The Persistence of Paint
The Bendheim Gallery of the Greenwich Arts Council hosted the Painting Center of New York, July 7 through 29, in a diverse and lively exhibit entitled The Persistence of Paint. The five painters included in this show, Carrie Patterson, Elizabeth Yamin, Anne Russinof, Carmela Kolman, and Geoffrey Dorfman, were selected by the Arts Council’s gallery committee along with staff curator, Tatiana Mori, from a panel of fourteen artists submitted by the Painting Center.
The exhibit was designed to demonstrate diversity in the use of painting language and the vitality of paint as a means of communication. The Painting Center is dedicated to promoting the art of painting in all its diversity and does not champion one school or style.
Carrie Patterson works much like a choreographer would in subtly altering the arrangement of line, shape and color in repetitive action, not on a dance floor but rather on a canvas. She received her MFA at the University of PA and has also studied at the NY Studio School, James Madison University, and the British Institute.
Carrie Patterson, Slant of Life, oil on canvas, 26" x 28"
New York City-based Elizabeth Yamin has been strongly influenced by her studio location, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, with its sense of hugeness, weight and inspiring decay. She received her MS in Museum Education at the Bank Street College in Manhattan.
Elizabeth Yamin, charcoal on paper, 19" x 11.5"
Anne Russinof’s forms suggest something along the lines of cellular biology. Each painting comprises variations on a theme of primarily doughnut-like shapes sometimes with the center circles filled in. She received her training at the Pratt Institute in NY and the Art Institute of Chicago, IL.
Anne Russinof, Fleshy, oil on canvas, 18" x 14"
Carmela Kolman received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1982 and an MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1984. She has exhibited widely in NYC. About her work she says, “As a former figure painter, I have turned my attention to fruit because they are living, voluminous objects that, like the human form, decay over time.”
Carmela Kolman, Peaches, oil on canvas, 20" x 20"
Painter, writer and musician, Geoffrey Dorfman received his BFA from Cooper Union in Manhattan, and his MFA from Syracuse University. As an associate professor at the College of Staten Island/CUNY since 1978, he has taught painting, drawing and modern culture. He has authored several articles on painting for Artforum and on music for Stagebill, and his recently published book, “Out of the Picture: Milton Resnick and the New York School” has received rave reviews.
Geoffrey Dorfman, Herald, oil on canvas, 42" x 46"
The opening for The Persistence of Paint was Friday, July 7, from 5 to 8 pm, beginning with an artists’ talk,
“Painting as a Spiritual Discipline.”
In September, the Bendheim Gallery will juxtapose the very different -- but consistently modern – works of two Greenwich residents: Penny Putnam’s richly colored watercolors and Andrew Hall’s three-dimensional constructions in the neutral colors of their raw materials.
Girl In A Window
Hall, who is the chair of arts (visual and performing) at Brunswick School, has had a long career in art teaching, exhibiting his own work only in the past five years or so. A native of Burnley, England, in an area famous for fine clay products such as Wedgewood and Doulton, he assisted his pottery craftsman father at Pennine Studios and attended North Staffordshire University, Britain’s premier school for the study of three-dimensional design. He has worked in textiles and has designed objects for production, but is now showing only his current works that make imaginative use of clay.
November
Hall shapes the clay by bending and marking it, then fires it once with no glaze, producing a matte surface with no applied color. To complete his works, he typically combines the clay pieces with found metal components and grasses. In addition to his educational responsibilities at Brunswick, he has long taught at the Clay Arts Center in Port Chester, where he has exhibited and is a member of the board.
Potting Shed
Penny Putnam has been devoting full time to painting since her 1999 retirement from a partnership in a New York firm specializing in package design. A Florida native, she studied design at the University of Florida and began her design career in the office of Raymond Loewy, a famous pioneer in the field of industrial and graphic design.
Secret In An Orange Envelope
While she has worked in various mediums, her Bendheim Gallery works will include only her watercolor compositions, which show remarkably bold color and textural effects for that medium. While resolutely abstract, her works are typically inspired by real-life visual perceptions. She has won awards in many regional shows and has been included in the highly competitive Faber Birren annual in Stamford. She is on the board of the Silvermine Guild of Artists and has been an officer in the Greenwich Arts Society, whose current logo and graphics she designed.
