Micheline Klagsbrun’s latest body of mixed media work on paper originated in a found object: a ledger containing observations of the 1874 Transit of Venus, a phenomenon occurring every 243 years when the planet Venus moves across the face of the sun, twice. Astronomers over the centuries, dating back 5000 years ago to the Sumerians, have tracked her movements and seen her as divine. The Transit of Venus becomes an entry point into a variety of inter-related ideas, celestial and astronomical, scientific and mythological, all of which become themes in the work. The depths of ocean and cosmos are evoked by Klagsbrun's creative use of cyanotype, a 19th-century photographic printing technique that produces deep indigo shades over which she layers drawings in ink and pencil.
Addressing the intersection of art and science through a series of mixed media paintings, the work is an abstract visualization of the processes occurring beneath the forest floor. The Mycelia series incorporate white fibers that represent the Hyphae, fine branching tubes that are important structures required for the growth of tree species. Other pieces are a composite of observational drawings and patterns taken from early botanic studies. Inspired and informed by the writings of British naturalist Robert Macfarlane, the artist is pleased that the show is opening a month after the publication of his new book Underland. The connection between the human and natural worlds and the urgency to address current issues regarding the health and future of our landscape is what Nemirov is interested in communicating through visual works that depict the mystery and complexity of the invisible process that is the mychorrhizal network.
What do you attract? What do you emit? How do you balance the two? Magnetic/Radiating is the exploration of balance between attracting and emitting. Stored in the soft folds. Tucked in the deep tissue of our bones. Woven into our neurons. We carry our pain from trauma, from recent events, from our childhoods and/or from previous lives. Stored like a secret in our bodies. Through introspection, internal processing and arduous work the pain is liberated. The pain is unwound. Detached from our physical body. Energy is released. When cultivated it can be converted to beauty. Radiating into the world.
Jim Herrington is a photographer whose portraits of celebrities including Benny Goodman, Willie Nelson, The Rolling Stones, Cormac McCarthy, Morgan Freeman and Dolly Parton have appeared on the pages of Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Esquire, GQ, Outside and The New York Times as well as on scores of album covers.
Favianna Rodriguez is an interdisciplinary artist, cultural strategist, and social justice activist based in Oakland, California. Her art and praxis address migration, economic inequality, gender justice, sexual freedom and ecology. Her practice boldly reshapes the myths, ideas, and cultural practices of the present, while confronting the wounds of the past. Favianna’s signature mark-making embodies the perspective of a first-generation American Latinx artist with Afro-Latinx roots who grew up in working-class Oakland, California during the birth of internet, and in the midst of an era of anti-immigrant hate and the war on drugs.
In her exhibit, Chromatic Concepts, Megan Padilla explores and studies the perception, depth, and stunning gradients of color through the nature of alcohol inks, creating original abstract pieces that are both dramatic in composition and color. The alcohol inks provide vibrant, colorful effects. It offers little control, while the harmony in color combinations deliver some sense of order through fluid movement and a visual experience to engage the viewers. Padilla is able to manipulate the medium by utilizing various techniques and tools that create colorful, contemporary elements and textures.
Home Fire was composed alongside a series of moves that set Emily Palmquist voyaging from west to east and west again. This fluttering about left Palmquist and her work double-taking for a sense of place and connection. The results invite viewers to step into a narrative of mixed origins where the familiar comingles with the projected, the past, the day-dreamed, and other deviating realms.
Ron Scharfe’s abstract modern art paintings are the result of color and form interacting, and the beauty and movement emerging from their interplay. Scharfe is inspired by exploration. “When you explore, the unexpected happens: color upon color; form upon form…movement creating shapes, which are suddenly rearranged into some other order. Mimicking impermanence, revealing and yet disguising what lies beneath.”
Matt Kroll is a landscape and fine art photographer based in Telluride, CO. His photography is inspired by vast mountains, desert, and ocean landscapes as well as the beauty that comes with the simple and finer parts of the world. From black and white, minimalist photographs to vibrant colorful landscapes, his photography captures a unique view of our world.
In her exhibit, Moons, Ally Crilly explores her relationship with the moon and its power. The beauty, the pull, and the altered state it puts her in. She is particularly curious about indigenous cultures’ respect to the moon. Crilly loves the names given to the different moons by different cultures. She is also learning to love painting portraits. “I find a human with a moon so beautiful and these portraits will try to convey the magic of the moon and our relationship to it.”
