Archibald (Age 9) sends Holiday Greetings.

We both wish you a very special New Year.

- John

Victoria Palermo, RAUM

	I am one of those people who occasionally succumbs to "Stendhal's Syndrome" -that is I swoon, literally experience vertigo, in front of a work of art... at times in front of a painting, especially a Rothko. In this work, I try to wedge myself into that abstract paint space, make it three-dimensional, walk around in it, and see through to the other side. The layers of translucent colors here are recombinant, varying with the viewer's vantage point. That means you, the viewer, may participate in the work, mixing color and determining composition through your position outside the construction. I acknowledge the visual associations with the machined aesthetic and geometrical shapes of the Bauhaus and De Stilj, but form rejects function in my pieces. Their architectonic ambition is compromised by gravity--they are made of rubber, and closer inspection reveals their handmade origins. The works defy practicality--more like miniature Victorian follies in spirit perhaps--inviting a sense of fantasy to imagine dwelling inside. Victoria Palermo 2011 "Victoria Palermo's diminutive architectural structures made of silicone rubber engage the senses and the intellect. Constructions that fuse a modernist appearance and ideology with an aesthetic of play found in their small size, bright colors, and illogical spaces, the work engenders a sense of pure pleasure and fun." --Katie Hauser Associate Professor, Art History Skidmore College

Sara Jane Roszak with Bruce Gagnier, Gillian Jagger, Jen P. Harris, Margaret Carlon, Linda Mussmann, and Osamu Kobayashi

