What's Happening! 6/7/13

Amelia Hollander-Ames and Sandra DeSando's drawing "After Midnight"

Amelia performing a viola solo in Sandra's exhibition 

Ed Fausty admiring Feng Xiao as Francesca

(Feng is painted to resemble Ross Bonn's portrait of Andrew, as recreated by Maggie Ens) in Tomomi's exhibition room where Anne Trauben collaborated with a sound installation.

Eldad Tarmu performing on his Vibraphone

Eldad performing in Kay Kenny's exhibition

Eldad and the amazing pipes of his Vibraphone

Feng Xiao as Ross Bonn's portrait of Francesca in Tomomi's exhibition room where Anne Trauben collaborated with a sound installation.

Feng waving hello in Margaret Weber's Special Exhibition Room

Heidi Curko talking with Eugene McKnight

Heidi with her drawings "Inanimate Objects"

Jill Scipione, Maggie Ens, Tomomi Ono and Feng Xiao working on recreating Ross Bonn's paintings

The poet Joel Lewis with Jill in Tim Daly's exhibition

Feng is the process of becoming Ross Bonn's Francesca, courtesy of Maggie Ens

Maggie with Sandy DeSando, preparing to transform Sandy into one of Ross's painted portraits

Maggie putting the finishing touches on her face painting of Tomomi as Andrew

Maggie recreating Ross Bonn's painting of Andrew on Tomomi

Mike DiFeo in conversation

Mike performing his guitar loops

Mike performing in his Pyrology exhibition

Mike's guitar loop performance

Portraits by Ross Bonn, in his Special Exhibition Room

The poet Joel Lewis with Tim Daly in Tim's exhibition

Joel reading amongst Tim's artworks

Ross Bonn with his painting of Samantha

Artists Ross and Maggie with the three living portraits

Ross Bonn's portrait of Annette

Tomomi (as Andrew) talking to Sandy (as Samantha)

Tomomi as Ross's portrait of Andrew in her exhibition room where Anne Trauben collaborated with a sound installation.

Zoe Weber presenting Eugene McKnight his birthday cake, with Councilwoman Diane Coleman

Steve Singer

Steve Singer is a sculptor, painter and draftsman living in Jersey City. Schooled in London, at Dartmouth, the Art Students League and NY Studio School, Steve has shown his work throughout the NY Metropolitan area, as well as in London, and has participated in solo and group gallery exhibitions and in museums - Newark Museum, Zimmerli Museum and Delaware Art Museum. Steve has been written up in Art in America and the NY Times, and he has received a Pollock-Krasner Grant. Public sculpture commissions include "Longshoreman" on the Jersey City Waterfront.

In the Night & Day Exhibition, Steve showed plein-air watercolors done from life outside. According to Steve, he sets up his easel, studies his subject and gets as much as he can done within a one-and-one-half hour maximum window. If that's not enough and the work looks promising, he will return to the site in similar conditions at the same time - as many times as it takes to finish. Steve mostly paints locally. The larger works shown were painted outside in Jersey City and the bunker portraits were done in his old Third Street atelier.

Steve Singer, "Musicians" watercolor — with Steven Singer at DRAWING ROOMS.

Sandra DeSando

Sandra DeSando is a longtime Jersey City resident artist and curator, formerly of the 111 Building. Her impressive background includes a Pollock-Krasner grant, a residency in The Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Space Program and YADDO. Her work has been exhibited throughout the NY Metropolitan area and Washington DC, as well as Canada and London. At the Night & Day Exhibition, Sandra showed large graphite and ink works on paper. Sandra's imagery is inspired by water landscape which she reinterprets in a strikingly moody and ethereal way.

Sandro DeSando's "Day at the end of North First" — with Sandra Desando at DRAWING ROOMS.

Ross Bonn

From May 2 through June 23, 2013, Ross Bonn’s intriguing portraits were on exhibit in our Special Project Rooms. A life-long resident of Bayonne, NJ, Ross paints to discover and reveal identity, through the mask of the face. His paintings depict persona, the essence of personality, and he paints them as if engaged in a struggle to find out who these people are. Ross must push, pull, warp and distort the form, surface and nature of the face itself. He also creates amazing color combinations, pushing value, chroma and intensity variables to the extreme and yet he somehow creates readable, emotive portraits as a result. He watches and intuits for what is under the skin; the person below the surface looking out.

"Milo" — with Ross Bonn at DRAWING ROOMS.

Kay Kenny

We are pleased to have presented Kay Kenny's "Night in the Middle of Nowhere" photographs included in our "Night and Day" exhibition.

Kay is a photographer, painter and teacher of photography at New York University and the International Center of Photography, with her studio located in Jersey City. 

