Piecing it Together

From January 28 to March 17, ArtsWestchester will present Piecing it Together, an exhibition of work by eight Westchester-based collage artists who transform broken images and materials into art that challenges the expected and the everyday. Piecing it together is free and on view in the Arts Exchange at ArtsWestchester, 31 Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 12-5pm. An opening reception will be held on Friday, January 27, 2012, from 6:00 to 8:30pm. For more information, call (914) 428-4220 x 306.

Collage – the piecing together of fragmentary, often disassociated, images into a new whole – is a personal and obsessive art form with as much emphasis placed on process as on finished product. It was an important medium in the development of modern art, and by the 21st century, the definition of collage has expanded to include an unimagined range of materials and techniques. The artists on view at ArtsWestchester exemplify this broader definition of collage, working with everything from recycled aluminum cans to album covers to shreds of vintage fabric.

Featured Artists:

Natalya Aikens (Pleasantville, NY) A graduate of the Pratt Institute, Aikens has been a fashion designer, an illustrator, and a costume designer. She was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and is deeply influenced by her heritage. Russian fairytales and decorative traditions intermingle with imagery of her birth city in the series “St. Pete’s Stories,” works made from found paper and vintage fabrics.

Michael Albert (White Plains, NY) Michael Albert has been making art since his days studying business at New York University. A prolific artist, his new wave Pop-Art collages deconstruct familiar objects, logos and text and refashions them into colorful paper tapestries. He is also the author of An Artist’s America, published by Henry Holt & Co.

Glenn Fischer (Yonkers, NY) Glenn Fischer, whose work has appeared on magazine covers and in academic texts on the medium, builds his geometric collages out of carefully cut strips from vintage books and album covers. Patterns play with colors. He holds an MA from New York University and is based in Yonkers, NY.

Rima Grad (Larchmont, NY) Ms. Grad is attracted to the randomness and unpredictability of collage. Her small-scale intimate images pull together fragments of her own photographs from recent sojourns abroad and pieces of billboard advertisements. “Humor and sadness seem to coexist,” she says, and her work is a personal exploration in this reality of the human condition.

Bryan Michael Green (Bedford Corner, NY) Bryan Michael Green holds a BFA and MFA from The School of Visual Arts. His photomontages explore ideas of self-representation and self-therapy. Juxtaposing skulls against flowering orchids, Greene layers one digital painting over another to create imaginary scenes that are at once beautiful and unsettling.

Mary Ann Lomonaco (Larchmont, NY) As an artist, Mary Ann Lomonaco turns to her environment for inspiration, sourcing materials from her everyday life. Labels from pantry items or Crayola crayons are transformed into whimsical collages that take familiar items and turn them from the practical into the decorative. 

Luis Perelman (Yonkers, NY) Luis Perelman has been an active member of the Westchester artistic community for close to forty years. He holds a Masters in Architecture from Columbia University and has exhibited works in a number of the country’s best known museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Neuberger Museum. His “Metallic Quilts” are made from found aluminum cans which he then painstakingly cuts, manipulates and treats before piecing them together into elaborate metal collages.

RSS (Random Studio Shot)

Beauty and inspiration can be found all around us, even in a box of vintage album covers sitting on my studio floor!

New Work

Turnabout
2011
Collage on Panel

A sneak peek at one of five new pieces to be included in my upcoming show opening on Friday, January 27th @ ArtsWestchester!

RSS (Random Studio Shot)

The commission piece for upstate is now completed and I am beginning to focus on my next upcoming show, scheduled for late January of 2012. I'm currently working on a larger piece that is 30" x 30" and using a lot of new material that I found recently at a great secondhand store in Mount Vernon, NY.

An important part of the creative process for me has always been the actual searching for and collecting of collage materials, especially when I am beginning a new body of work. Recently I started incorporating old album covers into the mix and absolutely love the intense color they bring to my work.

Worth Taking A Look

The Jack Fischer Gallery, one of my favorite west coast galleries, has an exhibition called "The Collage Show" that recently opened. Works by John Hudt, David King and Val Britton all stand out as favorites!

RSS (Random Studio Shot)

This is what my studio looks like these days! I have been diligently working on a commission piece for a project with Metropolitan Gallery based out of Austin, TX.

New Work

Almost Like Being There
2011
Paper Collage on Panel
16" x 16"

New Work

Pretty In Pink
Paper Collage on Panel
16" x 16"
2011

Artists Summer Institute (ASI)

I have been selected to attend the Artists Summer Institute (ASI), which is a free, five-day professional development intensive for 55 New York City artists working in all disciplines, offered through a partnership of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Creative Capital.

Held at Building 110: LMCC’s Arts Center at Governors Island, the Artists Summer Institute offers a unique opportunity for artists to step outside their daily routines and focus on their professional skills and artistic goals in bucolic, community setting. The Institute combines the best of LMCC’s Basic Finance for Artists program and Creative Capital’s Professional Development Program (PDP) to provide a more comprehensive range of training, tools and resources for working artists. The Institute is designed to help artists build a path to greater sustainability and self-sufficiency. Participants will receive arts-focused professional training in the areas of strategic planning, verbal communications, marketing and promotion, Internet optimization, financial management and business planning.

Full Circle at Sara Nightingale Gallery

New work to be included in a group show at Sara Nightingale Gallery in Water Mill, NY (The Hamptons).

The opening reception of Full Circle is on Saturday, June 4th from 6 - 8 p.m.

