Sunday opening at Silvermine for three shows

Silvermine Guild Art Center
1037 Silvermine Rd., New Canaan, (203) 966-9700
Director's Choice: Karen Hillmer
Sergio Gonzalez-Tornero: At the Tribal Carving Shed
New Members Exhibition
Jan. 9—Feb. 20, 2011.
Opening Reception: Sun., Jan. 9, 2—4 p.m.

Press release

Winter exhibits at Silvermine Guild Arts Center, located in New Canaan, CT always brings the highly anticipated Annual New Guild Members show plus exciting exhibitions featuring South America’s finest modern printmaker, Sergio Gonzalez-Tornero and Director’s Choice, Karin Hillmer. All are welcomed to the opening reception on Sunday, Jan. 9 from 2—4 p.m. The exhibits will run through Feb. 20, 2011.

Director’s Choice, Karin Hillmer, is a painter, a photographer and above all a storyteller. Her pictures represent a new reality—maybe “surreality"—shaped by a lifelong interest in philosophy, history, art invention, music and science. Her images combine the avant-garde with the historic, have a deep intellectual reference, are enigmatic and humorous, mysterious, and original. They also combine Renaissance and technology, genetics and Botticelli.

The meaning and experience of time has always been central to Hillmer. Researching this topic led her to the Argentine poet and writer, Jorge Luis Borges. His enigmatic fictions inspired her current work, Infinity & Dreams: photographs inspired by the short stories of J.L. Borges, where she explores visually the concepts of time and the infinite moment as it pertains to dreams or different forms of reality.

“The characters in my photographs, as in Borges’ fiction, represent the human experience; they are independent of space-time and connect the past, present and future in unexpected ways. My images have several layers of meaning, some obvious, others only revealing themselves over time. I invite the viewers to engage in a dialogue with my photographs, to explore this journey and to find their own personal experience along the way,” explains Hillmer. Photography itself, a product of the scientific process, has evolved into exciting new frontiers to give the artist innovative forms of expression. In Hillmer’s work the camera is no longer directed at one single object in a single moment, but explores multiples of space and time merging into a new visual landscape.

One of South America’s finest modern printmakers, Sergio Gonzalez-Tornero’s current works in his exhibit At the Tribal Carving Shed” are a fusion of two distinct entities: a compulsion towards modernist form with its abstract notion and a fascination with the historic cultures of the Pacific Northwest.

“I respond to their art above all, which I choose to see as a deeply spiritual and gloriously formalist view of life. I like to think that my work is an outsider’s painterly and ongoing romantic adventure into the spirit of the First Nations of the Northwest Coast of North America,” states Gonzalez-Tornero.

This connection began with the first of many visits to Haida Gsaii, “Land of the Haida,” also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, an archipelago located 100 miles off the coast of British Columbia and Alaska. The unique signature element of Sergio’s paintings is his use of red and white. For Gonzalez-Tornero, red serves as a substitution for black. He feels that black is a cold and lifeless color and by using red, he is infusing energy and life into his works. According to The New York Times, “His way of putting paint to canvas shows how texture and volume can be represented by using fairly heavy-handed, and somewhat unusual, cross-hatching techniques. His emphasis on line may remind some of woodcuts, where the white of the paper, or in this instance, the white of the painted areas, suggests the pristine voids common to most woodcut prints.”

Each year in the spring and fall, new members are selected through a jurying process into the Silvermine Guild of Artists. The Guild of Artists is a distinguished group of professional artists comprised of over 300 members who work in a wide array of media and are represented in museums, and prestigious private and corporate collections. Selection into the guild is based on several criteria such as creativity, uniqueness or timeliness, excellence of technique, compelling notion or idea, cultural or social relevance, professional presentation of work, clarity and continuity of style, and professional accomplishment.

The New Members Exhibition will showcase the works of eleven new Guild Artist members inducted in the spring and fall of 2010, representing a variety of media. The new members include:

• Amy Bilden (Web) of Greenwich, CT (sculpture);
• Kerry Brock (Web) of Weston, CT (printmaking);
• Sharon Cavagnolo (Web) of Mount Kisco, NY (painting);
• J. Henry Fair (Web) from New York, NY (photography);
• John Harris (Web) from Norwalk, CT (painting);
• Mindy Horn (Web) of Weston, CT (ceramics);
• Jane Lubin (Web) of Westport, CT (mixed media);
• Anca Pedvis (Web) of New York, NY (painting);
• Connie Pfeiffer (Web) of East Haddam, CT (sculpture);
• Margaret Roleke (Web) of Redding, CT (wall relief); and
• Anita Soos (Web) from Guilford, CT (drawing).

