Tag Archives: visual art

Francis Pavy

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Artist’s Statement

My work stems from the southern narrative storytelling tradition. Common subjects for me are the folk-life and folklore of the local people juxtaposed against the fabric of everyday American life. I am particularly interested in music, musicians and the musical traditions of Louisiana and the South.I strive to capture, reflect and inspire the universal by touching the immediate. A broad spectrum of people identify with my work because they can relate to the sublime, ordinary, mundane and iconic imagery I create. By touching the local or accessible experience they are able to touch the universal.

A lifelong resident of Louisiana, Francis X Pavy was born in Lafayette on March 2, 1954. He graduated in 1976 with a fine arts degree in sculpture from The University of Southwestern Louisiana. In 1977, Pavy started working in a glass shop, making leaded and beveled glass windows. He opened his own glass studio in 1982. In 1985, he adopted painting as his primary medium, but he continues to work in many other media as well, including prints, constructions, sculpture, glass, video, and installation.

Brandon Graving

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Artist’s Statement

My work has a natural immediacy, like a snapshot, capturing the chemical reaction of liquid inks as they are pushed into paper with a press, or sculptures that move with ambient air currents around them, interacting with the viewer.

I am interested in new realms within the field of unique prints via innovative technique and scale. The deeply embossed prints begin with an elaborately textured matrix consisting of natural forms, including aerial views of landscapes. I love the sensitivity of a wet piece of paper which perfectly records the wild and varied objects and inks, allowing saturation deep into it — or thick, reticulated ink poised on its surface, translating the moment the chemistry is caught and transfixed into this sculptural monoprint. The visceral quality of large scale prints offers a highly textured physicality only possible with the specialized equipment we have built for this purpose.

After years of bronze casting, my interest in paper has turned to casting trees with paper. Using crepe myrtle trees felled during hurricane Katrina, I form the spines of these sculptures with archival abaca paper over the trunks and branches, with the help of a structural steel armature. Comprising a series called Wonder, these sculptures are finished with individually torn translucent vellum tendrils. Some have drops of crystal at their extremities, which hold points of light, and defy gravity, like beads of water traveling along strawberry leaves. While these appear fragile, the abaca paper is incredibly durable, adding to the work’s conceptual information. With close inspection, the surface reveals the individual placement of fingertip-like pieces of abaca, forming a complex, textured surface. The kinetic aspect of these works allows them to exist in space, as we do. Animated by the viewer’s ambient air movements, they become directly involved with their audience, while producing a dance of shadows.

My work attempts to elicit an experience rather than recording or depicting an object or place; ideally, communicating aspects of being human, as I continue to grapple with that complexity.

Brandon Graving is a sculptor and printmaker, best know for her large-scale monoprint/sculpture installations. Graving’s 10.5 foot by 32 foot Ephemera: River with Flowers is the largest monoprint ever made by a single artist, and was on view at the New Orleans Museum of Art when the city was hit by Hurricane Katrina. Purchased by the Frederick R. Weismann Collection, this work has recently been exhibited in more than a dozen museums nationally. Graving’s work is in numerous private and public collections including the New Orleans Museum of Art. Her many grants and awards include the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award. A few years ago, she consolidated her print studios to found Gravity Press Experimental Print Shop, and has been working for the past four years on woodcut prints with S. Hannock and Sting which will open at the Metropolitan Museum in January, 2018.

Jodi Colella

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Artist’s Statement

Using soft materials and found objects, I create tactile objects and installations about human relationship. I redefine needle art techniques and transform the everyday into works of contemporary relevance. There is a presence of the maker in the shape of thousands of stitches, hand-wrought forms and, as in my collaborations, the orchestrated actions of many. Influenced by my travels, I draw from historical and cultural experiences around me that extend from my neighborhood to time spent in the Far East. Impressions from a residency in Shenzhen China, where citizens are experiencing radical social changes, resulted in works about the universal and confusing contradictions of identity and place. A fellowship in Thailand found me sharing a mudhouse with scorpions, centipedes, and more. These strange bedfellows feared me as much as I did them, yet over time a mutual respect developed as we each accepted the other – with the realization that neither my multiple-legged roommates nor myself are alone but part of a larger whole.

The exhibit Unidentifed Woman engages with the collections at Historic Northampton and the forces that have shaped women’s identities since the 18th century, by fusing personal experiences and ideologies into sculptures that contribute to the progress of both art and feminism. For this project, I strove to create headwear that infers an inner vitality and self awareness on the wearer – thereby redressing fashion’s oppression.

Headwear has long played a role in indicating the class, status and occupation of the wearer – enforcing conformity and erasing individuality. From the 18th century poke bonnet which restricted women’s field of vision, to today’s hijab, women in particular have been subjugated to fashion dictates and social norms. These headwear sculptures offer a vehicle for a subversive coded language which addresses the play between women’s visibility and invisibility.

