Atlanta, Part 1: My "Diamond Life"

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If you’re in Atlanta between now and May 28, hop on over to the Marcia Wood Gallery in Castleberry Hill.  My fourth solo show with the gallery, Diamond Life, is in the front exhibition space. Nancy Baker’s solo, New/Improved, is in the middle, and Mark Bercier’s solo, Youth, is in the gallery annex next door.

Rather than try to cram everything into one post, I’m going to write about the shows sequentially over the next week, along with a peek at some of the other things I saw and did while I was in town. I’m starting with my show (hey, it’s my blog!).

To orient you to what you’re seeing, we open with a couple of panoramic collages.

Above: From the entry looking into the gallery

Below: Looking back toward the door

A more realistic view of the entry, with Diamond Life 5 and Diamond Life 6, left, each 2011, encaustic on panel, 25 x 25 point to point

Peeking around the corner, six gouache-on-paper paintings from the series, Soie

I made the gouache paintings last summer after having made my first intaglio print in 20 years, an emerald square turned on its axis (story here). The print inspired a turning point in my practice. Shortly thereafter I painted a series of 22 diamond-shaped grids in gouache on paper—also called Soie, six of which you see framed here. Then, as I completed new small color fields in encaustic, I hung them with the same 45-degree orientation. I’m thinking of them now as chromatic geometries rather than color fields. Light hits the diagonal grain differently. Color appears deeper and more luminous. Formally, the diamond shape asserts itself, pushing rigorously outward while remaining resolutely poised. 

 

I shot this from the middle of the gallery, with the doorway to my left. The large painting on the middle wall is Romb

Soie 18, 2010, gouache on Arches, 22 x 30 unframed (about 25 x 34 framed), is the the painting just to the right of Romb in the image above this one

With the gouaches at my right shoulder I panned around the gallery toward the entry

Rummu, 2011, encaustic on panel, 32 x 32 inches

New view added. This photograph shows the color relationships and surface texture of Rummu really well. Photo: Helen Ferguson Crawford

Panning to the door

Romb, 2011, encaustic on panel, 45 x 45 inches point to point



From the front gallery we look into the middle space where Nancy Baker's show is up. We'll visit that show in the next post, along with Mark Bercier's in the gallery annex, a peek of which is below. Click here for post

Coming up:  A bit of a travelogue around Atlanta, including the High Museum (Ellsworth Kelly painting pictured here), the Goat Farm, and pics of some of the folks I spent time with over the weekend. Click here for post

Marketing Mondays: On Your Own Terms, A Final Baker's Dozen

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Gallery representation is not for everyone. Artists are fully capable of creating careers in more independent ways, especially with the options afforded by Cyberspace.  If a gallery is your goal, your independent successes may make you a more attractive partner for an artist/dealer relationship. Today I offer you the third and final baker's dozen, on having a career on your own terms. Be sure to read through the Comments to reap the benefit of a good deal of collective wisdom.

4.13.09: Promotion

An artist posed this question: “I was wondering about self-promotion versus promotion through a gallery. Do these work together or do they conflict? What are the boundaries?”

6.8.09: Defining Success

The art world paradigm is not the only viable option.

6.29.09: Career Q&A with Jackie Battenfield

My interview with the author ofThe Artist’s Career Guide. Battenfield is an artist who has also founded and run a gallery, and who now teaches career issues--in addition to having an international career.

11.16.09: You’ve Been Asked to do a Commission

The commission process varies widely, because there are many different kinds of commissions—everything from major corporate jobs with architect, consultant and dealer involved, to the small private project that takes place between artist and client.

2.8.10: Do You Need a Gallery?

