackness of the lowly tire inner tube to make some art for this show. The tubing for me is like ink or paint or cloth. It is kind of writing and painting and thinking in space.

The black inner tube material is sometimes stretched like animal skins, sometimes it is a weapon (a sling shot), and sometimes it is a geometric pattern that is existing as if a painter would have created a minimalist gesture.

This is where we are in 2008. The inner tube is the material of choice.”

Linda Mussmann

Robert Morgan:
Sculpture

Robert Morgan's family goes back to the early pioneers of central Kentucky and the mountains of Appalachia. He was shaped by his Catholic childhood, Haight- Ashbury in the 60's and the Aids epidemic of the 90's. Robert works in junk and found objects, assembling them into speaking cultural artifacts. His pieces tell new stories and ancient ones, Stories of love and loss, stories of birth, death and rebirth. His work is as decorative as it is symbolic. Robert spent years on the road living the life of a gypsy vagabond in his youth, he chronicles those journeys and experiences in his assemblages.

"My work is deeply rooted in my childhood, my mother's mental illness, her suicide, my medieval Catholic education, the devastation of Aids, alcoholism, and drug addiction. My work is at once African, Mayan, Hindu and Byzantine. My pieces are The Saints, Martyrs, Heroes, Warriors, Gods and Goddesses. They are in fact shrines.

My mother's family came from deep in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, the Troublesome Creek and Lost Creek area of what is now Breathitt County, Kentucky. Shadows of my mother's lost childhood and how it haunted mine loom large in my mythology.

I learned all I know from National Geographic, The World Book Encyclopedia and The Lives of the Saints"

Robert Morgan

Daisy Craddock, Jean Feinberg, Marjorie Van Dyke, Joseph Haske, Mark Saltz

2008-08-31T08:07:00.025-05:00

Daisy Craddock:

“Recent Paintings and Drawings”

The title for this show might just as well have been “Upstate.” If there is an underlying theme of yearning in this work, it is probably because this New York City based landscape painter gathers most of her imagery while visiting friends in the country. Many of the recent works on paper were done in and around Hudson.

The paintings in this show mark a return to “plein air” studies as a primary source, and I am pleased to be able to show the paintings and drawings together. There is a stronger sense of place in the drawings, which often serve as a kind of visual diary. The Three views from Mt. Merino were made over a period of weekend sojourns. Drawn from the same spot at different times of day, they focus on shifting light and the colors of late afternoon. With Olana just down the road, it is impossible not to give a nod to the Hudson River School. Both Mt. Merino paintings were done back in the studio, where the subject became more about the physical act of painting. Pond near Trumansburg recalls a farmhouse pond in the heat of summer. Flattened out by the midday sun, trees and water are described mostly by the shimmer of light.

Interspersed with the landscapes are some works on paper which at first appear to be abstract blocks of color. These diptychs are drawn from life and are closely observed. The subject of the blue diptychs is a morning glory, its surface, color and sheen at different times of day. This work is also about the joy of being intensely in the moment. Watermelon is a bit more obvious, with the skin of the fruit depicted on the left and its flesh on the right. I’m currently working on a group of drawings called “Green Market.”

Daisy Craddock

Sculpture Garden:

Andrew Dunnill

Drawing is for me the most direct form of visual expression. It enables me to interpret my experiences and observations, to question preconceptions, tap into my subconscious and reinvent my decision making process. Whether my subject matter originates in the ship breaking yards of India, in memories of rural England, or the vast open spaces of the American West, drawing is my foundation, free from the physical realities and practical restraints implicit in sculpture making.

Sculpture demands a different rigor and spatial understanding than drawing and yet the two languages often inform one another. The marks and images, narratives and abstractions that I generate in two dimensions are frequently the genesis of sculptural ideas. The works represented in this exhibition are an attempt to bring the experience of sculpture closer to that of drawing by releasing the potential energy and life that is often restricted in an inert material such as steel. I am searching for a pliant and plastic geometry to imbue the density and rigidity of steel with a new three-dimensional poetry.

Andrew Dunnill

The Carriage House:

There are five separate shows within the carriage house: Ground Floor - Group of Gallery Sculptors (Ben Butler, John Van Alstine, Renee Iacone Clearman, Jon Isherwood, Caroline Ramersdorfer, John Ruppert) / Second Floor - Small Rooms: Joseph Haske, Large Rooms: Marjorie Van Dyke / Third Floor - Mark Saltz

Joseph Haske:

Paintings

This group of small paintings of hands is a continuation of "hand- print” paintings I have made for several years. The shape is an outline of my own hand that I made years ago but the image comes from a fresco by Fra Angelico in the cloister of San Marco titled, "The Mocking of Christ". I first saw this painting in an art history class in college and the instructor, Maurice Bonds, pointed out the disembodied heads and hands engaged in mocking the figure of Christ and said this was the first "surreal painting".

The simple composition, one organic shape with geometric divisions, is an armature to experiment with some different color possibilities, and hopefully some new discoveries. There are different surface finishes, some of the paintings are glazed to a deep rich darkness and others are dry like stone.

The hand shape brings some narrative content that is subjective in the sense that it is hard to discern if the image is threatening or comforting. I enjoy this ambiguity and consider it essential to the painting.

Joseph Haske, 2008

Marjorie Van Dyke:

Paintings

The paintings in this exhibition are the product of the last two and a half years of work. Van Dyke continues to explore the process of making art. Her paintings are intense and dense, with visible evidence of the progression (and digression) of the image by means of the accretion and erosion of paint. There is a visible tension in the paintings, a struggle between the formal and the chaotic.

Van Dyke has a keen interest in art history, and her paintings reflect her continuing dialogue with the art of the past. Van Dyke lived in Rome for several years, and travels frequently to Europe.

Renaissance and Baroque painting has had a profound influence on her work, she has absorbed the richness of colors and dramatic presentation, as well as a sense of craft and the excitement of visual complexity.

The paintings are all satu

rated with color and nuance, the products of glazing, sanding, and reglazing resulting in rich primary colors and the intense depths of their complements, creating a garden of earthly delights. The compositions border on the chaotic, with the spaces pushing and pulling against each other, but with a subtle, almost subliminal sense of formalism that both holds the painting together, and provides a palpable tension.