Peter Gish brings an appealing collection of seascapes, landscapes and still life paintings to The Bendheim Gallery in October. The show will have a strong coastal Connecticut flavor and will include some of the artist’s well-known lighthouse paintings. Gish, who has been a combat artist, will add some of his works from the U.S. Marine Corps Art Collection to the wide-ranging exhibit, as well as a few distinctive portraits. He works in oil, watercolor, and pastel, with an emphasis on color and texture.
Victorian House on Mohegan Bluffs, oil on canvas, 37” x 46”
During World War II Gish trained as a naval aviator and decided on a painting career. He then studied art history and worked with Paul Sample at Dartmouth College. In 1957-58 he attended Oskar Kokoschka’s Sommerakademie in Salzburg, and in 1959 was Kokoschka’s assistant. He earned an MFA degree from Yale in 1964. He served as a combat artist with the Marine Corps in Viet Nam in 1997 and again in the early 1990’s in Iraq and Somalia. He retired with the rank of colonel.
In 1992 Gish retired from Fairfield University, where he had been an Art Department faculty member for 21 years. A 40-year resident of Greenwich, Gish now lives and paints in Saunderstown, RI.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1960, and raised in the United States, Fernando Martinez is, by profession, a furniture designer who has been designing and producing functional pieces for over 16 years. Most recently, the furniture pieces he has created have been centered on the idea of fictitious pieces with an imagined history, for which he has written elaborate texts to tell the unique “life story” of each work. In his paintings and wall-hung works, Martinez draws inspiration from commercial, hand-painted signs, adding sociological and psychological twists that avoid easy interpretation of his pieces. His works have appeared in a group show at Greenwich Library and has been widely exhibited in the New York and Boston areas.
Allan Tannenbaum is a renowned photojournalist. Throughout his years, he has documented both celebrities in the arts and in the political arena. The basis for his show is his recent book “New York in the 70s”.
A native of Passaic, NJ, photojournalist Allan Tannenbaum always found New York City an exciting place. He conveys his fascination with the city in The Bendheim Gallery exhibit, New York in the ‘70’s/Postscript 9/11. Based on his 2003 book, New York in the ‘70’s, and his role as the award-winning photo editor for the SoHo Weekly News, the exhibit show will include as a “postscript” his coverage of the World Trade Center destruction in 2001, which he describes as “the most powerful experience of my life.”
Tannenbaum has assembled a personal photographic diary of the many aspects of New York life, chronicling the city’s politics, society, nightlife and history, capturing everything from street gangs to disco divas, from the homeless to Hollywood stars. A high point of his career for the paper was photographing John Lennon and Yoko Ono for a special article on the couple. The low point was the murder of Lennon 10 days later.
After the Soho paper closed, Tannenbaum joined Sygma Photo News as a staff photographer and covered many international events. His work has been published in Newsweek, Time, Life, Paris Match, Stern and other publications. In 1989 he won a first prize in the Spot News Stories category at the World Press Photo competition.
New York in the ‘70’s/Postcript 9/11 will open on November 30 and run through January 27. Tannenbaum’s studio portraits, nighttime flashes, and street photography paint a unique and often unseen picture of New York City.
The Greenwich Arts Council and Greenwich Magazine presented the winners and selected contestants of the 2006 Greenwich Magazine Photo contest in an exhibition titled
Images of Greenwich, in the Director’s Hall of The Bendheim Gallery, 299 Greenwich Avenue.
Alexandra Bishop, We Gather Red Secrets
This event, developed by Greenwich Magazine through their annual contest for amateur photographers, presents color and black-and-white pictures of people and places in the town. The Arts Council co-sponsored this exhibit which included the 16 prize winners. The grand prize was awarded to Alexandra Bishop for her photo, We Gather Red Secrets (shown above).
Editor-in-Chief Donna Moffly said “Greenwich Magazine is just delighted to have the exhibit give exposure to the winners and other contest participants. There is beautiful material here and about one third of it is the work of students.”
Besides Ms. Moffly, the judges for the contest were Muffy Fox, the magazine’s project editor, Bob Capazzo, staff photographer for the magazine, and Tatiana Mori, GAC staff curator.
The first spring show in The Bendheim will feature the current sculpture of Susan Manspeizer, juxtaposed to a selection of Japanese prints produced over the past century.
A resident of Pound Ridge, Manspeizer works mainly with wood, often in thin strips or sheets, painted or left natural, and bent into complex forms. The curvilinear lines of the wood’s edges, along with its broader surfaces, can suggest a kind of abstract calligraphy in three dimensions. Her work can vary in maximum dimension from less than two feet to about seven feet, can be wall-hung or freestanding, and is meant for indoor display.