Struck by the poignant anonymity of the museum’s daguerreotypes, I scoured flea markets for similar images which I then altered with raw and idiosyncratic stitches that call attention to the Unidentified Woman whose name is long forgotten. This obsolete photographic process aligns with today’s social media; both are means that allow people to alter their public identity through the curation of carefully chosen images. In this way I stitch together past and present identity politics to provide an alternative chronology where expression replaces suppression and sewing equals activism.

Jodi Colella works with a broad range of materials to create provocative, tactile works that often include public participation. She has exhibited at Danforth Art Museum; Fruitlands Museum; Wheaton College; Helen Day Art Center; World of Threads Toronto and Textile Museum Washington D.C., among others. She has received numerous awards including the 2016 Fay Chandler Emerging Artist, 2016 Fellowship ComPeung Thailand, Pollack-Krasner Fellowship Vermont Studio Center, and Somerville Arts Council Fellowships 2015, 2012. Jodi has taught nationally at Eliot School Boston, Society for Craft in Pittsburgh, SDA’s Confluence in Minneapolis plus many local venues. She lives and works in Somerville, Massachusetts and most days can be found lost in her studio.

Ruben Natal-San Miguel

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Artist’s Statement

This photography series is focused on capturing the last vestiges of the vibrant street culture, the traditions and lifestyles that are quickly being eradicated due to the aggressive gentrification that’s invading almost every corner of NYC. For the past twelve summers, Ruben Natal-San Miguel has traveled around New York City by bicycle searching for what it’s like to live in these parts of the city. The artist has been able to find not only a vibrant and colorful vision, but also a happy and very meaningful life lesson.

Ruben Natal-San Miguel is a self-taught photographer currently living in NYC. His photography works had been extensively published and shown national and internationally.

Brenda Goodman

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Artist’s Statement

Most of my work comes from many marks I put on the surface. Then one shape pops out and starts to speak to another shape, and I just sort of put them in touch with each other until a feeling emerges and I develop it. When I worked earlier with symbols, I created the shapes. I would have something or someone in mind and draw those shapes until one appeared, and I would say, “That’s the one!” Later the marks were all from my unconscious. It becomes a very intuitive process. I am as surprised as the viewer very often because I don’t always know why or how I arrived at a certain painting, but what I do know for sure is it is from my gut and it’s honest and real and speaks its truth. Sometimes they reveal something to me; sometimes it’s not so clear. But either way something strong and emotional is being communicated.

In between my primary interest of abstract /figurative work I do series of self portraits which always satisfies a deep emotional need in me.

I would say endurance is just built into my constitution. I don’t do things halfway or give up easily. If I lose something I will spend hours, days, or weeks till I find it. I resolve every painting I do and won’t let it leave the studio until it feels absolutely right to me. At almost 74 now, my knees and back are giving me trouble (welcome to the club), but I won’t stop painting what is in my heart, and I will never retire! Anyway, have you ever heard a painter say they have retired? No….they just paint till they can’t anymore.

Brenda Goodman was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1943, studied at the College for Creative Studies, and moved to New York City in 1976. Since 1973 she has had 38 one-person shows and been included in over 200 group shows in galleries and museums throughout the United States, including the 1979 Whitney Biennial, Edward Thorp Gallery, Nielsen Gallery, David & Scweitzer Contemporary, and Jeff Bailey Gallery. Her work has been reviewed in Art in America, New Yorker, Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, The Detroit Free Press, and Huffington Post and is included in a number of collections such as Agnes Gund, Santa Barbara Museum, and Detroit Institute of the Arts. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2015, she was included in the American Academy of Arts and Letters annual invitational and received an Award in Art. In May 2017 she received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from her alma mater. Since 2009, she has lived and worked in the Catskill Mountains.

Lorrie Fredette

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Proper Limits Installation Day 5

Artist’s Statement

My installations are inspired by environmental and medical news stories pulled from today’s headlines as well as historical events. Source material so far has included the swine, avian and Spanish flu epidemics, vector borne diseases such as Lyme, malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever and West Nile Virus and the increased incidence of poison ivy with the growth of greenhouse gases. Once I’ve chosen an area of focus, I embark on a rigorous course of research and gather images, which I then alter, vet and reject through an elaborate system designed to completely subvert and distort any likeness to the original source. I am interested in this confluence of science and art, in methodology that thwarts my natural hand and in the contrast between “ugly” origins and sublime outcomes. The use of wax in its natural color as my primary medium is intentional — the neutral palette emphasizes shape, the aroma can be intoxicating and the texture is one that invites touch — all in support of my goal to lure viewers into an experience that they would certainly try to avoid had they encountered the original infection.