Mark Saltz:

Paintings

This selection of intimate scale paintings from the past decade is reflective of the concerns and formal interests of my work in general. They are material and process driven, made with resins, oils and dry pigments. Some are structural, resolving themselves geometrically, while others are more muscular in their painterly form. Through my own scraping, adding freshly mulled pigment and then using an electric sander to excavate back to the canvas surface, they go through a process of addition and subtraction. Revision is ongoing until their logic captures my attention and urges them into being.

Mark Saltz, 2008

John Van Alstine: Slate and Steel - Selections from the Beijing Olympic Series

2008-07-27T10:14:00.002-05:00

The exhibition at the John Davis Gallery (July 17^th – August 10th) featured the sculpture of John Van Alstine and included works from his Sisyphean Circle – Beijing Series.

Van Alstine's large scale proposal "Circle of Inclusion - Ring of Unity", the largest work in this series (seen here under construction in Beijing) was selected from over 2800 worldwide entries is among 25 of the non-Chinese projects to be commissioned and installed in the new Olympic Park complex by the City of Beijing for the 2008 summer Games.

Van Alstine will exhibit works from the Sisyphean Circle – Beijing Series in the main galleries and sculpture garden with both interior and outdoor pieces on view.

Sisyphean Series:

The Sisyphean Circle Series (2005-8), draws parallels between the Greek methodical character and the plight of the artist. As we know Sisyphus was forced to roll a large stone up a steep hill, only to have it tumbles back after reaching the top. This toil lasts all eternity and can be seen as a perfect metaphor for the creative process and especially applicable to one like myself who uses stone as a primary material - in fact I see the works in this series as self portraits.

I am continually and literally pushing stones around the studio and at the same time figuratively pushing them to a creative peak. Once there and the sculpture is “finished”, like most artists I am compelled to start again at the “bottom” on the next piece. The cycle is unending.

However, viewing the creative process simply as “endless toil” is undeniable negative and I prefer to consider the myth through the lens Albert Camus. The French existentialist in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus pointed out that the idea of reaching ones final destination is not always the most important. In fact if one "reconsiders Sisyphus" as Camus suggests, the struggle or journey reveals itself as ultimately the most meaningful. As in life, this notion is at the core of the creative process where the act of making most often trumps the object or final product.

-John Van Alstine

Van Alstine also recently completed and installed a major work, Cardinalis - Homage to Wilbur and Orville at the new $1.1 billion Indianapolis Airport terminal. Similar to the gravity defying style of the works in this exhibition, Cardinalis incorporates an actual titanium wing from a Navy F-14 fighter aircraft. The two part title first makes direct reference to Indiana's state bird the Cardinal (Richmondena Cardinalis) is reinforced by its striking colors: cardinal red and black. Second, it pays homage to the Wright Brothers, perhaps the most well known of all aviation pioneers and two of Indiana's native sons. (Wilbur born 1867 in Millvile, IN and Orville 1871 in Dayton, IN - both not far outside of Indianapolis.)

The dynamically positioned "red wing" and its connection to the ground via the sweeping arch element, makes an immediate and obvious link to aviation. This act of "bridging" can be seen as a symbol of airports, which are in fact - "middle ground" - the physical places in our contemporary society that connect the earth and sky. Airports are between two worlds and take on modern mythic status.

The physical shape, positioning and color of Cardinalis, with its uplifting, sweeping and graceful energy, is itself a metaphor for the act of flying. The delicate and relatively small area where it "touches down" not only gives the work great physical drama and visual excitement , it also is symbolic of the skill and "magic" needed for safe take offs and landings. Cardinalis pays homage both to the Wright Brothers and to the men and women whose skill and dedication make air travel a reality.

The Carriage House:

There are four separate artists showing within the carriage house, in addition to a group show of gallery sculptors on the ground floor:
Second Floor (small rooms) - paintings and works on paper by David Hornung
Second Floor (large rooms) – new paintings by Priscilla Derven
Elevator Shaft – installation by sculptor Victoria Palermo
Third and Fourth Floors – new paintings and works on paper by Christine Heller

David Hornung: Paintings

David Hornung paints pictures in oil and gouache from his imagination and memory. His subjects are homely: the tools, furniture, rude structures, flora, fauna, garden ornaments and other props common to rustic life. His work often implies narrative intent but delivers no story, suggesting instead, a sense of secrecy, of meaning withheld.

Mr. Hornung is a professor of art who has taught painting, drawing, and color at several art schools and universities including, Parsons, Pratt, Skidmore, Brooklyn College, and the Rhode Island School of Design. He is currently chair of the Department of Art and Art History at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York. He divides his time between NYC and his home and studio in the Catskills.

Priscilla Derven: Paintings

"My new work represents the continuation of a subject of mine of the last several years (people on beaches) with a change of medium (oil on canvas). I am interested in, and impressed by, the presence of people at the beach. It represents play, rest, leisure and pleasure. It’s a wonderful thing to bear witness to, given all the grief, strife and hardship of the lives of so many people on earth. We are living in a time of darkness and gloom. When I see people on the beach no matter who they are, their spirits seem lifted. They are playing. Or observing others playing.

But there is something else going on here as well: there is a capturing of the aloneness of people. I think the immensity of the sea brings out the isolation and insignificance of the individual. And from my view, the individual seems to sense this, however unconsciously. Time and again I find a certain melancholy and introspection in these moments of play."

-Priscilla Derven

Victoria Palermo:

MODETTES

I explore shape and color through process and material that is not paint.

What would it be like, I wonder, to live inside these objects, houses (sort of), immersing me in new color at every turn?

These space-objects together could make a village, but I can also envision each of them existing in isolation, each a framework for living outside the fray. They make me think of Zabriskie Point (1970; panned by everyone).

With no better name for them--hybrids of objects/models/three dimensional “paintings”—I call them “modettes”, also the name of an all-female punk band from the UK (disbanded in 1982).

-Victoria Palermo

Christine Heller

Stories in Black and White

Stories in B+W is my new series of paintings on paper made over the last 6 months from personal remembrances, following 3 years of work on installations about the Iraq war. The figures in this new work emerge and recede as well as strike out as they engage veiled mists and emotionally charged atmospheres. For example, “The Boy Who Hesitated" portrays the leaden inability to make a commitment and the “Woman Who Didn’t Notice” depicts the dull muddle of depression. Other paintings, such as “The One Who Pulled Away” and “The Man Who Struggled to Say Good-bye” represent remembered sensations and impressions.

They emerge from the dark, from memories, from the past

Just below the surface, just above the surface

Murky and dank, blurred, blank

Can’t see clearly, can’t make out the forms

They come forward

Pull back, move out of the picture, then slide back in

Always the same

Just out of reach, but for a moment of glimmering clarity.

