Thursday, September 30, 2010
PRESS RELEASE: Linda E. Jones at 215 College Gallery in Burlington
Sticks & Stones:
New Work by Linda E. Jones
October 8- Oct. 31, 2010
Opening Reception: October 8, 5- 8 pm
with informal gallery talk at 5:30
215 College Gallery is pleased to present "Sticks & Stones", a series of diverse new work by Linda Jones. Using materials as varied as encaustic (beeswax), foam insulation, rice paper, oil, graphite, and other mixed material, the exhibit contains constructions, paintings, digital prints as well as a site-specific gallery installation using a reconstructed Haitian tomb. Life from decay, shelter from the rubble are some of the subjects explored in this rich and complex work.
Linda has exhibited widely in museums and galleries throughout the US for over 35 years. She holds a BFA in painting and lithography from Antioch College and is represented in both private and public collections. The recipient of numerous awards, residencies and fellowships Linda was most recently awarded a Creation Grant for 2009/2010 from The Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition to her studio work, Linda has been teaching painting and drawing with Burlington City Arts since 2000 and is one of the original members of 215 College Gallery in Burlington. She resides with her husband and two sons in Burlington Vermont, where she has lived since 1980.
Linda's work is supported in part by the Vermont Arts Council & the National Endowment for the Arts.
For more information go to: www.215collegegallery.com and www.lindaejones.com
Image: Fungus Tree, 39x32", 2010, oil, encaustic & mixed media on wood panel
Press Release: New Exhibit At Northeast Kingdom Artisan’s Guild, St. Johnsbury
“Continuous Threads – Creative Legacies of the Northeast Kingdom”
New Exhibit At Northeast Kingdom Artisan’s Guild
St. Johnsbury, VT -- From October 2 through November 20 the Northeast Kingdom Artisan’s Guild will present a multimedia exhibition “Continuous Threads – Creative Legacies of the Northeast Kingdom” in its Backroom Gallery. The public is invited to meet the artists at a reception on Saturday, October 16, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm.
The Artisan’s Guild was selected as one of a handful of organizations state-wide to host this Vermont State of Craft Showcase event. State of Craft is a multi-year collaboration of the Vermont Craft Council, Bennington Museum, and Vermont Folklife Center to document, preserve and interpret the history of the contemporary crafts movement in Vermont. The “flagship” State of Craft exhibit continues at the Bennington Museum through the late fall. Echoing the themes of the major show, the Guild’s “Continuous Threads” offers an opportunity to learn about the careers of individual artists as well as the mentors and organizations that have nurtured them. The exhibit will explore the creative threads local artisans have drawn from the region’s rich cultural and historic craft traditions; as well as the inspirational threads of the landscape and community which drew them to the region.
Featured artists include Jesse Larocque who continues the basket-making tradition of his Abenaki ancestors. Printmakers Mary Simpson and Sheri Pearl and paper cutter Carolyn Guest, who grew up in the Northeast Kingdom, will show how their work is inspired by examples of generations of craftspeople in their families. Delsie Hoyt is the fourth generation of women in her Northeast Kingdom family to braid rugs; in her work rug braiding evolves from the utilitarian to fine art.
Several of the artisans included in the exhibit were drawn to the Northeast Kingdom by its landscape and weather, as well as its people and tightly knit communities. Printmaker Claire Van Vliet finds a particular quality in the skies and weather patterns of Newark; the photographs of Richard Brown capture the character of the region’s farmers and working landscape. Potter Norma St. Germain was drawn here by an established and supportive community of artisans. Glassblower Harry Besett learned his craft through studio apprenticeships in the United States and in Sweden. He and his wife Wendy draw inspiration from the hills and meadows surrounding their Hardwick home in their collaborative creations in which her landscape painting is encased in his blown glass forms.
Besett and Hardwick blacksmith Lucian Avery will include examples of work created by their apprentices; illustrating the promising future of craft in the region.
