Renee Iacone Clearman: Figures, Forms and Fetishes with Leticia Ortega, Dionisio Cortes, Kellyann Burns and Robert Reitzfeld

June 25th, a new exhibition opened at John Davis Gallery. The work of the featured artist Renee Iacone Clearman was on display in the main galleries under the title, Figures Forms and Fetishes.

An installation, when skies are hanged, by Leticia Ortega and Dionisio Cortes was in the Carriage House atrium. Paintings by Ortega, Cortes, Kellyann Burns, and Robert Reitzfeld (Che. An Exploration) were on view on the upper floors of the Carriage House.

Main Galleries:
Renee Iacone Clearman:

Figures Forms and Fetishes



"Clay has been described as the ultimate "primitive" material. It has been used for thousands of years and continues to be a substance which is inherently sensual and evocative.

For a number years my exploration of the human form involved a mixed media process utilizing rusted metals, old fabrics, glass, wire, string and numerous variations of cultural detritus. This exhibition represents my continuing exploration of the human form in clay.

Clay is a new medium for me and quite challenging.

The association of a pot to the human figure is age old. Even the identification of a pot's parts - foot, lip, body, belly, and mouth reflects this comparison. This association motivates my interest in using clay to express the human body as vessel in all its various capacities.

Some pieces imply fetishes which might be part of ritual use while others relate to the body as container. Some works are evocative of chunks of landscapes which suggest the human form to me.

For instance, the White Place figures are inspired from that area of New Mexico which haunts my imagination. It's a moonscape peopled with towering, weathered "figures" slowly deteriorating under the harsh elements.

The Tent Spikes series are a reflection of my fascination with a set of hand-carved Civil War tent spikes, some still adorned with disintegrating hemp around their throats. Each spike contains a story, a history, a soul that I strive to capture. Clay represents the primal material of life which both liberates and binds a form. In many ways, it is this paradox as it applies to the human body which keeps me interested."

Renee Iacone Clearman

2009



________________________________________

Sculpture Garden:
Mary Ellen Scherl




My defining moment as a sculptor was in 2001 when I began to work on Monumental Woman, the first of a series of life-size, classically rendered obese figures which went beyond the intention of merely achieving verisimilitude. Whereas my artistic practice previously featured realism and attention to detail, with Monumental Woman these aspects were married to emotional content; body image issues, dignity, pain, and healing. These qualities continue to influence my figurative work.

Since 2001 I have worked almost exclusively with one model. With her my intention has been to challenge the classical "Greek ideal" and today's waif-thin standard of beauty. Many have remarked that Monumental Woman, 50 DD, and Bathing Beauty are reminiscent of the ancient, ample Venus of Willendorf. My inspiration, however, comes from the mid-century Earthly Bodies photographs of Irving Penn and the more recent fleshy paintings of Lucien Freud. Corpulent and honest, my figures explore in clay what these two artists explored in paint and film.

In the last three years some of my work has departed from realism. Cellulite Series, a group of five figures celebrates the essence of the fertile, fecund, female form. Whereas earlier sculptures of my muse achieve verisimilitude, these ironically are minimalist in approach by addressing only the uniquely female anatomy, and eliminating extremities. I am intrigued by how Maiden Voyage feels at once goddess-like and pagan, it reminds me of masthead, albeit without the head. The freedom to simplify and exaggerate, as in Blue Muse and Feminine Alter has been a pleasure. The surface texture reflects how I build body-mass with layers of tiny lumps of clay until a generous fleshy form meets a sinuous line. I think of these 'lumps' as cellulite. In my realistic work the 'cellulite' gets blended together. In Cellulite Series I allow the process to show. The resulting pieces bear a resemblance to the human fragments in Penn's images and to the sensual and playful sculptures of Ken Price.

I find it meaningful that I am able to make a difference through my art. The practice of developing ideas, crafting images and objects feels as essential to me as food, water and shelter. I love making objects. I love making a difference. And I love making objects that make a difference.

Mary Ellen Scherl

2009



________________________________________


Carriage House:

There are four artists within the carriage house: Leticia Ortega, Dionisio Cortes, Kellyann Burns and Robert Reitzfeld in addition to a continuously changing group show of gallery sculptors on the first floor.