-Christine Heller

La Wilson: Witness (Assemblage) at John Davis Gallery, Hudson, New York

2008-07-12T07:36:00.007-05:00

La Wilson: Witness

John Davis began showing the work of La Wilson in 1983 in Akron, Ohio and continued with Ms. Wilson when his gallery moved to New York City. Including the 2004 retrospective that Mr. Davis curated, La Wilson Altered Objects (at the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art, Ursinus College), this upcoming show will be the 12th exhibition of Ms. Wilson's work that the artist and dealer have presented together. It will also mark Ms. Wilson’s fifth exhibition in Hudson, New York, (the first, having been recognized and reviewed in The New York Times). She visits Hudson, New York from Hudson, Ohio where she lives and works and she has shown extensively in the mid-west and New York City.

Ms. Wilson was given a retrospective of her work at The Akron Art Museum in 1986/1987 titled La Wilson Metaphorical Objects. Kathleen Monaghan (Director) initiated and selected work and Barbara Tannenbaum (Chief Curator and Head of Public Programs) facilitated the installation and supervised the production of the brochure with the late Ellen H. Johnson's contribution of an Interview with La and Ms. Monaghan contributing the introduction. In 1992 Tom Hinson, curator of Contemporary Art at the Cleveland Museum, chose a group of La’s works to exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art. In 1993, the artist received the top award for sculpture in the Cleveland Museum of Art May Show. It was in this same year that La was awarded the prestigious “Cleveland Arts Prize in Visual Arts” for sculpture. In 2004 the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College (Collegeville, Pennsylvania) mounted a retrospective of her work, titled La Wilson Altered Objects with catalogue essay by Edward M. Gomez, curated by John Davis.

In the current body of work, La Wilson continues to confound those who have watched her development as an artist over the years with her ability to defy the material and transform everyday objects into visual delights that convey profound meaning and sustenance. In her words, "I try to steer clear of objects that are too loaded with meaning; but then, when I think about it, everything I use is loaded - snakes, pencils, firecrackers, matches, hair pins. What I try to do is free myself from the conscious associations so that the unconscious ones can take over. I am much more interested in what I don't know than what I do know."

Sculpture Garden:

Sculptors Choose Sculptors

The Sculpture Garden will host an exhibition of sculptors from the John Davis Gallery choosing other sculptors whose work they admire.

John Ruppert has chosen Ledelle Moe. Ruppert states, “I picked Ledelle because she is a good sculptor and I felt that having a sculptor that works directly with the figure would bring a different perspective to the group. Her work while referencing the past, transcends the present and eludes to the future."

Ledelle Moe was born in Durban, South Africa in 1971. She studied sculpture there at Technikon Natal and graduated in 1993. Active in the local art community, Moe was one of the founding members of the FLAT Gallery, an artist initiative and alternative space in Durban. A travel grant in 1994 brought her to the United States where she embarked on a period of study at the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Sculpture Department Master’s program. She completed her Master’s Degree there in 1996 and soon after accepted an adjunct position in the Sculpture Department at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, Maryland. Later she taught at the Corcoran College of Art in Washington, DC, Virginia Commonwealth University and St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Moe has exhibited in a number of venues including the Kulturhuset (Stockholm, Sweden) the NSA Gallery (Durban, South Africa), the International Sculpture Center (Washington, DC), The Washington Project for the Arts (Washington, DC) and Maryland Art Place (Baltimore). Though Moe remains strongly connected to South Africa, returning to visit annually, she has continued to live and work in the United States. Based presently far from home, the perspective particular to her roots as a South African artist remains central to her work. Recent projects include large-scale concrete installations at Socrates Park and Pratt Institute in New York City, and Decatur Blue in Washington, DC. In 2002 Moe was the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Award which has allowed her time to work on new sculptures and travel back to South Africa where she has made and exhibited work, Recent projects include two installations shown in Salzburg, Austria and Brooklyn, New York this year. Presently based in Baltimore, Maryland, she continues to work on large-scale pieces and travels home annually to work and visit in South Africa.

Victoria Palermo has chosen John McQueen.

"Looking at John McQueen’s work makes me laugh. As efficiently as a haiku poet, John presents, in each piece, a wry observation about life (his, ours) and he nails it with humor.

The work is constructed from the simplest of materials - sticks. It nudges the boundaries of category. Roberta Smith has described the works as hovering “in the gap between craft, sculpture and Conceptual Art.” If Jenny Holzer took up basket-making, perhaps it would look like this."

Victoria Palermo

John McQueen was born in 1943 in Oakland, Illinois. He received his B.A. from the University of South Florida, Tampa in 1971 and his M.F.A. from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia in 1975.

McQueen's career has been marked by many awards and residencies including a 2001 Artist's Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a 1992 Visual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 1991 Tiffany Award, and a 1980 United States/Japan Friendship Commission Fellowship.

"Gimme a minute here. Gimme a chance. Gimme a good reason to arrive at a stance. Among the scads of synapses coursing across my vision, from highfalutin to peevishness, I can't decipher, arrange or even abide. It is only silly folly this keeping company with my own washed up mutterings; no pleasure to treasure. What makes me make? Not beauty, maybe repetition, but more likely a reach to plunder another as of yet ununderstood ride down a path of some hopeful but endless tomfoolery."

John McQueen
2008

Harry Gordon is Caroline Ramersdorfer's pick.

Harry started his sculpture career with a very classical, figurative beginning, and although his materials and forms have changed a great deal over the years, it is still possible to find remnants of the figure in his work. Most of the large outdoor wood pieces from the 1980s stand on two points (legs) and incorporate a separate element on top (body or arms). The granite work, started in the 1990s, also tends toward figurative or post and lintel forms.

When he incorporates several elements together to construct a sculpture, he is looking at the way they relate to each other, and ultimately how they work together as a whole. A tilt here and a cut there can change the attitude of the piece and gives each one its own distinct personality. When the piece has just one element, he tends to do more carving and editing of the material to achieve the same effect.

Gordon’s work and the ideas behind it are tied very closely with the material from which it is constructed. He states, "I have chosen traditional, ancient mediums with which to express myself. I try not to manipulate my materials beyond their natural state, but imbue them with an expression of dignity and grandeur to release their spirit."

Ben Butler is represented by Rena Leinberger

Rena Leinberger was born in Ludington, Michigan and currently lives and works in Tillson, New York. She received her M.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002 where she was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant.