The Northeast Kingdom Artisans Guild (748-0158) is located at 430 Railroad St., St. Johnsbury and is open Monday through Saturday from 10:30 to 5:30
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Press Release: Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Tom Golden Collection, at UVM
BURLINGTON- The University of Vermont's Fleming Museum is excited to announce the opening of a special exhibition featuring original drawings, sculptures, and collages by the celebrated artistic duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude. In addition to bringing this retrospective of their careers to Burlington, the Museum will also offer a unique opportunity to hear the artist Christo lecture about past and current projects. Opening on Tuesday, September 21, the exhibition, Christo and Jeanne Claude: The Tom Golden Collection includes over 125 original works and photographs that trace the artists' impressive careers from 1972 to the present. "This is an extraordinary opportunity for our community to experience one of the most engaged, and engaging artists of our time," said Fleming Museum director Janie Cohen, "In the course of realizing their remarkable projects around the world over the last 35 years, Christo and his late partner Jeanne-Claude have accomplished phenomenal feats of engineering, negotiation, and, above all, stunning beauty." |
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Press Release: Jon Gregg “Recent Works on Paper” at Amy E. Tarrant Gallery Burlington
BURLINGTON, VT — Talented Vermont artist and co-founder of the Vermont Studio Center, Jon Gregg exhibits all-new work in an artist’s reception on Friday, October 8 from 5:30 to 8 pm in the Amy E. Tarrant Gallery at the Flynn Center. The collection goes on display on Saturday, October 2 and remains on display through Saturday, December 31.
The Flynn is thrilled to present Gregg’s simply titled Recent Works on Paper, consisting of oil stick with mixed media on paper which, conforming to the artist’s philosophy, are untitled. Gregg prefers not to write the expected artist’s statement, holding to his belief that “painting is a visual language and the painting should speak for itself.”
Gregg holds a M.A. in architecture and practiced the craft from 1971 to 1983. After a life- changing event in the early ‘80s, he and his life partner, Louise von Weise, decided to focus on their art and went on to create an artist colony in Johnson that is the Vermont Studio Center— the largest international artists' and writers’ residency program in the United States. Gregg has won awards from the Vermont Arts Council, and the Preservation Trust of Vermont. A practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism since 1971, in 2006 he biked across the country to celebrate his 60th birthday.
PRESS RELEASE: Forest & Field at Art on Main in Bristol
Painting and the arts have always been a part of Cynthia Guild Kling’s life. She says that where she is at the time influences the subject of her work. Today it is Starksboro; in the past New Hampshire, New Mexico and Sweden have given her inspiration.
“Many of the places I have painted have changed,” she says; “fields are developed, trees die and are cut down, buildings are lost or moved, and roads are built or widened. My work tells the story of ‘time when.’”
The artist has shown her work in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire with the Laconia Art Group, at Gilford Old Home Day Artists’ Exhibit, at Deerleap Books, the Starksboro Public Library, as well as in her own studio.
John Clarke has spent most of his life in a classroom teaching English but now works daily at the intersection of the human and the arboreal, exploring patterns that might explain what it takes to live. John taught at UVM for 25 years while living in an old farmhouse house in South Starksboro and Buels Gore. He found refuge in the woods where overgrown pastures generated wildly distorted trees struggling with each other to find a safe pathway to sunlight. At first he just pulled out firewood, but sometimes he stumbled onto strange shapes that he felt deserved a coat of oil. He began to focus on burls, whose tortured shapes could yield a fine bowl.
After retiring in 2000, burls absorbed his focus, not as bowls but as human figures whose growth was shaped by unruly circumstance. Attacked from the outside by disease, fungus, sand or damage, trees turned themselves inside out in their fight to remain upright. Sculpting a burl reveals the patterns a tree devises to remain standing among other trees. A burl could become a pregnant woman, a blinded king, a boy climbing a dead snag or a family of elves. John remains connected to the education world and sometimes brings his figures and tools to Vermont schools so young people can taste the allure of banging a chisel into some formless stump.
For more information, visit www.artonmain.net, find us on Facebook, or contact Carolyn Ashby, Gallery Manager at (802) 453-4032 or info@artonmain.net.
