Gallery talk at City Gallery Sunday afternoon

City Gallery
994 State St., New Haven, (203) 782-2489
Freddi Elton: Carborundum Dreams
Through Mar. 25, 2012.
Gallery Talk, Sun., Mar. 25, 2—4 p.m.

Press release

The show Carborundum Dreams closes this Sunday at City Gallery in New Haven. On Sunday afternoon, artist Freddi Elton will give a gallery talk about the work and her process.

Freddi Elton will present a discussion of her work, with examples of plates and materials as well as a dialogue about insights gained during this project. Anyone with an interest in the technique of carborundum printing or any other aspect of the work is eagerly invited to attend.

Show of carborundum prints opens Saturday at City Gallery

City Gallery
994 State St., New Haven, (203) 782-2489
Freddi Elton: Carborundum Dreams
Mar. 1—25, 2012.
Opening Reception, Sat., Mar. 3, 2—5 p.m.

Press release

City Gallery in New Haven will present Carborundum Dreams, a collection of collographic prints by Freddi Elton, during March, 2012. This show documents the progression of Eltonʼs experiments in a developing medium after taking a course in alternative methods of printmaking in 2010.

Fascinated with the richness and texture of carborundum grit in platemaking, she first worked on plates made from cardboard, then began to look for more permanent surfaces on which to construct plates, and for various methods of applying carborundum—with glue, with acrylic medium, with wax. Different techniques of inking, wiping, and applying color provided another area of immense variability. The journey has been often frustrating, the failures frequent, and the results often mixed, but the thrill of discovery is ever-present and always enticing.

Carborundum Dreams runs from Mar. 1—25. An opening reception will be held Sat., Mar. 3, 2—5 pm.

Saturday opening at City Gallery in New Haven

City Gallery
994 State St., New Haven, (203) 782-2489
Freddi Elton: Lines of Desire
June 3—27, 2010.
Opening reception: Sat., June 5, 3—6 p.m.

Press release

City Gallery will present Lines of Desire, a collection of new work by Freddi Elton, from June 3—27. Elton will be showing encaustic, silk aquatint and mixed media pieces. The opening reception will be held on Sat., June 5, from 3—6 pm. The public is invited and admission is free. There will also be a Meet the Artist on Sunday, June 27 from 12—4 pm.

The title, Lines of Desire is a landscaping term describing the preferred path when progressing from point "A" to point "B". Often designers of college greens, for example, will simply plant grass and watch to see how paths are formed by walkers before laying in any stone or pavement. In winter, we see animal tracks clearly formed in the snow, and they are never completely straight, but rather follow the landscape's vagaries in an organic way.

Elton was inspired by this concept in her current work. She has created pieces with layered, complex surfaces, and made an effort to allow lines to follow their own particular geography. Her process is slow and sometimes arduous, but the results are, when successful, surprising and satisfying.

Hot & cool at City Gallery

City Gallery
994 State St., New Haven, (203) 782-2489
Freddi Elton: Hot/Medium/Cool
Through Jan. 31, 2009.

While Freddi Elton has previously shown abstract photographic works in City Gallery shows, her Hot/Medium/Cool solo show focuses on printmaking (a "cool" medium) and encaustic (a "hot" medium). It is actually a return to printmaking for Elton; her photographic images were influenced by her prior printmaking efforts.

Elton's abstractions are well within the stylistic approach—or, perhaps sensibility is a more accurate term—that loosely characterizes the City Gallery set of artists. Elton layers textures and shapes, many geometrical, and further teases compositions with gestural marks.

The works on the walls alternate between sets of monoprints and series of encaustic compositions. In both cases there is obvious care and concern for the surface of the works. Not surprisingly, in the case of the encaustics—a paint-infused beeswax—the surface has a more plastic presence. With monoprints, the attention to surface is manifested by the way the inks clot on the paper fibers. For example, in the monoprint "Morn" the simple arrangement of shapes is enlivened by the way the understated colors (muted pastel yellow and blue, black) soaking into the paper. The blue of the "sky" and the yellow of the "ground" float like dust motes in a beam of light.

City Gallery Line-Up to run concurrently with Open Studios

City Gallery
994 State St., New Haven, (203) 782-2489
Line-Up
Oct. 3—26, 2008 (with special extended hours City-Wide Open Studios' weekend)
Closing reception: Sun., Oct. 26, 2008, 2—5 p.m.

Press release

City Gallery is pleased to present Line-Up, a mixed media exhibit, by gallery members.
The exhibit is planned to run concurrently with City Wide Open Studios. The hours will be: Fri., Oct. 3, 12—8 p.m.; Sat., Oct. 4, 12—8 p.m.; Sun., Oct. 5, 12—5 p.m. The Closing Reception is Sun., Oct. 26, 2—5 p.m. Free.

The artists are working in all kinds of media: painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and each is responding to ideas about line.

The artists presenting are: Judy Atlas, Orange; Meg Bloom, New Haven; Phyllis Crowley, New Haven; Jennifer Davies, Branford; Nancy Eisenfeld, North Haven; Freddi Elton, Woodbridge; Barbara Harder, New Haven; Jane Harris, Madison; Sheila Kaczmarek, Guilford; Mary Lesser (see image), New Haven; Deborah McDuff, New Haven; Liz Pagano, New Haven; Jefri Ruchti, Guilford.

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.