	Main Galleries: Sara Jane Roszak New Work "These days I have been thinking about simple, elemental concepts while painting. I think about water and wind, fire and sand. The night ocean. The reflection of a winter sunset on bare trees. Sea foam and tidal pools. The transitory nature of things ephemeral. The accidental drowning of a childhood friend, an experienced lobsterman entangled in his ropes off the coast of Rockport, Ma. The war in the Afghanistan desert. How these images resonate with my imagination and bring forward the forms of my emotional life are the content of these works." Sara Jane Roszak 2011 Sculpture Garden Bruce Gagnier The sculpture by Bruce Gagnier will be extended for an additional month in the garden and Carriage House, in conjunction with Lori Bookstein Fine Art. There will be small bronzes added to this exhibition. Bruce Gagnier was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts in 1941. He studied art history at Williams College (1959-1963) and went on to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the summer of 1963 and Columbia University (1963-1967), where he studied under Nicholas Carone, Peter Agostini and John Heliker. "I model figures in clay. These five words isolate elements of my work: myself, the figure, the modeling of it, the clay. Modeling is historical, consistent in technique, painterly, and opposed in its purest practice to carving. Clay can be molded to another identity, made into an illusion through light. The figure has a history of being a form of content, a container for a subject. Sometimes, for me, it seems that its strictly carnal self has taken over and that its body has become the meaning. This difference can become a fulcrum between the then and now. Most often, in my work, I look to the figure as a possible container which embodies a search for a somebody, a person who as another self represents something about all of us; of the human in the environment affected by experience, a record of desire and disappointment, the longing for an ideal and the recognition of compromise. The contents merge to the surface, rearranging the anatomy. I participate in this by trial and error. But these bodies are not me, they are other people and because of that, they are more interesting. The work begins in clay, on a wire armature; I begin close to the wire, the interior. I intervene, gauging the person of the figure along the way. I put myself in the work from the inside out. I go back though, cutting in, to inspect and renew the inner life. One also shifts forms, previously defined, in a collage-like way, to rearrange the combinations and thereby adjust the personality of the (now) other person. It becomes very much a spatial game at this point. Marks, elements of work, etc, are left over, not intended as such and remain only as part of the imperfection at helping a subject find itself in the person; of arriving at a smooth and seamless arrangement to outer space. I give them a name. The inner life and history of this being in reality never completes itself but the work ends when an agreement is made between us that experience for the time being has run its course." Bruce Gagnier 2011 Elevator Shaft Installation Gillian Jagger Reveal, The installation by Gillian Jagger is extended a second month and closes the Carriage House for the season. "I became aware of the reflection of my body in a tree in 1983. It had a tilt in its torso just like mine. In time and scale it differed. But I felt deeply connected. Because the tree was very large and relatively still I could read it by a long, long stare. Because it had occurred again and again in similar form through these centuries and appears just now in my back field I can count on the fact of its existence. This installation came about from the combination of seeing John Davis' amazing horse/carriage elevator shaft and a wondrous enormous hunk of a tree that I have kept for 5 years. By hanging the 15 ft tree between three floors, it can be seen by looking up, and, it will be seen from three levels if one climbs the stairs to the floors above. I have cut the tree vertically into five parts. These strips are similar to the basic segmented construction of all trees which can be seen most clearly when they are in early growth, or when struck by lightning, or in late decay. This tree was in none of those states when it was taken down in full health. It was too tall. It threatened a house. It was cut down. The five vertical parts I have hung slightly apart . I want to see inside this tree. I want it to be transparent to me, despite its solidity. I want to experience the precariousness of its existence as I experience its absolute undefeatability. I want to know it is itself." Gillian Jagger 2011 Second Floor Carriage House Jen P. Harris Light Weight "Light Weight is a collection of figurative works on paper, and one large-scale oil painting. The figures represented seem to either wrestle with or defy gravity and mass. This work reflects my interest in the metaphoric potential of lightness and weight, and the open-ended, reflective quality of the genderless body. The works on paper are black and white and were made by layering ink washes on stretched paper. These pieces have the presence and "weight" of paintings despite the fact that they are actually paper. The process of making them involved an ongoing engagement with control, spontaneity and chance. The majority of the pieces are titled Sleep. These pieces feature images of me asleep, rotated from a horizontal to a vertical orientation, evoking the passages of dreams and the expansion and contraction of time and space. The works investigate a number of interwoven themes: the solitary figure as a traveler through both hard (outside) and soft (inner) space; androgyny as an emblem of psychological and biological changeability and uncertainty; weight/solidity and weightlessness/transparency and their associations with responsibility and freedom; and a confusion of figure/ground and up/down that evokes painterly tropes and functions as the basis of perceptual disorientation and reintegration." Jen P. Harris 2011 Second Floor Carriage House Meg Carlon "These works stem from an Edward Hicks "peaceable kingdom" notion, set in the zoological realm. The paintings attempt to evoke a sense of microcosmic community where animated forms flow in and out of the picture plane. Aggregations of these forms comprise hidden worlds that bustle with swimmers, floaters, gliders, drifters, colliders, hunters, jokers, sleepers and other creatures at large." Meg Carlon 2011 Third Floor Carriage House Linda Mussmann Plaster Pieces These days, Linda Mussmann is thinking about icons: the house, the girl, the tree and the cat. The materials she uses include inner tubing, wire, string, washers, pins, tacks, and plaster. These pieces continue her fascination with images that haunt, puzzle, tell stories or not - silhouettes and souvenirs. She draws inspiration from her childhood experiences on the farm in Indiana where she spent endless hours in the garage of her father playing with and constructing things from all sorts of scrap materials. She also draws on ideas that took shape during her exploration of the house basement where her mother kept remnants and rubble that survived the tornado of 1948 - treasures from 19th century ancestors including buttons, bows, match books, and scrap books. Linda's rich and creative childhood continues to supply her with an inexhaustible inventory of images that she translates into all kinds of visual art including, but not limited to, sculpture, drawings, multi-media pieces, and murals. Fourth Floor Carriage House Osamu Kobayashi "The process of painting is a power struggle. I take my painting one way; it wants to go somewhere else. And when it goes somewhere else; I drag it in another direction. In the end, the painting usually wins. My recent work is reductive in form, compositionally centered, and employs a spontaneous and intuitive array of colors, shapes, and textures. Using these elements I create visual dualities: chance vs. control, organic vs. geometric, warm vs. cool, large vs. small, etc. Like a good story, the elements that comprise each work push and pull off of each other, creating a unified structure that stays contained--but never becomes subdued--within its own parameters. The goal is to create work with a sensation similar to that of a clear thought: the idea has its bases covered; there's no room for argument. In reality, however, these paintings can never be clear thoughts. They are much more open than that. They are more of a confrontation: between what I desire to know and what I can never know entirely." Osamu Kobayashi 2011

La Wilson Sept/Oct with Drew Goerlitz, Gillian Jagger, Margrit Lewczuk, Craig Olson and Liv Aanrud