PRESS RELEASE: Liz Nelson Speaks at First Friday Art Talk at Art House in Craftsbury
Liz Nelson shows examples of her watercolor, acrylic, oil, and multimedia paintings at The Art House Gallery this Friday night, October 1, at 6:30 pm. She will discuss her work, techniques, and mediums, and speak about her life as an artist. Her talk will be followed by reception at 7:30. More information at vermontarthouse.com, or 802.586.2545.
On Thursday, September 30th at 7:00 pm author Lawrence Millman will read from his book A Woman in the Polar Night. Millman will read from two of his books at Stardust Books and Cafe, Craftsbury Common, VT and will answer questions about his books. Books will be available for purchase and signing. For more information on Millman, visit rolfpotts.com, or call 802.586.2200.
Image: Green River, mixed media, 2010, 24 x 36"
Press Release: Middlebury College showcases 40 Years of Acquisitions
“Friends Bearing Gifts: 40 Years of Acquisitions from the Friends of the Art Museum”
September 17–December 12, 2010
Middlebury, VT- On Fri., Sept.17 the Middlebury College Museum of Art will open its doors to all members of the community for an exhibition made possible through the commitment and involvement demonstrated by the Friends of the Art Museum (formerly Friends of Art) over the last 40 years.
Since the group’s inception in 1969 the Friends, an association of alumni, community members, faculty, staff, and students of the College, have used their membership dues to obtain new acquisitions for the College’s art collection and to support educational outreach programs for the benefit of the community.
The opening of the Christian A. Johnson Memorial Building in 1968 marked the beginning of the campaign to gather a permanent collection of art for the College. The Friends, along with faculty
members from the Art Department, heavily aided these early efforts and helped to shape the identity of the collection over the years. While the Museum has moved from its original location in the Johnson Building to the Mahaney Center for the Arts and is now run by a full-time dedicated staff, it is impossible to ignore the integral role played by the Friends in its establishment.
The success of the Museum has served to strengthen both the College and the local community.Middlebury students have benefitted from an acquisition strategy based in part on using art as a teaching tool in classes, while programs like MiddArts and the Museum Assistants Program have helped enrich art curriculums for schools in the surrounding area. The Friends have always corroborated the importance of these initiatives, exemplified by their creation of the Awards for Distinction in the Visual Arts, given annually to recognize significant contributions to the visual arts in Addison County.
This exhibition, celebrating four decades of generosity, includes 40 objects purchased using funds raised by the Friends. With an extremely diverse display of works—ranging from an ancient Chinese mirror and black figure lekythos (the Friends’ first ever acquisition) to works by modern masters such as Chuck Close and Jasper Johns—Friends Bearing Giftsdemonstrates the overarching impact that the Friends of the Art Museum have had on all areas of the Museum’s permanent collection.
Through this special exhibition, the Museum acknowledges the achievements and generosity of the community of Friends that remains as essential to the Museum today
as it was at the time of its establishment.Organized by Chief Curator Emmie Donadio and Director Richard Saunders, the exhibition remains on view through Sun., Dec. 12. A wide range of viewpoints is reflected in the labels that accompany the works displayed, as current and past faculty and alumni in a range of disciplines have contributed to the information presented with the objects on view. An illustrated survey of the history of the Museum and its community of Friends, with an essay by Donadio, will also be available for purchase at the Museum Store.
The Middlebury College Museum of Art, located in the Mahaney Center for the Arts on Rte. 30 on the southern edge of campus, is free and open to the public Tues. through Fri. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sat. and Sun. from noon to 5 p.m. It is closed Mondays. The Museum is physically accessible. Parking is available in the Center for the Arts parking lot. For further information, please call (802) 443–5007 or TTY (802) 443–3155, or visit the Museum’s website at museum.middlebury.edu.
