Late Summer 2017 Newsletter
June brought two great-story sales. The first was of this piece, a favorite of mine since I did it a few years back. My husband delivered it to Louisa Gould Gallery on Martha’s Vineyard in early June and a few days later it was headed to Madrid on a private jet. The collector even helped unwrap it after being drawn into the gallery by my 50″x90″ piece in the window.
Rolling Cloud, 44″x62″.
This octych has received a great deal of attention, including a blog post of its own. It was shown and appreciated at Gold Gallery in Boston, and then at Albert Shahinian Fine Art in Rhinebeck this past winter.
Green Waves, 13″x76″ overall, oil on linen.
https://scheeleart.wordpress.com/2015/03/24/the-evolution-of-a-new-concept/
In May I was contacted by a woman in NC who told me that she wanted to buy it, and had the perfect spot for it. She had read the blog post and loved the story. She had never bought original art before, except for one print. She found me through a google search.
After much back and forth, it turned out that she had seen the price on the small oil-on-paper study that I had done leading up to the final piece, and the actual cost was way beyond what she had anticipated or budgeted for. So I offered her some other, smaller pieces in the green palette that she prefers…and then didn’t hear back from her for a few weeks.
This happens with some frequency. For a discussion of why original art created by a career artist costs what it does, you can read this blog post:
https://scheeleart.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/this-painting-costs-what/
In the end, she could not resist the piece and I could not resist making a price accommodation to enable her to have it, though it was still a huge leap for her both in cost and in faith, as she hadn’t set eyes on the actual piece.
My galleriest Albert Shahinian, who had the piece and is also an expert art handler, did the packing and shipping, and here is Green Waves in its perfect spot:
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My Atlas Project is gaining momentum and focus. I earlier began a description of the evolution of this endeavor and got so carried away that I found I needed a separate post, which I will be working on going forward.
In brief, motivated last fall by a number of factors including an upcoming residency on Nantucket and my fears over an acceleration of climate change with the new administration in Washington, I decided I needed to marry more concretely my deep love of the outdoor world and its complexities with my visual expression.
The third and most complex grouping, Atlas/Hudson River Valley had a trial run during a recent studio tour/open studio. Each site map circles closer to what I want, this most recent one being a collaged road map with map pins showing the locations of the paintings in the grouping and monotype thumbnails of the same. Like the earlier versions, this folds up into a small map.
I ran out of time—this was an excruciatingly slow process, with many design elements and much trial and error—and didn’t get any of the written piece figured out, but in discussion during the open studio I figured out how to approach this in a way that has integrity with the map.
This will all coalesce into a large solo show at Thompson Giroux Gallery in Chatham, NY, March 31-May 6 in 2018, of Atlas/Hudson river Valley and Atlas/Forms of Water. There will be many more paintings and therefore more thumbnails on the map; most likely an off-center extension at top right to show the source of the river in the Adirondacks; and a narrow extension the length of the left side to add written and visual detail about our area. The show will feature monotypes, collages, and pastels as well as oil paintings.
Overlook with River, 24″x36″, the last piece finished before the July Tour.
The Studio Tour overall was a sweet weekend with folks from my mailing list coming through as well as those who were new to me. Usually it is a low-pressure event for me and I have a lovely time at the outset setting up my studio for viewing. I had knocked myself out working on the Site Map and printing linocut wall tags for the Atlas Project this time around, but it was well worth it for how the deadline brought the project together enough for me to hone many aspects and trouble-shoot the things that are not yet quite right.
Front wall of studio arranged as Atlas/Hudson River Valley, for Studio Tour 2017.
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The day after the Studio Tour ended I was off for a week to teach on Nantucket. So lovely to see the island wearing its summer color, after spending two weeks there in February! I taught my composition workshop, Constructing/Deconstructing the Landscape, to a receptive and able group of six. These are the exercises that they had finished at the end of day #2.
For demo purposes I did several small oil-on-paper pieces, choosing subject matter according to the requests of my students:
Horizontal Wave, 5″x12″.
Warm Fall Fields, 5″x12″.
Dusk Palms, 5″x5″.
After my workshop was over I spent a long afternoon in the print shop, rediscovering what works for my imagery in monotype (there are always a row of failures before some successes). This is my favorite of the batch:
Monotype Sunset over Tidal Flats, 8″x10″.
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In June I had a discussion with some of the artists who I mentor about curating a show of their artwork, and got a very positive response. I contacted what I thought would be the perfect venue for a show of such an eclectic group of artists, the ArtBar in Kingston. The only slot Allie had open in 2017 was for August, so this exhibition of 18 artists had to come together very quickly!