Main Galleries: La Wilson Constructions: New Work John Davis began showing the work of La Wilson in 1983 in Akron, Ohio and continued with Ms. Wilson when his gallery moved to New York City. Including the 2004 retrospective that Mr. Davis curated, La Wilson Altered Objects (at the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art, Ursinus College), this upcoming show will be the 13th exhibition of Ms. Wilson's work that the artist and dealer have presented together. It will also mark Ms. Wilson's sixth exhibition in Hudson, New York, (the first, having been recognized and reviewed in The New York Times). She visits Hudson, New York from Hudson, Ohio where she lives and works and she has shown extensively in the mid-west and New York City. Ms. Wilson was given a retrospective of her work at The Akron Art Museum in 1986/1987 titled La Wilson Metaphorical Objects. Kathleen Monaghan (Director) initiated and selected work and Barbara Tannenbaum (Chief Curator and Head of Public Programs) facilitated the installation and supervised the production of the brochure with the late Ellen H. Johnson's contribution of an Interview with La and Ms. Monaghan contributing the introduction. In 1992 Tom Hinson, curator of Contemporary Art at the Cleveland Museum, chose a group of La's works to exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art. In 1993, the artist received the top award for sculpture in the Cleveland Museum of Art May Show. It was in this same year that La was awarded the prestigious "Cleveland Arts Prize in Visual Arts" for sculpture. In 2004 the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College (Collegeville, Pennsylvania) mounted a retrospective of her work, titled La Wilson Altered Objects with catalogue essay by Edward M. Gomez, curated by John Davis. In the current body of work, La Wilson continues to confound those who have watched her development as an artist over the years with her ability to defy the material and transform everyday objects into visual delights that convey profound meaning and sustenance. In her words, "I try to steer clear of objects that are too loaded with meaning; but then, when I think about it, everything I use is loaded - snakes, pencils, firecrackers, matches, hair pins. What I try to do is free myself from the conscious associations so that the unconscious ones can take over. I am much more interested in what I don't know than what I do know." Drew Goerlitz "Containment, concealment, and privacy have been recurring themes in my work. My interpretation of reliquary is not to hold a sacred object or relic, but to engage the viewer with the form and tension of the unknown interior. The adornment of these objects relates to architectural details and the idea of facade. Facade is what we are presented with upon first appearance, whether speaking of people or architecture, and it isn't until we look inside that we discover the true structure. This body of work developed from a series I began while in residence in Switzerland. During my time spent there I was drawn to the architecture and also to Swiss social and political ideals. All of these observations have found their way into this series of sculpture. The Reliquary series is a new body of work that has many influences both reoccurring and new. During my stay in Switzerland I had limited time, which had me adjust my process in the studio. It forced me to adopt a very candid approach, and react to the sculpture during the process of making. The continuation of the series over the last year has seen an increase in scale and a subtle refinement in the elements of composition. Being back in my studio has afforded me more time to reflect on the form and content of these larger sculptures." Drew Goerlitz 2011 Gillian Jagger Reveal, "I became aware of the reflection of my body in a tree in 1983. It had a tilt in its torso just like mine. In time and scale it differed. But I felt deeply connected. Because the tree was very large and relatively still I could read it by a long, long stare. Because it had occurred again and again in similar form through these centuries and appears just now in my back field I can count on the fact of its existence. This installation came about from the combination of seeing John Davis' amazing horse/carriage elevator shaft and a wondrous enormous hunk of a tree that I have kept for 5 years. By hanging the 15 ft tree between three floors, it can be seen by looking up, and, it will be seen from three levels if one climbs the stairs to the floors above. I have cut the tree vertically into five parts. These strips are similar to the basic segmented construction of all trees which can be seen most clearly when they are in early growth, or when struck by lightning, or in late decay. This tree was in none of those states when it was taken down in full health. It was too tall. It threatened a house. It was cut down. The five vertical parts I have hung slightly apart . I want to see inside this tree. I want it to be transparent to me, despite its solidity. I want to experience the precariousness of its existence as I experience its absolute undefeatability. I want to know it is itself." Gillian Jagger 2011 Gillian Jagger Drawings "Drawing for me has always been the place I go to, to begin again. I am not conditioned by the piece I have just completed. I am not controlled by my latest angle of vision. The drawing experience is the one place where I feel close to complete freedom in my life. When drawing we can redefine where we put our gaze. Each one of us are lighthouses of a sort lighting up different areas in the dark. When we are students in art school and seen as changing our vision month to month, we are often seen as being unfocused. But looking back I also see that change has always been the main measure of the breadth of our creativity and flexibility. Lately my own drawings took me to a more vulnerable personal place than I was used too. I went there because, when drawing, I could clearly feel the necessity of doing it that particular way despite the conditioning of what could be a disapproving art world that surrounds us all. A world that right now does not think much of vulnerability. I guess drawing is a place where we can redefine ourselves over and over again." Gillian Jagger, 2011 Margrit Lewczuk Lewczuk's drawings offer a glimpse into how the paintings are made. Her colors are vibrant and pulsating, ranging from florescent greens to striking blues, luscious hot reds and fuchsia's with a sprinkle of rich earthly tones. Her travels to exotic lands such as Timbuktu, Bamako, Tunisia, Mexico, Mali & Dogon in West Africa influence the rhythms, colors and mark making in her drawings and paintings. The surroundings of rich textiles, pottery, ruins, ancient carvings all seep into the work; her tribal motifs are painted freehand onto large white linens in lush colors resulting in geometric patterns that twist and bend the planes of space. Roberta Smith says, "Her interlacing, overlapping forms, for the most part organized in grids and other quadrilateral arrangements, balance with distinctive awkwardness between organic and geometric, their boisterous scale held in check by taut layering. The resulting flatness is nearly concave; the shapes seem carved, or maybe nailed down, like abstract animal skins. The resulting tension has a pulsating energy that is visionary..." Margrit Lewczuk, 2011 Craig Olson New Hesitation Blues "I got my hesitation feet in my hesitation shoes, Believe to my soul I got the Hesitation Blues. This exhibition is an attempt to address some of the more obscured aspects of my studio over the past several years (and on to the present day). It was, and is, obscurity born of circumstance, a place where necessity and imagination played themselves out into something beyond my control. Most of the paintings did start out with a prevailing idea, or ideal, which quickly dissolved before my eyes and lead to the works you now see. The aim is not to make any single statement, or to fit the work into neatly defined genres or categories. Many traditions were followed, some going back hundreds of years, while others were conjured in a moment's notice. It's all mashed together: landscape and figuration next to pattern and shape, mysterious invocations next to alphabetic text. Through it all, though, is the desire to follow where the work leads me. And so I'm left asking, like the voice of old Sam Collins crackling through the atmosphere: Tell me, how long do I have to wait? Can I get you now, or must I hesitate?" Craig Olson, 2011 Liv Aanrud "I grew up on a small farm in the Midwest. There is a quiet tempo there that fundamentally shapes how I understand life. This is where my mind's eye lingers when I begin to paint, when I take a piece of the known world and follow it into uncertainty. A form emerges underneath the painted surface in a tug of war where size often yields to intent. I like modest might, self conscious usurpations, when a painting captures the moment right before authority is asserted. In these curious events I search for something familiar, and sincere, diffident but determined. These are pictures of the natural, or rather, how the natural might be created." Liv Aanrud, 2011

