Artist talk at Real Art Ways this Thursday

Real Art Ways
56 Arbor St., Hartford, (860) 232-1006
Carol Padberg: Face Value
Through Jan. 11, 2009.
Artist's talk: Thurs., Dec. 4, 6 p.m.

Press release

Artist Carol Padberg will be available this Thursday evening for an artist's talk about her current show at Real Art Ways. The talk will begin at 6 p.m.

Here is Padberg's artist statement on Face Value, her installation in Real Art Ways' Real Room:

During the last four years I have made work based on modernist fonts. Using the "modernist DNA" of typography fonts such as Bauhaus, Futura, and Helvetica, I create visual improvisations. I use fragments of found typography to take apart and put back together language. I have explored this subject in a variety of materials, including traditional painting media (encaustic and more recently polymer resins) as well as materials that extend the medium of painting (adhesive vinyl, flocking and metallic films in collage and installations). Often I choose materials with which I can create a tension between the flat graphic voice of type and the fluidity of paint and handwriting. These images ask questions about design, nonverbal language, and the modernist lineage of abstract painting.

For my Real Room exhibition I have created a site-specific installation. The installation is entitled "Helvetica Mash Up." In website development a "mash up" is a website that combines two or more computer programs. In this work I combine the manual technique of hand-cut collage with digitally generated layers. The end result is an abstraction that began as a small collage made entirely of red vinyl lettering, and ends up as a large information age improvisation in the "scale" of Helvetica.

I reviewed a show of Padberg's paintings at Paesaggio at 100 Pearl February of last year. There is video of Padberg discussing the work on Facebook.