It was interesting switching hats back and forth from mentor to curator, and there will be follow-up in my groups on my experience with the artists as curator. I have heard repeatedly from gallery owners that it is their quality-of-life choice to represent talented artists who are also easy and responsive to work with, so this is a theme that I pass along.
On the card, top to bottom: Betsy Jacaruso, Rebecca Darlington, Elizabeth Panzer, and Sandra Nystrom.
I selected the work and Allie, who owns the venue, hung the show. The opening reception was busy and the the comments very enthusiastic. The list of all of the artists involved: Polly Law, Sandra Nystrom, Rebecca Darlington, Linda Lynton, Linda Puiatti, Al Desetta, Betsy Jacaruso, Patti Gibbons, Lois Linet, Stacie Flint, Elizabeth Panzer, Dave Channon, Karen Schaffel, Julia Santos Solomen, Mary Katz, Loel Barr, Mark Loete, Cathy Metitchecchia.
This is my short description of the work I have done with these, and many other, artists over the years:
My mentoring work began as a way of helping other artists enter or expand their presence in the art market by providing support for both studio practice and exhibiting. The groups are a blend of coaching, support group, and targeted career advice for emerging and mid-level artists.
An article, written by Lynn Woods, will be coming out shortly on the show in the Kingston Times and I will add the link.
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Coming up, very soon, this four-person show at the Nantucket Artists Association, a brainchild of Program Coordinator Mary Emery: Due East, 4 Woodstock Artists on Nantucket, featuring the work of Polly Law, Kate McGloughlin, Jenny Nelson, and myself; all artists who teach and/or have done residencies at the AAN. Dates are September 1-22.
https://www.nantucketarts.org/dues-east-woodstock-artists-on-nantucket1.html
A medium-sized oil-on-linen that will be featured in the show:
Color Field/Incoming Tide, 30″x30″.
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Recently finished, my second Atlas/Hudson River Valley mixed-media/collage:
Atlas/HV Collage, 2 panels of 16″x8″/ea.
And in oil, an image of the tide coming in over the tidal flats mid-Cape, always a moment of bliss for me:
Sky Meets Water, 18″x24″.
This piece fits into the Atlas/Forms of Water segment. It is a different type of category from Atlas/Hudson River Valley, and there will be overlap, making for a more dynamic installation.
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A few of my other sales so far this season:
Calm Crossing, 38″x70″, sold by the Louisa Gould Gallery.
Monotype/Wave#5, 8″x10″, sold by the Julie Heller Gallery.
Haybales, 8″x24″, pastel on paper, studio sale.
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Upcoming workshops are at the PAAM September 11-14, the loveliest time of the year to be on the Cape:
And the Woodstock School of Art October 28-30, also a stunning time of year for the locale:
http://woodstockschoolofart.org/course/color-mixing-landscape-painters/
Enjoy your rest of summer season and beginning of fall!
15: Artists from Ulster County—A group show at Albert Shahinian Fine Art in Rhinebeck
I am co-curating a show at my gallery in Rhinebeck, using this blog post as an ongoing site for information about the show. I am a participating artist in “15” as well.
Keep checking back for additional news, press, and photos. We have selected outstanding work from these stellar artists, and expect this exhibition to be a bright light in our late winter.
How do the light-infused geometric abstractions of Heather Hutchison exhibit in the same show with Lenny Kislin’s antique assemblages? How does Bernard Gerson’s mysterious photograph of two faces connect to Yale Epstein’s luminously rendered mixed media paintings? 15: Artists of Ulster County looks at just this exploration.
15 will be at Albert Shahinian Fine Art in Rhinebeck from February 18 to April 22, 2012. It brings back and expands on the show that exhibited at Brooklyn Artists Gym Gallery last May, 2011. This time around, curators Christie Scheele and Peter Wallace have added artists and pieces. As they selected the paintings, photographs, drawings, prints and sculptures, they discovered something exciting:
“When we first invited artists to participate in our show last year, we were going for eclectic, and did not anticipate the complex connections that emerged between the artists. What we found was that we had uncovered a kind of Ven diagram of artistic endeavor in the Hudson Valley. Each artist was having a hidden conversation with at least three others in the group. It was like a creative game of ‘telephone,’ where the end does resemble the beginning in delightful ways.”
From Polly M. Law’s edgy, doll-like figures to Chris Hawkins iconic children’s worlds, from Kim Alderman’s smoke-fired ceramic totems to Meredith Rosier’s densely atmospheric drawings, there is a journey to this show with a point of entry for any viewer. The fifteen artists in this exhibition represent, with the highest level of achievement and creative edge, the same wide range of artistic expression that is available in the entire region.