"In my installations and sculptures, I intervene into quirky spaces with residues of human history and architecture in states of decay. I also draw hapless cartographies demarcating the passing of time.

I always use the familiar as a source – whether urban spaces, furniture, transit systems or interiors – they all traverse the gap between function and obsolescence; time and memory. In that subtle mental space, materials mutate in unusual ways and possibilities expand, tensions form, erasure is implicit. I can alter the commonplace through a shift in materials or extend the site into the form of the work. Sometimes a further removal into photo or video skews the sense of familiarity and permanence. The work becomes awkward and suggestive of the weight of things outside of our reach. Something has inexplicably gone awry.

The resulting works engage notions of escape, futility and collapse. These spaces and objects reflect the precarious physical, emotional, and socio-political climate we both inhabit and create."

-Rena Leinberger

Jon Isherwood chose sculptor John Umphlett.

"Instinct is to register something significant in that ‘first encounter’. Subconscious antidotes become consciousness. Mr. Umphlett’s sculptures ask us to consider an alternative explanation to all that seems common place. He forces us to reconsider all that we know, and now observe what we hadn’t noticed about the very thing that seemed familiar."Talking about his work, John Umphlett states, “As an artist, I would describe myself as an innovative and inquisitive thinker. Keeping open about experimentation through material relationships, both as physical and conceptual are essential to discovery. Through the practice of trial and error, I often express parallel relationships between material and color, idea and images, and concepts and objects. This process further challenges my creativity and novel approach in developing a body of work. I am finding that I have a heightened awareness of social communication. Small gestures and cues of one’s emotional paths lead to large rich personalities. Personalities exist, as a catalyst in extending the important revisited elements. The work can be a representation of an action or a snapshot of a moment that takes hours to fully view. Time exists as an inevitable and ever-changing constant that can be the most powerful detail of the piece. I have found that my artistic process uncovers a broad range of many diverse paths all holding important directions to discover."

Carriage House:

There are five artists within the carriage house: Dionisio & Leticia Cortes, Mac Chambers, Colin Cochran, and Constance Jacobson in addition to a group show of gallery sculptors on the first floor.

Dionisio Cortes + Leticia Ortega
Summer Cutouts, 2008
Site-specific installation for John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY
72”Wx 89”Dx330”H
Kraft paper

Leticia Ortega and Dionisio Cortes join labors to construct a playful collaborative installation this summer. Their two dimensional artwork, dense layering addressing formal issues such as pattern, order, and space, is clearly evoked in this piece.
Ms. Ortega and Mr. Cortes created a three-story high, tower-like, rectangular volume by accumulating tens of layers of 30-feet long paper panels. The paper panels hang vertical and freely, each, one inch apart. Each paper panel has been cut out with the artists’ trait motifs. The cutouts, being a slightly smaller/bigger, create a three-dimensional vertical topography.

A visual dialogue is intended to occur between the Carriage space and the piece, and between the piece and the visitor. Visitors will be free to interact with the installation at ground level, as it’ll be penetrable.

Dionisio Cortes and Leticia Ortega live and work in New York City. Their work has been shown in Mexico, Italy, and the U.S. Ms. Ortega’s work was included in the I Olga Costa Biennial and Mr. Cortes’ in the Monterrey Biennial. Both are recipients of numerous prestigious awards including the Vitro Art Center and the Monterrey Biennial in Mexico. They have taught at several institutions including American School and El Nix in Mexico, and Wet Paint! Art Studio in NYC. Their work can be found in numerous private and public collections.

McWillie Chambers

Mr. Chambers was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where he attended the Louisiana Polytechnic Institute from 1969 - 71. From 1971 - 73 he studied at the Kansas City Art Institute where he received his BFA. He then went to New York City where he attended the New York Studio School (1973-74). In 1981 he studied at the Universidad de Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain. Currently he lives in New York City and Hudson, New York. His paintings are now shown in dozens of galleries around the country including, among others, Fischbach Gallery and Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation in New York City.

The artist, Bill Sullivan, has written an excellent description of McWillie's work: "McWillie Chambers' painting is not in any way confrontational, and yet he confronts a great dilemma and lets his own inherent graciousness resolve it. The dilemma is that most, but not all, of Chambers' subject matter is the male nude. Photographs and memory are the key to this work. He doesn't paint apples and flowers, or the destitute and desperate, the hopeless. He paints what he needs to paint, and is totally committed to a positive, affirmative view of life. An apple doesn't turn him on, and his paintings are a respite from the suffering in the world we know all too well. If this is gay art, it must be most successful because that seems irrelevant. The sources of this work are actually beside the point. After all, this is not exploitation. Rather it is a celebration of desire, the memory of desire. This work flirts with you, engaging in an erotic dialog rather than being voyeuristic. Never were men and places so desirable. And place is why, as much as the men.

Chambers grew up in Louisiana, the home of deep south graciousness and sophistication. Chambers was raised with the rare attitude toward life, difficult for us New Yorkers to actually believe, and so we look for the falsity. Bigots will find it in gender preference, but even they will be seduced by the paint. The paint flows and moves across the surface, and in the space. Not for a moment does its sensuousness relent. The paint is hot, the color dazzling, the light subtropical. In this place he remembers and desires, he puts men he remembers and desires, and every one of them is a portrait that transcends likeness and makes instead an erotically spiritual connection with the soul. Even when the sexuality is frank to the point of being blunt, an innocence is retained, and this innocence is the true content of this work: With great honesty, we are given an innocence that many of us have forgotten or never knew. Chambers' memory stimulates our own desire.

In a catalogue essay by Bill Arning, this work is put in the tradition of Cadmus, French and Tchelitchew. These paintings seem very different in attitude, style, sense of time and message. The only similarity is subject matter. And even that's different. If he painted apples would he be in the tradition of Cezanne? Charles Demuth and Duncan Grant are mentioned as sharing a personal, private point of view. This work is so out of the closet that the comparison is hard to understand. And finally, even poor latent Tom Eakins is brought up. Better to have considered the case of David Hockney or Janet Fish if she were a gay man. Hockney and Fish are artists who indulge in joy, who epitomize the uniquely American constitutional right to pursuing happiness. The self absorbed narcissism of gay culture and its clichés keep us from Chambers' paintings. If we can get beyond this and accept the true nature of these paintings we will be embraced by innocence."