Midcareer artists ask "How do I get into a gallery?" but many emerging artists have a different question: "Do I need a gallery?"
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5.17.10: The Sofa
“What if you don’t want your work to go over the sofa?”  We want to sell. We don’t want to sell out. So beyond that specific piece of furniture, "the sofa" becomes a metaphor for any commercial transaction we feel will debase our work.
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7.12.10: How Did You Find a Gallery?
Recently I recommended an artist to one of the galleries I work with. The dealer liked the work, and the artist is now scheduled for a show. Just like that.  For artists who are sending out package after package, this anecdote is no doubt infuriating. But the fact is that more artists find shows through networking than postage.

2.22.10: The Studio Visit

Don’t pin all your hopes on an art professional’s visit. But prepare anyway. Related: Selling Out of Your Studio

9.13.10: Your Board of Directors

 We're not corporations but we are sole proprietors, and we can all be helped with feedback and good advice. 

1.10.11: “Where Can I Show?” (Part 1)

Think a gallery is the only place to show? Think again

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1.17:11: “Where Can I Show?” (Part 2)

Entrepreneurial spirit has led to many respectable opportunities: apartment galleries, flat files, curated online projects and more.

2.07.11: The Gallery Contract

A contract is typically written to protect the writer of the contract. So if a gallery presents you with the contract, you should know that the document is first and foremost designed to protect the gallery.
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2.21.11: A Portfolio of Representation

A dealer doesn’t represent just one artist. Why should you have just one dealer representing you?

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3.7.11: "Should I Do An Artists' Fair?"

At the recent Pool Art Fair, held at an East Side hotel during Armory Week in New York City, I took the time to talk with some of the exhibiting artists to see if or how their assessment differed from my own. I went on Sunday afternoon, the fourth and last day of the fair.

If you have found this or other Marketing Mondays posts useful, please consider supporting this blog with a donation. A PayPal Donate button is located on the Sidebar at right. Thank you.

As the World Turns

Persephone on her throne (or chariot?), ascending once again from the Underworld.  Image of a Southern Italian vessel, ca 460 B.C.E.,  from the Internet via the Pergamon Museum, Berlin

What I love about Easter is not the Christian holiday, but that it coincides with Passover and that both religions coincide with a time from the Pagan past in which Earth's rebirth was celebrated each year.

In Greek mythology, when the maiden Persephone was out gathering flowers one day, she was abducted by Hades, ruler of the Underworld. Demeter searched for her daughter but to no avail. In her grief, this life-giving goddess of agriculture and fertility turned the world barren and cold.

Knowing his people could not exist in such a state, the all-powerful Zeus forced Hades to release Persephone, but not before the nefarious ruler tricked the young woman into eating a handful of pomegrate seeds, thus assuring her return to him. (The Fates had decreed that anyone who consumed food in the Underworld was doomed to return to it.)

When Persephone arose, the earth began to warm. Flowers bloomed and crops began to grow. Demeter, joyful at the longed-for reunion with her beloved daughter, turned the land verdant and fecund again. And when Persephone descended to Hades in the autumn, the earth once again became barren and cold, a cycle that ever was and ever may be.

I love this story, which has its roots in the agrarian culture of Bronze Age Greece (and probably long before that). Of course the ascension of the child to a higher realm is a familiar scenario, but I am always moved that here it is told in terms of mother and daughter, a reminder that culture has not always been defined from a male point of view. The lovely Persephone was Proserpina in the land of my Magna Graeca-Etruscan-Roman-Italian forebears, so I feel a special kinship to the myth, which was a religion, the Eleusinian Mysteries, long before the son ascended to his father.

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As for the egg, well it symbolizes new life in every culture, from the ancient Persian Nowrūz, the spring equinox, when eggs were decorated and gifted, to the pysanky, Ukranian Easter eggs, below.

The tradition of painting eggs with a beeswax resist exists through Slavic countries. These are Ukranian pysanky

But, wait, there's more. The fragments below are engraved ostrich eggs that date to some 60,000 years ago in Africa. An article in Science Now suggests that our common ancestors had the capacity for symbolic thinking, and that these shards suggest "the earliest evidence of the existence of a graphic tradition among prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations.” 

