Sunday reception at Kehler Liddell for "Artist's Choice" group show

Kehler Liddell Gallery
873 Whalley Ave., New Haven, (203) 389-9555
Artist's Choice
Through Aug. 16, 2012.
Opening Reception: Sun., July 8, 3—6 p.m.

Press release

Artist's Choice is a unique exhibition of member artists work paired with the work of guest artists accompanied by a written statement. Each artist in the show is accomplished. There is a broad spectrum of work including: painting, sculpture, photography and drawing or paint, wood, stone, metal, paper, ink, found objects and more. Broad spectrums of work and member/guest shows are not unusual. Artist's Choice is all this and more. It is the personal invitation from one artist to another, the particular pairings, the binding of one artist to another, which leaves the viewer wondering what stirred within the host artist to extend this invitation. The answers are provided by each of the 22 Kehler Liddell member artists in highly personal statements, which reveal inspiration and admiration among creative professionals. It is the statements and moves the exhibition out of the ordinary.

The show will be on display through Aug. 16. An artists' reception will be held Sun., July 8, from 3—6 p.m.

Host artist Gar Waterman (Web) reveals Jay Seeley as a "fellow hopeless accumulator of stuff." "Each object is fecund with the promise of finding a place in his work…. When Jay requested the use of a set of wings from my Tin Man series of sculptures, I was delighted to be able to contribute to his creative process, knowing that the result would be mysterious and wonderful…My reconfigured scrap metal sculptures and Jay Seeley's photographs (see image "Angelee" below) fuel that interpretive alchemy that we, as artists, all practice as part of our creative process."


"Marion Belanger," writes host artist Keith Johnson, "is a photographer interested in the concepts of persistence and change, and in the way that boundaries demarcate difference, particularly with regard to the land." She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as other notable awards and has an extensive and impressive exhibition history. Johnson chose Belanger "because she is a smart, creative well seeing photographer. The piece she will show (see image below) was site-specific and printed in a non-traditional way. It will hang from the rafters in the gallery. She is a good friend and I like her work.”


The show includes the work of forty-four artists and twenty-two thoughtful statements making sense of the pairings, revealing both host and guest artist and work that surprises, delights and on occasion, confounds.