Kay received her BFA from Syracuse University, MA from Rutgers University and MFA from Syracuse University. She has since then received awards, including 2009 Honorable Mention in Fine Art Photography Lucie Awards, and exhibited in one-person shows in New York City, Lubbock, Texas, Medina, Colombia, and Taipei, Taiwan. Her work is included in the Brooklyn Museum Artist Books Collection, Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin, Nantong Museum, China, Pfizer Corporation, New York, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Lawrenceville, New Jersey, and Provident Bank, New Jersey. 

For over a decade, Kay has been photographing the rural night landscape, working with long exposures and the ambient light of the moon and stars. She has been capturing unexpected scenes, what she describes as “poetic tribute to wild imaginings: the nightmares and dreams inherent in the lonely darkened corners of the world.” Photographing familiar places, such as rural backyards, fields and roads, these places become unfamiliar in her night-time images with eerie lighting effects of shadows and innuendos, revealing another world.

"Fox and Blue Ball" — with Kay Kenny at DRAWING ROOMS.

Heidi Curko

Heidi Curko is a teaching artist active in Jersey City and Hoboken and we were really pleased she showed with us in our “Night and Day” exhibition.

Inspired by a set of prints engraved by the musician John Cage, Heidi created twenty drawings and one encaustic painting for the exhibition. Cage’s drypoints involve stones he had collected from around the world and he used principles from the I Ching Tables of Chance Operations to guide his images. Heidi instead chose not chance to determine her images, but relied on her life experiences to inform her stone tracings.

"Inanimate Objects" — with Heidi Curko at DRAWING ROOMS.

Margaret Weber

Margaret Weber is a Jersey City printmaker and collage artist. From 05/02/13 - 06/09/13, she will show her body of work called “Dark Passage” in the Special Project Rooms.

Margaret was an early pioneer to Jersey City, having arrived from New York City in the early 70's. She received her B.A. and M.A. from Jersey City State College and became an art teacher, teaching art in the public schools for 29 years while making art– first in a corner of a room, and eventually in a floor-through print shop and studio in the once neglected brownstone she owns and restored to its 1865 Italianate grandeur.

Margaret has shown her work throughout NY and NJ. She received a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Visual Artist/Teacher Award and Grant and her work is represented in the Permanent Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Johnson and Johnson, Rutgers University Library and in private collections.

Margaret’s “Dark Passage” mixed-media narrative works are skillfully crafted and compelling. Using the same copper plate to create her series, and marked with a heavy gestural hand- many in swirls and spirals, she carefully chooses imagery and materials that pessimistically speak about the current state of human interaction with the natural world. Margaret believes we are in denial of climate change and the destruction of our natural habitat, and the world is awash in plastic. According to Margaret, "'The Dark Passage' series depicts a reversal of an expected hierarchy. A bird flies across an unnatural landscape in possession of a human skull." Margaret wonders if nature will carry on despite human destruction.

Perhaps for Margaret, the process of making these related works on paper is a metaphor for a potentially positive answer to this question. 

Margaret's art-making process begins with an image or thought which is allowed to take shape on a copper plate matrix and generate different solutions as it progresses. What results is a beautiful picture of an ugly reality. Her hope is that the image might move one to feel, think and/or act in a responsible way.

Tim Daly

One of Hoboken’s long time artist residents and certainly among its most talented, Tim Daly will be showing his work in the "Night & Day" Exhibition from 05/02/13 - 06/09/13.

Tim is a realist painter who was born and raised in Jersey City and currently lives in Hoboken, having first arrived during the pioneer days of the late '70s when, as Tim recalls, living in Hoboken was cheap. 

Tim studied at School of Visual Arts and is best known for his landscape paintings of Jersey City and Hudson County, and his mural series in the south mezzanine N.J. Transit's Secaucus Junction Rail Station. Tim works with acrylic and oil on canvas and charcoal and pastel on brown paper, and sometimes takes pictures in order to capture the visual information he is interested in. Tim has had numerous solo and group shows in Hoboken, Jersey City and New York, and is represented in numerous collections.

According to Tim, it’s the oddness of the New Jersey landscape that he’s most drawn to, especially the landscape surrounding Jersey City– specifically Jersey City Heights where he grew up, and the Meadowlands, and the urban industrial landscape of the New York/New Jersey Metro area. 

Tim has described his work as "recent history paintings"– paintings of things and places that are about to disappear. He draws inspiration from American, Dutch, and English landscape paintings. Tim's works depict moody hyperrealist scenes, often requiring years to complete, and boast his mastery of atmospheric light. His works can often be considered a meditation on light as much as a study in realism.

Among the work Tim will show in the “Night & Day” Exhibition are landscape paintings entitled “Global Hawk Crash, Eastern Maryland”, “Tornado Swarm, Delaware” and “WTC Site 9/13/01”.

Come join us at the Opening Reception on Sunday, May 5th, from 3-5p to see Tim's work.

Tomomi Ono

Tomomi Ono is a former resident of Jersey City, currently living in Brooklyn, who has shown her work in group and solo shows in New Jersey and New York City, as well as across the country and in Japan. We are excited that she is showing her work in the "Night & Day" exhibit on 05/02/13 - 06/09/12.