Installation:
Leticia Ortega & Dionisio Cortes
when skies are hanged..., 2009
Site-specific installation
water, plastic bags, nylon thread
360" H x 96" W x 120" L

Leticia Ortega and Dionisio Cortes join labors once again to construct a playful and whimsical collaborative installation. They used the three-story high elevator shaft at the Carriage House to install hundreds of plastic bags filled with water. The hanging bags will be grouped in clusters to create a sort of hovering clouds. The water filling each bag becomes a lens reflecting and refracting light and space.

This installation is based on a simple, small-town, Mexican custom, which is believed to scare houseflies away and/or stop them from entering a space. The custom calls for hanging clear, plastic bags filled with water on a window or door threshold. It is argued that the distorted and augmented reflection of the surroundings and/or the flies themselves, scare flies away as they may perceive these images as huge predators. These bags are mostly used in modest restaurants and street vending carts.

We are always mesmerized and captivated by the beautiful way these bags reflect the sky. Inspired in one of e.e. Cummings poems, our intention is to use this popular practice to create a playful and elusive piece. In the inspirational poem, images of summer are found in between a brimful of lines that make music for you before (if ever) they make sense.

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Second Floor:
Kellyann Burns



















"My process is my subject. The harmonic balance of color, of light and form found in nature is constantly shifting, subordinated by nature's own process, its own need to transform.

I paint, I sand, I turn the canvas. I paint, I sand, I turn the canvas. I build with color and focus on the conceptual elements of painting, not the decorative. Over time as in nature, order and form unite, until a harmony is revealed between light within the painting and light reflecting from the painting."


Kellyann Burns

2009

________________________________________

Third Floor:
Leticia Ortega & Dionisio Cortes





Leticia Ortega - In my new work, I develop images both freely and painterly, but also with control and fine detailing. I obsessively work and rework areas to build an all-over emotional atmosphere of space and color. Although abstract in essence, the work however, evokes notions of waterscape.

Dionisio Cortes - My recent work continuous to explore the possibilities of the "gesture". I construct patterned and highly ornamental paintings. I build up my subject matter by laying rhythmic and gestural patterns over decorative designs [drawn from materials and patterns found in the decorative arts]. The work reflects my interest in the search for the "ideal beauty" in the age of surplus information.

We both develop surfaces by carefully accumulating tens of layers. Substrates are coated with dry/oil gesso, which yields a smooth, luminous surface. Veils of paint are layered in an obsessive and ritualistic process. The pieces interweave materials and methods allowing for translucency. This meticulous and laborious process is encrypted and recuperated in the finished product.

Collaborative Work - For the first time and for this show we are showing a series of collaboratively paintings. (In the past we have worked together in installation and sculpture). In our individual work, processes and materials are frequently shared. As a husband-wife team, many of our mutual experiences feed the content of our personal work.


Leticia Ortega & Dionisio Cortes

2009

________________________________________




Fourth Floor:
Robert Reitzfeld
Che. An Exploration




" On New Years Day 1959, the Cuban revolutionaries took over the island as the dictator Batista fled. Fidel Castro and Ernesto "Che" Guevara rode into Havana as liberators.

Che, in part because of an iconic image, became a folk hero as well as a source of income for t-shirt manufacturers.

The truth is that Che was notoriously homophobic and had many Cuban homosexuals imprisoned, tortured and killed.

It is well known that many extreme homophobes have buried in them homosexual desires that they subvert by over protesting."


Robert Reitzfeld

2009

Rosanna Bruno, Mary Ellen Scherl, EJ Hauser, Molly Herman, Sharon Butler

May 28th, a group of women artists opened the season with a medley of exhibitions for the Main Galleries, Sculpture Garden and Carriage House. In celebration, the gallery had four solo exhibitions by abstract painters in both the front galleries and Carriage House. The sculpture garden featured a figurative sculptor, sculpting women. The exhibition was on display through June 21st.

Main Galleries:

Rosanna Bruno

"I am interested in the act of painting itself. Through the process of painting I feel it is possible to work out the jumble of constant visual stimulation through the experience of just making. It is a form of translation, utilizing the language of paint to speak to endless experiences. My paintings are seemingly direct, though often constructed with a complex network of color and line-- color being the primary structural element. I am most interested in the paintings that ultimately belie the experience of making them—offering instead a sense of falling into place or appearing without effort. Play and struggle coexist in painting and it is in this relationship that I find meaning."