Lorrie Fredette holds a BFA from the Herron School of Art/Indiana University. Her work has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions. Venues include the Museum of Contemporary Art (Jacksonville, FL), Art & History Museum-Maitland (Maitland, FL), Cynthia Reeves @ Mass MoCA’s Art Campus (North Adams, MA), Art Miami (FL), and the Downtown Art Fair (New York, NY). She has participated in residencies at the Saltonstall Foundation, the Adolf and Virginia Dehn Visiting Artist Program at Loomis Chaffee, and the Women’s Studio Workshop. Her work is included in several collections including the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Jyväskylän Taidemuseo, Jyväskylä, Finland.

Malala Andrialavidrazana

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Artist’s Statement

Cartography is both art and science as well as a powerful tool to control civilisations. Maps and atlases are fascinating because of significant information they can offer within a specific period of time. They are not faithful representations of reality, but they sometimes convey strong ideas which are the keys to understanding historical narratives — a determining element in my selections.

Influenced by my formal architectural training, I use the photographic medium to explore the crossing universes and boundaries of nature and culture. Social changes and spatial structures in a globalized world are at the heart of my artistic reflections; by examining in-between spaces, I propose an open frame where borders do not exist.

Malala Andrialavidrazana (b. 1971, Madagascar) lives and works in Paris, France. Her work has been shown world-wide, including at Fondation Donwahi, Ivory Coast (2016), Bamako Encounters, African Biennale of Photography, Mali (2005/2015), Théâtre National de Chaillot, France (2015), New Church Museum, South Africa (2014), La Maison Rouge, France (2014), SUD Triennial, Cameroon (2013), Gulbenkian Foundation, Portugal/France (2013), SAVVY, Germany (2013), Focus Mumbai, India (2013), Biennale Bénin, Benin (2012), KZNSA, South Africa (2012), Tiwani, UK (2012), DIPE, China (2011), Pan African Festival, Algiers (2009), UCCA, China (2008), Centrale Électrique, Belgium (2007), Rencontres d’Arles, France (2007), Herzliya Museum, Israel (2007), Force de l’art, France (2006) and more.

Brian Sargent

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Artist’s Statement

Because the Night: from After Dark, Prospect Park and Allegories of a Posthumous Landscape

I began taking pictures at night in Prospect Park in the spring of 2001. I had just purchased my first serious camera and was looking forward to making something technically impressive, as my work up to that point was handicapped by often slipshod technique and always roughshod equipment. We had just come through a great political tumult, with an impeachment followed by an election which saw an intellectually incurious man assume the office of the President after losing the popular vote (and save for the Supreme Court, the electoral college as well). The dot-com bubble had burst and the crisis was beginning to spread to the wider economy. Enron, voted “the most innovative company in America” and one of the sitting president’s biggest financial backers, was revealed to have committed financial fraud on a massive scale. All summer long, I watched with fascination as its share price slid towards zero, waiting for the penny to drop. And then of course it was September.

Like everybody else I was experiencing elevated levels of anxiety, but my true panic was realizing that our leadership, emboldened with the highest approval ratings on record, was about to commit an even greater tragedy: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. So what does all of this have to do with night photography? I’m not sure except that I was compelled to look for a place where the truth could not be refuted, and I sought that in nature, where, for the time being anyway, truth was eternal.

In the park I re-discovered history. I made note of the gas lamps lining the pathways and knew that one day the jaundiced light emitted by the sodium vapor lamp would also disappear, and it gave me a strange comfort. I observed statues commemorating past conflicts, listened as men on horseback whispered to me about human folly and found I was a little less bitter. The park revealed to me the present as it has always been, a crossroads of the past and the future. In my work I always strive to sit at that intersection. This new camera of mine, a rangefinder, required me to use the center portion of the lens to find focus, but I recognize now something else was motivating me to hew to the visual center in my frame. As a practical reality, the political center was dead. I think part of me hoped to anchor this expression in the guise of composition, where the rule of thirds reigned supreme.

It’s been over a decade since I’ve made those pictures and I again find myself drawn to night and to nature, tilling the same ground: failure of leadership, arrogance and hubris, a desire to invent our own version of the truth. Barack Obama, an erudite, measured centrist was elected President. Inheriting an economy on the brink (and a constitution under assault) it was his misfortune to have to save the established order; our misfortune was that he succeeded a little too well. His greatest success was his greatest failure, for it gave rise to the Tea Party, which in turn brought us Donald Trump. That Donald Trump could be ushered into office under the auspices of the working class is almost enough to shatter the very meaning of irony, which is now blooming like so much algae, consuming all the oxygen in the pond. The fourth estate, having abrogated their role in the run-up to the Iraq Invasion is now desperate to reclaim the mantle of responsible journalism. Hopefully this newfound vigor on the part of the press corps can help restore the balance of power. In Allegories of A Posthumous Landscape, I revisit the figures that spoke to me in my Prospect Park series, only this time transforming real people into statuettes, in hopes that they might whisper to the future that “yes, we were here once too.”