- Bill Sullivan

Colin Cochran

Colin Cochran is an American artist who grew up on Cape Cod and is based in New York and Santa Fe; for many years, he has made mixed- medium paintings that are characterized by rich surface textures and an experimental use of pigments. Cochran's signature style combines flatly painted passages of color (as opposed to fully modeled details) and watery brushstrokes in basic object-and-ground images that gently abstract their subjects. Among them are plain, boxy houses, animals--especially crows, hens, sheep and fish--and cacti, reduced to simple, recognizable shapes. Cochran likes to evoke the varied textures that appear in nature, even as he cooks up new visual and physical surface effects of his own. He often starts with sheets of rough sandpaper, which he covers with gesso before brushing on coats of oil glaze, then colored, water-based paints. Those watery washes can never be fully absorbed by the support or by intermediary oily layers, but in time, they do dry. Sometimes he rubs raw pigment or charcoal scrapings into the surfaces while they are still wet, so that later, when dry, they are crusty but nonetheless lustrous. (Occasionally he uses an electric hair dryer to speed up the drying process, which creates cracks in the surface.)

Cochran also works on wood, metal and ceramic tile. Normally, his paintings are small and intimate-feeling. It may not be an accident that, in spirit and technique, they recall the strongly massed, broodingly romantic canvases of Albert Pinkham Ryder, who also painted faster-drying atop slower-drying layers so that an underlying application would pull an overlying one apart.

Edward M. Gomez
Art in America

Constance Jacobson

The paintings and prints in this exhibition of the work of Constance Jacobson are a continuation of a series she started six years ago called Almost Biology. This term refers to fabricated scientific imagery, an imagined parallel universe. The fantasy images are not concerned with biological verisimilitude, but they do make reference to cellular communities. During the time she worked on them, her family’s experience with dementia also led her to consider the brain and confront a fear of loss of self. The large watercolors (from the Tome series) that suggest axial brain slices were created by painting only within a brain-shaped stencil that lay on top of the support paper. For many of them, india ink and watercolors were flowed onto the wet paper. For the artist, this seemed to be the right metaphorical strategy to express variations in mood and thought: ideas remaining fluid until they settle into a pattern. There are about thirty pieces in this repeated-motif series, although only a few are shown here.

The small Greymatter monotypes continue the cerebral theme. "Again, I chose materials for their simplicity and ease of use, in this case powdered graphite and oil. I think of these prints as idiosyncratic electroencephalographic recordings — thoughts as fluid virtual matter and as fading memories, thoughts reappearing and connecting with others."

Constance Jacobson

Photograph of La Wilson's Homage to Paul Klee by Michael Frederick.

Ben Butler at John Davis Gallery, Rebecca Allan, History, Use, & Borrowed Landscape curated by Nancy Shaver

2008-06-01T09:40:00.008-05:00

Ben Butler will be exhibiting sculpture and large monoprints in the front galleries and will open the sculpture garden this season with additional outdoor work. The exhibition opens on May 22nd and runs through June 15th with a reception on May 24th from 6-8 pm.

In his words:

"A vaulted dome, during its construction, grows brick by brick with a single purpose. It is concerned with survival, to span a distance, to enclose a space and to remain stable. Its completed form is therefore both essential and necessary, a requirement for existence.

The shape of a wooden canoe reflects a similar purpose. It is curved and pointed and elongated as much by the nature of water as by the intentions of the mind that built it. Like the dome, it is the product of unseen forces, and is willing to conform endlessly to these forces to ensure its own success.

The boat and the dome and so many other elemental structures, from water pitchers to suspension bridges, resonate not because their forms resemble the forms of nature, but because the processes that generated them resemble the processes of nature. My sculptures are meditations on these processes. Rather than compose forms, I compose systems, simple but strict, and work within each to find and build a resonant form. The resulting object, when successful, conveys the elegance of the system immediately while inviting a slower contemplation of that system's relationship to the manifested form."

- Ben Butler

The Carriage House:

The month of May also opens the Carriage House for the summer/fall season. There are three separate shows within the carriage house:

Ground Floor - Group of Gallery Sculptors (Ben Butler, John Van Alstine, Renee Iacone Clearman, Jon Isherwood, Caroline Ramersdorfer, John Ruppert)

Second and Third Floors - Resident Earth, New Paintings by Rebecca Allan

Elevator Shaft and top floor - History, Use, and Borrowed Landscape, a curated show by Nancy Shaver including Stephen Courbois, Taylor Davis, Kenji Fujita, Arthur Gibbons, Robert de Saint Phalle, Nancy Shaver, Steel Stillman, Allyson Strafella, and Mark Wonsidler

Resident Earth

New Paintings by Rebecca Allan

Resident Earth, an exhibition of new works by Rebecca Allan, is the artist’s first solo exhibition at John Davis Gallery. The exhibition encompasses the Allan’s longstanding exploration of rivers and watershed landscapes in the Pacific Northwest and in the Hudson Valley.

“My work arises from a sense of urgency and passion that finds expression through the endeavor of painting. A painter, like any craftsman or scholar, grapples daily with the effort of making something that conveys meaning, and also has a relationship to history and to one’s own milieu. In painting, the deep levels of contemplation, study, and physical effort as well as the struggle against time and with one’s own mortal and psychological limitations can allow for a kind of leveling that is not accessible at other times.

My interest in watershed landscapes stems from a direct and overwhelming response to particular sites that I find most compelling because they are rare and often threatened. The rivers and glacial pools that have been my primary subject for the past ten years are increasingly difficult to find in their pristine state. What I see and experience in the landscape provides a framework for contemplating the awesome power of nature's cycles as well as the interdependence of its ecosystems. I think of the process of painting as a metaphor for reconciling the conflicts and painful circumstances of life. The sense of disorientation that often accompanies the act of painting is also equivalent to that experience hiking along river rapids, and up to the glacial pools in higher altitudes.

My tondos (round canvases) do away with the stability of the horizon, and allow for the suggestion of this vertiginous quality. Working with the tondo occurred to me after seeing the oculus in the Pantheon in Rome. At the same time I was becoming impatient with the modernist treatment of the space of the painting as “continuous” with the surrounding world. For example, the cropping of a dancer’s extended arm at the edge of the frame in Degas’ drawings became a standard mode of composing space vis-à-vis the edges of the rectangle that was revolutionary in the early 20th century. This device had particular aesthetic and philosophical significance. We now seem to take that relationship to the rectangle for granted. I adore Degas' awkward bathers, but I want to investigate new ways of composing that are neither conscious of this modernist device nor linked to the vertical and horizontal axis.