Creative Arts Workshop exhibition showcases talented faculty

Creative Arts Workshop Hilles Gallery
80 Audubon St., New Haven, (203) 562-4927
Faculty Show
Through June 26, 2009

On thing that struck me as I wandered through the second floor of the two-floor Hilles Gallery at Creative Arts Workshop, checking out the Faculty Show, is the seductive energy of the gesture. It isn't that there were gestural drawings. Rather, there were a number of works in which the physical dynamism of the approach—or the appearance thereof—is reflected in a compelling liveliness of expression. This gestural current is present in Kelley Kapp's "Mad Plaid," a two-panel monochromatic acrylic on canvas. There's something about Kapp's doodle-like profusion of brush strokes that invites closer inspection.

A sense of fervent commotion also animates Julie Rogoff's "Through the Trees," an oil painting and abstraction. The pastel hues in "Through the Trees" capture the sense of sunlight coursing through the forest canopy. Her "Chomping at the Edge, CT River" relies on a darker palette but still conveys the feel of gestural motion.

This energy is present in Dorothy Powers' "Round Again," collaged and enlarged photocopies of a drawing of objects that look like balls of string. Nancy Eisenfeld's "Vortex," ink on paper, weds sweeps of pen lines with what appears to be stamps of abstract natural forms. Again, whether Eisenfeld approached the execution of "Vortex" in a gestural manner, the drawing pulses with visual energy.

Some works convey this sense of motion and urgency even though the act of creation was likely meticulous, even painstaking. Connie Pfeiffer's "Opening" is a steel wire wall sculpture in which two vertical, parallel lines anchor a chaotic profusion of horizontal threads. It is like a 3-D drawing in black and white. There is also motion captured in the sculptures of David Millen and Susan Clinard—figures poised in one-legged balance.

The exhibition showcases the breadth of media in which CAW's artist/teachers work. One example is the trio of sculptures by Jeannie Thomma. Thomma's poles are wrapped and decorated with felted wool and mixed media—thread, lace, sequins, ribbon. Thomma uses the characteristics of all materials at her disposal—the colors, textures and surfaces—to create complex, visually engaging works.

Downstairs, I loved the contrast between Steven R. DiGiovanni's "Untitled" acrylic on canvas and Josh Gaetjen's "Story and Play II." Lines and form are important for both painters. But where Gaetjen's urban landscape is concerned with accurately replicating architectural perspective and the play of light and shadows, DiGiovanni bends and warps his geometric shapes. He turns space inside out, painting a funhouse mirror of his imagination. Both large works satisfy in their very different ways (although both painters share a command of their craft.)

A short review like this can't do justice to this show. Suffice to say, Creative Arts Workshop is a treasure trove of talent and a real jewel for New Haven.

City Gallery Give Art opening tomorrow

City Gallery
994 State St., New Haven, (203) 782-2489
Give Art
Nov. 24—Dec. 23, 2007.
Opening reception, Sun., Dec. 2, 12—4 p.m.

Tis the season, I guess, for abstraction. But that's usually the case at City Gallery in New Haven. For its annual year-ending holiday Give Art show, City Gallery members are showcasing a lot of smaller works. All the works are available for sale at the fixed price of $100 each. The full spectrum of materials and techniques employed by gallery artists is on display. Show participants include new members Deborah McDuff (mask making) and Freddi Elton (photography). This holiday season, City Gallery members are offering the opportunity to give the gift of art at an affordable price.

For the most part, the work is collage-based. Several artists incorporate found or non-traditional materials. (Although what might have been considered a non-traditional material in the past—a delicate twig as used by Meg Bloom, a torn piece of corrugated cardboard employed by Jane Harris, fine mesh screening added by Connie Pfeiffer, a strip of rough tree bark completing a Nancy Eisenfeld composition—is increasingly becoming the new norm.)

Deborah McDuff offers lively collages in which she creates masks out of things like cut-up soda cans, feathers, fabric and beads. There are some beautiful watercolors by Judy Atlas. Almost pastel-like, they radiate deep vibrant color. One, speckled with light blue dots, looks like some beautiful chaos attending the Big Bang or other cosmic event. Another (there was no sheet with titles available when I visited), in which washes and spatters of green range over a background of black, orange and cream, offers a convincing illusion of depth.

Jefri Ruchti's charcoal and/or graphite drawings revel in rich twists of light and shadow, suggesting natural if unidentifiable forms. With Freddi Elton's photographs, there is a sense of time in suspended animation. Her images zoom in close on layers of ice, capturing a vision of cracks, bubbles and needle-like forms.

The opening reception is Sun., Dec. 2, from 12—4 p.m.