EXHIBITIONS
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Artist Reception: Sunday, 9/14/14, 3-6pm Jersey City Art & Studio Tour (JCAST): Saturday, 10/18/14 - Sunday, 10/19/14, 12-6pm We hear people say women artists aren't given the same opportunities to show their work that men are. Not so at DRAWING ROOMS. Our next show, DRAWING OFF THE WALL, curated by Anne Trauben, features Anne Q. McKeown, Anne Trauben, Maggie Ens, Jeanne Tremel, Suzan Shutan, Ellie Murphy, Nancy Baker, Kate Dodd and Larry Dell– 8 women artists and one man, each artist in their own room. It’s a sculpture installation show where artists use unconventional materials in unconventional ways to draw in space. The engaging layout of DRAWING ROOMS, a former convent, where sisters once lived in small cell-rooms, is perfect for containing and focusing the intimate work of these artists. All the artists are from the New Jersey/New York area and have developed inventive, creative systems of working with line and form to “draw “in 3D. Jeanne Tremel, a Bushwick, Brooklyn artist, is one of the eight women artists in the show. Her mixed media installation incorporating yarn, lace, found wood, beads, driftwood, small fabric pillows, felt, pom poms, plaster shelf and a ceramic vase, involves themes of life cycle, aging, pathos, and joy. Anne Q. McKeown is the Master Papermaker at the Brodsky Center at Rutgers and a Yale graduate. Anne considers herself a maker of things. In her work, rational and conceptual approaches are combined with intuitive inquiry. Inspiration comes from distilling collections of images from myths, dreams and systems into symbolic shapes and gestures that reference long histories seen and felt before in human expression. The imagery of her installation, Take, might evoke a glimmer, a memory; say in Polanski’s Repulsion, or Jung’s Red Book images, or Picasso’sGuernica. With this installation Anne asks, “Can the lust for life go too far? Wanting, taking, pleasing self, what is needed and what is wanted? Where does the edge of one end and the other begin? When is grabbing for the prize, the jewel a violation? What's your take? NJ artist Kate Dodd created Disposable Habits, "This installation appears to drip from the windows into a floating sea of baroque swoops and curls which bubble to the sink like draining suds. The structure is visually seductive yet impedes movement through the room or to views beyond – this is the specter of the future, when our gluttony will literally glut our oceans, our air, our movement. The seemingly endless flow of consumption and disposal, that styrofoam embodies so viscerally, permeates all of contemporary existence and provokes certain questions. Is it ever acceptable to be wasteful for the sake of pleasure? Is it possible to separate pleasure entirely from negative consequences? And are we willing to give up today’s pleasures to avoid the perils of our habits? Kate's striking and seductive installation raises some very interesting and important points. We expect her room to be packed! Brooklyn artist Nancy Baker will be exhibiting her complex, layered, graphic constructions. As a child, Nancy was fascinated by jewels and faceted shapes- a form that she says has surprisingly appeared in her work over and over again throughout decades. Her process starts with a computer drawing printed on archival pigment based computer paper and individual paper pieces made by using paints and mixed media- sometimes glitter and modeling paste. The pieces are assembled, adding different materials and media. The shadows created by the work are essential. Nancy's work are like sentences that reflect an urban vernacular– specifically, language heard in the streets, on trains and roads. Ellie Murphy’s “Baleen”, was created specifically for this show at Drawing Rooms. "I was inspired by the contemplative nature of the convent rooms and the off-the-wall concept of the drawing process to create a room-size curtain of fringe. A feeding system and a filtering system, I hope it invites the viewer to take in nourishment and blow out what confines.” This work is about the relationship between personal and cultural nostalgia. Ellie combines references to doll hair, crafts, folk motifs and Americana from her 1970’s childhood in Kansas. Larry Dell’s installation of chicken wire forms have an atmosphere all their own. Pressed and mashed into solid masses resembling insects, animals and possibly aliens, these steely structures surround the viewer, staring back with a cold gaze. Suzan Shutan’s work combines manufactured materials with handmade forms in colorful installations that address issues in nature, and are Minimalist in its geometry of pattern and reduction of form. “Much of my work offers views of “systems” found in the natural world. These systems contemplate daily life into meaningful patterns and structures that demonstrate transformative life processes such growth and decay. Ethereal at times, the patterns range from birds in flight to the movement of ants, spores, the internal physics of blushing to the flow of oil spills.” Jersey City’s Maggie Ens employs a vast array of mass-produced objects and materials to create artworks with new meaning and purpose. She says they are constructed of "collective cast-off sparks of life and culture to express benefit and worth.” Her colorful installation includes hula-hoops and winged kites, amongst other materials. Anne Trauben “draws" in space with wire, weaving thin gossamer strands in bunches like scrawls of pencil lines through the air. “As a sculptor, I'm interested in space- how to shape it as well as capture it in an elegant, poetic and ethereal way through a process that blurs the lines between 2 and 3 dimension: drawing, sculpture, sewing and craft.” Also, opening on JCAST Weekend, 10/18/14-10/19/14, 12-6pm, in our third floor galleries, DRAWING ROOMS CIRCLE features artists who manage, teach and help support our art center: Greg Brickey, Margaret Weber, Edward Fausty, Feng Xiao Liu, James Pustorino, Kim Wiseman, Ross Bonn, Stephanie Daniels, Taiwo DuVall, Robert Preston, Gilbert Giles, Cheryl Gross, William Stamos, Loura van der Meule, Stephen Cimini, Sandra DeSando, Jennifer Krause Chapeau. Highlights of DRAWING ROOMS CIRCLE include Robert Preston’s biting QUEENS (OF ENGLAND) series, a wall of Gilbert Giles’ sports sketchbook drawings, Stephen Cimini’s cold wax medium on canvas paintings, Loura van der Meule’s star drawings, a major new colored pencil waterscape by Sandra DeSando, Margaret Weber’s mysterious drawing collages on dark plexiglass, Taiwo DuVall’s totem woodcuts, multi-panel floating head drawings by Greg Brickey, William Stamos’ golden pallets, a horizon diptych by Jennifer Krause Chapeau, Ed Fausty’s Moving Mountains photos with Feng Xiao Liu’s calligraphy, and portraits by Cheryl Gross, Kim Wiseman and Ross Bonn. A projection room by Stephanie Daniels is also a must-see! |