Something to think about when you bite into your chocolate egg

The Easer Bunny didn't bring these: shards from engraved ostrich eggs dating from about 60,000 years ago in Southern Africa

"Less" is More

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Barbara Gallucci, Less, from the exhibition,  LESS and More LESS, at Carroll and Sons Gallery, Boston, through April 30

Finally, a take on the over-produced Robert Indiana sculpture that I can live with. Not only that, there's the lovely suggestion that paring down is the green thing to do. More info here.  Is it too corny to say that I

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Marketing Monday: Demystifying the Art World, Another Baker's Dozen

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There's a reason for my "bakery" offerings last week and this (and next): I've been focused on exhibitions of my own. But I take seriously my commitment to Marketing Mondays, so I've rounded up another baker's dozen of posts, this time pulling back the curtain on how the art world works. If you're new to Marketing Mondays, this information will be fresh. If you've been with me for a while, it's an edited package worth re-reading.

3.2.09: The Art Network

You know the old saw, It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. The who you know part is certainly true for us. The art world is full of referrals.

5.18.09: The Vanity Gallery

This was a big one. A vanity dealer threatened to sue, and 72+ readers weighed in with their stories, and comments continue to be posted. A related link: Co-op Galleries, Yes. Vanity Galleries, No.

7.06.09:  What Artists Should Know About Running a Gallery

Want the real inside scoop on what art dealers' concerns are? New York dealer Edward Winkleman has written a book for dealers, How To Start and Run a Commercial Gallery, that every artist should read from cover to cover--especially the chapter on How to Find Artists.

10.12.09: How Dealers Are Considering Artists Now (Part 1)

While the Dow is edging up and there seem to be more red dots in the galleries, the art world is still reeling from the recession. I talked to 12 dealers from around the country.

10.19.09: How Dealers Are Considering Artists Now (Part 2)

Do your homework. Keep networking. Galleries are split between those that look at unsolicited packages and those that don’t. Best advice here: Read the gallery’s submission guidelines. What’s equally relevant now: Understand that times are as tough for the dealer as they are for the artist. Keep working. Don’t give up. .

1.18.10: “How Do I Get a Curator to Look at My Work?”

Over the past few years, I've spoken with a number of museum curators about my work. Other curators, over the course of several semesters, have spoken to a careers class I teach. Some advice from the curators themselves.

1.25.10: A Curator Connects the Dots

Mary Birmingham talks about how she selected the artists for a show she curated at the Hunterdon Art Museum. Hint: The more visible you are, the more likely a curator is to see your work.

3.1.10: Demystifying the Art World

Dealers struggle. Critics struggle. And very few people are making big bucks. This post started with a comment Jerry Saltz made on his Facebook page and developed from there.

4.26.10: The Dealer’s Commission

The dealer is not cutting into my price. She is taking 50 percent of the retail price, which typically gives each of us the money we need to keep doing what we do.

8.2.10: It Takes a Village to Have a Big Career

If you look at the artists who have big careers—I mean those big-ass international careers in the bluest of the blue-chip galleries and on the covers of the few art magazines left—you realize they have not done it alone.

8.30.10: Let’s Talk Prices

If you’re thinking about how to price your work, you have a lot to consider. Start here.

9.27.10 and 10.4.10:  The Academic Gallery, Part 1 and Part 2

One of the great opportunities for unrepresented artists, academic galleries offer a place to exhibit--indeed, to learn to exhibit--in a venue where you're freed from the pressure of sales. I spoke with Patricia MIranda and Jane Allen Nodine, artists who direct institutional galleries.

11.29.10: Six Degrees of Representation

So you’ve got a painting in a gallery show for the first time. Or a new gallery has taken a work of yours to an art fair. What’s your relationship to the gallery? Are you represented? What do you owe the gallery and what does it owe you?