Tomomi creates poetry on paper. Exploring metaphorical expressions of life existence and the continuation of life cycles, Tomomi previously created a series of work where she investigated subjects such as “egg”, “cell” and “seeds”. In the body of work she's showing at DRAWING ROOMS, she focuses on “sky”. 

Tomomi’s images of day sky depict stars very subtly, so faintly, the viewer needs to look closely to see them. According to Tomomi, "our lives are just a small part of an enormous universe. The night sky reminds us of our tiny existence." Sparkling stars in the clear night skies were inspired from her lonely night train trip in the Alps over 20 years ago. The dramatic panorama of the night sky has lived inside her as one of the most beautiful experiences. “Gray Sky” is the sky seen in the city. 

Tomomi’s skies are not scientific star maps– rather, they are the skies of her senses. 

Tomomi’s process involves drawing images on stone and then printing a lithograph. Through this process, in Tomomi's “Day Sky / Night Sky”, she shares her vocabulary with the viewer to create work that resonates in a lovely meditative way.

Come join us at the Opening Reception on Sunday, May 5th, from 3-5p to see Tomomi's work.

Mike DiFeo

Introducing Mike DiFeo, whose work will be seen in the exhibit "Night & Day" from 05/02/13 - 06/09/13. 

Originally from Union, NJ, Mike studied photography, filmmaking, and audio production at New Jersey City University. After college he worked in the film industry and was a member of International Cinematographers Guild. He’s been involved in the Jersey City arts scene for a few years, having first exhibited at JC's Lex Leonard Gallery. Besides Jersey City, Mike has also shown in his work in NYC and Atlanta. 

Mike approaches photography in a painterly fashion, using atmospheric lighting conditions as his palette and composing images from their ambience. Playing with the confines of perception, Mike’s picture taking process extends photography beyond the typical exposure by drawing with light. In Mike's hands, the camera becomes an extension of his body with gestures varying from subtle to the extreme equivalent of brushstrokes on a canvas. Mike’s visceral response to his environment embraces unexpected possibilities.

Besides image making, Mike is a juggler. It’s easy to imagine a connection between these two activities...

Come join us at the Opening Reception on Sunday, May 5th, from 3-5p to see Mike's work.

Night & Day and Special Project Rooms

The public is invited to meet the artists and enjoy refreshments at an OPENING RECEPTION for our new exhibits on SUNDAY, MAY 5, from 3 to 5 pm. Artists featured are:

"NIGHT & DAY" EXHIBIT:

• Tim Daly , whose mastery of light in his modern landscapes have been described by one art critic as “bordering on the religious”;

• Steve Singer, a Pollock-Krasner Award-winning artist, paints sunlit scenes of urban life.

• Michael DiFeo, an artist, cinematographer, and pyrologist, who uses a camera shutter to “paint” with fire and urban lights.

• Kay Kenny’s night photos incorporate dark, mysterious spaces, where mists come, stars streak, and moons rise and fall;

• Tomomi Ono captures nature floating in air or sinking into a dark space, evoking the transience of existence;

• Heidi Curko explores foreground and background, light and shadow, in her drawings of inanimate objects;

• Sandy DeSando explores dawn in breathtaking, atmospheric paintings.

SPECIAL PROJECT EXHIBITS:

• Ross Bonn’s intriguing portraits uncover the masks people wear to reveal the persona beneath.

• Margaret Weber explores the nexus of memory and fantasy in her striking Dark Passage series of intaglio prints.

Margaret Weber

From 05/02/13-06/09/13, in our Special Project Rooms, come see Margaret Weber's intaglio print series where she explores the nexus of memory and fantasy in her striking works called Dark Passage. Gallery hours will be Thursdays & Friday 4 to 7pm, and Saturdays & Sundays from 2 to 6pm. 

Come join us for the opening reception on Sunday May 5 from 3-5p.

Ross Bonn

From 05/02/13-06/09/13, come see Ross Bonn’s intriguing portraits uncover the masks people wear to reveal the persona beneath in our Special Project Rooms. Gallery hours will be Thursdays & Friday 4 to 7pm, and Saturdays & Sundays from 2 to 6pm. 

Come join us for the opening reception on Sunday May 5 from 3-5p.

Night and Day: 5/2/13 - 6/9/13

“Night and Day” is our latest exhibit exploring works of contrasting opposites, hidden meanings, and the atmospheric qualities of light and darkness. The exhibit will be up from May 2nd to June 9th. Gallery hours are Thursdays & Friday 4 to 7pm, and Saturdays & Sundays from 2 to 6pm.

Come join us for the opening reception on Sunday May 5 from 3-5p.

2013 Posts

The next fourteen posts came from Drawing Rooms Blog in 2013. The description of the blog is as follows:

"This blog serves as a complement to our gallery and exhibition practice and includes links and pictures of some of our favorite places for intimate interactions with art and ideas."