Main Galleries and Sculpture Garden:
Andrew Dunnill
"Drawing is for me the most direct form of visual expression. It enables me to interpret my experiences and observations, to question preconceptions, tap into my subconscious and reinvent my decision making process. Whether my subject matter originates in the ship breaking yards of India, in memories of rural England, or the vast open spaces of the American West, drawing is my foundation, free from the physical realities and practical restraints implicit in sculpture making.
Sculpture demands a different rigor and spatial understanding than drawing and yet the two languages often inform one another. The marks and images, narratives and abstractions that I generate in two dimensions are frequently the genesis of sculptural ideas. The works represented in this exhibition are an attempt to bring the experience of sculpture closer to that of drawing by releasing the potential energy and life that is often restricted in an inert material such as steel. I am searching for a pliant and plastic geometry to imbue the density and rigidity of steel with a new three-dimensional poetry."
Andrew Dunnill
2010
Carriage House:
There are five artists within the carriage house: Roman Hrab, Jennifer Mazza, Jonathan Parker, Philip Heilman and Mark Tambella in addition to a continuously changing group show of gallery sculptors on the first floor.
Installation: Roman Hrab:
Chandelier for Ernst Haeckel (Radiolarian/Jellyfish Hybrid)
Like Haeckel’s prints, Chandelier inspires contemplation in its morphing, mandala-like composition. Aspects of Haeckel’s work that further inform Chandelier are the synthesis of art and science, and the systems at work that communicate with each other. Tangential to this is the subculture of parlor microscopy that was all the rage in Haeckel’s day. The well-to-do of Victorian society often gathered to compare slide samples, marveling at one another’s discoveries under the glass. Fast-forward to the 21st century, and man’s impact on nature is increasingly self-evident, with climate change wreaking havoc on populations of fauna and flora around the world. Warming ocean temperatures are causing population explosions in jellyfish, massive bacterial and algae blooms, and widespread destruction of coral reefs. I see the Radiolarian/ Jellyfish Hybrid as a rogue plankton life-form that has mutated and outgrown the microscope, taken over the parlor, or in this case the carriage house elevator shaft, like some architectural parasite. Nature running amok in response to the indulgences of mankind.
2010
Carriage House:
There are five artists within the carriage house: Roman Hrab, Jennifer Mazza, Jonathan Parker, Philip Heilman and Mark Tambella in addition to a continuously changing group show of gallery sculptors on the first floor.
Installation: Roman Hrab:
Chandelier for Ernst Haeckel (Radiolarian/Jellyfish Hybrid)
Chandelier for Ernst Haeckel (Radiolarian/Jellyfish Hybrid) is a sculptural installation inspired by the observations and studies of 19th century naturalist Ernst Haeckel. In 1866, Haeckel traveled to the Canary Islands where he met Charles Darwin, whose On the Origin of Species had been published seven years prior. A great admirer of Origins, Haeckel also realized that the technical weight of its subject limited the book’s exposure to the masses. Via his own research he gave name to many previously unknown oceanic life-forms; he won his greatest popularity when he began visually documenting the species that he discovered. His drawings and engravings would later be published in collections such as Art Forms in Nature and The Radiolarian Atlas, best-sellers in their day. They highlighted Haeckel’s sense of order and detail, but also drew criticism for their exaggerated hyperrealism.
Like Haeckel’s prints, Chandelier inspires contemplation in its morphing, mandala-like composition. Aspects of Haeckel’s work that further inform Chandelier are the synthesis of art and science, and the systems at work that communicate with each other. Tangential to this is the subculture of parlor microscopy that was all the rage in Haeckel’s day. The well-to-do of Victorian society often gathered to compare slide samples, marveling at one another’s discoveries under the glass. Fast-forward to the 21st century, and man’s impact on nature is increasingly self-evident, with climate change wreaking havoc on populations of fauna and flora around the world. Warming ocean temperatures are causing population explosions in jellyfish, massive bacterial and algae blooms, and widespread destruction of coral reefs. I see the Radiolarian/ Jellyfish Hybrid as a rogue plankton life-form that has mutated and outgrown the microscope, taken over the parlor, or in this case the carriage house elevator shaft, like some architectural parasite. Nature running amok in response to the indulgences of mankind.