Born in Rochester NY, Brian Sargent earned a BFA in drawing and photography from Purchase College. Upon graduating he pursued an internship at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography, volunteering in the library’s rare book department. After hours Brian played drums with the staff of the Visual Studies Workshop, trading rock steady beats for access to VSW’s darkrooms. His work has appeared in numerous group shows in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Sante Fe over the last 10 years and is held in numerous private collections, most notably the Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy Collection at the Granary in Connecticut. He has managed the Fox Movietone Newsreel archive in New York for over a decade, helping documentary filmmakers tell their stories while pursuing a career in the arts.

Greely Myatt

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Artist’s Statement

As an artist, I want you to care about something as much as I care. To do that I make work that is at the same time familiar, and a bit strange — mysterious and, I hope, poetic. I want the work to be accessible on numerous levels. I attempt that through the selection of materials, treatment of form, use of subject matter and the method of presentation. I remain conscious of how my work rubs up to art across time and how it is informed by that history. The sculptural objects and installations I have produced refer to topics as varied as High Modernism, topical issues, the landscape — both physical and cultural — as well as music, jokes and cartoons. I have consistently attempted to combine art historical references with vernacular influences. As a native of the rural south, I have a tremendous respect for work that is made by the hand and guided by the heart and eye. But I also understand the importance of the mind in this process. To state my approach to the making of art in the simplest and most direct manner, I have used these — the hand, the eye, the heart and the mind.

Greely Myatt was born in Mississippi. He currently lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee, where he is Professor of Art at The University of Memphis. His sculptures and installations have been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the United States, Europe and Japan. He has received grants and fellowships from the Tennessee Arts Commission, The University of Memphis, The University of Georgia, Alternate Roots, Atlanta, and received the Mississippi Arts and Letters Visual Arts Award in 1994. Myatt was an exchange artist to Israel in 1998. In 2009 work from twenty years of living and working in Memphis were exhibited across the city in nine separate venues. In 2011 he was invited to Island Press at Washington University, St. Louis to produce prints. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, ArtNews, Sculpture Magazine, ArtForum, Art Papers, Number:, Juxtapoz and American Quilter. Represented by Sandler Hudson Gallery, Atlanta, and David Lusk Gallery, Memphis and Nashville, his work is in numerous private and public collections. He is currently working on a public project for Urban Arts in Memphis, TN.

Eva Kwong

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Artist’s Statement

“Love Between the Atoms” refers to the attraction between the protons and the electrons in an atom. I see this attractive force as something that bonds us all together in this world. It is this attractive force which forms bonds at the subatomic level which makes thing work in the physical world that we experience. It is this attractive force that enables us to build forms with clay and to draw people together and build relationships with each other. In many ways, mutual attraction of one form or another is what enables us to connect and create interactions on microcosmic as well as macrocosmic levels, from the physical to the emotional.

I am interested in the interconnection of the myriad of layers in the world, from microcosm to macrocosm. Maybe it is because I grew up with both eastern and western cultures. I was brought up with the traditional chinese concept of yin and yang that underlies all life forms and energies. This was discussed every day by my grandmother, who also passed on to me the joy of making things. Growing up in Hong Kong and New York, I learned to look at everything through the lens of both cultures.

This interest in opposite ways of perception, the intertwining of dualities, has informed all my work for several decades since I was student. I am interested in the juxtaposition of mass/space, land/air, solid/hollow, male and female forms. I feel I am a hybrid hovering between opposites.

My work-study experience at the Rhode Island School of Design Nature Lab sparked my continued interest in forms and concepts from nature. Most of my inspirations for my work come from my direct observation of things in nature and within my life. Often it starts from a question or thought about some human experience; for example, pondering about how our bodies function under the skin, or fertility, and mortality.

I like to make things. It is my way of experiencing and understanding the world through my own filter. It is like ”tapping,” a term used by the Australian bushmen to refer to a sense of an animal or water nearby. It is a gut-felt, intuitive impulse to puts things that I feel, think about, question, or observe in my life into concrete form.

My artwork is a way to understand myself and the interpenetration of the worlds within and around us all.

Eva Kwong was born in Hong Kong and moved to New York as a teenager, where she thought of the visual language of art as another universal language. Her sculptures reflect her bi-cultural background and her interests in natural forms and microbes. Eva received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from the Tyler School of Art. She has been awarded grants from the National Endowment For the Arts, Ohio Art Council, Arts Midwest, PA. Council on the Arts, NCECA, and the McKnight Foundation.