—end—
Image Credits:
Hiram Powers, Bust of Greek Slave, c. 1850-73, marble, 24 1/2 x 16 x 7 1/2 inches. Middlebury College Museum of Art, gift of the Friends of Art and the Salomon-Hutzler Foundation, 1970.006 (Photo: Tad Merrick)
Caparisoned Horse, Chinese, Eastern Wei dynasty (534–550), polychrome ceramic, 12 3/4 x 12 1/2 x 7 3/4 inches. Middlebury College Museum of Art, purchase with funds provided by the Friends of Art Acquisition Fund, 2004.015 (photo: Ken Burris)
Giuseppe De Nittis, Study for Alle Corse, c. 1874, oil on panel, 5 x 9 1/4 inches. Middlebury College Museum of Art, purchase with funds provided by the Friends of Art Acquisition Fund and the Christian A. Johnson Memorial Fund, 1989.007 (Photo: Tad Merrick)
Saturday, September 25, 2010
CALL TO ARTISTS: Vermont Watercolor Society
The Vermont Watercolor Society is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. Founded in 1995 by a small group of painters, the Society is now over 250 members strong. Susan Wahlrab, a Vermont Watercolor Artist from Calais is jurying work for an exhibition at the Helen Day Art Center.
Wahlrab is an accomplished watercolor painter in her own right, she holds an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Her multilayered intaglio and monoprints have been exhibited and collected worldwide. Wahlrab moved to Vermont in 1992 to raise a family. She supports herself through the sale of her work.
The Society has two levels of membership: Associate and Signature. Juried exhibitions are essential to the membership because to attain Signature status, one must be included in three juried shows.
Artists wishing to submit work are welcome to drop artwork off between Monday October 4th and Friday October 8th. All artists must be members of Vermont Watercolor Society. Non-members are invited to join on the spot. The member fee for VWS is $35. Please refer to www.vermontwatercolorsociety.com for submission details.
Helen Day Art Center will feature the Juried Exhibition of artwork from Vermont Watercolor Society members, opening October 15th and continuing through November 21st
Artists Tour of the exhibition will be at 5:00pm, and costs $5 to the public, complimentary to members of HDAC and to members of the Vermont Watercolor Society. The public opening reception begins at 6:00pm.
Image: Joann DiNicola, Blueberries and Bluejays
PRESS RELEASE: Art Events in Montpelier
Come out and celebrate: Art Walk, Sculptcycle Unveiling, and meet Montpelier Alive’s new Executive Director!
Unwind on Friday, October 15th in downtown Montpelier during our fall Art Walk, where you will find comics art, dancing, music, edible delectables and the unveiling of Montpelier Alive’s newest gift to the city.
Downtown Montpelier will be Alive with Montpelier Alive'sfall Art Walk. All are invited to stroll, free of charge through a variety of downtown businesses and public venues from 4 to 8 pm to enjoy an array of visual and performing arts by local artists, including Mary Jo Krolewski (see attached image), showing at The Cheshire Cat on Elm Street.
In a “Comics” inspired theme, The Kellogg Hubbard Children's Library will be open for the entirety of Art Walk to display work from their Supergirls and Dark Knights Comics Clubs and Birchgrove Baking will create a cake inspired by the strip Mimi's Doughnuts by NH artist, Marek Bennett. Art walk programs, listing participating venues and artists, will be available at venue locations throughout Montpelier. New Art Walk venues include Venus Tattoos, Contemporary Dance and Fitness Studio and Capital Kitchen.
At 5:30 P.M. on the lawn of the Washington County Court House (State and Elm Streets), Montpelier Alive will unveil its newest gift to the city. Join in the celebration as this sculpture is revealed to the public in its new home. Montpelier Alive’s new Executive Director, Chuck D’Aprix is also expected to be on-hand for the unveiling.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
PRESS RELEASE: Hardwick Fall Film Festival
Embedded in the very word "agriculture" is our own underlying culture, the human values that inspire and motivate our lives.
Independent Vermont filmmakers have explored these issues with a creative honesty and four of their works can be seen on October 15 and 16 in the 2010 HARDWICK FALL FILM FESTIVAL at the Hardwick Town House. The festival has been organized by Harriet Wood and David Rodgers.
THE SCHEDULE:
Friday, October 15th: "My Mother's Early Lovers", by Nora Jacobson, 8 PM
Saturday, October 16th:
"Man With a Plan", 4 PM, by John O'Brien
"Neighbors", 6 PM, by Meredith Holch
"The Summer of Walter Hacks", 8 PM, by George Woodard/ Gerianne Smart
The films will all be followed by a discussion with the filmmakers and in the case of "My Mother's Early Lovers", by the author of the novel that the film was patterned after, and possibly the filmmaker as well. This will be the only chance to see the latest film of George Woodard, which can only be screened at film festivals. The films are all made in Vermont with Vermont actors and locations and the theme of rural Vermont connects them.