Rosanna Bruno

2009

Sculpture Garden:

Mary Ellen Scherl

"My defining moment as a sculptor was in 2001 when I began to work on Monumental Woman, the first of a series of life-size, classically rendered obese figures which went beyond the intention of merely achieving verisimilitude. Whereas my artistic practice previously featured realism and attention to detail, with Monumental Woman these aspects were married to emotional content; body image issues, dignity, pain, and healing. These qualities continue to influence my figurative work.

Since 2001 I have worked almost exclusively with one model. With her my intention has been to challenge the classical “Greek ideal” and today’s waif-thin standard of beauty. Many have remarked that Monumental Woman, 50 DD, and Bathing Beauty are reminiscent of the ancient, ample Venus of Willendorf. My inspiration, however, comes from the mid-century Earthly Bodies photographs of Irving Penn and the more recent fleshy paintings of Lucien Freud. Corpulent and honest, my figures explore in clay what these two artists explored in paint and film.

In the last three years some of my work has departed from realism. Cellulite Series, a group of five figures celebrates the essence of the fertile, fecund, female form. Whereas earlier sculptures of my muse achieve verisimilitude, these ironically are minimalist in approach by addressing only the uniquely female anatomy, and eliminating extremities. I am intrigued by how Maiden Voyage feels at once goddess-like and pagan, it reminds me of masthead, albeit without the head. The freedom to simplify and exaggerate, as in Blue Muse and Feminine Alter has been a pleasure. The surface texture reflects how I build body-mass with layers of tiny lumps of clay until a generous fleshy form meets a sinuous line. I think of these ‘lumps’ as cellulite. In my realistic work the ‘cellulite’ gets blended together. In Cellulite Series I allow the process to show. The resulting pieces bear a resemblance to the human fragments in Penn’s images and to the sensual and playful sculptures of Ken Price.

In 2005, in an effort to try to help heal on a larger scale, I asked myself, “What if my art could help fight breast cancer?” The result of my query was Mamorial; a breast cancer awareness installation that has grown into a project echoing the AIDS Awareness Quilt. Mamorial provides therapeutic healing for breast cancer survivors and a visceral awareness experience for the general public. Two-hundred-fifty survivors from twenty-three states have made molds of their cancer affected chests and have written about their breast cancer experience. The resulting life-casts and soundtrack of testimonials comprise the traveling multi-media Mamorial installation. Creating Mamorial and witnessing its powerful and healing benefits recently inspired Hallowed Ground; a new direction intended to combat systematic genocide.

I am neither a breast cancer survivor nor a relative of a victim of genocide. Yet, I find it meaningful that I am able to make a difference through my art. The practice of developing ideas, crafting images and objects feels as essential to me as food, water and shelter. I love making objects. I love making a difference. And I love making objects that make a difference."

Mary Ellen Scherl

2009

Carriage House:

There are three artists within the carriage house: EJ Hauser, Molly Herman, and Sharon Butler in addition to a continuously changing group show of gallery sculptors on the first floor.

Second Floor:

EJ Hauser

"It seems I’m always trying to find a way to bring my notebooks into the world…my notebooks serving as a kind of personal repository for holding images and words that I think of as energy and force…while working in the notebooks, I also make drawings, clip images from the newspaper, and write down strings of words…these drawings and lists become the origin for my paintings…and, I basically develop the heavy paint paintings similarly to how I develop the word paintings…it is a kind of semi-free associative process, where an idea (word or image) goes up on the panel, and I react to it…building layers, adding and subtracting, looking for something resonant.

And, the paint and color of my thick paint paintings has become more resonant to me since embarking on the purely word paintings…the landscapes, geological arenas, and oceans where semi-fierce animals, heads, and weird creatures roam has become more unencumbered since making these word paintings …it’s as if the structure and text dreaming within the word paintings has created a kind of extreme position to push against…one in which the paint has become freed up as a kind of sculptural tool for my imagining."

EJ Hauser

2008

Third Floor:

Molly Herman

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.”

-- Theodore Roethke

“This sing-song incantation from a Theodore Roethke’s villanelle, “The Waking” could be taken as my mantra for the tangent in my new work.

I began by asking: “How to reduce the act of painting to its most elemental?”

I decided to build a painting from a sequence of obvious and repeatable marks and focused on a particular pigment in each piece.

Quickly, this process evolved and broke from a methodical printed pattern into a kind of layered and textured “Free Verse.” Compositions are arrived at through an open-ended search; a process embedded in the painting.

As with my previous work, I continue my interest in exploring the physicality of the paint. The “flesh” of these paintings is dense and mottled, made of scraped-into and scumbled-on stratums of color, while the simplicity of the stamped image reaches toward a more earthy metaphor.