Peter McCaffrey, with Ben Butler, Susan Chrysler White, Fran O'Neill, Christopher Walsh, Kristin Locashio and Jenny Snider

Peter McCaffrey
m a r k i n g s

"A picture of the soul was a crudely drawn circle of chalk on the blackboard in my first year of parochial school. Any transgressions against God were depicted as small strokes marking the surface. A venial sin, like fibbing, was a small peck. Something more serious like murder, a mortal sin, would fill in the circle with a swirl of lines that would completely blacken the surface. I found the little cartoons of animals that my Father drew were much more interesting. They were something to keep, and I longed to imitate the way they were made. My crayon drawings of circus animals had more soul than that chalk circle.

Animals and nature have been the focus of my work. Animals seem gifted with senses that have never been lost, or guided by voices we will never hear. One drifts along with the noise of the herd unconsciously keeping up and not bumping into things. Painting pulls me out of the lockstep by concentrating my attention on the things I would pass blindly by. Spending some time in the country has brought me in closer contact with the subjects I find most interesting. Teaching an undergraduate class of painting animals at the zoo has helped me articulate the groundwork with which I need to start. The drawing is an integral part of the work. Gold leaf has the effect of "canonizing" the subject.

"They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth." (Henry Beston)"

Peter McCaffrey
2011

Sculpture Garden
Ben Butler
On Making




"Everything has a source. When the order of things eludes us, we often mistake complexity for chaos, and therefore miss the wonderful sources of things.

All things, under close enough observation, will reveal the complete stories of their making. My objects simply reveal themselves much more readily than most, and therefore hope to teach us something about looking.

The spirit of science, of discovery and illumination, is central to my art. Ultimately, everything made is first found.

Yet, for both art and science, successful work must allow others not to simply rediscover what you have discovered, but to make, through the work, their own discoveries. The work then remains alive."