In addition, there will be a special exhibit of Vermont landscapes and barns by Michael Jermyn in the gallery at the Town House.
Tickets will be available at the door an hour before each screening. $6.00 per film or $18.00 for the entire series. No checks or credit cards. For more information call (802) 456-8708 Sponsored by The Center for an Agricultural Economy
Images are stills from:
Meredith Holch "Neighbors"
Nora Jacobson's "My Mother's Early Lovers" George Woodard and Sue Ball
Monday, September 20, 2010
REVIEW: Jonathan Harris at the Firehouse, Burlington
PRESS RELEASE: "On the Planet" in Barre and Burlington
ON THE PLANET is a 3-site, international art exhibit organized by Studio Place Arts that showcases artwork, performances, and educational activities by Japanese and American artists in September, 2010, in recognition of the 10th Anniversary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity.
The exhibit takes place at all sites from Septemer 1-22. All 3 floors of Studio Place Arts explore biodiversity and related environmental topics, with artwork by Japanese and American artists, including prints on the second floor by students from the Nagoya University of Fine Arts, and an installation by New York-based installation artist Midori Harima (see below). During this same timeframe, there is an exhibit at Flynndog in Burlington, and outdoors performances and installations at historic stone quarries at Millstone Hill in Barre Town.
Self-guided tours of ON THE PLANET outdoors sculptures located in historic quarries at Millstone Hill in Barre Town take place on Tuesdays. Sept. 14, 21, Noon- 6:00 PM. It takes about an hour to walk around the loop, through beautiful paths passing quarries in the woods and many exciting sculptural installations, including one by Massachusetts artist Chris Nelson that bisects the large Capital Quarry with yellow nylon rope.
Visit Studio Place Arts in Barre for map and directions, or find directions online at http://www.studioplacearts.com/millstonedirections.html
Images (top to bottom):
Installation at Flynndog in Burlington,
Midori Harima installation at Studio Place Arts,
Chris Nelson installation at Millstone Hill
Thursday, September 16, 2010
REVIEW: Jude Bond at 215 College Gallery in Burlington
Jude Bond is an artist with a cohesive, evolving body of work, a woman in full possession of her creative powers. Over the course of her career, her primary materials have been women’s garments, domestic implements, and photographs that reference the notions of time and change.
In her current exhibit at 215 College Gallery (September 10 - October 3), entitled A Gathering of Skirts, she offers, in the front room of the gallery, three mixed media sculptures from her 2007 series Tomatoes (previously exhibited in a show at Flynndog), with petticoats flouncing on inverted tomato cages, their three arms each brandishing antique kitchen utensils.
In the larger room at the gallery, Bond exhibits new work from 2010. Two of the walls present digitally-altered photographs in sepia tones overlaid by organza printed with the same image, both layers machine-stitched together. The stitching becomes a prominent part of the piece, often appearing in a series of parallel vertical lines that emphasize the subjects’ skirts or bodices, but occasionally (as in the second image in the horizontally-mounted series Stitch/Threads, above, depicting two contemporary aerialists called “Ambidextrous”) in flights of loop-the-loop fancy.
The ends of the threads hang down in long tresses, like Spanish moss or root hairs. In the series Stitch/Sisters, mounted as three rows of five columns, the dangling threads of the upper rows fall in a wonderfully tangled, ragged mass, sometimes obscuring the faces of the rows beneath. In each of these fifteen pieces, the upper organza photograph is slightly larger than the underlying paper print, and is also somewhat offset, creating a sense of blurring, multiples, or a slippage of time. All but one of the images are pairs of girls or women, apparently sisters, including one Japanese pair, sitting for a formal portrait in native costume. A subtle charm is introduced by slight differences in the sepia tone among the images – some yellower, some pinker, some browner – as though to suggest that sisters (also humans, different ages, different generations) are both alike and distinct.