Molly Herman

2009

Fourth Floor:

Sharon Butler

Beacon Paintings

"For four months last summer, I spent Mondays in Beacon, NY, working quietly in a solitary 4’ x 5’ shack. I had heard of a project called “Habitat for Artists” from Chris Albert, a blogger I met during the Blogger Conference at the Red Dot Fair back in March. “Habitat For Artists” was organized by artist Simon Draper, who built twelve small sheds on the grounds of Spire Studios and invited a group of artists to use them for the summer. Traveling to Beacon was more time-consuming than working in one stationary location, and I painted less on days spent there. But by expanding my world, the shack helped enrich my work.

At the beginning of the summer, I was entering a transitional phase, unsure where I was going but confident that the discipline of daily practice would lead somewhere. Though known mainly for Flavin, Lewitt, and Serra’s resolutely intellectual brand of minimalism, Dia:Beacon, just a few blocks from my little shack, was featuring installations by colorists Blinky Palermo and Imi Knoebel, which impelled me to consider color more intensely than I ever had before. As the summer unfolded in my shack, I extended the limited, austere palette I’d been using for years to include the entire spectrum.

This series of small paintings is the result of my time spent in Beacon. Their scale, handmadeness, and intuitive form constitute an emotive and spontaneous counterpoint to the cerebral and exhaustive exploration of mathematical and geometric constructs and the meticulous experimentation with industrial materials predominantly showcased at Dia."

Sharon Butler

2009

Lois Dickson

Lois Dickson:

Paintings

April 30 – May 24, 2009.  

The new work reflects the artist’s ongoing exploration of the natural world. While earlier paintings explore subject matter monumental in scale--glaciers and geysers of Chilean Patagonia-- Dickson now considers a sphere of radically inverse proportion: the micro cosmos of butterfly wings. Barely legible as lepidoptera, moths and butterflies morph into organic forms that emerge from dense, thickly painted surfaces and/or thin washes of iridescent hue.  The butterfly provides the artist with endless metaphoric and pictorial possibilities.  “Butterflies change shape, reading as volume one moment, line the next.  Variations of color and form are infinite.  The metamorphic cycle of butterflies’ lives is a symbol of decay and renewal, a theme I’ve always been interested in.”

Several paintings take as a departure point the wing pattern of various species. The prominent eyespots on the ventral hind wings of the Caligo Owl Butterfly have special implications for the artist.  As complications with her own eyes have developed, Dickson has searched for equivalent forms appropriate to her art.  Intended to disorient predators, the Caligo eyespots also disarm viewers of these paintings with their deeply felt gaze, both plaintive and defiant.

 In contrast to the ephemeral quality of their primary motif, many of the paintings have a tough touch which the artist ascribes to the physicality of her painting process:  “I work with a brush in one hand, and a palette knife in the other--troweling on and scraping off until the image is ‘excavated.’  ”  The new work also demonstrates a kind of synergy between pictorial “order” and “chaos” ; tangled knots of organic form play against a rigorous grid, evoking both Apollonian and Dionysian intent.   “I want to balance the intensity of my emotional response with a rational, more measured quality.  One hopes the paintings engage the viewer in a way that invites multiple readings and a wide range of personal responses.”

Fran O'Neill

The work of Fran O'Neill will be on display at the John Davis Gallery from April 2nd through 26th, 2009.  There will be a reception for the artist on Saturday, April 4th, from 6 till 8 p.m.  This will be the first featured exhibition in the main galleries of Ms. O'Neill’s work.  She previously exhibited in the Carriage House in 2007.  

Here are some of the artist's thoughts about her work:

“Growing up in a small rural town in Australia is quite a contrast to my present living situation here in New York. My vivid memories of the Australian landscape compelled my need to find a visual language particular to me. I have a deep interest in sewing and have always had a connection with various “fabric/pattern”, as this began to enter my work; I began to think about my connections to different countries, in particular their crafts and the various ways they tell their stories.  I have been exploring patterns, and color, the repletion and saturation of the mark, breaking sometimes abruptly the mark itself, to explore themes of isolation and absence while preserving a symbolistic ambiguity, an openness of meaning for the viewer.

The fabrics that I have been using come from Asia, Japan, India and Africa: batik, woodblock prints, and others. This has fueled my interest in fabric and patterning in the history of Western and Eastern painting, Islamic art, Dutch Still life & interior painting, Persian miniatures and African art—investigating the ways in which intricately patterned fields can work as a veiled entry into another world.