Ben Butler

2011

Elevator Shaft Installation
Susan Chrysler White
Yin & Yang,
Kachina (detail) 2010, acrylic and enamel on plexiglass, 14' x 8'

"My Kachinas are two of the first sculptural hanging pieces I have completed that are not site-specific commissioned installations. In these three dimensional pieces I have been researching how my paintings, in my aesthetic vocabulary of excess, have a strong connection with historical and contemporary manifestations of the chandelier. The exploration of light, space, transparency and calligraphic drawing all find a home in these elongated quasi-figural forms. Flat painted plexiglass pieces hang radially, suspended from a central rod, forming dense dimensional environments in which the viewer is both allowed to move around and, in the case of the hanging in the John Davis Carriage House Gallery, will be allowed to view from above and below on different floor levels."

Susan Chrysler White

2011

Second Floor Carriage House
Christopher Walsh
Paintings

"My oil paintings explore a territory that suggests fractal structures, circuit boards and urban landscape. The underlying theme in my art is an exploration of how consciousness and identity are shaped by the rhythms of our everyday experience. On a daily basis, the city is a vocabulary of source material: traffic lights, overpasses, billboards, spires, windows, facades and grids, combine to create a large collage. A collage that has contradictions to it. It has a structural, man-made element, but it's unplanned. There are layers of both growth and decay. For example, I might find myself at the same stoplight every day, at a certain time, with a certain light, and I can't help but compose a picture that's subconsciously stored in my memory of that.

At the same time, this process of identifying with my environment breaks down in the studio into a formal vocabulary that is intentionally ambiguous and fragmentary. There's something neurological about my response to this vocabulary during the process of painting. I search for triggers and synapses, as I struggle to define an image. My visual memory of the city is confronted by an approach to materials that is improvisational and painterly.

With line, fragments of form and blocks of color I build compositions that contain a precarious balance of light and dark, architecture and space, gesture and geometry. Improvising off a grid or axis, I see the painting surface as an arena for a dialogue between thought and action, impulse and intent.

The images that emerge are colorful, rhythmic, and tactile."

Christopher Walsh
2011

Second Floor Carriage House

Fran O'Neill

"The de-stabilizing of symmetry, patterns and the expected within a simple or complex composition is what I strive to find and do. It is the 'rupture' within the presumed regularity of a repetitious field that I explore. I deliberately look for these moments to build upon through painting and drawing; layering and exploring color, through dramatic or subtle shifts."

Fran O'Neill
2011


Third Floor Carriage House
Kristin Locashio
Paintings

"I will be showing new vehicles, made expressly for the unusual interior space in the Carriage House at the John Davis Galler"In these new paintings I utilize a range of tools and methods to broaden and vary the expressive possibilities of paint. Working intuitively I develop structure through the painting process, allowing the composition to materialize and dematerialize in an effort to achieve a wholeness in the painting. Improvisation with paint and its' liquid materiality is the driving force behind these works, the result being a lasting visual reminder of the experience of making."

Kristin Locashio
2011

Fourth Floor Carriage House
Jenny Snider

Made of tinted and painted paper mache, they will hang on walls and stand on the floor, like the wooden vehicles exhibited in 2002 at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. In both color and surface, paper mache echoes the concrete walls of the carriage house."

Jenny Snider
2011

Jon Isherwood with Bruce Gagnier, Dionisio Cortes & Leticia Ortega Cortes, Susan Scott, Michael Volonakis, and Joyce Robins

June 23rd through July 17th, 2011

Main Galleries:
Jon Isherwood
Vested Interests


Isherwood's new sculptures and drawings represent the further development of his ongoing dialogue with the associative sensations of form and surface. Carving stone such as rosa aurora marble, limestone, and black granite, Isherwood gives his sculpture a sensuality and softness that belie the unyielding nature of the material. Carved lines contour the surfaces to emphasize the form, create the illusion of expansiveness and provoke associations to patterning, layering and veiled imagery. His sculptures are a result of a unique process allowing him to attain an uncompromised precision in the carving of the incised surfaces, which play with and against the swelling, fleshy, soft and yet substantial character of his organic forms. Isherwood's drawings further illustrate and compliment the tension between image, shape and skin that characterizes his carvings.