My tondinos (tondos smaller than 12 inches) are created with a technique I call peel collage—applying thin skins of paint, resembling seaweed—that are lifted from my palette."

Rebecca Allan

March 2008

In addition to her landscapes, the gallery will present a selection of the artist's exquisite botanical illustrations of native plants.

Fourth Floor and Elevator Installation:

The top floor of the Carriage House and the Elevator Shaft will provide a venue for an exhibition (curated by Nancy Shaver) titled:

History, Use, and Borrowed Landscape

John Davis’ back building was built in the 1800’s as a carriage house. In 1914-1915 it was a factory for making bomber jackets – war, now it is an art gallery.

The fourth floor

Cement floor, cement walls, cement beams, metal, wood, rope, a visually complicated space, with slanting ceilings of different heights and small windows, letting in views of Hudson’s roofs and electrical wires.

Picasso, Braque, and Leger taught us how to appreciate such decayed beauty in the early 1900’s. We now see that beauty as a constant.

The history of the building and the history of art intertwine to provide the experience of the place.

It is a borrowed landscape for the artwork of a few friends from Hudson, Bard College, and New York City.

Nancy Shaver, March 2008

History, Use, and Borrowed Landscape Artists:

Stephen Courbois, Taylor Davis, Kenji Fujita, Arthur Gibbons, Robert de Saint Phalle, Nancy Shaver, Steel Stillman, Allyson Strafella, Mark Wonsidler.

Larry Brown: Paintings

2008-05-14T09:15:00.004-05:00

The work of Larry Brown will be on display at the John Davis Gallery from April 24th through May 18th. There will be a reception for the artist on April 26th, from 6 till 8 p.m.

This new work is an extension of my long term interest in the extreme nature of oppositions. The radical differences and our increasing awareness of similarities among and between primary forms in science and nature have informed my work for over a decade. The distinctions between the cosmological and the microscopic and/or molecular are very apparent, yet both seem to operate, generally, as analogous constructs. The interspersion and complex union of these seemingly disparate realities, coupled with the infinite possibilities of their simultaneous interaction has been the focus of my concerns and examination.

The visual vocabulary for these new paintings has continued to evolve and progress and now engages a universal narrative concerning likely events, consequences or experiences. The images are derived from science and nature: physics, astronomy, chemistry and earth and atmospheric sciences. These elements are combined and intermixed; fully interacting with the dramas and tangible forms of daily matters. They all serve as an attempt to form a context in which to understand the processes and circumstances of the world in which we live. The subsequent dialogue tends to suggest dynamic situations of crisis, calamity or fate.

I see the work as metaphor, perhaps, for a juggling act of gigantic proportions; a delicate balancing act of reason and ideology that may be out of control, quite dangerous and potentially irreversible.

Larry Brown
April 2008

Yura Adams: Paintings

2008-04-25T12:34:00.005-05:00

The paintings of Yura Adams conjure a specific pictorial world figured by portraits, abstract shapes, landscapes and animals. She paints on boards, wood, canvas, reliefs and cast paper. Her choice of material fluctuates in response to the ground. The work can be oil on a canvas or a wooden tondo fixed in a 19th century steel wheel round. It might also be a collaged concoction of paint, digital drawing and photography applied to a piece of smashed metal. It is united by a singular vision drawn from quotes of her environment and her imagination and painted with both abstract and highly realistic forms in tight composition.

In her own words, “My work addresses a personal vision of expressionism but, to keep the content in its place, I remove my hand occasionally by using chance elements such as risky paint applications or photography. My camera has become a research assistant and muse, but the product that results from the act of painting is what I pursue.

In content, my work relates to contemporary American culture in all its broad and eclectic pooling of generational input and current experiences. It reflects my prairie background made of mixed European ingredients and a life formed by the 50's and 60's culture. It also reflects a life focused on art and specifically my conversation between painting, photography and the computer. "

Paul Hamann: Photography

2008-03-10T12:28:00.005-05:00

The work of Paul Hamann was on display at the John Davis Gallery from February 28th through March 23rd.

Self-taught photographer Paul Hamann has been making black and white images since 1968, exploring through various camera formats and printing techniques, the aspects of the natural landscape.

Inspired by the work of the great landscape photographers and armed with a keen interest in the natural mathematics of order/chaos, Hamann’s photographs seek to reveal the patterns and sequences in the exterior natural landscape in a way that transcends the subject matter and draws us into a space that surrounds the subject of the image.

Working first with a 35mm camera, Hamann began taking pictures with an eye to the details and abstractions that captured the essence of what he saw. He soon began to explore the greater range and depth of large format negatives—first working with a 5x7 camera and later experimenting with 4x5 and even larger formats. The technical requirements of shooting with the larger format cameras as well as the resulting clarity and definition of the images proved perfectly suited to the detail and precision of Hamann’s creative vision.

Susan Sontag said, “The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.” This distinction is certainly true of landscape photography. Although Paul Hamann’s photographs are essentially disclosing their subject they are also in effect constructed by the almost mathematical imagination with which they are composed, exposed and printed. The images themselves also construct a sort of meta landscape, stringing the tension between what is perceived on the surface of the image and what might be hidden behind, around, beneath or within it—the landscape of the interior.

This tension between what is constructed and what is disclosed is at the core of what Paul Hamann’s images are about—revealing the ordered patterns in the chaos, the motion in the perceived stillness, the interior of the exterior.

Kim Uchiyama: Paintings

2008-02-14T15:16:00.009-05:00

The work of Kim Uchiyama will be on display at the John Davis Gallery from January 31st through February 24th. There will be a reception for the artist on February 2nd, from 6 till 8 p.m.

My paintings seek to explore organic structures inherent in nature. Geometric forms, comprised of flattened areas of color, are variously organized by rhythm and interval. These forms delineate the space of the painting, which is stretched and pulled horizontally across a vertically shaped canvas to create tension. Color is limited to mostly primary colors: red, yellow and blue form fundamental color relationships which serve to simplify the structure. The resulting compositions -- visually not unlike a musical staff--become a way for the viewer to experience vibration and resonance.

This past summer at the MacDowell Colony, I discovered a new dimension in my painting. At nearby Willard Pond, I observed the reflection of the surrounding land and sky on the water’s smooth and unadulterated surface. But I also imagined innate movement in the Pond’s depths, mirrored above: the water was itself divided and striated by the diverse crosscurrents underneath. Stripes of color characterized this new combination of surface and depth, and embodied new levels of being, arrived at through observation and contemplation. In choosing to work with primary colors, and by using interval to juxtapose their various relationships, I sought in each work to create a singular and vibratory visual rhythm that would resonate internally with the viewer, creating a parallel for my own visceral experience of the Pond’s inner and outer life.