The sculptor’s current work is conceived as a tribute to women – to their strength, their generosity, and their caring nature. Women, she says, “bring forth new life,” and she has tried to capture their human feelings in her sculpture. She was very much affected by the tsunami of 2004, and a work titled “Tsunami Women Weep” is one of several she has produced related to this tragedy. She has had numerous solo shows in New York galleries and nearby at such venues as the Silvermine Guild Arts Center and the Alternative Space for Contemporary Art in Armonk, and one of her sculptures has been selected for the permanent collection of the Zimmerli Museum in New Jersey. She is now represented by the Walter Wickiser Gallery in New York.
Historically, the Japanese woodblock print has been one of the high points in the evolution of the visual arts. Starting in the 1700s, a series of masters of the print medium produced richly colored woodblocks, documenting the metropolitan culture of the Edo period with bold compositions and unusual vantage points. This distinctive Japanese art form waned in the early 20th Century, then underwent a series of revivals, reaching new levels of accomplishment in the 1950s and subsequent decades. Compositions, colors, and textures remain adventurous, and subject matter has become more cosmopolitan, reflecting Japan’s intense cultural involvement with the entire world. The Bendheim Gallery show will include a broad selection of these exciting and timely works.
The Manspeizer show also includes a separate exhibit of Japanese prints courtesy of Merlin C. Dailey & Associates, Inc., Japanese Prints and Fine Arts of Asia.
Since the 1970s, prints as a form of original art have enjoyed a remarkable revival. Many of the most famous artists of recent decades have found print-making an area most congenial to their more adventurous efforts. The renewed interest in prints among artists has been accompanied and supported by a the establishment of several print-making studios that have helped advance the technical development of such mediums as lithograph, etching, and silk screen.
To produce such prints, the artists themselves work directly on the materials such as metal plates, stone slabs, or sheets of silk that will be employed in the process. When the prints are “pulled,” these artists then sign those that meet their exacting expectations. The resulting works are obtainable at a fraction of the prevailing prices for unique works by the same artists.
This spring, the GAC’s Bendheim gallery will exhibit – and offer for sale – prints in a wide variety of mediums, by many artists whose names are recognized around the world. Among the artists whose work we expect to include are Josef Albers, Carol Anthony, Christo, Helen Frankenthaler, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Motherwell, Elizabeth Murray, Ed Ruscha, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol.
“You may house their bodies, but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow.”
Kahlil Gibran
It is safe to say that no one in the world was left unaffected by the devastation of the recent tsunami in South Asia. Hundreds of thousands of people lost lives and homes. Although the suffering and shock of this tragedy will be long-lasting, one cannot imagine or measure the effect of such loss on the lives of children. Thanks to Hands On Thailand, a community of volunteers from all over the world led by American Mike Cegielski, the rebuilding of lives has begun.
But how do you rebuild spirit? Photojournalist Janet Durrans was sent to Thailand and Indonesia to cover the aftermath of the tsunami. While on assignment there she was deeply moved by the faces and stories of the children. By providing the children with watercolors and paper, she encouraged them to paint about what had just happened in their young lives. The resulting artworks, filled with saturated color and striking imagery, tell of a time before, during, and after the tsunami.
This is their story.
(Wave of Terror, Wave of Hope was exhibited at Reilly Hall of The Bendheim Gallery from May 12 through May 30. All the works were available at a minimum tax-deductible donation of $100, all of which went directly to benefit Hands On Thailand)
©Janet Durrans 2005
©Janet Durrans 2005
Yvonne Boogaerts, Liquid Table installation
From June 7 to 30, The Bendheim Gallery housed a group of challenging installations exploring the PROCESS through which abstract, non-descriptive art is created. Staff gallery curator L. Tatiana Mori conceived this show, an unprecedented one for the Arts Council. It gave viewers exciting insights into the steps artists go through in creating their work. The eight artists taking part in the exhibition were Yvonne Boogaerts and Lucia Ravens of Greenwich, Katherine D. Crone, Carla Galler, Steve Perkins, Donna Ruff, and Ines Villanueva, all of New York, and Gerald Saladyga of New Haven.
Steve Perkins, Mosiac
Yvonne Boogaerts creates a sculptural installation for sensual interaction on a micro-to-macro scale. Colorful, semitransparent forms are suspended from the ceiling to cast a world of light and fantasy that echo on a liquid table of swirling primary colors. This concept came to Yvonne as a result of a challenging and illuminating graduate program; her conceptual and spatial perspective evolved from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, from representative to evocative, challenging viewers to exercise their imaginations. As people manipulate the colors within the tables, their responses will vary widely, engaging a childlike wonder in us all.