Isherwood's work has been widely exhibited in public museums and private galleries around the US, Canada, and Europe. He is the recipient of a Jerome Foundation Fellowship, a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of New York at Plattsburgh. His sculpture has recently been exhibited at The Today Museum, Beijing, China; The Museum at Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ; and in Belgrave Square, London, UK. He has had more than 20 solo exhibitions, including Reeves Contemporary in NYC, John Davis Gallery in NYC; Maiden Lane Exhibition Space in NYC; the C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore; Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park and Museum in Hamilton, OH; and the Sculpture Court in Southampton, NY. He has been featured in many group exhibitions, including the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, Italy; The McNay Museum, San Antonio, TX; The Derby City Museum, Derby, UK; and Kunsthalle, Manheim, Germany. His work can be found in more than 22 public collections. Isherwood's work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, ArtNews, The Washington Post, The New York Sun, Sculpture Magazine, Partisan Reviews, The Philadelphia Enquirer, and in The Times and The Guardian, UK. He has made personal appearances on shows featuring his work, including WAMC Public Radio and The Culture Show, BBC Television, UK. He has lectured at numerous colleges and universities in the U.S. and Europe.




Bruce Gagnier
Sculpture Garden




The gallery is very pleased to present, in conjunction with Lori Bookstein Fine Art, the sculpture of Bruce Gagnier.

Bruce Gagnier was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts in 1941. He studied art history at Williams College (1959-1963) and went on to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the summer of 1963 and Columbia University (1963-1967), where he studied under Nicholas Carone, Peter Agostini and John Heliker.

"I model figures in clay. These five words isolate elements of my work: myself, the figure, the modeling of it, the clay. Modeling is historical, consistent in technique, painterly, and opposed in its purest practice to carving. Clay can be molded to another identity, made into an illusion through light. The figure has a history of being a form of content, a container for a subject. Sometimes, for me, it seems that its strictly carnal self has taken over and that its body has become the meaning. This difference can become a fulcrum between the then and now. Most often, in my work, I look to the figure as a possible container which embodies a search for a somebody, a person who as another self represents something about all of us; of the human in the environment affected by experience, a record of desire and disappointment, the longing for an ideal and the recognition of compromise. The contents merge to the surface, rearranging the anatomy. I participate in this by trial and error. But these bodies are not me, they are other people and because of that, they are more interesting. The work begins in clay, on a wire armature; I begin close to the wire, the interior. I intervene, gauging the person of the figure along the way. I put myself in the work from the inside out. I go back though, cutting in, to inspect and renew the inner life. One also shifts forms, previously defined, in a collage-like way, to rearrange the combinations and thereby adjust the personality of the (now) other person. It becomes very much a spatial game at this point. Marks, elements of work, etc, are left over, not intended as such and remain only as part of the imperfection at helping a subject find itself in the person; of arriving at a smooth and seamless arrangement to outer space. I give them a name. The inner life and history of this being in reality never completes itself but the work ends when an agreement is made between us that experience for the time being has run its course."

Bruce Gagnier
2011




Elevator Shaft Installation
Leticia Ortega + Dionisio Cortes
35,000 drops,
2011, Site-specific drawing/installation for John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY
72"W x 89"D x 33"H
Paper, graphite, acrylic paint, polymer resin



In response to the prevailing and intensified violence in Mexico, which has claimed more than 35,000 lives over the past few years, Ms. Ortega and Mr. Cortes have created 35,000 drops a three-story high, drawing/installation.

On his way from the Philippines to bury his son Juanelo, tortured and killed this past March 28th, Mexican poet Javier Sicilia wrote the following poem:

El mundo ya no es digno de la palabra
Nos la ahogaron adentro
Como te asfixiaron
Como te desgarraron a ti los pulmones
Y el dolor no se me aparta
Solo queda un mundo
Por el silencio de los justos
Solo por tu silencio y por mi silencio, Juanelo.
Es mi ultimo poema, no puedo escribir mas poesia... la poesia ya no existe en mi.
Javier Sicilia, Morelos, Mexico April 2, 2010

The world is not longer worthy of the word
They suffocated it inside us
As they asphyxiated you
As they torn your lungs apart
And pain does not depart me
Only one world is left
For the silence of the just
Only for your silence and for my silence, Juanelo.

This is my last poem, I cannot write poetry any
more... poetry no longer exists in me.
Javier Sicilia, Morelos, Mexico April 2, 2010

On April 2nd Mr. Sicilia stopped writing poetry.

