Support Gorky's Granddaughter IndiGoGo fundraising drive

Since 2009, artists Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting have interviewed artists in their studios, posting over 200 videos of these encounters on their Gorky's Granddaughter site. These videos are smart, informative, often funny, warm, engaging. They are currently pursuing a crowd sourcing campaign on IndieGoGo to enable them to expand their efforts.

From their appeal:

We (Chris Joy and Zach Keeting) established Gorky's Granddaughter in 2009 as a way to engage in and intensify artistic discourse. Through making video documents of working artists and publishing them on the web, Gorky's has established a large and dedicated audience of artists, art-world practitioners, collectors, and art lovers.

By providing access to artists in their personal studios, we create a safe space for intimate and in-depth conversations that don't happen anywhere else. Both intensely focused and refreshingly informal, our conversations get to the heart of artists' thoughts as well as the complex meanings that surround the work they show us.

In a sense, we see ourselves as creating a visual, living version of long-form catalogue essays in an engaging, accessible, and entertaining format.

Please consider contributing to this very worthwhile project.

Keeting and Grill shows to open at Giampietro Gallery Friday, Sept. 6

Giampietro Gallery—Works of Art
315 Peck St., New Haven, (203) 777-7760
Zachary Keeting: Recent Work
Clare Grill: Steeped
Sept. 6—Oct. 5, 2013.
Reception: Fri., Sept. 6, 5—8 p.m.

Press release from Giampietro Gallery

Fred Giampietro Gallery is pleased to present new work by artists Zachary Keeting and Clare Grill. The two shows will be on view from Sept. 6—Oct. 5, with an opening reception on Fri., Sept. 6, from 5—8 p.m.

Zachary Keeting's abstract paintings are visually compelling and technically unique. His surfaces are constantly in flux: calligraphic gestures, crackled pours, blotted geometries, all whirling around in dynamic organic imbalance. They exhibit a great understanding of color, movement, texture, and composition.

Zachary Keeting: "April (2)"

Keeting received his M.F.A from Boston University and his B.F.A. from Alfred University. Zachary’s work has exhibited extensively throughout New England and New York. Keeting has been awarded many residency and fellowship opportunities including an Artist-in-Residence at VCCA in Amherst, VA, Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY, Petrified National Forests in Arizona, Byrdcliffe in Woodstock, NY, Montana Artist Refuge in Basin, Montana, Santa Fe Art Institute, Pouch Cove in Newfoundland, Canada, Millay colony in Austerlitz, NY, and the Woodstock School of Art in NY.

Clare Grill writes, "My paintings come from a reverence for and curiosity about what's past—mine and everyone’s . . . I make paintings about things fading away. My paintings have an available but perhaps not an obvious logic, like when an image dictates something about the mark, but the mark isn't at the total will of the image. I come to each piece differently, sometimes by looking at my things, or out the window, or at pictures of familiar places, or old drawings, or other times by reading a string of words I’ve copied down somewhere. I mess with the images these thoughts cook up, layering and wearing them away. I've become less concerned with image really, and more with just painting. The image surfaces according to the way the paint looks like it feels to touch."

Grill received her M.F.A. from the Pratt Institute and her B.A. from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. In 2011 Clare attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Grill's work has exhibited throughout New England and NY. Clare has accepted many prestigious awards including the Pratt Alumni Award from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and Best in Show for the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts curated by Carter Foster. Grill has also participated in AIM 28 Bronx Museum and Aljira, Emerge 9 as well as a residency fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center.

A group show of color essentialism opens Friday at Giampietro Gallery in New Haven

Giampietro Gallery—Works of Art
315 Peck St., New Haven, (203) 777-7760
Chromacosm
Feb. 3—Mar. 3, 2012.
Opening Reception: Fri., Feb. 3, 5—8 p.m.

Press Release

Giampietro Gallery is pleased to present Chromacosm, a group exhibition that brings together six artists who embrace color as a primary and essential element of their work. Artists presented are: Melissa Brown, Clint Jukkala, Zachary Keeting, Joshua Marsh, Douglas Melini, and Tamara Zahaykevich. The exhibit is on view from Feb. 3 to Mar. 3, 2012.

Conjuring worlds, both abstract and representational, the artists in Chromacosm think and speak in color as much as through drawing, imagery, or material. While associations abound, color here is felt more than named. Jewel-like hues, chromatic spills, and atmospheric gradations, evoke imagined spaces made of vibrant pigments. The works in Chromacosm are not so much about color, but rather color is the DNA that brings these images and objects to life.