With gratitude and appreciation for the generous support of the MacDowell Colony, who have helped to make this body of work a reality.

Kim Uchiyama
January 2008

Erin Walrath: Assemblage, Collage

2008-01-17T10:37:00.002-05:00

Limelight, 2007, 4 X 6 inches, mixed-media

The work of Erin Walrath will be on display at the John Davis Gallery from January 3rd through the 27th. There will be a reception for the artist on January 5th, from 6 till 8 p.m.

Some thoughts from Ms. Walrath about her upcoming show:

"Sometimes I am certain that we are being dissolved in the chaos we have created and are destined to be the manufacturers of our own end. And so, in search of hope, I walk around this confused world dowsing for little surges of beauty and significance just below the surface; evidence of anything meaningful. In rescuing, assembling and preserving the things I discover, I hope to breathe a kind of sensitivity back into the world.

The result of this process is a series of shorthand sketches imbued with irony, romanticism and sometimes brutality. Otherwise impotent fragments of material are animated in a new context. This process of assemblage and collage has consumed me for the last few years, resulting in a perhaps temporary abandonment of traditional means of painting, but leading me on into what I feel is a more expressive world of imagery. These collages have given me the courage to wander from the world of literal beauty and landscape into a more obscure but personally meaningful place.

This change is reflected in the environment in which I work; a studio which is in a constant state of cycling between chaos and order. There are drawers of greens, drawers of reds, nails of every size, boxes of corroded metals and of Christs and circus clowns. There is a bin of shredded leftovers to be sorted and an old chest full of patterned retired material that, on some warm flea market afternoon, seemed to stand out against all the others for its valiance and persistent beauty.

So, like a child, I bring my optimism each day and work diligently to bring meaning to this world of fragments. With nature’s example informing my process, I suppose I am a glorified gardener of junk; composting and breaking down fruits of the past into their most basic elements, finding the seed of form or color or meaning which is still laced with potency and planting it in a new context. The result of all of this, is a meditation of sorts and an opportunity to leave the tirelessly pacing beast that is the mind just outside the door."

Don't miss this first show of the season. The Gallery is open from Thursdays through Monday's, 10 till 5:30 p.m.

Happy Holidays...

2007-12-03T10:42:00.001-05:00

Archibald (Age 5) sends his Holiday Greetings.
Everyone from the gallery wishes you a very special New Year.
-John
Photograph by Michael Fredericks

Robert Reitzfeld Paintings

2007-11-18T11:18:00.000-05:00

The paintings of Robert Reitzfeld were on display from November 8th through December 2nd, 2007.

Robert's work is often referred to as both Pop Art and Abstract Painting. To reference his sources of imagery we must look at the fact that we are besieged with an astounding number of images every day. Advertising, movies, mail, computers, newspapers, magazines, television, comics, art and graffiti all contribute to this constant barrage of visual information. This onslaught has contributed to and influenced our daily lives and Reitzfeld's work accepts this fact. He celebrates and uses this imagery to construct his paintings.

The images that reveal themselves in Robert's paintings are all a part of him, his identity, and history and they are auto-biographical. These elements are the basis for his production. Some recent, some from my past. Some clear, some fragmented, others abstracted. The work combines parts of art historical images with images from popular culture, including cartoon, advertising, art deco and art nouveau passages. Together they meld to create a blend that critics have dubbed pop culture.

Robert Edleman wrote, "Reitzfeld explores the relationship between the accidental qualities of abstract painting and the precise design aspects of cartoon illustration… Reitzfeld finds ways to keep his painting rich with associations for both painting and popular culture."

Andrew McDonnell states , "Robert Reitzfeld is a master of Abstract Pop."

John Ruppert, Alison Fox, Suzanne Ulrich and Rosanna Bruno

2007-10-16T09:04:00.000-05:00

John Ruppert
John Davis Gallery, Hudson, New York

The John Davis Gallery will present the following shows from October 11th through November 4th with a reception for the artists on Saturday, October 13th from 6:00 till 8:00 p.m.

Baltimore based sculptor John Ruppert often combines objects from nature with those that are man made. Many of his forms are cast directly from natural materials including fragments of trees, boulders and botanical forms that have been effected by an energy event. He uses his sculpture to evoke tension by bringing the awareness of nature into the urban context.

He sees the casting process as a metaphor to volcanic activity and the origin of the earth. Working with natural objects that have been effected by some kind of force of nature, he presents the cast copy with the original to bring into question different realities. The casting with its history of process compared to the original and its history. With the evidence of the mold being integral to the image, Ruppert also casts the moulds of the mould creating a void of the original object.

The observation and inclusion of natural phenomenon is critical to John's work, making process an integral part of its content. In much of the work he tries to reveal "nature" in the materials. Also guiding the work is the coexistence of natural systems and order… along with our own need to impose order.

Context is essential to these sculptures. The indoor and out surroundings, as well as the relationship to other objects and each other, are in constant flux. In an outdoor setting the sculptures act as a monitor to the surroundings; interacting with the context of the site (with each other ... if there are more than one form) and the various weather and light conditions.

For the past several years, Mr. Ruppert has been stunned by the reckless nature of our government when engaging with the rest of the world and how uninformed it is about the subtle complexities and differences within cultures.

The piece above is titled "Arrogance / A Sanitzed War". “Arrogance" references the cool and distant engagement of this violence and reveals its horror by drawing you in with the visceral nature of the materials while simultaneously repelling you, as when passing the carnage of an auto accident.

Carriage House:

There are five separate shows within the carriage house:
Ground Floor - Group of Gallery Sculptors (Ben Butler, John Van Alstine, Solin-Iacone, Jon Isherwood, Caroline Ramersdorfer, John Ruppert. Second Floor (small rooms) - collages by Suzanne Ulrich and Second Floor (large areas) and third floor - paintings by Alison Fox. Top Floor - paintings by Rosanna Bruno.

Suzanne Ulrich

Suzanne Ulrich makes collage works of cut, torn, painted and pasted papers that have a small intimate scale. The rectangle both dominates and gives structure to the work with attention to the surface detail and layering. With a compositional ordering, avoiding any illusionist references, each piece becomes a composed self-contained presence.