Leticia Ortega and Dionisio Cortes live and work in New York City and in Highland, NY. Their work has been shown in the United States, Mexico, and Italy. Ms. Ortega's work has been included in the I Olga Costa Biennial and Mr. Cortes' in the Monterrey Biennial. Both are recipients of numerous prestigious awards including the Vitro Art Center and the Monterrey Biennial in Mexico. They have taught at several institutions including American School and El Nix in Mexico, and Wet Paint! Art Studio in NYC. Their work can be found in numerous private and public collections




Second Floor Carriage House
Susan Scott



"These are constructed paintings. Because I know the components of each piece are going to be reconfigured over and over again, I make them from new materials with this In mind. Through what can be an arduous process, the parts become compromised, damaged or changed beyond repair, until ultimately something emerges with pictorial and physical integrity. The process of restructuring --- re-finding formal relationships allows a kind of narrative to edge its way into the work without being literal, so the paintings remain open to very broad readings, always subjective. I'm intrigued by the way Image and obecthood speck to each other in a painting, as if negotiating roles. For example, I might use a piece of wood to replace the rectangular plane of the painting, leaving it with no formal boundaries, but sustained as if by an umbilical to the wall. I have a deep respect for the tradition of painting, within which I find plenty of room to address almost anything, sometimes with a tiny dose of Irreverence and humor."

Susan Scott,
2011




Third Floor Carriage House
Michael Volonakis



"The process of drawing and painting I trust is educated yet ultimately intuitive. Within what may seem conflicting motivations lie paths to unexpected compositions."

Michael Volonakis
2011









Fourth Floor:
Joyce Robins

"My work as a reporter has taught me that logical stories, without riddles and holes in them, in which everything is obvious, tend to be untrue."
-- Hanna Krall, The Woman From Hamburg



"I try to use experience of the world, visual memories, to inform my work. Never direct, it is an oblique reference. I am always surprised after completing a sculpture to see that it resembles something in the world. I count it as a success when that occurs because it reinforces an engagement with the environment. Intuition is strong in the beginning of the process. I try to think 'visually' and avoid any kind of narrative impulse in my use of the world. I understand the connections only after completing a sculpture.

Krall's statement is analogous to how I feel about my own encounters in the world. That understanding inspires me to produce sculpture with literal holes. The openings illustrate a concept of time and disintegration. Simple structures that are the ground for a more complicated surface rendering represent a model of this environment.

Slicing a slab of clay from a large block, then rolling it out and starting to shape it with my hands is often enough to suggest the way to proceed. I trust my instinct. It can be a long process to find the shape and longer still to modify and articulate that form. Some of the methods I use to do this include removing material from it, using a wooden tool to mark indentations in the interior and at the edges, using a steel tool to make perforations and, finally, shaping the edge itself. I want light to penetrate through the dense and opaque clay.

Sometimes I stretch it over a form to dry creating an irregular and undulating membrane. After it is fired, then, the form will lift off its supporting surface. Glaze is applied to some indents so color will be held in a different way than on untreated surface.

I grew up at the ocean edge with beaches and salt marshes. It was important for me to see the mix of landscape and water, the colors of the marsh, as well as the encrustation and buildup of repeated encounters of liquid against solid, the evidence of time, of decay and renewal. Memories of being there, looking closely at what landed on the edge have remained a continuing source of inspiration. These conditions are always there when I make art. The holes are metaphors for the bubbles in the foam of a receding wave. They are about a dissolution or disappearance of material. They are also intimating an ordering, not symmetrical, but still a balancing of elements. They provide a framework to integrate color onto the form. The shape of my sculpture is usually something simple, enough to hold a diverse amount of marking"

Joyce Robins,
2011

David Hornung, Pamela J. Wallace, Stephen L. Reynolds, Dale Emmart, Robert C. Morgan

On Thursday, May 26th, a group of artists will open the season with a medley of exhibitions for the Main Galleries, Sculpture Garden and Carriage House. In celebration, the gallery will have four solo shows (sculpture, painting, and an installation). The work will be on display through June 19th with a reception for the artists on Saturday, May 28th from 6:00 until 8:00 p.m.

Main Galleries:
David Hornung

"These recent pictures, all made with gouache on handmade paper, were completed in the winter and spring of 2010-2011. As usual, they depict scenes from around my home in the Catskills. My usual working method is to create loose sketches from memory and imagination and then translate them into paintings.

The paintings in this exhibition, although small, take time to develop. I make many adjustments and "corrections", mostly in pursuit of a nebulous but insistent sense of balance. Not compositional balance, but the balance of all the various parts of a picture including its tenuous connection to outside reality. I'm preoccupied by the distinction between fact and fiction in what is largely an artificial enterprise. You could say that I am compelled by a pictorial truth, not realism."

