Tag: 2024

Solo Series Fall 2024

Scission, 2022 | Benjamin Long | Oil, alkyd, and graphite on Dibond

On View September 13 – October 21, 2024

Opening Reception | Friday, September 13 | 6:00p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Coffee Break: Artist Talks | Saturday, September 28 | 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Coffee Break: Artist Talks | Saturday, October 19 | 10:00 a.m. – 12:00p.m.

DIGITAL CATALOG

ARTISTS

Bobbie Diamond Adams, Printmaking and Papermaking

From the Alchemy Series | Mixed media, $600
From the Meditations Series | Collagraph Monoprint, $800

“I like to provide hints of subject matter in my titles, but leave specific narrative to the imagination of the viewer.”

– Bobbie Diamond Adams

Bobbie Diamond Adams’ printmaking and papermaking works are abstract in concept.  
From the hints of green that emerge from a sea of black textures in one piece, to the stillness and quiet of the lone green ellipse in another, her artistic eye is evident in the connections she makes amongst seemingly disparate or unrelated elements. The process of printmaking and papermaking are both labor-intensive and meditative to Diamond Adams, often layering over and reworking pieces for extensive periods of time. Following an intuitive approach, she notes “I use many different plates, and interweave many layers of transparent ink, assembling and embellishing, as well as overprinting.”

Bobbie Diamond Adams’ work is on display in our Tile gallery.

Anna Bockrath, Interdisciplinary Art

days go, 2024 | Screen printed photograph, handwoven cotton, NFS
held, 2024 | Screen printed photograph on cotton twill tape, $400

“Though weaving, screen printing, trimming, and folding, I utilize techniques that lend themselves to transformation through accumulations of repeated gestures.”

– Anna Bockrath

Inspired by poetry, mythology, and her own personal history, Anna Bockrath explores the complicated concepts of loss, care, and time through her interdisciplinary work. Bockrath’s creations have an airy and ephemeral quality about them, achieved by using both materials and processes that allow for light and air to permeate. Driven by a fascination with process and materiality, her works are created through acts of iteration, layering, and repetition. This act of repetition in her creative practice parallels the repetitive cycles she experiences in her own life, citing “I relate this use of repetition to my own experience of dealing with loss and the repetitive cycles that are entangled with grief.”

Anna Bockrath’s a certain slant of light is on view in our Community Arts gallery.

Benjamin Long, Painting

K.O.O.K., 2021 | Oil and alkyd on wood, $1,500
Dot Dash, 2023 | Oil and alkyd on panel, $1,100

“Please just look and let your eyes have the experience…words can take a break this time.”

– Benjamin Long

Benjamin Long’s oil paintings are colorful, punchy, and both visually and conceptually intriguing.
Each piece comes with its own complex, almost dream-like composition, which leaves the viewer yearning for context. Recurring motifs of snowman-like figures, beehives, and lit cigarettes and pipes give the work an illustrative quality, reminiscent of the work of the late artist Philip Guston. Long acknowledges the ambiguity of his narratives, noting “maybe someday I will figure out a way to translate a personal visual language into a written one” and invites the viewer to derive their own meaning from the clues provided instead.

Benjamin Long’s paintings are featured in our Kelner gallery.

Mick Ricereto, Painting

Cumberland, 2024 | Watercolor on paper, $650
Stillman, 2023 | Watercolor on paper, $650

“I work in response to our disordered, beautiful and sometimes crumbling civilization.”

– Mick Ricereto

From dilapidated brick storefronts, to rusted fences and street signs, Mick Ricereto encapsulates the decay of the urban landscape in his intricate watercolor works. Ricereto uses watercolor to build each landscape layer by layer, a lengthy and intensive process that acts as a metaphor to the civil environment he captures: each layer is built upon the last. The fragility of the watercolor medium, he notes, doubles as “a nod to society’s delicate balance of survival.” This “tensionless state of constant entropy”, as described by Ricereto, is expressed through his paintings in both observed realism and idealized moments of repose. 

Mick Ricereto’s Corner’s Report is being exhibited in our Book Room gallery.

