EXHIBITIONS
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Drawing Rooms Art Project: JC to AC
Artist Reception: Friday, 4/13/18, 6-9pm, Noyes Art Garage 2200 Fairmount Avenue, Atlantic City, NJ 08401 Hours of Operation: Wed - Sun: 11:00 am - 6:00 pm Telephone: (609) 626-3805 Artists from the Jersey City art space Drawing Rooms will be featured at Noyes this Spring in an exhibition of new works that promises to be a visually stunning display called "Drawing Rooms Art Project: JC to AC". Sparse black and white forms, energized slashes and bursts of marks, patterns and glowing colors make up the visual language and strong graphic impact of this group of New Jersey artists. Drawing Rooms, which has just celebrated its fifth year of programming, is part of Victory Hall Inc., the JC non-profit that has been producing exhibitions there since 2001. These artists are also part of The Art Project, Victory Hall’s Art in Public Places program that fills almost forty lobbies in four buildings with vibrant innovative works straight from the artist’s studio. As part of the project, residents of the building and the public interact with the artists at “Meet the Artists” events and the curators give frequent guided tours of the exhibitions. “Noyes Garage is the perfect place to expose our JC artists to the AC public and get people of all ages to see what artists working in their state are making, and for the artists to meet the public, and get a response to their work. The accessible, relaxed atmosphere at Noyes makes art part of everyone's daily life, which is how it should be,” says curator and artist, Anne Trauben. Alejandro Rubin’s “Just Keep Swimming” photo series shares his love of the water with the viewer. Saturated in color and mesmerizing pattern, the images become abstract and emotive. Born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela (where he took these pictures), Alejandro moved to the United States after finishing high school with academic and athletic scholarships to pursue a degree in Graphic Design and Photography, and be part of the Swimming team at Saint Peter's University. He is currently working on his MFA at NJCU in Jersey City and is an Intern at Drawing Rooms. Alyce Gottesman, a NJ native, says the rhythms of the seasons and the energy of nature influences her work, as well as and the special light that exists in N. California where she spent the latter part of her childhood. She cites her lifelong appreciation of music as another influences her painting. Alyce made these paintings when she returned from a recent trip to India. Anne Trauben is a sculptor who seeks to blur the line between two and three dimensions in her work. She is always considering formal design elements such as the beauty of shapes and how one shapes connects to another. Her 24 minimal collages are installed in a grid that take up a full wall. Anne says she “found such pleasure in cutting the forms with a scissor, as though I’m drawing in space or refining the curve of a clay form” and asks us to consider “how many ways can an idea be expressed differently”? Bruce Halpin says his “relationship with painting is complex, contradictory”. His flat, yet creamy, mat paintings on wood constructions become intriguing graphic/architectural objects. The meaning of the works emerges through a dialogue of the artist’s intention and the materials used. Connecting to nature has long been a source of inspiration and is reflected in the work of Eileen Ferara. Using a mix of materials and techniques, she creates images which have strong foundations in drawing; and often extend into printmaking, collage, artist’s books and painting. Her recent work has been an exploration of our relationship to the environment of the Estuary, and in particular her local urban waterways around the Hudson River, and surrounding marsh areas which empty out into the Atlantic Ocean. Greg Letson’s work explores ways of “expressing emotions, concepts, ideas and stories through a reductive vocabulary of visual shapes, marks and structures”. His images are “never preconceived and are always a product of an unfolding sequence of impulses and decisions in the course of making each final image”. His paintings “exist solely as visual compositions which are meant to resonate uniquely within the perceptual faculties of each viewer”. Jill Scipione presents dynamic, large-scale paintings inspired by passages from the Biblical Psalms and books of the Old Testament Prophets. These paintings are about light traced into dark; her drawing line becoming a painted trail of movement, creating and diffusing figures, forms and atmospheres. Her themes of Tent, Snare, Scaffolding, Messenger and Survival Suit, speak of threat and protection, fear and safety, destruction and deliverance. James Pustorino’s The Every Second Counts series uses short color strokes and “scribbled” line to build up form. According to Jim, “this composition can approximate music in that it is built of marks of color drawn with varying strengths, speeds and emphasis much like musical notes and tones or the way different instruments work together in a musical composition. As in music, structure and form are built through repetition, variation and contrast, areas of intensity and areas of rest; and the creation of an engrossing or compelling visual experience, as opposed to aural experience, is the goal of the piece.” Karen Nielsen-Fried begins every painting without a plan. She “trusts the first urges toward a color and then another color and then onward to line and form”. Her Intuitive Geometries series explores the beauty of geometric form as well as “random expansion of those forms to create entities that have emotional narrative”. “The Self is made up of all of the scraps of moments of being. We try to put forward a seamless facade as we tell ourselves and others our story. Overlapping pieces taped or stitched together, holes, torn and ragged edges are much more representative of the reality of being an authentic, yet flawed, human being”. “The intentional quality of the sublime emerges at the heart of this work” by Mona Brody. Her “personal experience, writings, and biography shape the nature of many of the works, always encouraging viewers to think about their own associations with themes of memory, personal histories, and time.” Photographer Roger Sayre, creates unique images with a strong sense of design through inventive photo-techniques. His photo “Buenos Aires (Bobby Fischer vs Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian, 1971 - Fischer in 34 moves)” is a document of every move from the thrilling championship chess game. Moving real chess pieces in actual-time chess moves on photosensitive paper, Sayre’s layered dark and light chessboard becomes a shadowy memory of the moments of the game. For more than a decade, Stephen Cimini’s oil paint with cold wax medium painting has been inspired by architecture. He has started referring to his compositions as “random symmetry” where he “creates a balance on the canvas with no discernible pattern allowing a symmetrical, meditative composition to emerge”, using the golden mean as a reference. |