Melissa Brown paints alien rock and landscape forms from another world. Composed largely of hard edges and graphic shapes, the stratified layers of these strange formations reveal the spectral glow of unnatural, interior hues.

Clint Jukkala’s paintings offer portals into sensory worlds of color, geometry, and remembered experience. Ostensibly abstract, they refer to the real world, suggesting interior spaces, windows, and landscape vistas.

Zachary Keeting (see image) brushes, pours, and scrapes gestures that accumulate and collapse into complex colorful layers. Paint slides, skids, bubbles and drips, creating translucent and opaque movements of intertwined forms.

Joshua Marsh’s paintings on burlap hum with the glow of limited and precise hues. Yet these still lives of seemingly everyday objects are transformed into eerie, infrared images where boundaries blur and color traces the remnants of contours.

Douglas Melini weaves brilliant, painted designs of finely tuned colored lines. Horizontals, verticals, and diagonals accumulate into trippy, kaleidoscope plaids enclosed by hand painted wooden frames.

Tamara Zahaykevich’s intimate, sculptural gems are made of paper, foam and paint. Idiosyncratic in form and built of decidedly raw materials, her jaunty constructions radiate energy and suggest narrative possibility.

Melissa Brown is a New York based artist, Clint Jukkala and Zachary Keeting are New Haven based artists represented by Giampietro Gallery. Joshua Marsh is based in Philadelphia and is represented by Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York. Douglas Melini is based in New York. Tamara Zahaykevich is based in New York and represented by Kansas Gallery.

Artists' Talk for "The Guy Show" at Artplace in Fairfield this Sunday

Artplace Gallery
11 Unquowa Rd., Fairfield, (203) 292-8328
The Guy Show
Through Feb. 26, 2011
Artists’ Talk: Sun., Feb. 13, 3 p.m.

Press release

Artplace Gallery is pleased to announce dates for the first curated show in its new gallery space. Entitled The Guy Show the exhibit runs from February 1—26, 2011 at 11 Unquowa Rd. in Fairfield and is unique in that it will exclusively feature regional male artists from Fairfield and New Haven counties. The opening reception was held this past Saturday, Feb. 5, but there will be an artists’ talk this Sun., Feb. 13, at 3 p.m.

“We selected these ten artists for their professionalism, clarity of vision as well as their ability to move beyond limits set by traditional art,” says Gerald Saladyga, who is curating and organizing the exhibit. Saladyga is a member of ArtPlace and has curated exhibits on religious art, art and AIDS and redefining “landscape” in art. He notes that The Guy Show is not about “male issues” but about the direction male artists are now moving in.

“We chose five painters, three sculptors and two photographers who demonstrate a wide range of work as well as age and visibility—some are beginning their careers and several are already established,” he says.

Most of the artists featured are New Haven-based with two from Norwalk and one from New Fairfield. The painters include Chris Durante, a member of Norwalk Community College Art Department; Christopher Joy (Web) and Zachary Keeting (Web), co-founders of “Gorky’s Granddaughter,” an artist video interview site; Felandus Thames (Web), a painter and silk-screen printmaker who was recently represented by the Jack Tilton Gallery at Art/Basel/Miami 2010; and Jonathan Waters (Web)whose work has been exhibited at Art in General in NYC and locally at the Ivoryton and Madison Sculpture Miles.


Photographers Keith Johnson (see image above) and Jeremy Keats Saladyga have also been included in important exhibitions: Johnson in three Ground/Cover exhibits in Arizona, Washington and Wyoming and Keats Saladyga at The Michael Foley Gallery, NYC and the Museum of The City of New York.

Joseph Saccio (Web), a largely self-taught sculptor, received the “Best in Show” award at Silvermine’s Art of the Northeast USA exhibit in 2010, while Silas Finch (Web, see image below), a young New-Haven based sculptor, will see his work featured in the up-coming indie film by Stephen Dest, My Brother Jack.


Finally, Joseph Fucigna (Web), also a member of Norwalk Community College, held a recent one-man exhibit of his constructions at the Sculpture Barn in New Fairfield, CT.

“This show presents cutting-edge art not usually represented in Fairfield,” says Saladyga. “Visitors to the show will see art that is not usually exhibited in a private gallery.”

Artists' and scientists' reception Thursday evening at Haskins Laboratories

Haskins Laboratories
300 George St. 9th Floor, New Haven, (203) 772-2788
Mind Sets
Through Jan. 28, 2011, 2009.
Artists' and scientists’ reception: Thurs., Nov. 4, 5—7 p.m. (with a panel discussion at 5 p.m.)