The mysteries of time, change, and duality that are evoked in the Stitch series become explicit in three Time Travel/Spirit Photography pieces (left). The artist dressed up in antique white dresses, had her niece photograph her, then digitally added herself to old photographs. The effect is magical, suggesting that time travel really is possible: we actually might go back and participate in our great-grandparents’ Sunday picnic, or maybe they could join us for dinner some night.
The remaining piece in the inner gallery, The Girlfriends (right), is a significant departure from the photo-based work surrounding it, with nine cloth dolls mounted on a storage shelf backed by four cheesecloth panels dyed with walnuts, tea, and blueberries.
With its three-dimensionality and food-references, The Girlfriends has more in common with the Tomatoes in the front room, though the thin, sometimes nervous lines of the inked dolls' faces call to mind the wiggly threads in the Stitch pieces. Each of the dolls has her skirt hitched up on one side with a jewel-and-chain device that is (the artist said) half of a sweater guard, meant to suggest a Victorian skirt-lifter. The raised skirts reveal canning jars filled with groups of small items such as buttons, gloves, and stones.
With her canning jars, dated photographs, and old clothing, Jude Bond demonstrates a preservationist’s impulse to store, archive, and keep the past alive. But her willingness to cut, sew, and modify history’s hand-me-downs makes Art, and statements about the being and experience of women that is altogether contemporary.
PRESS RELEASE: Emiko Sawaragi Gilbert and Janet Van Fleet at Flynndog in Burlington
Emiko Sawaragi Gilbert will be showing manipulated found branches in a series called Cornucopia, which references the bounty of nature and goodness she finds in Vermont. One piece, which is exhibited near the front door in On the Planet (closing September 22) will be a holdover in the new exhibit.
Janet Van Fleet is installing All Aboard, a long train whose cars are re-purposed from her three-dimensional work in wood, metal, and found materials. “Cars of insects, cars of warmakers, moneymakers, couples, walls, animals, teapots... kind of a cornucopia too, in its own way,” says the artist.
Images: Cornucopia detail by Emiko Sawaragi Gilbert, All Aboard detail by Janet Van Fleet
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
PRESS RELEASE: Riddles and Lies: Charged by Desire, Borough Gallery, Burlington
Riddles and Lies: charged by desire September 10th - October 1st, 2010
BOROUGH GALLERY & STUDIO 180 Flynn Avenue (through the SEABA entrance), Burlington
Borough Gallery & Studio presents their most recent exhibition, Riddles & Lies: charged by desire, created around 4 artists whose focus is reinterpreting the psychology and emotional logic of their surroundings and circumstances while also drawing heavily from the imagination and art of manipulation. Featuring book art, paintings, mixed media and drawings by Haley Bishop, Ian Burcroff, Shawna Cross and Philip Hardy; the exhibit is based on improvisation, deconstructing established notions, filling the voids of reality and layering, stacking, removing and recreating the truth until only the expressiveness of riddles is left behind.
Riddles & Lies: charged by desire opened on September 10th and will be on display by appointment until October 1st.
For more information or to schedule a tour please contact Borough Gallery at boroughgallery@gmail.com,or call 802-393-1890
TOP IMAGE: Philip Hardy "The End of the Stork" Oil on canvas, 54" x 44"
MIDDLE IMAGE: Shawna Cross "Meter Maid (bending windows)" Oil on canvas, 54" x 44"
BOTTOM IMAGE:
Ian Burcroff "New Leaf" acrylic on canvas, 24" x 28"Tuesday, September 14, 2010
CALL TO ARTISTS: Backroom Gallery in St. Johnsbury
The Backroom Gallery at the Northeast Kingdom Artisans Guild welcomes applications for solo or group exhibitions in 2011 by full-time Vermont artists in any media.
We will plan our 2011 schedule in October. Interested artists should send JPEGS , slides or photographs of work they would like to exhibit, as well as information about yourself and your work, including prices, by September 30. See below for mail and email addresses.
If you are a Guild member, work exhibited in the Backroom Gallery must be different from work in the store's inventory.