The idea that a pattern and fabric, so artificial in its representation, can still take on a range of emotions and personas, also acting as a metaphor to explore cross pollination of cultures and countries that I have traveled to and now live in. The more I explore these links I feel I am getting a deeper understanding of both myself and the richness the language of painting can bring to my subject: painterly surfaces, the sensuality of color, line, form and marks combining to bring about images, which are sometimes difficult to decipher."

Ms. O'Neill received a Joan Mitchell grant/award in 2008.

Constance Jacobson: Above the Neck

The work of Constance Jacobson will be on display at the John Davis Gallery from March 5th through the 29th. There will be a reception for the artist on Saturday, March 7th, from 6 till 8 p.m. This will be the first featured exhibition in the main galleries of Ms. Jacobson’s work. She previously exhibited in Hudson in the Carriage House in 2008.

Here are some of the artist's thoughts about her work:

"Much has been written in recent years about the brain’s structure and about how it functions to create memories and states of consciousness. I have been trying to read as widely as I can on these topics, as I reflect on my family’s experience with dementia, the death before death, and on the relationship of human beings to nature.

The prints and drawings in this exhibit are an outgrowth of these contemplations. Many use a printed lotus leaf as a homologous structure to a horizontal slice of the brain. I felt this relationship to be a healing and soothing metaphor for my own reflections, and a way of connecting the human animal to the world of plants. The brain in other prints and drawings becomes transformed into a medusa-shaped jellyfish with long tentacles, another humble and beautiful aquatic species, and in this case, a nod to our marine origins. In still other work, I have depicted human heads in a water environment, barely floating above the rising waterline. This vulnerability is felt on a personal level--a fear of loss of self, but it also reflects the tenuous immersion of humanity in an increasingly human-threatened natural world. Only when humans see themselves as part of nature, connected to and dependent on all other living things, will they do everything in their power to preserve it.”

Kristin Locashio

The work of Kristin Locashio will be on display at the John Davis Gallery from February 5th through March 1st, 2009. There will be a reception for the artist on Saturday, February 7th, from 6 till 8 p.m.

"The paintings develop from an exploration of mark making. I do not begin with any imagery in mind. I work intuitively to develop a composition. Each layer is made by working with, or against, the last. One compositional approach that I have been exploring is composed of short, choppy, vertical or horizontal marks, which suggest an agitated ground that strives to contain a structure attempting to emerge from a flurry of brushstrokes. Another approach is built from long, interwoven marks, rising and falling across the canvas, intertwining with one another in a ropy physicality of paint. Ultimately, the work evolves from the act of seeking, with the knowledge that the possibility of editing always exists."

Kristin Locashio, 2008

Dale Emmart: Paintings

The work of Dale Emmart will be on display at the John Davis Gallery from January 8th through February 1st. There will be a reception for the artist on Saturday, January 10th, from 6 till 8 p.m. This will be the first featured exhibition in the main galleries of Ms. Emmart’s work. She previously exhibited in Hudson in the Carriage House in 2007.

Here are some of Dale's thoughts about her work:

“My ideal for viewing painting is up close and slow. And this is the way in which I develop my pieces: with scrutiny, examination, re-assessment, and consistent adjustment. The paper and oil panels exhibited associate entirely with the quality of time in still life, where an inert, singular moment hangs, suspended and sustained. The oil paintings use observation as an operative to twist, bend, or wrestle form and space away from fact into an alternative essence. The drawings on handmade paper are delicate, and are intended as a diaristic exercise. Surface manipulations, on both paper and panel; suggest evidence of the painting process: bumps, bleeds, folds and cuts under the surface or inscribed on the top, connect the image with its source. All share common references: drawings of a palm plant in Bermuda, oysters and muscle shell clusters in Brittany, market place rabbits and wizened trees in Portugal, dead tree roots from Pennsylvania. The references suggest visual equivalents of ecological and psychological discomfort. The works are personally and environmentally cathartic. Pervasive rusty warm color recalls flesh and earth. Flakey mollusk shells, brittle wood, roots imply arterial pathways, and nerve endings. Contrasts of color temperature, soft to hard shapes, opaque weights layered against transparent marks map out rhetorical questions of sustainability, disappearance, vulnerability, and regeneration.”

Dale Emmart, 2009