Roman M. Hrab
2010
Second Floor: Jennifer Mazza
"I am very excited to share this new series as it represents a great departure from the previous directions my work has taken. I feel these paintings to be some of the strangest images I have yet made, for the very fact of them not being strange – not overtly at least. But I sense that they are subtly covert and they do succeed in knitting together such a great number of the disparate strands my mind has been following of late – springing from art history, literature, philosophy and theater theory among other sources. They are in a sense about the experience of experiencing a painting, and play at this by employing the most minimal means: mundane objects, irrational poses, ambiguous spaces. These new paintings, as I understand them, have something to do with time - the manipulating of time; compressing, halting, or drawing it out - through subject, application, and the implication (or lack of) depth and space.
Many of the paintings and works on paper included in this show come from a series that I am working on called "The Object Removed," which makes direct quotations from paintings made by a number of Renaissance artists including Memling and the Master of Osservanza. Creating images based both loosely or explicitly on masterworks by these artists, I have removed the human form from what was originally either a religious painting or a portrait. Devoid of their intended subject, the new images seem to belong to the genre of Renaissance Landscapes. I mean this ironically as there is no such genre, all "landscape" in Renaissance painting being dependent on or subjugated to the human content. And so even with the human forms removed these landscapes remain entirely subjective, and become projections of interior turmoil abandoned by the paintings' previous occupants or else manifest a sense of absence or longing."
Jennifer Mazza
2010
Second Floor:
Jonathan Parker
"The work I produce is often intimate in scale and simple in design. My own intention is at the heart of each piece I make, but ultimately, each painting speaks its own language. When I make art I have something to say, however, when I stand before a finished work, it has something to say to me. And if the painting works, it speaks not in my voice but in a universal language."
Jonathan Parker
2010
Third Floor:
Philip Heilman
“Source Material…….How do we get our inspiration? Why does one reference stay with us while hundreds of others fall away? I don’t know. There are artists that I go back to for visual sustenance who over years have shown me continuous integrity and honesty. Many I know or knew. Some are dead. Some I’ve never met. Each was for me either a Wowa! moment or a quiet jump off point to a dozen other sources. They have been educational to me. After seeing their work in depth all of the moments thereafter seemed to matter more. In no particular order the names Forrest Bess, Fred Mitchell, Irving Kriesberg, Melville Price, Walker Evans, Lois Dodd, Marsden Hartley, Paul Feeley, Peter Busa, Alfred Jensen, Jean Cohen, Joan Mitchell, Put Brinley, Stuart Davis, Eva Hesse come to mind….on their shoulders stand Carroll Dunham, Peter Acheson, Mary Heilmann, Jonathan Lasker, Amy Sillman, along with a hundred others whose name escapes me now.
In college I started out looking at black & white photographs; my favorites were Avedon, Sternfeld, Kertez, Evans which led me to explore design, which lead me to look at color, which lead to painters. They cast vivid memories in my psyche. Their work is honest and forthright. They each had their Wowa moment much earlier than I. Yet they learned how to create something new & fresh from what came before. So I bind myself to them as guide posts. Thru them I’ve had my own Wowa! moments. My favorite quote goes: “…the only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know”. Nowhere is that more true that in the art world. Nothing is new. Just new source material. Nobody owns it yet it’s all for sale.
Perhaps a painter summed it up best, saying, “We are trying to paint what is real. We are trying to paint what we have never seen before."
Philip Heilman
2010
Fourth Floor:
Mark Tambella
"This exhibition is primarily a sampling of a series of small square still life. They are oil paintings on panel created in one or two sessions, in various studio and outdoor settings. They are supplemental to an ongoing series of portraits.