Lucia Ravens, A Portrait of Peace
Artist Katherine D. Crone’s works are visual journals. Her subject matter is light and shadow, water, reflections, architectural details and panoramic landscapes. Her process for the Sculptural Books begins with a review of photographs. Simultaneously, she makes maquettes of shapes and proportions to find the best marriage of form and image. After altering the image with a computer, she prints them directly on fine silk organza or transparent film. The “pages” of the sculptural books are bound with traditional bookbinding techniques, creating three-dimensional work of art.
Ines Villanueva
Carla Galler’s work is an interactive installation that serves as a reminder of a historic but lost art form. Her Shooting Gallery is based on antique carnival shooting games. These machines are now being dismantled because their parts are in great demand as Americana, with collectors are paying lofty sums for them on eBay and at auction houses. Carla found that it was possible to recreate these games in a virtual space, inviting players to experience them in a digital environment. She hopes to impart to the user a sense of their loss.
Carla Galler, Clown
For artist Steve Perkins the journey of creating his work took him far away, to Thailand. Through his video installation, he wants viewers to experience the vast influence a culture has on an artist. His work is the result of well considered, meaningful travels that have stimulated his imagination. It is also a reflection of an ancient civilization pushing towards modernity.
Katherine D. Crone, Maidstone Evening
Lucia Ravens’s installation, A Portrait of Peace, explores interpretations of the concepts of peace, diversity, and spirituality to encourage interactive communities. The work invites the viewer to take a step toward peace, to arouse consciousness to the level where every individual’s actions matter. Her art is inspired by and dedicated to the memory of her late father, and through it she wants to carry on her father’s humanitarian spirit.
Gerald Saladyga, 9th Square Light
Donna Ruff introduces the idea of the book as an authority on the spatial, dimensional, and psychological reading of aesthetic objects. Her work Five Boroughs was conceived out of one her childhood memories. Her grandparents owned a scrap paper company in Chicago, which sold old books as scrap by weight; but they first slashed each page, so that they could not be resold. Her grandmother would then tape the pages in books for Donna and her sister, making for a somewhat disjointed and sticky reading experience. Five Boroughs is made of old telephone book pages. To the artist, each page documents the existence of hundreds of individuals who appear and disappear every year in the body of the book. She presents this work as an elegy: to the handmade, to the life lived, to the words unspoken, to the book re-bound.
Gerald Saladyga’s installation is an ongoing exploration about construction and imagined light in all its forms and colors. The idea behind this work originated during the summer of 2003 when he was walking through the neighborhood of his studio in the Ninth Square section of New Haven during a time of major reconstruction and renovation. One could not help noticing the interaction of bright sunlight and dense shade on the chromatic spectrum of the new and old construction. Multicolored painted factory windows were one particularly outstanding subject for this effect, and they inspired his Renovation of Light; multicolored layers of paint washes and applied dots.
Ines Villanueva’s works are based on the idea of search. The best way to describe her work is as a sacred milestone of a feminine symbolism. The artist’s constant search for something that is not yet expressed has taken her on a journey of self-discovery. She wants viewers to know that art is within our deepest being, and invites them to experience her work as pieces of continuous process, where one can exist, contemplate and dream.
GWe invite everyone to enjoy the diversity of these works. We hope that with this Arts Council exhibition will challenge viewers to think outside normal bounds, to gain an understanding of the world behind abstract art works and installations, and – most important – to enhance everyone’s art experience.
The Greenwich Arts Council will launch the new gallery season this fall with whimsy and color in JUST FOLKS, a folk art exhibit and sale at The Bendheim Gallery. Co-curated by Cindy Ross and GAC staff curator Tatiana Mori, JUST FOLKS will feature a wide range of art from around the world.
Laurie Carmody Ahner, international folk art specialist and owner of Galerie Bonheur, St. Louis.
Folk art describes a wide range of objects that reflect craft traditions and is generally produced by people who have little or no academic artistic training, nor the desire to emulate “fine art.” The turn of the 21st century saw an increase in work by self-taught folk artists, possibly because of the growing number of retired people with time to spend on new ventures. Along with painting, sculpture, and other decorative art forms, utilitarian objects such as tools and costume can be considered folk art.