Solo Series Spring 2024

Glass Sea, 2022 | Abbey Stace | Plaster, acrylic, oil

On View April 27 – May 31, 2024

Opening Reception | Saturday, April 27 | 6:00p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Coffee Break: Artist Talks | Saturday, May 4 | 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Coffee Break: Artist Talks | Saturday, May 11 | 10:00 a.m. – 12:00p.m.

DIGITAL CATALOG

ARTISTS

Chau Nguyen, Interdisciplinary Art

Asian Fusion, 2019-20 | Oil on unstretched canvas, bamboo
The Kiss, 2022 | MDF panel on wooden frame, lacquer paint, gold leaf

“My ethnographic approach goes against the grain of the Western art historical canon to embrace these fragments of archives.”

– Chau Nguyen

Chau Nguyen is a first-generation Vietnamese interdisciplinary artist, whose work draws from concepts of translation, memory, symbols, affect theory, materiality, and research on Vietnamese histories. They work to convey this notable friction at the intersection of cultural identity, colonial fragments, and transnationalism through their art and their study. Chau’s artistic practice allows for and relies on experimentation and material transformation as a way to combine their research into postcolonial transnationalism and their personal perspective as a Vietnamese immigrant. With an emphasis on material and its history, their work offers an open-ended and complex look into these concepts. 

Nguyen’s Of Color is being exhibited in our Community Arts gallery.

Duwenavue Sante Johnson, Mixed Media

Seasonal Resilience, 2022 | Handmade paper, collage
Abound, 2020 | Handprinted, handcut and sewn paper

“Creation comes from an intense emotional state involving uncomfortable, non-cooperative responses to perceptions and resilience, while searching for joy and beauty.”

– Sante Johnson

Duwenavue Sante Johnson is a BIPOC embroiderer and contemporary artist, influenced by world travels, environmental patterns and textures, and colorscapes. Not limiting herself to any one medium, Johnson blends practices of painting, printmaking, textile, and craft to create dynamic works of art that encapsulate the human experience. Art acts as a tool for Johnson, helping her process and understand the complexities of humanity, its divides and cultural histories, and engage with these pathways to create something positive that unites. 

Johnson’s Seasonal Resilience is on display in our Tile gallery

Grue Shackelford, Fiber Art

Holler of Recollection III, 2023 | Tufted yarn
Vista II, 2023 | Tufted yarn

“Each piece is a fragment of a memory, a place recalled through a haze of blazing sunset and screaming fury.”

– Grue Shackelford

Grue Shackelford is a contemporary fiber artist based in Philadelphia, whose work explores the relationships between memory, intergenerational trauma, and the Appalachian identity. A West Virginia native, Shackelford is familiar with Appalachian Fatalism, a “pervasive, inborn spirit that is found in everyone and thing that dwells in those hills”. This mentality juxtaposed with the never-ending cycle of trauma that befalls the Appalachian people is something that intrigues them. Through tufts and tangles of multicolored yarn and felt, each of Shackelford’s intricate wall hangings tells a story. 

Shackelford’s Montani Semper Liberi is on display in our Kellner gallery.

Abbey Stace, Painting

Glass Sea, 2022 | Plaster, acrylic, oil
Smoke and Ember, 2024 | Plaster, acrylic, oil, sand

“There is only becoming; a permanent state can never be reached.”

– Abbey Stace

Abbey Stace is a contemporary abstract artist, whose material abstractions have developed over a lifetime of studying science, philosophy and art. Change and chance are fundamental to Stace’s artistic practice, creating work that is experimental and process-driven rather than literal and narrative-driven. She starts with a simple composition and then allows the materials to interact with each other to create naturally-forming textures, colors and shapes. This approach directly parallels the constant change that is life, noting “this mirrors the serendipitous and unpredictable process that is life…The layers of matter built up and worn away…mirror the accumulation and loss of experiences and memories in the human psyche.” Favoring ambiguity, Stace invites the viewer to derive their own associations and connections from her work.

Stace’s Salt & Stone is on view in our Book Room gallery.