Mail application to Joan Harlowe, POB 64, East Burke VT 05832. Email application to redhorse@burkevt.net, and put "Gallery application" in the subject line.
PRESS RELEASE: Olivia Parker at Photostop in White River Junction
Parker is widely regarded as a seminal photographer who has influenced the course of contemporary photography. She has had more than one hundred one-person exhibitions in the United States and abroad, and her work is represented in major private, corporate, and museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Portfolios of her work have been published in Art News, American Photographer, Camera, Camera Arts, The Sciences and numerous other magazines in the United States, Europe, and Japan. There have been three monographs of Parker's work: Signs of Life (Godine, 1978), Under the Looking Glass (New York Graphic Society, 1983), and Weighing The Planets (New York Graphic Society, 1987). She has lectured and conducted workshops extensively both in this country and abroad.
Mostly self-taught, Olivia Parker makes ephemeral constructions to photograph that experiment with the endless possibilities of light. She has explored the nature of the still life for several decades. In the current exhibition at PHOTOSTOP, the photographer’s work has been influenced by 17th century Dutch, Flemish, and Spanish painting; the images contain objects photographed against a dark background, some with sharply focused foregrounds and backgrounds dissolving into darkness pierced by light.
In tandem with her exhibition, Parker will be teaching a rare workshop on October 2 titled “Photo Imagining in the Digital Age” from 9-5 pm. For registration details contact Lia Rothstein at PHOTOSTOP.
PHOTOSTOP Gallery is located in Suite 150 of the Tip Top Media Arts Building, 85 North Main Street, White River Jct.,VT 05001. New Fall gallery hours are Wednesdays and Thursdays from noon-5 and Fridays and Saturdays from noon-6 pm. On First Fridays and opening nights, the gallery will be open until 8 pm. Other hours are available by appointment. For additional information, call 802.698.0320. PHOTOSTOP’s website is www.photostopvt.com.
Image: Not So Still Life diptych, ©Olivia Parker 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
CALL TO ARTISTS: Comic Book Challenge in Montpelier
Can you create a 24 page comic book in 24 hours? Thousands of others have!
The Kellogg-Hubbard Library has teamed up with the Trees & Hills comic group to host a 24-Hour Comic Challenge on Oct. 2. Participants will create a 24 page comic book – story, art and lettering – in a consecutive 24 hour period.
The event – which occurs on the international 24-Hour Comic Book Day – takes place at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier. Library staff will be on hand starting at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 2 and the challenge begins at 11 a.m. and continues for the next 24 hours!
“It may sound hard, but completing a comic book in 24 hours is an amazing and rewarding experience,” said Daniel Barlow, the co-founder of Trees & Hills and one of the organizers of the event. “We're really looking forward to seeing the halls of the library filled with cartoonists engaged in a creative marathon.”
The 24-Hour Comic challenge has a unique connection to Vermont: It was created two decades ago by cartoonist Scott McCloud (“Understanding Comics”) as a creative challenge for artist Stephen R. Bissette, a Vermont artist who teaches at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vt.
“Scott invented the 24 Hour Comic as a challenge for he and I, a way of breaking logjams and freeing constrained energy by completing, sans preparation, an entire 24-page comic in a mere 24 hours, start to finish,” Bissette explained. “Whatever we did during that 24 hour stretch -- including distractions like eating, using the bathroom, napping, walking, whatever - in my case, it included making my two kids lunch and picking them up from school - the clock was still ticking.”
McCloud drew the first 24-Hour comic on Aug. 31, 1990 and Bissette created his days later on Sept. 5. Since then, tens of thousands of others have taken on the challenge, culminating in an official 24-Hour Comic Book Day. The Montpelier challenge takes place on this year's official global challenge.
The event is free and open to cartoonists and artists who are at least 16 years old. Anyone interested in participating is asked to preregister by e-mailing their name, address and telephone number to organize@treesandhills.org, or calling (802) 223-3338.
For younger cartoonists, NH cartoonist Marek Bennett will lead a three-hour interactive teaching session on comics storytelling. Bennett, the creator of the popular newspaper comic strip “Mimi's Doughnuts,” will end the lesson with each participant creating his or her own mini-comic book.
