BEGINNINGS – MassoniArt
April 6 – May 6
Opening Reception – April First Friday, April 6th, 5-8 pm
Open House – Saturday, April 7th, 11-3 pm
Closing Reception – May First Friday, May 4th, 5-8 pm
Deborah Weiss, Heidi Fowler, Joe Karlik, Susan Hostetler, Blake Conroy, Katherine Kerr Allen, Marc Castelli, Alessandra Manzotti, Elizabeth DaCosta Ahern, Larry Schroth, Elizabeth Casquiero, Rob Glebe, Sara Bakken, Katherine Cox and introducing James Tatum.
Spring is a time of renewal. Artists inspire us, raise our awareness, and motivate us to see with new eyes. In planning this exhibit, we reached out to gallery artists to learn what was currently capturing their attention – perhaps a new series, medium, or subject area.
Katherine Kerr Allen’s garden collages welcome visitors as they enter the gallery. Spring is in full glory. In these new small works, she seeks to capture authentically what she sees and responds to in the natural world using paint, cloth, bark, paper and thread. In recent months, she has been pushing the boundaries of recognizable landscape references, embracing greater abstraction and finding a new playfulness and a heightened expression in texture and color.
Birds, birds, birds – fly up the stairs and into the beams in the new installation created by Susan Hostetler. Hostetler, an award-winning Washington, DC artist, collaborated with gallery artist Blake Conroy who created cloud like frames in laser-cut metal as a means of suspending Hostetler’s sculpted birds in mid-air.
Hostetler’s birds fly towards the main wall in the gallery now the site of a laser cut paper sculpture installation also by Blake Conroy. The twelve-foot piece – Definition of Monoculture II – is composed of nearly fifty panels of cut paper creating a filigreed corn field with a hidden message.
Gallery artist Deborah Weiss has delivered a new series of oil on panel works. One never knows if she is interpreting water, sky or land. For Weiss, the exchange between terrain, climate, temperature and the elements is constant: sometimes consistent and often times transforming by the moment. Her work is an exploration of the fleeting effects of the atmospheric conditions on the land and on water.
We are welcoming back visiting artist Katherine Cox who is creating pure magic with her large-scale graphite and color pencil skyscapes. Cox who is the Director of Education at the Huntington Museum of Art has exhibited throughout the United States. She considers pencil the most pure and distilled medium for expression and paper integral to the image – not simply the surface that holds the image. The brilliant red background of her powerful drawing – When Rage Surges Up in My Soul – transforms the dark clouds roiling on the surface into visceral punch to the solar plexus.
New to the gallery is James Tatum. Born in the US but residing for most of his life in Canada and Britain, Tatum currently lives in Devon, England where he draws inspiration for his work. His oil and acrylic landscape paintings begin en plein air with a series of drawings, watercolors and acrylics, and are completed in his studio in Exeter. His goal is to combine close observation with an intuitive, visceral response to the environment. The paintings are a record of his total sensory experience of being in a particular place and a particular time.
Other gallery artists featured in the Beginnings exhibition include Heidi Fowler, Larry Schroth, Alessandra Manzotti, Elizabeth DaCosta Ahern, Vicco von Voss, Rob Glebe and Elizabeth Casqueiro.
For the artists participating in this exhibit, part of the process of beginning anew or changing direction is experimentation. Beginnings are simply the point of departure. We welcome you to join us for the journey in the Gallery.
It all begins when the soul would have its way with you. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Visit MassoniArt.com for more information on upcoming exhibits at the MassoniArt Gallery.
Gallery hours are Wednesday thru Friday 11-4pm, Saturday 10-5 pm.
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~ MassoniArt
Contributed Photo