If you have found this or other Marketing Mondays posts useful, please consider supporting this blog with a donation. A PayPal Donate button is located on the Sidebar at right. Thank you.

Through the Roof

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What you won't see on the Met roof this summer: Louise Bourgeois's Maman (here being installed at the Tate Modern in London). Image from the Internet

I love the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I love its roof, officially the Iris B. and Gerald Cantor Roof Garden. Take the special elevator to the roof and you walk out onto an aerie overlooking Central Park, with the sleek buildings of midtown to the south; the storied apartment buildings of Central Park West: The Dakota, the Beresford, the San Remo (and some fabulous sunsets); and more immediately, the limestone structures of Fifth Avenue to the East.

Once the weather turns warm, sculpture is installed on the roof, where it remains through October. It's the neatest slice of art, architecture and real estate in the city. I've written about two installations--Frank Stella and Roxy Paine--and I loved Doug and Mike Starns's Big Bambu last year; I even took the tour, which allowed me to climb up into the structure.

This year, according to the press release that has just arrived in my in box, the British sculptor Anthony Caro will be up there.  Says the Met proudly: "Anthony Caro on the Roof will be the 14th consecutive single-artist installation on the Cantor Roof Garden." 

It will also be the ninth consecutive male-artist installation.

I have finally gone through the roof! In those 14 years there have been exactly two women: Magdalena Abakanowicz and Coosje van Bruggen (the latter in concert with her partner, Claes Oldenberg). Here's the list from Wikipedia: 

"Every summer since 1998 the roof garden has hosted a single-artist exhibition. The artists have been: Ellsworth Kelly (1998), Magdalena Abakanowicz (1999), David Smith (2000), Joel Shapiro (2001), Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen (2002), Roy Lichtenstein (2003), Andy Goldsworthy (2004), Sol LeWitt (2005), Cai Guo-Qiang (2006), Frank Stella (2007), Jeff Koons (2008), Roxy Paine (2009) and Big Bambú by Doug and Mike Starn (2010).

These are all fine artists--well, except for Koons--but let me ask you: Where is Ursula von Rydingsvard? Where is Chakaia Booker? Where is Maya Lin? Jackie Ferrara? Jackie Winsor? Lila Katzen? Alice Aycock? Mary Miss? Barbara Chase Riboud? Sheila Hicks? Beverly Pepper?

Shall I go on?

Where is Rachel Whiteread? Where is Nancy Azara? Cady Noland? Sherrie Levine? Janine Antoni? Nikki de Saint Phalle? Barbara Hepworth? Rebecca Horn? Pae White?

And where, for the love of god, is Louise?

Marketing Mondays: A Baker’s Dozen of Negativity

Ah, the drama of our art lives! I don’t mean to make light. There’s nothing funny about the obstacles we have to overcome as we claw our way up to the mezzanine. In looking over two-plus years of topics, I realized I’ve talked quite a lot about the negative side of things (and so have you, judging by the comments). Still these posts on negative issues have useful information and, for the most part, a positive spin.  I'm liking this roundup idea so much that for the next couple of weeks, as I juggle some exhibition openings and travel, it will be the format for Marketing Mondays.

1.26.09: Rejection: Get Over it

Rejection might seem like a downer of a way to start the Marketing Monday series, but the hope-dashing, nerve-breaking, thanks-but-no-thanks wall that stands between an artist and success is a looming constant. There’s no easy way to deal with it except to experience it, get over it and move on. Rejection is never pleasant, but until you get over it, you can never move on. 

2.23.09: Why Haven’t I Heard Back?

You sent submission packages to a few dealers. It’s been months and you haven’t heard back. Or maybe it was an e-mail with a few j-pegs that got no response. You curse them. How busy can they be? It’s just one submission per dealer, after all.

3.16.09: How Not to Approach a Gallery

“I am not ‘To Whom to May Concern,’” says a Westchester dealer. “If you don’t know whom to address, you haven’t done your homework.”