Frank Usrey, Crow Series
JUST FOLKS will open on Friday, September 7, with an invitational fundraiser. A public opening and special weekend “buy and take” sale is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, September 8 and 9.
Frank Usrey, Crow Series
Mose Tolliver, Peace Bird
Karl Mullen, Untitled
Karl Mullen, Untitled
Karl Mullen, Untitled
Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Dirty Toto
Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Cotton Pickers
featured painting, print media, photography, and installation
A.D. Hunt, Performer 2006
A.D. Hunt, The Ambassador 2007
Andrew Small, Untitled 2006
Andrew Small, Untitled 2007
Parsley Steinweiss, Peak 2007
Parsley Steinweiss, Sweet Nothings 2007
Multi-media installation featuring over 100 original Flexitoon puppets and marionettes, props, costumes and set pieces.
See Flexitoon in YouTube action by going to www.flexitoon.com and clicking on the PULLING STRINGS image.
Quentin Regos: Bree, the Cheesemaker’s Daughter, Hamlin
Quentin Regos: Mr. Roquefort, Hamlin
The Marin Collection: Queen, King & Rabbit, Alice In Winter Wonderland
Paul Bastin: Vlad, The Hamptoons
Paul Bastin: Puppeteers Olga Felgemacher & Craig Marin
John F. Hill, photographer
Beautiful limited edition photographs of the culture & landscape of China and Thailand juxtaposed with the emotional gestures of local lifestyle and floral portraits.
Morning Labors by John Hill
Moonrise by John Hill
In Search of Enlightnment by John Hill
Bounty of the Monsoon by John Hill
Private Heaven by John Hill
Lady in Waiting by John Hill
Dreaming by John Hill
Batting Order by John Hill
Amy Portnoy
NYC-based artist’ colorful & humorous illustrations, often featured in the NY Times Metropolitan Diary.
Beach by Amy Portnoy
Bags by Amy Portnoy
Address by Amy Portnoy
The Telethon by Amy Portnoy
NYSun Jazz by Amy Portnoy
Dim Sum by Amy Portnoy
GREENWICH ART SOCIETY
Credit-Suisse, the Swiss investment bank with offices here in Greenwich, will sponsor the Greenwich Art Society’s 91st Annual Members’ Exhibition at The Bendheim Gallery. The bank is offering a $1000 prize, the "Credit-Suisse Prize for Best in Show," and is sharing the cost of printing a full color catalogue of all the works in the show. (The catalogue will be available in the Gallery for $15.) Approximately $2000 in other prizes will also be awarded. The jurist, who had not yet been announced at press time, will choose the 60 works to be included in the exhibition and award all prizes. Society members may submit up to two works in all media. Other artists may join at the time of submission. Receiving dates are Thursday, March 6th, 6 – 8 pm and Friday, March 7th, 10 AM --12 Noon. The gala opening reception, which will include entertainment and catered refreshments, will take place on Friday, March 14th, 6 - 9 pm.
Amanda Yin, The Lighthouse, oil
Ann Flinn, Sonata, oil
Anna Patalano, Untitled, oil
Bill Grant, Top of the Avenue, Greenwich, acrylic
Bob Miranti, Untitled, ceramic sculpture
Eline de Jong, Shadows & Light Grand Central 1, oil
Shauna Holiman, 2 Magnolia Pods, mixed media
Jean Pierre Jacquet, Kessta!, oil
Jean Pierre Jacquet, Walking the Line, oil
Jeremy Butler, Look Like This, sculpture
Karen Heffner, Don't Assume You Are Still Playing the Same Game, sculpture
Larry Blizard, Theatre Lobby, pencil drawing
Nina Bentley, 101 Little Black Dresses, mixed media
Artists’ cooperative run by professional and emerging artists presenting works by local and regional artists.
Feelings of Nature-Haiku Series No. 68, oil on paper, 45" x 33" by Liana 
Pace Prints ? 30 Years of Printmaking explored the works of renowned artists such as Jennifer Bartlett, Chuck Close, Jim Dine, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Claes Oldenburg, Louise Nevelson and Red Grooms. The exhibition of over 30 prints was composed of several printmaking techniques such as etching, aquatint, woodcut, silkscreen, lithographs and linocuts. Pace Prints ? 30 Years of Printmaking has been curated by Nan Lvoff, Claire Henriques and Benjamin Ortiz. All prints were for sale and a percentage of the sale price included a tax-deductible donation to the Greenwich Arts Council.
This exhibition ran from November 14 through December 20, 2003.
