Priscilla Derven, Paintings, "SOA e SONA" with Foon Sham, John Ready, Holly Hughes, Ben La Rocca and Deirdre Swords

On Thursday, September 16th, a group of artists opened a group of exhibitions for the Main Galleries, Sculpture Garden and Carriage House. The work was on display through October 10th.

Main Galleries:
Priscilla Derven, Paintings
SOA e SONA


"For the past number of years, I’ve alternated my subject matter within my interest in figurative painting. I’ve painted wistful, playful, isolated figures on the beach with all that implies and I’ve painted figures in turmoil in what I have been calling the skirmish series.

Recently, I came across three or four paintings on paper that I’d done a number of years ago. The idea for this series began ten years ago, in fact. I thought I had shelved it, but something in this work grabbed my attention and these images have reasserted themselves in my consciousness and curiosity.

The two new series are titled SOA e SONA. They are the acronyms I have given the work which sound like a foreign language to me so I decided to go with using the Italian “e” for “and” for a little verbal joke. They refer to the sources I used for these images, which I choose to not disclose since I believe that a visual experience must stand alone, without need for semantic reference. I wish for the viewer to draw his or her own conclusion as to what is going on here."

Priscilla Derven 2010


Sculpture Garden:
Foon Sham
Curve, 2010

This is one of the series of works that I have started in 1997, when I wanted to create a large vessel form that allows people to enter inside. Many of the works in this series had an opening on the bottom to allow viewers to walk in and out, to interact with the exterior and the interior. When one gets inside, one would experience the change of temperature, the scale of the surrounding, the view to the sky and the weaving pattern generated by the wood blocks; one could even hear his/her echo inside. This particular piece is smaller in scale and more focused on the aesthetics of the form such as its curvilinear contour, and the visual patterns of the blocks.

The piece is made of cedar, a wood that would last outdoors. The wood was painted with two coats of wood preservatives in natural color."

Foon Sham
2010

Carriage House:
Installation:
John Ready

John Ready lives and maintains his studio in La Crescent, Minnesota. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Art Education from University of Wisconsin - La Crosse, a Master of Arts degree in Metalsmithing/Jewelry from Iowa State University, Ames Iowa and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York. He lived and worked in New York City for several years before returning to the mid-west. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse and is the Director of University Gallery at UW-L.

His work has been exhibited throughout the United States with recent exhibition at the Rochester Art Center, Rochester, Minnesota (2009) and public art projects for the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art / Olbrich Botanical Gardens, Madison, WI (2004-05) and the Milwaukee Riverwalk, Milwaukee, WI (2009-2012).


Second Floor:
Holly Hughes


At John Davis Gallery Hughes will show a selection of paintings, prints, plates and gouaches showcasing an ongoing dialogue between media. Her Italian ceramic work continues to have a significant impact on her entire studio practice.

“Right now, my favorite painters worked hundreds of years ago - in glaze on plates in steep hill towns. They painted things like handshakes and ermine pelts – with a loose and masterful touch and an almost Disney-like clarity.”

Picking up the broken threads of stories told at different historical moments Holly Hughes playfully reweaves them into new fictions. Using “fragments of meaning” collected during her travels and research, as well her longstanding practice of improvisational and recombinatory strategies – she invites viewers to create their own narratives.

“It’s a game of decoding - we are always sorting through the complexity of shapes - some caught between the suggestive and the recognizable, others legible, or in that just sub-noun condition.”

Her activated figure/ground surfaces allow room for the imagination to run wild. Flooded with color, these fresh images invoke their past ancestors. History is a tattletale - with not so hidden “other possibles” lurking everywhere. Nature imagery abounds and the artist humorously toys with heraldic language. In slow, detailed and thought provoking ways Holly’s new work reveals the telling instability of signs.

“Studying ceramic traditions has opened my painting to an iconographic explosion of sorts – but nothing reads as it used to.”


Third Floor:
Ben La Rocco























“My paintings are about my life. Memory, dreams reading and study of form and geometry feed into them, but immersion in feeling and other people is the most important thing. I am trying to get closer to myself, to others and to the world through painting. I want it to take me somewhere closer to reality and to explore new ways of feeling and relating.

If life is about evolution, about improving oneself and being of use to others in whatever measure one is able as one goes along, then painting must be about the same thing, like philosophy - a way of being in the world. Painting must grow and change in unpredictable ways

When I paint I do not plan what I am going to do unless something comes to me from an inexplicable source. My gage for the validity of a moment’s inspiration is in its obscurity. If the sources of imagery are too readily identifiable, I distrust them. It must emerge instead from a dark place and come into the light. I work with brushes, knives and all kinds of mediums. If an image jumps forth and demands attention, then I put it in a painting; if not, I work according to my intuition, associating colors as they occur to me and feeling the movement of the paint through my body and the feelings that move through my insides and mind. I often work from life and images of animals, spirals, branching trees and nebulous clouds recur.

This is a general rule. My larger paintings on canvas take a very long time to develop and the smaller ones come more quickly, often on board, motivating me to continue working on the others. The small paintings derive from momentary thoughts or feelings expressing themselves visually. I think of them as odes. I think of the larger paintings as accretions: things gradually piling on top of one another.

I am inspired by artists - all of them. I find their vulnerability irresistible. I love best those that channel their paintings directly from mysterious sources; those that have great emotional breadth and depth; those who have mystical insight; and those with a vast sense of space.”

Ben La Rocco
2010


Fourth Floor:
Deirdre Swords

























Having recently moved to Columbia County Deirdre’s work has taken a new direction. In response to living close to the natural world she has increased her paint quantity and added to the structure of her paintings’ supports. The paintings are more tactile, more like the ground that she walks on. She is motivated by her desire to manifest meaning from out of her unconscious. This meaning is dictated by her feelings and her visual impressions; the new tactile dimension has given the work an element of playfulness and expresses a respect for the physicality of the materials she uses.