7.13.09: How to Reject a Gallery

“I was wondering how to tell a gallery you are not interested in being represented by them or being part of their upcoming programming. Doing it gracefully is proving to be quite difficult. How much info should you give, how much is too little or too much?”

8.17.09: Isms and Phobias
I used to have a buddy who constantly complained about the art world numbers. "Women are getting all the shows," he'd whine, after one exhibition got a couple of reviews. Or, "Artists of color are getting all the attention," when one African-American or Hispanic artist (usually male) would rise to prominence. And yet, when we visited exhibitions together, the numbers remained overwhelmingly in favor of men like himself--what Robert Hughes described (sarcastically) as "the pale penis people."

8.31.09: The Negative Review

The pain or disappointment caused by a less-than-positive response to your work can be great, especially after the effort in creating, delivering and installing a show. Especially after the press release and postcards you or your dealer may have sent to critics with high hopes and fingers crossed. Especially after the euphoria of the opening, when you're surrounded by enthusiasm and kind words. 

3.8.10: When Your Dealer Won’t Tell You Who’s Bought . . .

 “The gallery that represents me does not want to give me the names of, and information about, the people who have bought my paintings. It's gotten so I am afraid to even ask. I understand their rationale but am wondering what you think of that practice. I have lost track of my work.”

5.24.10: When Bad Things Happen to Good Dealers

Artists often talk about the very real difficulties they’ve had with dealers or consultants—late payments, non payments, damaged work, suddenly closed galleries—you know the list. Well, it’s not only artists who get the go-around.

6.14.10: Bitterness and Sour Grapes

Two flavors that artists deal with are sour and bitter: We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t taste them sometimes, but you don’t want to get to the point where you find them poisoning your practice and overtaking your life.

8.10.10: Five Queries That Got Dumped (and Why)

I have a dealer friend who forwards me some of the artists' e-mail inquiries she receives. She does this partly, I think, because she has to share them with someone (you can't make this stuff up), and partly because she knew that eventually they would make their way into a Marketing Mondays post as a cautionary tale.

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11.22.10:  “Russian Nesting Dolls of Disappointment”

It's OK to want more. That's part of setting goals and working hard. You know how it is: All you want is to get into a juried show. Then all you want is to get into a gallery. Then have a solo at the gallery representing you. But we also need to develop the capacity to appreciate what we have achieved. Without that appreciation, you get trapped in what artist Ted Mineo called "the Russian nesting dolls of disappointment."

1.24.11: Burning Bridges

Burning bridges is a radical act. Sometimes it's a foolish act, based on hubris or anger. Sometimes it's a desperate act, when other measures have failed. And other times it's a necessary strategy to put a distance between you and those who do not have your best interests at heart.

2.14.11: A Contract I Didn’t Sign

This post reminds us of the importance of not signing a contract unless and until we are comfortable with what we are signing. It also reminds us that not every bit of visibility for us is necessarily helpful.

If you have found this or other Marketing Mondays posts useful, please consider supporting this blog with a donation. A PayPal Donate button is located on the Sidebar at right. Thank you.

"Conversations," an Eight-Artist Exhibition at the R&F Gallery, Kingston, New York

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Conversations began as an online exchange between Laura Moriarty and myself about the dialogue that exists between an artist’s primary means of expression and the work s/he does on paper. As artists who work in the very tangible medium of encaustic—Moriarty as a sculptor, me as a painter—our personal dialogues with our work can be demanding, even physical. Working on paper, which for us is collage, monotype, and painting with water media, allows for a lightness and freedom in the give-and-take of process. Sometimes ideas flow between mediums; sometimes separate bodies of work emerge. 

In the way that conversations between artists often do, ours expanded beyond the personal to discuss the visual discourse we saw in the work of other artists.  "Wouldn't it be great to do a show on this idea?" we asked each other, and an exhibition began to take shape. Because our initial chat was on Facebook, it spread out electronically into a network of URLS and emails. We assembled a tantalizing selection of images. Looking at the dialogue within each artist’s work, we speculated on the larger conversations that might take place if all the work were installed together.

