Studio Wallpaper 2014 (a work in progress) by Susan Graham

February 6 through March 2, 2015

Opening reception: February 6, 7-9pm

Artist In Residence Winter 2015

Guttenberg Arts Gallery is pleased to present Studio Wallpaper (a work in progress), a new site specific sugar and porcelain toile installation by Susan Graham, currently Artist in Residence, on view February 6 through March 2, 2015.

Susan Graham’s works are built upon a conceptual standpoint of her unbreakable link with her hometown, family, and childhood. Utilizing her memories, dreams, and personal stories as her topics, Graham ultimately broadens their focus and addresses larger social and political issues that affect us all. This is most evident in her ongoing series of wall installations. Her process, based on the layout of the toile patterned wallpaper from a childhood bedroom, pushes this method to encompass entire rooms with various sized sculptural elements made from both sugar and porcelain that creates patterns representing repetitive acts or actions. These often result in the making of a multitude of similar objects which are linked to a particular psychological state. These materials give the work a deceptive feeling of domesticity or sweetness while the subjects are challenging in their high-low contradictions. 

For Studio Wallpaper (a work in progress), Graham has created a gorgeous, spiral site-specific installation. Referencing to Guttenberg’s long history as the “Embroidery Capital of the United States”, she begins at a corner as the central central point and works outward into the gallery space. The patterns are drawn directly from the embroidered lacework produced by local businesses to form recurring narratives of complex pastoral scenes and the storytelling qualities found in traditional Toile de Jouy wallpaper using the same delicate look and a conceptually similar idea of preciousness, fragility, and intense process. Graham's works again takes these themes to a broader level and addresses human encroachment on nature using decoration that poetically depict the eternal struggle between nature and technology. 

Susan Graham attended Ohio State University and the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work has been shown at galleries and museums including Neuberger Museum of Art, Musee International des Arts Modestes, Sete, France and the Tucson Museum of Art. Graham has received several fellowships and grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation,  Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Smack Mellon Artist Residency, Ruth Chenven Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Recently, she completed a commissioned public work for an elevator lobby in the Johns Hopkins Hospital’s new medical facility in Baltimore, Maryland.

Exhibition: February 6 - March 6, 2015; Opening reception: February 6, 6-8pm. 

For more information please contact studio@guttenbergarts.org or 201-868-8585.

Guttenberg Art Gallery is free and open to the public by appointment. www.guttenbergarts.org

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OPEN HOUSE : Saturday, January 10, 2-8pm

We are super excited to host our Open House on January, Saturday the 10th. We will have live demos by both of our AMAZING Studio DIrectors, Phoebe Deutsch (ceramic)  and Russ Spitkovsky (etching). They will run individual, hour-long demos in their respective mediums, teaching all of you how to work in printmaking and ceramics. We hope to see you all there!

 3PM: PHOEBE DEUTSCHCeramics Studio Director Phoebe Deutsch will be demonstrating techniques such as wedging clay to prepare for throwing, centering the clay on the wheel, proper stabilizing techniques, building up tall walls, using and describing w…

 

3PM: PHOEBE DEUTSCH

Ceramics Studio Director Phoebe Deutsch will be demonstrating techniques such as wedging clay to prepare for throwing, centering the clay on the wheel, proper stabilizing techniques, building up tall walls, using and describing what tool are best for different types of mark making. 


The wheel was invented in ancient Mesopotamia around 3,000 B.C.  These first turntables were slow, but they were a vast improvement over the previous methods of shaping pots. In the 19th century the concept of throwing pottery as we know it today flourished due to potter's wheels that could achieve higher spinning speeds. Ceramic artists today utilize the wheel for both functional and sculptural prepuces.

 
 4:30PM: RUSS SPITKOVSKYStudio director Russ Spitkovsky, will give a demonstration of the etching process at 4:30 pm. Using actual plate examples to explain the different steps and states of a hard ground and aquatint etching on a zinc pla…

 

4:30PM: RUSS SPITKOVSKY

Studio director Russ Spitkovsky, will give a demonstration of the etching process at 4:30 pm. Using actual plate examples to explain the different steps and states of a hard ground and aquatint etching on a zinc plate Russ will also print several completed etchings, and introduce the audience to the etching press and intaglio culture.


Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio(relief) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types of material. As a method of printmaking, it is, along with engraving, the most important technique for old master prints, and remains in wide use today.