David Hornung
2011


Stephen L. Reynolds & Pamela J. Wallace
Sculpture Garden

Pamela J. Wallace and Stephen Reynolds will be exhibiting sculpture in the garden that is a result of their collaboration. The two pieces are titled "Water Capture" and each is 9 feet high.

Excerpts from an industrial dream... On road trips Wallace and Reynolds slow their car down to a crawl when passing a fading industrial structure or farm building. Their idea of a good time is to tour a WWII era factory where submarine propeller shafts were made. These aging industrial structures are filled with textural and formal details that travel with them back to their Germantown studio. There, the sculptures that they collaborate on are distillations of this shared visual experience and are the result of long conversations and many sketches.

The final product is always far from an exact representation of the original source, but their careful selection of details results in a unique object that nonetheless suggests the beauty of industry past its prime.

Pamela J. Wallace & Stephen L. Reynolds
2011


Elevator Shaft Installation
Pamela J. Wallace
Suspended so far, yet somewhere else

"In Suspended so far, yet somewhere else, I am constructing a system in response to the architecture and function of this elevator shaft. For years, this elevator moved countless pounds in and out of this carriage house. I do not know what was lifted or how much weight was carried, but it is this absence of information that motivated me to produce this work.

Using a system of suspended spheres, ropes, bowls and stones, I've created an installation that reflects on the many unknown burdens that have moved up and down in this space. Stopping this movement, I have held the platform on the bottom floor by weighing it down with small stones, forcing it, for the time being, to simply sit still."

This installation was made possible with funding from The New York Foundation for the Arts, Special Opportunity Stipend Project Grant.

Pamela J. Wallace,
2011


Second Floor Carriage House
Pamela J. Wallace

"I combine hard durable industrial materials such as iron and concrete with organic ephemeral materials like paper, thread, fabric and wax. As this is aesthetically appealing to me, I am also interested in working with materials associated with work and gender as I forge iron elements, or sew and use paper to create contrasting organic forms.

Both my installations and sculptures are made up of a continuum of objects, where patterns are often mapped out like constellations. Upon first looking, one sees a distribution of objects mimicking non-linear geometries where order comes and goes. Approaching the work, it becomes clear that the smallest detail is essential, as with the tiny insect pin as it can pierce and display, exposing awkwardness and vulnerability as when a bug is pinned up and studied. Closer inspection reveals unexpected details such as plant fibers encased in sewn plastic bags, iron spoon and bowl forms capturing empty space, or circles held tight to the wall by the tips of pins."

Pamela J. Wallace,
2011


Third Floor Carriage House
Dale Emmart
Pod, Nest, Vine, Sky

"I relish the time it takes to observe, render, and interpret. The slow, incremental process of adjusting formal elements over and over is essentially what brings me the most substantial sense of involvement. I paint to find a place between seeing and invention.

The varied space of the Carriage House offers the opportunity to install pieces with three different, concurrent types of work. The first set of paintings are in oil on panel; the second, stretched paper pulp drawings; and finally, monotype prints with watercolor. Due as much to necessity as inclination the series, through material and visual intention, maintain continuity. I keep a rural Pennsylvania studio for painting and a studio for works on paper in Manhattan. I enjoy the diversity and the cross-pollination of ideas among works of each studio.

Historical landscape, still life, botanical drawings and compulsive gesture drawing have importance in these works; their presence obvious throughout. The Nest and Vine series come directly from still life and observation. 'Pods' rely on the scrutiny of botanical examination. The monotypes merge renderings of popped corn with studies of shifting cloud masses."

Dale Emmart
2011


Fourth Floor:
Robert C. Morgan

"Beginning in 1970, my work as a painter has involved the use of metallic pigments and polymer emulsion in both representational and abstract styles. The centerpiece of the current exhibition involves a diptych, titled Learning To Swim, based on a two-part image I saw in a 1937 swim manual that I painted in 1974. The painting was previously shown at White Columns in New York in 1984. The five smaller paintings are geometric forms, which double as letters, painted in 2011. As with other recent exhibitions, I consistently include a mix of early and up-to-date paintings in order to show a formal, conceptual, and historical relationship between the paintings. I enjoy seeing the present in relation to the past, and enjoy the feeling of a progression in time by painting images and forms that intrigue me. I look for both erotic and ironic content in my work, and hope that this will communicate to my viewers."

Robert C. Morgan,
2011