Trees & Hills is a social cartooning organization for comic book creators in Vermont, New Hampshire and western Massachusetts. Founded in 2006 by Barlow and NH cartoonist Colin Tedford, the group focuses on building and connecting communities via the publication of socially progressive comics.
The Kellogg-Hubbard Library is located in a large granite building in downtown Montpelier. The building, which has housed the library since 1894, is the state's fourth largest library and has the second largest collection of reading materials. Library offices are located at 135 Main Street in Montpelier and can be reached by calling (802) 223-3338.
Trees & Hills Comics Group, bringing together cartoonists in VT, NH & western MA
www.treesandhills.org
Contacts:
Daniel Barlow
(802) 224-6905
Phayvanh Luekhamhan
(802) 522-3973
P.O. Box 1224, Montpelier, VT 05601
PRESS RELEASE: Hand to Hand at Chaffee Art Center in Rutland
The Chaffee Art Center invites you to join us in marking the historic beginning of the withdrawal of troops from Iraq by visiting our Fall exhibit, The Hand to Hand Project. The exhibit will run from October 8 through November 20, 2010. The opening reception will take place on Friday, October 8, from 5-8 PM.
Working with nearly 200 artists, Cecelia Kane chronicles the events of the Iraq war since its inception in March 2003, when she began painting the day's news headlines on stuffed white cotton gloves, one for every day the war continued, except Sundays. She describes each glove as a " 'rosary bead' in this on-going, meditation of war witnessing."
Some express our collective horror at the violence, and some depict positive outcomes such as an AP photo of a Muslim woman joyously displaying an inked fingertip after voting in a democratic election: all reflect the role of journalism in mediating our reception of the historical events.
In January 2006 the artist expanded the project to include invited artists who each took on one week of Iraq War news to depict on a glove or hand related artwork in their own media and style.
196 national and international artists have contributed to Hand to Hand including 6 artists from Vermont. Kane has ended the project on August 31, 2010 to coincide with President Obama's pledge to withdraw combat troops from Iraq at that time. In its entirety the project will fill every exhibition room of the Chaffee Art Center including the staircase.
The artists hail from all across America and nine countries including a Contractor with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stationed in Baghdad, a marine in the Gulf of Hormuz and two teenage refugee Iraqi sisters. There will be approximately 2,000 artworks ranging in media from video, animation and sound works, to glass, photography, painted, printed, embroidered and sculptural hands.
Written statements accompany the works, many of which commemorate the soldiers. A 400 page color catalog will be available for sale at the project's final showing at the Chaffee Art Center. The catalog printing is funded by grants from The Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, Idea Capital, and the Women's Caucus for Art, Georgia.
Hand to Hand has exhibited at 15 venues from coast to coast since its inception.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
PRESS RELEASE: Gail Salzman at Furchgott Sourdiffe Gallery in Shelburne
Furchgott Sourdiffe Gallery in Shelburne will be showing Immersion: Recent Paintings by Gail Salzman September 24-October 26, 2010. The exhibit will open with a public reception on Friday , September 24, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
With luminous color and a tactile paint surface, Gail Salzman’s abstract waterscapes embrace mystery and contradiction. Universal dualities – containment & overflow, depth & reflection, decay & rejuvenation – are thematic undercurrents in her work.
Immersion includes a series of oil paintings dealing with water in its many guises – as threatened life force, as playground, as balm for body and soul. Nearly as comfortable moving in water as on land, Salzman gathers her inspiration from a pond next to her studio and the tidal pools of coastal Maine. The artist states, “The element of water is a powerful metaphor for the fluidity of time and memory. Like water, oil paint can move in unexpected ways, conveying overlapping realities, changing perspectives. In the act of painting, I see personal themes and broader environmental issues converge. This creates the emotional and visual tension that fuels my work.”
Gail has exhibited throughout the East Coast for over twenty years and is a recipient of several national and regional grants. She teaches drawing and painting at CCV and Burlington City Arts. Salzman lives and works in Fairfield Vermont.
Image: Pond 4, oil on panel, 24" x 22"