Alison Fox

For this new body of work, Alison Fox makes paintings that use two different formal structuring devices. The first is to uses a vase and flowers as an abstract artist might use the square, using the image as a simple visual form as opposed to a representational sign.

The second formal devise is based on the paintings relationship to the space. The color relationships between the canvases repeat from one floor to the other and play off the palates of the architecture of the exhibition space.

Alison Fox is based in New York City and Hudson, NY. Her work has been exhibited internationally, she has been reviewed in Art in America and The NY Times and her work is in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum and the Charles Saatchi Collection.

Rosanna Bruno

Rosanna Bruno's paintings are about constructing a complex space that is constantly shifting. She tends to work on several paintings of various sizes at the same time in order to keep them open and to better exploit, in a deliberate way, discoveries made in the process of working. There is a constant fluidity and organic development from one painting to the next. Thin layers of color form the primary structure and emotional tone of the paintings. Intense, sometimes garish colors are paired with muted counterparts in unlikely combinations. The result is, at times, as dissonant as it is elegant. Several direct linear marks and scraped passages link up to form a single distinct gesture which can read as a quick movement, or a slow and meandering one.

Rosanna is most interested in the experience of feeling grounded in the work, while knowing that the ground can ultimately fall away beneath her. She sees painting as a guided adventure and within the limitations of the language of abstraction, there are endless possibilities.

Tom Nicol: Helter-skelter, Review by Peter Barton, Register Star, Hudson, New York

2007-09-29T11:30:00.000-05:00

Tom Nicol: Helter-skelter

Abstraction is real, probably more real than nature.

–Josef Albers

There are not many contemporary art galleries in the city of Hudson, so it is surprising the way exhibitions appear in every artistic genre. Case in point is a perfect gem of a show now at the John Davis Gallery which utilizes purely abstract planes to convey its intentions. In a refreshing understated context the artist, Tom Nicol, counters our age of visual clutter and information glut with an affirmation of geometric restraint, expressive color, and clean, open space. His is not an art of obsessive messaging. The paintings speak for themselves and do so by remaining just this side of silence. That is, what you see is what they are, clean and simple.

Of course, this makes it difficult to review because the last thing any writer wants to do is stack up a lot of words in front of such artistic clarity of intention. So much care has been dedicated to distilling away all the unnecessary elements. However, some recognition of the finer qualities of this artists’s process and its purposeful standpoints seems in order because it is really good art and such a rare pleasure to have here on exhibit.

The intelligence of Nicol’s art form lies in this posture of refreshing impressions. So skillfully does the artist manipulate the vocabulary of visual components both on and within the canvases, that little unexpected incidents surprise us again and again. He manages to generate considerable fascination in what psychology terms ‘Aha! incidents.’ These occurrences are so artistically straight forward that they border on humor, candor, and cleverness, and when viewed across all 20 plus pieces in the show, clearly display narrative brilliance.

In this kind of reductive art practice, visual elements are kept at a minimum. This artist operates basically on only two levels in a process that foregoes the entire realm of the superfluous leaving us with only finite essences and definitive resolutions. For example, imagine a red and a blue car; then take away the car which leaves only the colors red and blue for consideration; now you have the clarified concept underlying his investigations.

For this exercise in duality, the artist uses stark white canvases on the one hand, often shaped by cut-away areas, while on the other he employs swatches of color to punctuate these arctic fields with intense incidents that reemphasize the flat planes of the canvases themselves. These two layers of activity, planes within planes, white and multi-color, catch the eye in a curious way. They vie for attention for awhile, shifting perceptual responses back and forth, until we find that we are eventually able to hold both layers in a simultaneous interplay of real and illusory affect; both colors and their white fields become a unified realm like a game board.

This use of color for its own sake has striking implications. It brings out a helter-skelter world in stop motion, chance engagements in universal space, like maybe those cars have bumped into each other. It conveys emotional sensations as well as intellectual circumstances. In one application, blocks of primary color are blatantly present, solid and rich, they cousin-up, bump into each other. In another, the colors are like shades of light, atmospheric, cool and muted, aloof. Once again we find this duality of intention where nothing is certain, nothing is ever as simple as it seems at first glance.

That reduction process happens in the creative enterprise as well. Both of these planes of operation, the shaping of the canvases and the colorations, are motivated by an add-and-subtract principle. Things are taken out or placed in until that exact moment when the painting reaches the state where nothing else is required for a full esthetic impulse to be generated. Only then is the painting complete. This restraint in itself is compelling because in spite of the simple parts, the whole is very intricate.

In a sense, while all the variations are organized by the use of flat planes–planes which include the canvas area itself–the artist’s slight of hand make us believe there is much more going on. It takes a period of adjustment before we realize that we are experiencing the elucidation of only a few principles of geometry, proportion, progression and color shift in infinite variations. Throughout, there is an unmistakable air of sufficiency and attenuated circumstance at the same time.

Amazing how complicated all this sounds in relation to the purely visual effect. And there is more. For the most part the paintings are displayed in that horizontal American way, all in the eye-line or some relationship to it. It is this sense of a horizon, an actual and imaginary horizon, that makes reading the canvases from one to the other and wall to wall so intriguing. The story unfolds with its visual plot twists and rythyms and curious occurrences, transforming the psychological vistas into a tangible terrain. It is where, too, we acquire an appreciation for the artist at work, his mind unfolding and impressing our eyes with both the consistency of process and variety of interpretations.

These properties, and others you will find on your own scrutiny, of course. But there is one small aspect which is more subliminal and to my way of seeing, critical to the whole grouping and this is the way the corners in many instances are slightly rounded. This barely discernable trait greatly enhances the object-like quality of these paintings, removing them, at times fully, from the traditional notion of a painting and proposing a reevaluation of them as things in their own right, doing what things do more than what paintings do.

Here is what I mean when I say that art genres appear in Hudson representing artistic consciousness at many tiers, in the case of Nicol, its most refined. The viewer not only has the opportunity to view art forms often consigned to more rarefied urban venues, but also has the atmosphere in which to form a true understanding of creative principles and practices. Were this exhibit to be in a larger gallery setting such as Chelsea or a major museum context, the subtleties would most likely be overwhelmed, the intimacy lost in the sheer quantity of presentments. But here, in the more relaxed gallery environment, its full luster is allowed to percolate in the mind. If Manhattan represents a chest full of jewels, then Hudson offers the opportunity to enjoy individual gems, like this exhibition.

By Peter Barton