Meredith Rosier
“When I commence upon the exploration of marks and their subsequent densities, I am investigating containment and dispersal. Density arrives from the layering of pigments pushed through metal screening, coarse or delicate fabrics and handmade stencils as I employ unexpected hand tools in order to interlock my materials. I utilize sawdust, dirt, rust, smoke, fireplace ash, pastel, gouache, ink, graphite, pencil and conte crayon. I intend to seam tiers of pigment to one another until the density contradicts the notion that paper lies beneath. Deliberately working within a restrained palette, I aim for an intimation of phosphorescence from my pigments and a dialogue between the indeterminate and the exactitude of my forms.”
Polly M. Law
“I make paper dolls with deep personal issues. I use humble materials but elevate them with my attention to color, form, costume, expression and gesture. I sometimes incorporate materials scavenged from the natural world. Sometimes I incorporate my deep love of language in the form of type and visual/verbal puns.”
Leslie Bender
“I’m always known for psychological high motion figures reacting in an environment such as beach or restaurant, but I have also drawn and painted from life for 4 decades. Continually practicing the formal elements strengthens the artist’s work exponentially.Paint and its manipulative faculties is as fascinating as studying from life::: here is volume and paint, all smooshed into one!”“Still Life Pedestal #2″, Oil on canvas, 20″X30”.
Kim Alderman
“My 40 plus years of forming clay into functional and sculptural objects has given me an experience of relational consciousness: I form clay and clay forms me, I move clay and clay moves me. The skin of the earth and my skin are both breathing organs of perception and as such, we share dna and an emotional body, we share voice and imagination. This relationship is critical to my work as an artist and teacher, and the inspiration for my book MOON TIME: Receiving Images of Feminine Consciousness through Clay, Drawing, and Word.”
Heather Hutchison
Christie Scheele
“A variety of landscape imagery, color, and format expresses a range of my interests, allowing me to combine my contemporary art training with my love of the natural world in differing degrees from piece to piece, emphasizing in one a sense of place, and in another alternative concepts that refer to the process of making art. Common to them all is my use of minimalist compositions, with strong interlocking shapes, and the silky surfaces I achieve by layering delicate coats of paint, relating my work to other contemporary artists who use photographs for inspiration.
Kate McGloughlin
Bernard Gerson
Tom Luciano
Judy Sigunick
“I began making my most recent ceramic figures after 2003 when I heard the story of a young college student and peace activist Rachel Corrie who traveled to Gaza . While acting as a human shield to protect a local Palestinian’s home from demolition by the Israeli Defense Forces, she was crushed by a bulldozer, while the house remained intact. This event was seminal for me and from that moment on I vowed to be as candid and thoughtful in my work, as Rachel Corrie was brave and trusting in her actions.”
Anique Taylor
THE TRAVELER SERIES is about the personal journeys of women;
how we are in different ways, inadvertent, reluctant pilgrims. Chemical
sensitivities have necessitated inventing personal processes that excluded
accepted methods of working. I developed a process of alternating casein
paints, colored pencils and matt medium in successive layers – drawing back
into lino prints, watercolors, and computer fragments with archival pens and pencils.
Heads are sculpted with 20-30 layers of newspaper interspersed with assorted
resins & glues after which facial expressions are delicately built up in several layers
with archival pencils.This gives them a beingness, like silent partners to our growth
who understand our intricacies. In this way they are psychological portraits of who
we are and what we are trying to become.
“THE TRAVELER SERIES is about the personal journeys of women; how we are in different ways, inadvertent, reluctant pilgrims.“Tamar Lost”, from the Good Girl series, mixed media, 32″X16″.
Mark Kanter
“My work begins with printing ink or paint applied and manipulated on Plexiglas until a
structure and/or image suggests itself. It is then mono-printed by hand onto paper, canvas
or panel, reversing the image and causing various accidents to occur. The underlying
structure I build in the first phase of each piece opens to new suggestions, which I then
pursue in paint; adding, subtracting and inflecting what survives until a cohesive whole is
forged.”
Chris Hawkins
“In my new paintings the dialogue is visceral manipulation of personal icons; the composites ape dream in the gardens of law and religion. Although the characters may be uncertain, they are incisive as villains against tampered knowledge. As the soils are tilled, in innocence they look for mercy in values and essentials.”
Yale Epstein
“These works came about by allowing gestural, calligraphic marks (as ” made up” language), to become integrated with elements of the art processes, and to take on the forms that seem appropriate. The completed images are a result of my attempt to leave a lot of openness to the emerging graphic directions, and the emotional implications of the works, as they were evolving. In this similar vein, the paintings are not to be ‘understood’ by the rational mind, but to be experienced as visual/emotional entities on their own terms. Yet inevitably, the viewer will add to the mix, their own personal reactive processes and perspective.”
