Fran Shalom
Paintings
On Thursday, October
11th, there will be a group of exhibitions for the Main Galleries,
Sculpture Garden and Carriage House. The gallery will have eight solo
exhibitions of painting, sculpture and Installation. The work will be
on display through November 4th with a reception for the artists on Saturday, October 13th from 6:00 until 8:00 p.m.
Main Galleries:
Fran Shalom
Paintings
"Abstract Paintings
Oil on Wood
Color and Form
Playfully Modern"
Fran Shalom
2012
Sculpture Garden
Andrew Dunnill
Andrew Dunnill's exhibition has been extended for another month.
"Essentially abstract
my sculptures employ metaphor to evoke the poetry of an object with
many associations. They grow out of drawing and an intuitive response
to material, form and space. I imbue the sculptures with an intimate,
human and monumental scale in an attempt to emphasize the subject
matter and heighten spatial awareness. In this body of work I am
exploring the inherent qualities that wood has to offer as a material
to influence my sculptural language and sensibility."
Andrew Dunnill
2012
Project Space
Dionisio Cortes and Letitia Ortega Cortes
The Swing, 2012
A two-person in-situ installation by Leticia Ortega and Dionisio Cortes for John Davis Gallery
Rope, wood plank, dry trees, video projection, screen, speakers
Dimensions variable
"The
pumping of a swing is almost a magical process. There is no external
agent driving it higher; the driving is entirely internal. It seems to
defy the laws of physics. Of course it is also magical as an experience
as pointed out by Robert Louis Stevenson in his Child's Garden of Verses:
The Swing
How do you like to go up in a swing
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle
and all Over the countryside
Till I look down on the garden green
Down on the roof so brown
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!
While there is not
much information as to determine when the first person tied a seat to a
rope and swung back and forth like a pendulum (there are images of
swings and riders on pottery from Ancient Greece), we know the swing is
one of the world’s most recognized recreational contraptions.
It seems that by the
late 1700s, children in the United States had developed the art of
hanging rope and wood plank swings from trees to get their daily dose of
adrenaline. Most agree that the concept of swinging is the natural
byproduct of youngsters having fun on barn ropes and pulleys. These
moved out to the swimming hole where a well-placed rope in an
overhanging tree was enough to keep the kids busy for hours.
As the digital world
continues to expand into more and more areas of our lives, a profound
human need to experience and/or re-experience the real and physical has
also arisen. Our current installation is presented as a sort of livable
diorama, a hand-built construction depicting a made-up environment.
This proposed alternative vision of landscape invites and tempts the
visitor to create and/or re-create the magical process of swinging
within a re-imagined reality."
Dionisio Cortes & Leticia Ortega Cortes
2012
First Floor Carriage House
Bruce Gagnier
Bruce Gagnier's exhibition is extended for a second month.
"Working from the
inside out, as a modeler, I have tested the image of the figure,
sometimes too severely, relying on the method of the sketch, while also
being very aware that the norms of the past criticize me. Made up of
many parts recovered from memory, my image of the figure comes from
other times and places but which single time or place exactly I don’t
know. I would like to think that, as they emerge and meet with the
terms of the space around them, they express their own inner life on
the surface of their bodies and that this is the meaning of what might
appear to some as distortion. It is important to point out that
distortions in the figure can lead one to legitimate, real definitions
of experience such as will, faith, and desire.
The turmoil of modeling in clay leaves its own record of itself
behind, and this determines much of the final look and feel of the
figures as people in the flesh. One hopes that the turmoil is
dedicated to the equation of deciphering the relation between the inner
life and its relation to the world and that it does not stray into
aesthetics, particularly those bound to the surface. I feel that, as
the figures emerge from the clay they become involved with their own
ideas about themselves. Their image and its potential for
solidification come into conflict with my own desire for revelation.
I think most of my figures, as I imagine they would want to be, would
prefer to be classical in every way but they know themselves, as I get
to know them, and our situation does not allow this as a legitimate
solution. While acknowledging their imperfections, they also must
fend off the pressures of the world to conform to readymade
identities. As for anatomy I learn it over again for each figure and
must remember the parts as necessary to the action and adapted to the
character performance of each actor. Any thoughts I might have had at
the beginning disappear as they find themselves as a personage and push
me aside. I have always thought that if I make a good figure, then I
will have made a sculpture. The figure is the first and the important
thing.
The figure in contrapposto can assume many positions. The
difficulty is finding a pose that does not repeat or form a quote
around the content of another time, particularly that of beauty or
idealism. It is important that they are experiential. There is not much
space to park oneself in the subject of the single figure. One feels
surrounded by great solutions. There is no escape through exaggeration
and caricature because it too is cliché. Irony in relation to one’s own
seriousness is useful. The most important aspect of the human figure
is that it can move and specifically that in the process of finding
itself, it does move and more to the point, in and out of meanings. My
forms employ the rather de-accessioned method of hill and valleys. The
valleys are especially important because, although they interrupt the
solidity, they bring space into play across the
surface of the form and help put the people as sculpture at a distance
from us. . These are provisional people, each one trying to arrest the
process as I have described it at a moment which will help the next
figure better engage the problems I have tried to outline."
Bruce Gagnier
2012
Second Floor Carriage House
Cynthia Carlson
Portraits
"This exhibit has
selections from two different bodies of work twenty years apart. Both
are portraits. Both have a starting point with an obvious personal
attachment to subject matter, as well as a more naturalistic approach
than most other previous works. Within a fifty year period of making
art, my evolution has often been non-linear stylistically. A
retrospective might resemble a large group show."
Cynthia Carlson
2012
Second Floor Carriage House
Carrie Waldman
The Idea of Sight
"These
paintings are inspired by the idea that images are products of the
mind. Looking is practice for seeing. The brain creates the image,
weaving together optical signals and a wealth of stored information and
experience. Attention builds beauty."
Carrie Waldman
2012
Third Floor Carriage House
Lois Dickson
Deconstruct
"I am interested in the flow of the organic forms juxtaposed against the underpinned
geometry of the picture plane, the interplay of the curve against the straight.
Engaged with an unusual landscape or an unexpected image from the natural world, I
explore the possibilities generated for my work. The resulting paintings and drawings
have been deconstructed and reconstructed over days or years.”
Lois Dickson
2012
Fourth Floor Carriage House:
McWillie Chambers
“I have no obvious
explanation for my life-long fascination with ships. I did not grow up
around a port, no one in my family was associated with shipping or the
sea, nor have I ever traveled on an ocean-going ship. None of these
facts have prevented me from avidly studying the passenger ships of the
last century and the people brought together by this kind of travel.
The present group of paintings of famous ships is recent evidence of
my curiosity."
McWillie Chambers
2012
“Today a rude brief recitative,
Of ships sailing the seas, each with
Its special flag or ship-signal,
Of unnamed heroes in the ships- of
Waves spreading and spreading
Far as the eye can reach,
Of dashing spray, and the winds
Piping and blowing,
And out of these a chant for the
Sailors of all nations,
Fitful, like a surge.
“Song for All Seas, All Ships”, Walt Whitman
Gallery hours are
Thursday through Monday, 10:00 till 5:00 p.m. For further information
about the gallery, the artists and upcoming exhibition, visit
362 1/2 Warren Street Hudson, NY 12534
What a great turnout at the Art League's Open House held
National Juried Exhibition: The Mitchell Gallery, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD. is now accepting entries in all media for Less is More: Small Works in a Great Space. Jurors: Joann G. Moser, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Jack Rasmussen, Katzen Arts Center at American University, Washington, D.C. Submission deadline, February 28, 2013. 