Solo Series Winter 2024

Pareidolic Figure, 2023 | Karen Hunter McLaughlin | Indigo dye, watercolor pencil, interference watercolor, on botanical dyed paper

On View January 19 – February 26, 2024

Opening Reception | Friday, January 19 | 6:00p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Coffee Break: Artist Talks | Saturday, February 3 | 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Coffee Break: Artist Talks | Saturday, February 17 | 10:00 a.m. – 12:00p.m.

DIGITAL CATALOG

ARTISTS

Mia Fabrizio, Mixed Media

True Grit, 2023 | Found tables, carved drywall, silkscreen, cement and twigs
Brick House, 2023 | Brick, wood, dirt, cement, artificial grass and paver
Mama Liked The Roses, 2021 |
Aluminum wire, leather lace, fabric, wire, silkscreen, collage, spray, wood, drywall, foam core, digital photographs, acrylic paint, latex paint and found objects

“My work operates at the intersection of architecture, sociology and visual art.”

– Mia Fabrizio

Interdisciplinary artist, Mia Fabrizio, creates mixed media paintings, freestanding sculptures, and installations comprised of building materials and domestic items. Her work acts as an investigation into the relationship between physical construction and cultural paradigms, highlighting contradictions within domestic spaces with the intent of exposing the true fluidity of perceived binaries, such as masculine and feminine, public and private, and modern and traditional. She describes her artistic process as “[vacillating] between tearing apart and tenderly memorializing [her] personal family experience.” 

Fabrizio’s work is on display in our Tile gallery.

Karen Hunter McLaughlin, Mixed Media

Filagree, 2023 | Indigo dye, watercolor pencil, interference watercolor, on botanical dyed paper
Earth Embrace, 2023 | Rust, Monotype Print, Collage with pronto plate litho on Rives
Pareidolic Figure, 2023 | Indigo dye, watercolor pencil, interference watercolor, on botanical dyed paper

“This work is motivated by a fascination with the mycorrhizal network – the symbiotic association between the plant world and fungi, drawing on the deep connections between trees, plants and mycelia. The new work draws on concepts of how they invisibly share what the other lacks, how they rescue each other.”

– Karen Hunter McLaughlin

Artist Karen Hunter McLaughlin’s work uses symmetry to expand on long-held interests in the connections between natural science and art. This series investigates kinship with the more-than-human world, and a dive into “Ki”, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s suggested pronoun for other-than-human. She employs a language of shapes that mimic the threadlike hyphae of mycelium, the same marks often used to illustrate galactic space, brain synapses, and other human, and non-human body systems. They are perfect symbols of the matrixes that support the essential nexus of human connection.

Hunter McLaughlin’s new series, Golden Thread, is on view in our Book Room gallery.

Nicole Santiago, Painting

Shifting Celebrations, 2018 | Oil on linen
Caregiver, 2019 | Oil on panel
Second Time Around, 2019 | Oil on canvas

“My work is autobiographical, its content thinly veiled by the mundane domestic debris that clutters the picture plane.”

– Nicole Santiago

Artist Nicole Santiago creates paintings that are rooted in personal experiences, yet read universally. Her use of familiar scenes, a desk littered with empty soda cans and medicine bottles, help stretch her compositions beyond the limits of her own experiences and engage with broader audiences. She notes, “while storytelling is an integral part of my work, it always remains subservient to the broader formal concerns of the picture itself.” 

Santiago’s narrative paintings are on display in our Kellner gallery.

Summer Yates, Sculpture

Surrender, 2021 | Foam, stake flags, plastic table cloth, and hanger
Dine, 2023 | Photograph of platter, polyester, and hanger
Get Outta My Mouth, 2020 | Acrylic, vinyl, and ribboning

“In a celebratory fashion, the work reflects the complexities of ‘holding it all together’ and total surrender.”

– Summer Yates

Summer Yates assembles mixed media wall hangings and soft sculptures that are light, flexible, and brightly-colored. There is an emphasis on the material of her work and how it parallels her intertwined experiences as a woman, artist and mother. She notes, “As a mother, I’m confronted with my own need to care for and nourish myself… the sculpture, installation, and wall hangings in this show reveal the catharsis I experienced in doing so…the soft, squishy quality of my materials and how I assemble them affirm how I embrace all the parts of myself.”

Yates’ series, WAM! (Woman Artist Mother), is on view in our Community Arts gallery.