Panoramic view as you walk up the stairs. We're going to walk around the corner in a moment

George Mason

Bright and Clear, 2010; hydrocal plaster, burlap, casein, gold leaf; 49.5 x 37.5

Because Moriarty is the director of the Gallery at R&F, our speculation became an invitation to six artists whose work we felt had affinities; and because of the way the exhibition came about, we co-curators decided to include our own work.  There are many conversations in this exhibition. No doubt you will “listen in” on some that we have not heard, such is the nature of personal perception. Let me show you around.

Looking into the gallery you see Steven Alexander's painting and works on paper on the far wall, a Moriarty sculpture on the stand, and my Silk Road paintings on the wall at right. The panoramas below show you the entire gallery in two views 

From the doorway, starting at left: Nancy Azara on the left wall; two by Pam Farrell, one by George Mason, Steven Alexander to the end of the far wall; Grace DeGennaro on the right wall; two Moriarty sculptures on stands 

Turning clockwise, with the sculpture to orient you: three by Grace DeGenaro, a Lorrie Fredette installation, my paintings and, through the doorway, a work on paper; two by Nancy Azara (click on either or these panoramic shots for a larger image)

Grace De Gennaro

Indigo Series #38, 2010, watercolor on Arches; Weaving, 2010, oil on linen; Indigo Series #27, 2010, watercolor on Arches

 DeGennaro: Weaving, 2010, oil on linen; 34 x 21 inches

Grace DeGennaro’s paintings and works on paper seem to occupy a space that hovers between the corporeal and the ethereal. Working symmetrically she paints archetypal forms which, she feels, “transcend both language and culture.”  Her personal iconography draws from elements in our world culture and consciousness: mandalas, the Chakras, Byzantine mosaics, ethnic textiles and more. Her dialogue would seem to be between materiality and spirituality, each at their most profoundly beautiful.

De Gennaro in conversation with Lorrie Fredette, whose installation is below. While De Gennaro's work reaches for consciousness on a higher plane, Fredette's is inspired by what's under the microscope

Lorrie Fredette

Proper Limits (Truth), 2010; mixed media with discharged paper, wax, resin, soil and muslin

Lorrie Fredette’s sculpture is inspired by the growth and movement of organic systems.  In this installation, Fredette has integrated sculptural forms—waxed fabric stretched over a metal armature, along with cast wax and soil forms—against a paper backdrop depicting what seem to be life forms under a microscope. The unlikely inspiration for her work is fearsome, like the Borrelia burgdorferi (Lyme disease) shown here, but Fredette has so thoroughly subverted the source material that any discussion centers not on illness but on life. Still, she has upended the scale so that the microscopic looms over a row of tiny houses.

Installation view: Moriarty, De Gennaro, Fredette

Installation view: Moriarty, Alexander, DeGennaro

Installation view: Alexander, Moriarty

Steven Alexander

Mother Tongue #12, 2010, acrylic on linen, 20 x 16 inches

Steven Alexander’s work is the most seamless between mediums. In his paintings on linen or paper, geometry is distilled into slender rectangles—pure form—centered in color fields that tend toward a secondary or tertiary hue. The dialogue in this work seems to be one of empathic communication, not only between and among the works, but between the works and their viewer.  These are painting that connect wordlessly to the triad of  eye, heart and mind. A patinated surface, slightly pitted and softly matte, imbues the work with surprising physicality.

Laura Moriarty

Uplift, 2011, encaustic on panel, 16 x 16 x 9 inches

On a more material plane, Laura Moriarty’s sculptures are inspired by plate tectonics. Created through the slow build-up and erosion of stratified wax, these sculptures are illustrations of imagined geologic processes that can be read like core samples or topographical models. Her works on paper (installed on the outer wall of the gallery and shown farther down this post) are abstractions on the Compass Rose, composed of collaged shards of road maps. “You are here,” they suggest—here being an entirely elusive location.