Lenny Kislin
In 1991, I began to physically join these forms into conceptual and narrative art objects that I felt utilized them to their best advantages. What you see here in these pieces is the fruit of my passion for these here-to-fore under-appreciated objects.”
“Mindless Vanity”, mixed media assemblage, 22.5″x27.5″x10″.
Rosalind Robertson’s striking work was in our show at BAG, but when it came time to organize the new show, we were not able to contact her. So, we went ahead with the new artists and ended up with the number 15…announcements went out…studio visits arranged…blog assembled.
Happily, she called me several weeks back having returned to her Woodstock home, ready to pick up her career. Since we have come too far with our “15” to insert her retroactively into the PR, we are delighted to include her as a sort of grandfathered addition to the show. We will have work of hers at ASFA, two of which you can view below.
“103”, ink on paper with sea water, 30″X20″.
The ingredients?
1. First find an ocean
2. Research appropriate materials
- Keep inks warm, avoid coagulation
- 300lb paper to withstand rough handling
- Drive 5 hours to nearest Ocean
- Find safe beach access
- Pour pigments onto paper and quickly
- Put on boots and walk into the water
“104”, ink on paper and sea water, 30″X20″.
Some Studio Shots from our Visits
Peter and Meredith in her studio.
Kate and Peter in her studio.
Leslie and Peter in her studio.
Heather and Christie in Heather’s studio.
Peter in Heather’s studio.
Show of 15 Ulster County artists in Rhinebeck
Posted by Paul Smart on February 17, 2012 in Art, Events
Tom Luciano, who lives outside Phoenicia and runs a top-shelf antiques shop in Hudson, came out of SUNY-Purchase’s Art program like a bolt a while back. I remember when he remade my garage into a studio for his work. Gradually, his paying work, marriage, parenthood and other matters crowded his attention – until he found a means of capturing the world around him digitally, on a daily basis, that combined meditation with creativity. Daily postings on Facebook reestablished a market for his work, which in turn prompted deeper explorations. Now, Luciano will be amongst a group of 15 Ulster County artists being brought together by regional gallery pioneer Albert Shahinian at his new pair of spaces in the middle of Rhinebeck.
Actually, “revived” is more the theme of this expansive exhibition, which first surfaced last May at the Brooklyn Artists’ Gym (BAG), when BAG founder and director Peter Wallace joined forces with Chichester-based painter Christie Scheele to create a New York City showcase for a cross-section of Ulster County’s mid- and late-career artists working in such diverse media as painting, printwork, photography, ceramics, assemblage and mixed media. Now, as Scheele brings her baby to her longstanding gallerist’s new haunts, with Kim Alderman, Leslie Bender, Yale Epstein, Bernard Gerson, Chris Hawkins, Heather Hutchison, Mark Kanter, Lenny Kislin, Polly M. Law, Tom Luciano, Kate McGloughlin, Meredith Rosier, Judy Sigunick and Anique Taylor in tow, along with Scheele’s singular work, it turns out that about half have shown with Shahinian before – either in Rhinebeck or at his earlier galleries in Poughkeepsie and Hudson.
“When we first invited artists to participate in our show last year, we were going for eclectic, and did not anticipate the complex connections that emerged between the artists. We found that we had uncovered a kind of Venn diagram of artistic endeavors in the Hudson Valley,” the curators have remarked on their creation and its new genesis. “15 looks to explore the layered relationships between the exhibit’s selections. How do the light-infused geometric abstractions of Heather Hutchison inhabit the same space with Lenny Kislin’s antique assemblages? How does Bernard Gerson’s mysterious photograph of two faces connect to Yale Epstein’s luminously rendered mixed-media paintings? From Polly M. Law’s edgy, doll-like figures to Chris Hawkins’ iconic children’s worlds, from Kim Alderman’s smoke-fired ceramic totems to Meredith Rosier’s densely atmospheric drawings, there is a journey to this show with a point of entry for any viewer.”
Me, I’m looking forward to seeing Kanter’s epic drawings in such a setting, as well as McGloughlin’s earthy prints and paintings and Sigunick’s witty, warm ceramics – and Luciano’s vividly thoughtful observations (and ruminations). Talk about that adage about getting away to appreciate what one has!
With an opening reception this Saturday evening, February 18 all over the center of Rhinebeck, we’re relishing the chance to catch up with so many favorite Ulster artists at once – and coming back while it all stays up past the Passover and Easter holidays, until April 22. The reception’s set to run from 5 to 7 p.m. at Albert Shahinian Fine Art’s Upstairs Galleries at 22 East Market Street, as well as the ASFA@ Prudential/Serls Prime Properties space at 6384 Mill Street (Route 9). Hours are Thursdays through Sundays. For further information, call (845) 876-7578 or visit http://www.shahinianfineart.com.
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