The content attempts a kind of poetic association of subjects hopefully with delicate metaphorical underpinnings, trying to avoid obvious narrative or cliché. Eh. The compositions are not assembled and copied but are selected within the process of mark making. I have tried to also utilize scale and color to convey underlying characteristics much the way I would paint a portrait, with responses and interpretations with a subject while not just copying its image.
Taking a moment with something simple; how an individual is about people, a spoon is about spoons, a fish about all fish"
Mark Tambella
2010
Many of the paintings and works on paper included in this show come from a series that I am working on called "The Object Removed," which makes direct quotations from paintings made by a number of Renaissance artists including Memling and the Master of Osservanza. Creating images based both loosely or explicitly on masterworks by these artists, I have removed the human form from what was originally either a religious painting or a portrait. Devoid of their intended subject, the new images seem to belong to the genre of Renaissance Landscapes. I mean this ironically as there is no such genre, all "landscape" in Renaissance painting being dependent on or subjugated to the human content. And so even with the human forms removed these landscapes remain entirely subjective, and become projections of interior turmoil abandoned by the paintings' previous occupants or else manifest a sense of absence or longing."
Jennifer Mazza
2010
Second Floor:
Jonathan Parker
"The work I produce is often intimate in scale and simple in design. My own intention is at the heart of each piece I make, but ultimately, each painting speaks its own language. When I make art I have something to say, however, when I stand before a finished work, it has something to say to me. And if the painting works, it speaks not in my voice but in a universal language."
Jonathan Parker
2010
Third Floor:
Philip Heilman
“Source Material…….How do we get our inspiration? Why does one reference stay with us while hundreds of others fall away? I don’t know. There are artists that I go back to for visual sustenance who over years have shown me continuous integrity and honesty. Many I know or knew. Some are dead. Some I’ve never met. Each was for me either a Wowa! moment or a quiet jump off point to a dozen other sources. They have been educational to me. After seeing their work in depth all of the moments thereafter seemed to matter more. In no particular order the names Forrest Bess, Fred Mitchell, Irving Kriesberg, Melville Price, Walker Evans, Lois Dodd, Marsden Hartley, Paul Feeley, Peter Busa, Alfred Jensen, Jean Cohen, Joan Mitchell, Put Brinley, Stuart Davis, Eva Hesse come to mind….on their shoulders stand Carroll Dunham, Peter Acheson, Mary Heilmann, Jonathan Lasker, Amy Sillman, along with a hundred others whose name escapes me now.
In college I started out looking at black & white photographs; my favorites were Avedon, Sternfeld, Kertez, Evans which led me to explore design, which lead me to look at color, which lead to painters. They cast vivid memories in my psyche. Their work is honest and forthright. They each had their Wowa moment much earlier than I. Yet they learned how to create something new & fresh from what came before. So I bind myself to them as guide posts. Thru them I’ve had my own Wowa! moments. My favorite quote goes: “…the only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know”. Nowhere is that more true that in the art world. Nothing is new. Just new source material. Nobody owns it yet it’s all for sale.
Perhaps a painter summed it up best, saying, “We are trying to paint what is real. We are trying to paint what we have never seen before."
Philip Heilman
2010
Fourth Floor:
Mark Tambella
"This exhibition is primarily a sampling of a series of small square still life. They are oil paintings on panel created in one or two sessions, in various studio and outdoor settings. They are supplemental to an ongoing series of portraits.
The content attempts a kind of poetic association of subjects hopefully with delicate metaphorical underpinnings, trying to avoid obvious narrative or cliché. Eh. The compositions are not assembled and copied but are selected within the process of mark making. I have tried to also utilize scale and color to convey underlying characteristics much the way I would paint a portrait, with responses and interpretations with a subject while not just copying its image.
Taking a moment with something simple; how an individual is about people, a spoon is about spoons, a fish about all fish"
Mark Tambella
2010
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