Installation view, from back: DeGennaro, Farrell, Mason

George Mason

At Anchor in the New World, 2010; hydrocal on burlap, and casein paint; 18 x 17 inches

For George Mason, listening is the part of the conversation that interests him. “It turns out that having an idea may be less important than being open to the inquiry for its own sake,” he says. Mason’s inquiry leads him to complex patterns; a reference to the language and symbols of ancient cultures, real or imagined; and a rich and tactile materiality.

Indeed, materiality generates its own tête-à-tête: wax and wood, plaster and metal leaf, acrylic suggestive of wax, wax suggestive of fabric, fabric and paper, paper pressed into oil or rubbed over wood. There are many “voices” here.



Pam Farrell

Waterwall 4678, 2010, oil on pnel 12 x 12 inches

Pam Farrell’s cascades of soft color are reticent. Memories, traces and vestiges are what she brings forth from those chromatic veils, or perhaps tucks behind them. Her emotional dialogue is “between what is known and what is not.”  Formally, Farrell creates a reductive image that is built up from thin layers of paint in muted hues. A visceral eye-to-eye takes place when she places mulberry paper onto the surface of a still-wet painting to pull a monoprint—a trace that remains a lasting imprint. (You'll see a monoprint farther down the post.)

Installation view: Moriarty, foreground; DeGennaro, Azara

Nancy Azara

Black Castle Series; rubbing with collage, oil pastel, paint, pencil on mylar; five sections, 39 x 123 inches

Broken Red Leaves, carved and painted wood with palladium leaf and encaustic, 43 x 11 x 2 inches

 

In Nancy Azara’s work, the iconography of one deeply pigmented leaf, repeated, finds its way into carved wood and onto paper into which Azara has rubbed the image of her carvings. The artist’s conversation might thus seem to be a closed dialogue except that the subject, nature refined to the point of spirit, wafts into the consciousness of the viewer, engendering a conversation for which words seem wholly unnecessary.



Installation view: Moriarty, foreground; Azara, Mattera

Installation view: Mattera, Azara

Joanne Mattera

Silk Road 136, 2010, encaustic on panel 17 x 17 inches

Soie 5, 2010, gouache on Fabriano, framed 26 x 34 inches

While the diamond shape that appears in DeGennaro’s work may allude to spiritual wisdom, in my work it is simply a chromatic geometry.  Light hits the diagonal grain differently. Color appears deeper and more luminous. Formally, the shape asserts itself, pushing rigorously outward while remaining resolutely poised. There is a textile sensibility in my work; I am from a family of tailors. The modernist grid and the warp and weft of cloth carry on an intimate conversation of their own.

Installation views, above and below: Stepping out of the gallery and around the corner, we come to Moriarty's works on paper, waxed map shards that are collaged and pinned. Farther down the wall you glimpse Farrell's and Mason's monoprints

Installation view from the other end of the wall: Mason's and Farrell's monoprints, with a view below of one of Farrell's works photographed before framing

Pam Farrell

Soft Parade 0012, 2010, monoprint/oil on mulberry paper, 15 x 19 inches unframed

Conversations  runs through May 14, when the artists will gather for an informal discussion at the Closing from 2:00-4:00 p.m. You are invited. The R&F Gallery is at 84 Ten Broeck Avenue, Kingston, about 100 miles up the Thruway from New York City. The gallery is located within the factory occupied by R&F Handmade Paints (ask for a tour of that facility if you're interested). Gallery hours are Monday-Saturday, 10:00-5:00. For more information call 845-331-3112.

You will find additional images on my schedule blog.

Post Script: In her blog post Nancy Natale takes her readers on a tour of the R&F factory, which is down the hall from the gallery. Walk down the hall in the image below and then click here: Art In the Studio .