The exhibition is both a roundup and a reunion, and will emphasize the geometric form whose locus of points is equidistant from a given point. Among the highlights and new to the gallery is Barry Underwood, from Cleveland, Ohio, whose photograph, Parade Field is a documentation of an installation he created in the Headlands Center for the Arts during a residency there. Barry recently won a Focus Project award as well as the Cleveland Arts Prize. Alicia Lachance, also new to the gallery from St. Louis, will be appearing in the upcoming Midwest Edition of New American Paintings. The jurors were Julie Rodrigues Widhom and Pamela Alper, curators from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Glenn Fischer of NYC uses paper from vintage books and magazines that he finds in thrift stores to construct his collages.

Artists in Full Circle include:

Malin Abrahamsson
Bill Armstrong
Peter Buchman
Perry Burns
Michael Chiarello
Eric Dever
Cara Enteles
Glenn Fischer
Grant Haffner
Yong Jo Ji and Anna Anatasova
James Jennedy
Alicia Lachance
Christian Little
Christa Maiwald
Karyn Mannix
Alexis Martino
Steve Miller
Lindsay Morris
Vlad Po
Maggie Simonelli
Joseph Stabilito
Barry Underwood
Jeremy Wagner
Gus Yero

New Work

Swing Tall
Paper Collage on Panel
24" x 24"
2011

Open Studio

On Saturday May 14th and Sunday May 15th from 11 am to 5 pm, the public is invited to view the studios and art with the artists at the 8th Annual YoHo Artists Spring Open Studios.

The YoHo Artists Studios are located at 540 Nepperhan Avenue and 578 Nepperhan Avenue, and 222 Lake Avenue in Yonkers, NY, in the former Alexander Smith Carpet Mills Building, an historic landmark. This thriving community of more than three dozen artist...s is one of the largest artist communities in the Greater New York area.

Many of the YoHo Artists are gallery-affiliated and have exhibited internationally. The artists will open their studio doors, giving the public a rare opportunity to learn about their artistic process, from painting to photography, textile art to sculpture, collage to installation. Many of the artists works are for sale at studio prices.

The 8th Annual YoHo Artists Spring Open Studios 2011 is a two day free event open to the public, galleries, museums, journalists, students, scholars, and collectors. There is plenty of free parking in the rear of the YoHo Artists Studios building, and a Municipal Parking Lot with meters across Nepperhan Ave.

I'm located in studio #510, on the 5th floor at 578 Nepperhan Avenue.

Hope to see you there!

New Work

A House for Happy
Collage on Panel
24" x 24"
2011

Cutting Edges: Contemporary Collage

I'm happy to announce that my work has been published along with other amazing artists and illustrators in the book Cutting Edges: Contemporary Collage from the publisher Gestalten (Germany).

In a visual journey this publication explores the rise and the new ways of representation of Collage in the contemporary art world.
You can purchase the book here.

Adam Lister Gallery – Group Show

I have two pieces of work included in a group show titled "Unfamiliar Territories" at the Adam Lister Gallery, Jan 14, 2011 - Feb 21, 2011.

Press Release:

Adam Lister Gallery is pleased to present our first exhibition of 2011, a group show featuring 15 artists, titled “Unfamiliar Territories”.

This exhibit brings together a group of artists that have a common ground of questioning our perceptions of the world within their work. Through modifying, investigating, and engaging in exploration for the purpose of discovery, each artist has formulated their own unique system of communication. The work in this show treads a fine line on the border of reality and imagination, incorporating elements and attributes from both sides. Visual language for these artists is not only a transmission of personal culture, but also a window into alternative views of the universe.

The artists exhibiting in “Unfamiliar Territories”, view the world through a combination of comparisons, calculations, schemes, concepts and recipes. They take the familiar and the obvious, and through a process of reformulation, present it as curious and unfamiliar. This reinterpretation defines itself as a pure, non-functional object introduced into the world through the mind and eyes of the artist.

Artists: Anna Jane Kocon, Bobby Coleman, Chris Duerk, Craig Hill, Eric Bos, Gail Vollrath, Geoff Ault, Glenn Fischer, Gwynneth VanLaven, Michelle Valenton, Phillip Scarpone, Sabine Carlson, Stephanie Rond, Steve Wanna, Travis Childers

For questions:
Email - adamlistergallery@gmail.com
T#- 646.263.7305

Adam Lister Gallery
3950 University Drive
*entrance on North St between University Dr. and Rt.123
Fairfax VA 22030

Studio News

So I finally figured out how to download an interior shot of my new studio space from my Sprint phone. Enjoy!

The Year in Art

The Year in Art

Artistaday

Local artists get creative to bring in buyers - The Riverdale Press

Local artists get creative to bring in buyers - The Riverdale Press

Studio Sweet Studio

I picked up the keys to my art studio this past week on Thursday. While I don't have photos yet to post of the interior space, I did snag one showing what it looks like from the outside.

The studio itself is in the YOHO Center for the Arts, located in Yonkers, NY, in a vibrant and dynamic renovated former carpet factory building. It has a really large window, about a 16' ceiling and gray wood floors. It's essentially a loft space I guess and has that nice strong industrial feel to it.

The building itself is a growing community of almost 50 painters, mixed media, sculptors, and other artists and it looks like open studios are a regular occurrence. In fact, there is one scheduled on Sunday, November 14th from 11-6 PM. I'm not sure I will be moved in by then but my door will be open. Not going to miss an opportunity like that! I'm in Studio #510 on the 5th floor of 578 Nepperhan Avenue if anyone wants to stop by!

Over the next week or so I will concentrate my efforts on moving myself in. As for the direction my work will now take, I still haven't a clue, but I'm excited to find out. I decided to hit some thrift stores today to see if I can find some old books to help inspire me. Found this great online thrifting community which has a national thrift store directory!

I have to say I feel truly grateful for this new space to work in. It seemed to have happened suddenly and organically, which feels like the Universe has had (and still does) it's hand in all of this.