Kirsten Flaherty: Recent Work Press Release

Recent Work  Kirsten Flaherty

January  10 - February 2, 2015

Opening reception, January 10, 6-8pm; Artist Talk 7:30pm

Artist In Residence / spring 2015

 

Guttenberg Arts Gallery is pleased to present Recent Work  a solo exhibition of works by Kirsten Flaherty, currently an Artist in Residence, on view January 10 - February 2, 2015

 

Kirsten Flaherty’s Recent Work, examines a larger global ecological sphere and all its inhabitants, their interdependence and often complex relationships, not only to their habitats but also their economic involvement. For this exhibition, Flaherty’s works on paper focuses on the viewers own sympathies to these complex situations by using stark, monochromatic, detailed  images of the innocents affected by our systematic urbanization. Through the graphic process of printmaking and the delicate line work within the images, Flaherty exposes the fragility of life and the fallacies in human nature that come with even more devastating repercussions.

 

The most recent series of intimate portraits of animals, these etchings focus on the the aforementioned devastating repercussions through visually identifying specific critically endangered animals. Works such as “Egyptian Vultures” and Crowned Eagle” depicts these species in light of humans causing habitat destruction and poisoning. In contrast to these meticulously detailed figures, the use of stark letters and numbers featured throughout these prints represent stock quotes from various know big companies during the Global Financial Crisis in 2007-2008. Although these corporations differ in the way each makes their financial gains, all are known for the negative impact they make not only on our natural environment, but also in our own economic system.

 

Kirsten Flaherty’s works have been exhibited throughout the United States as well as internationally including the Czech Republic, Peru, Israel, and Italy. Additionally, she is a member of the Board of Directors of the New York Society of Etchers and has been dedicated to presenting exhibitions that showcase varying visions through techniques in etching, monotype, silkscreen and other printmaking processes, with the overall intention of celebrating the venerable art of print. Kirsten Flaherty lives and works in New York City.


For more information and press images please contact studio@guttenbergarts.org or 201-868-8585.Guttenberg Art Gallery is free and open to the public by appointment. www.guttenbergarts.org

MADE HERE PRESS RELEASE

MADE HERE Jairo Alfonsa, Mirra Goldfrad, Beth Sutherland 

December 5, 2014 - January 5, 2015 

Opening reception: December 5, 7-9pm

Artists In Residence Fall 2014

Guttenberg Arts Gallery is pleased to present “MADE HERE” a group exhibition of the current Artists in Residence; Jairo Alfonsa, Mirra Goldfrad and Beth Sutherland. On view December 5, 2014 through January 5, 2015. 

The works included in MADE HERE were created during the artist’s residences addressing issues and concepts that revolve around the urban environment of Guttenberg as their focus. The title “MADE HERE” carries not only multiple definitions, but multiple conceptual meanings ranging from location to identity and are deeply considered within all the new works for this exhibition. 

For Mirra Goldfrad this means “finding that the experiential qualities of place are responsible for subsequent perspectives and influence my work greatly.” Thus the specific location of Guttenberg is such a place that facilitates new works that attempt to internalize understandings formed by experiences, a kind of reconciliation of perceptual issues of consciousness. With Goldfrad, explorations of local imagery in relationship to individual uncertainties work toward identity formation to explore human interactions, as experience is paramount for her in the development of an individual. Goldfrad often uses print media with a preference for relief, “because I am drawn to the kind of poetic beauty of printing what is left untouched and the quality of line associated with relief prints”. 

Beth Sutherland also is drawn to the involved process of relief printmaking but takes into the larger scope of her art making process. “I go out and draw on the spot, as I sit and draw from my car, a particular grouping of buildings upon a landscape or an odd embellishment suggests an unarticulated imaginary narrative of the occupants and passers-by. Then I go back to the studio, make drawings from memory as well, and finally edit all this into what I hope looks like a fresh, concise, composed image which retains the initial mystery that attracted me to the subject in the first place. Since arriving in Guttenberg, I've been compelled to record the fascinating neighborhood. The array of building styles, materials, and details creates a curious mixture of past and present.” 

It is this same fascination with the details of a place are the basis of Jairo Alfonso’s newest drawings. His ongoing interest in exploring material culture from an archaeological perspective, particularly the multilayered nature of objects, reflecting on the relationship we, as human beings, establish with the objects we create, use, and discard. Alfonso’s works depicts accumulations of objects, devices and accessories from everyday life, piled up, and drawn closely together, so as to flood the pictorial space. He also will focus on a single object, and the act of disassembling becomes an anatomic lesson of sorts, which allows the viewer to metaphorical immerse himself or herself into a new world informed by the history, ideology, materials and shapes hidden in this artifacts. 

 

Exhibition: December 5, 2014 - January 5, 2015; Opening Reception: December 5, 7-9pm.

For more information please contact info@guttenbergarts.org or 201-868-8585.

Guttenberg Art Gallery is free and open to the public by appointment. 

www.guttenbergarts.org

Source: MADEHERE