Press release

The Arts Council of Greater New Haven, in collaboration with Haskins Laboratories, presents Mind Sets at Haskins Laboratories, 300 George St., 9th floor, New Haven. This exhibition will be on display now through Jan. 28, 2011. Regular viewing hours are Wednesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. An artists’ and scientists’ reception is scheduled for Thurs., Nov. 4, from 5—7 pm, with a panel discussion at 5 p.m. The public is invited to attend.

Curated by Cat Balco and Debbie Hesse with Curatorial Assistant Steven Olsen, Mind Sets explores the potential of collaboration between artists and scientists. New initiatives and ideas result from conversations between artists and scientists, offering new ways of approaching concepts through interdisciplinary communication.

Featured artists include Fritz Horstman, Zachary Keeting, Lucy Kim, Eva Lee, Martha Lewis, Laura Marsh, Kim Mikenis, Carol Padberg, Dushko Petrovich, Cuyler Remick, Matt Sargent, Bill Solomon, Susan Classen-Sullivan and Paul Theriault. Students of Natacha Poggio, a multidisciplinary designer on faculty at Hartford Art School and Director of the Design Global Change initiative, have collaboratively produced a catalogue and graphic images for the exhibit.

Haskins Laboratories is an independent, international, multidisciplinary community of researchers conducting basic research on spoken and written language. Exchanging ideas, fostering collaborations, and forging partnerships across the sciences, it produces groundbreaking research that enhances our understanding of—and reveals ways to improve or remediate—speech perception and production, reading and reading disabilities, and human communication.

The Arts Council of Greater New Haven is a regional nonprofit arts organization that provides leadership to, and advocates for, member artists and institutions throughout the Greater New Haven area. Visit the Arts Council at www.newhavenarts.org and follow the organization on Facebook (www.facebook.com/artscouncilofgreaternewhaven) and Twitter (NewHavenArts).

Artspace openings tomorrow

Artspace
50 Orange St, New Haven, (203) 772-2709
Upheaval: An installation by Laura Moriarty
Lovely, Dark and Deep: Photographs by Carolyn Monastra
Sculptural Installation by Steve Novick
Paintings by Zachary Keeting
Site-specific installation by Alison Owen
May 12—June 20, 2009
Opening reception: Thurs., May 14, 6—8 p.m., with artist talks at 6:30 p.m.

(Un)spoken continues in the main gallery at Artspace, Gallery 1. Five new exhibits are opening in the subsidiary galleries this Thursday.

There will be an opening reception tomorrow evening from 6—8 p.m., with artist talks beginning at 6:30 p.m.

Press release

Gallery 2 • Upheaval: An installation by Laura Moriarty

In her sculptural paintings, installations, and works on paper, Moriarty explores the relationship between art and science both aesthetically and in the creative process. Her sculptural paintings are a play on plate tectonics, where landmasses drift apart and crash together, piling one episode upon another in precarious ways.

Gallery 3 • Lovely, Dark and Deep: Photographs by Carolyn Monastra

As a landscape photographer, Monastra blends inspiration from fairy tales, myths, and the fragmentary space of dreams with her own experiences of the environment to discover and create mystery in the natural world. In contrast to the sweeping, pristine vistas of photographers such as Ansel Adams, Monastra prefers to capture the darker, enigmatic beauty of smaller, somewhat sinister worlds that exist off the beaten path.

Gallery 4 • Sculptural Installation by Steve Novick

Using a broad range of found objects and materials including rubber, plastic, cloth, wood, mirrors, paper, and paint, Novick's sculptures and installations playfully use and subvert the geometric shapes, strong colors, and "pure" abstraction of Modernism. Novick also explores humor, perception, conceptualism, and the relationship between nature and culture in his work.

Gallery 5 • Paintings by Zachary Keeting

Keeting's exuberant and prolific work in painting, drawing, and photography explores a broad range of aesthetic sensibilities, from abstraction to figuration, vivid color to shades of gray, and the organic to the geometric. Despite this formal range, all of Keeting's work intends to make his inner life tangible and to provide artifacts of time, risk, and improvisation.

Gallery 7 • Site-specific installation by Alison Owen

Owen's subtle work includes installations, paintings, drawings, and wallpaper that draw attention to peripheral spaces that are normally overlooked. For her installations, she uses simple materials such as thread, thumbtacks, and paper to slightly alter the space. For her wallpaper, Owen uses the dirt, dust, and lint she gathers while cleaning the installation site, fusing domestic labor with the installation process and creating a new environment with the almost invisible detritus of everyday life.