Katy Parnello's newest collection, Visceral grew from a desire to create space for her family. Realizing on a deeper level the importance of environment, she created a comforting and inspiring room that provides strength, support and a reminder of what is possible. Her stand alone pieces can be hung on walls or incorporated into the architecture of a building to further support and encourage the sensory experience of life.
Jorge Anchondo lives in Ridgway. He has studied in plenty of places and received plenty of degrees. Although he may be known more for his pigs than his paintings, art has been his life for over half a century. He paints because it provides a space to think and meditate. His paintings do not have anything at all to do with painting as painting, perhaps more with painting as a vehicle to let him wander in another land.
This series was painted as a reflection and re-examination of Elisa Gomez’s studies of nature and traveling. With a much more loose and flowing approach, Gomez wanted to express the connection she has with music and nature and how they feed into one another. She strives to break barriers within this body of work, creating colors and textures that are free of spatial separations and less linear. This series comes from a place where Gomez’s expression loses words and can only be shown through her paintings.
This exhibit is the product of 5000 photos, shot over three years, during all four seasons, in the Hunter College 68th Street subway station. The intent is to visually present the human stories which we all hear in our minds as we scan the images. Carl Marcus is typically known for his large format landscape and portrait photography. He was born in New York City and moved to Telluride forty years ago.
The colorful, humorous, and hopeful fabric works of New Orleans artist Chris Roberts-Antieau will be on display at Gallery 81435 through September 2018. Chris Roberts-Antieau is a self-taught pioneer of machine embroidery. Her main body of work, which she calls “fabric paintings,” are highly sophisticated tapestries created in her signature style of fabric appliqué and intricate embroidery, crafted on a simple Bernina sewing machine. Antieau’s subject matter ranges from joyfully candid cultural commentary depicting unbelievable true stories to more personal reflections on nature, perception, reality, and truth.
As a non-representational painter, Brucie Holler’s work is influenced by the landscape and the idea of a sense of place. The relationship between the sky, water, and land is what compels Holler the most. “I’m always hoping to find a connection that is not too literal, the gray sky and water of winter, the squall lines in the spring, the gathering of the summer storm, the flight path of seabirds, the golden light of autumn that illuminates all it touches.” It is within this artistic paradigm that Holler searches for a sublime and quiet beauty in her paintings.
Known for his monumental figurative paintings, Jason Lee Gimbel renders full figure works through abstraction-expressionist brushwork and vibrant colors. Gimbel’s instinctual approach, random use of color and mark making pushes figurative work to the edges of representation and, in some instances, into abstraction. These painted drawings break up the surface through a visual harmony that disrupts the partially outlined figures, providing the viewer with a complex balance between the merger of the figure and background.
Every spring, Gregory Botts drives across the country from New York City to Abiquiu, New Mexico. Along the way, he visits natural areas and begins his works as plein air paintings. Each year, a narrative emerges in the paintings. A southern route through Florida, Louisiana, and Texas has heavily influenced the past five years. This particular direction points to an imaginative poetry sought out by Botts. The plein air paintings typically emphasize a concern for endangered environments. These paintings also serve as references in Botts’ studio paintings. In his studio, Botts enlarges imagery remembered from his trips and uses his plein air paintings to guide his ideas and artwork. After a simple narrative is formed, a poetry of symbols arises from the repetition and simplification of forms. In this type of painting, the Earth itself has become a character – playing the ideal part of the hero.
Molly Perrault’s Regeneration is comprised of works created entirely out of magazine paper. Using tiny shards of found colors and textures, Perrault strives to create an illusion of oil painted landscapes sans paint. She views her process as cyclical: nature is used to produce the paper in which the magazines are printed, and Perrault assumes her role in both the act of destruction and reconstruction.
Austin Halpern is a fine art photographer captivated by nature’s abstract splendor. With a camera in his hands, Austin says he has become attentive to little miracles like the colors reflected in moving water at dusk and the way street lights glow upon asphalt after it rains.Just as a sweeping landscape photograph is majestic and impressive, so are the big, extraordinary moments in life. And yet, what if we viewed the every day with such attention, contemplation, and wonder? The ordinary occurrences of nature can offer us something immensely intimate and creative. Take a look around you. Is This Water? invites us to see differently, to see more—and possibly even, to make meaning.
