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Ramsey Lofton

Ramsey Lofton uses digitally collaged photography, humor, and a Hungarian hound to explore the emotional bonds and boundaries of caregiver and canine. Childless by choice, Lofton discovers how her love for her Vizsla -- adog she adopted while in the Peace Corps in Hungary -- has closed the gulf between her perceptions of parenting and the realitiy of loving with no bounds.

In the series, "Hungarian Trails, Hungarian Tales," Lofton delves into her dog's cultural heritage as a descendent of the ancient Huns, as the dog of the royals and later the symbol of cultural survival after communism. In other works, Lofton inserts her dog into the continuum of female representa tion in art history.

<< Detail from " Vagina Monodogue" series

Without manipulating her dog's poses, Lofton uses images that express the explicit and innate relationship between her and her dog, revealing a complex identity beyond what is assumed about dogs.

Lofton received a MAT, Rhode Island College; MFA, Rutgers University; and BFA, University of Rhode Island. Her work has been widely exhibited and reviewed throughout New England and the Southwest. Ramsey lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she combines her interests in art and community development as the Community Education Supervisor for the College of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico.

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Jill McLaughlin

 
In her latest work, Jill McLaughlin combines mediums and subjects that she has been working with for over twenty years. Photography, image transfers, paint, fabric, and ephemera are collaged into artist's journals and books that engage us by allowing us to touch and closely explore the images.

Black and white source images for new collages >>

The mainly biological themes are common to us all on different levels. The combination of subjects and symbols can evoke different memories and meanings for everyone.

McLaughlin studied art in Michigan at Delta Community College and Western Michigan University. Born in Duluth, Minnesota, Jill currently lives in South Kingstown, Rhode Island.

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Kim Salerno

Kim Salerno, a new Hera Gallery Artis , explores the tension between nature and culture in her recent paintings. She invites us to consider the nature of realism, as highly synthetic images of the natural.

These paintings combine layers of pictures, which have been culled from history books on subjects ranging from Hudson River School landscapes to Chinese screen painting and arabesques from Islamic pattern design. The historical images are remade in craft store materials such as beads, foam, string, sand and sequins. The result is an amalgam that is not quite historicist and decidedly unnatural.

Kim Salerno's paintings have been exhibited throughout the United States in galleries, cultural centers and museums. Her work has won many awards and is included in several private and corporate collections.
 
Salerno attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she earned a certificate in painting. She has a master of architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and a bachelor of art degree from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

<< The Boat Of Love, mixed materials

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Julienne Saslaw

Julienne Saslaw describes the origins of her "pencil paintings" series:

"This series of pencil paintings started with a unique experience. By chance, I was left alone for a short time in a large, beautifully lit cavern in the Southwest."

"The silence in that womb-like cavity was complete and total. Not only was I not afraid, but the resulting emotions and thoughts are the source of the cavern series I’ve called Earthscapes: Subterranean."

"Ghostly Caverns", aquapencil on paper from " Earthscapes: Subterranean >>

"In these works, I have dwelled on the mysteries of deep, dark, unrevealed secret spaces of the mind. Using concentric and spiraling lines and shapes in the underlying compositions, I seek to pull the viewer into, down, around and through the tumbled voids. Aquapencil and collage capture the essence of stalactites and other mineral formations that have moved me so deeply."

Julienne received a B.A. from Hunter College, New York, and studied at the Art Students League, Brooklyn Museum Art School, and New York University. Saslaw's work has been exhibited widely and is held in the collection of Islip Art Museum, and in private collections in Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and California.

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Naomi Sultanik

Naomi Sultanik, also a new Hera Gallery Artist, creates wrapped and bound book-like forms that are often hung from the ceiling and on the walls. The book is a potent symbol, referring to the cache of knowledge within its cover. Sultanik writes about her work:

"Fragments; matter, words, reflection
Layering towards a surface
Charting an image.
Transparencies connect
Where the space between object and action
Becomes a landscape
In the mystery of relations."

<< Detail of packet from "Bind/ Double Bind"       installation

Sultanik’s work has been exhibited in the United States, The Netherlands, Portugal, and Israel. She studied at the Cooper Union and State University of New York, Buffalo. Naomi currently resides in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

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Katherine Veneman

Katherine Veneman says of her new series:

"…my current series of four small canvases is united by the idea of orientation. The idea of finding one’s way within a painting, or of failing to do so, functions as a metaphor for the larger way that we navigate the world around us. My recent work derives from my experience over the last year of relocating from Providence to Houston, and the disorientation that comparing and contrasting the very different lifestyles that each place requires."

 
"Variations and consistencies in perception have become more interesting to me as tools to navigate a new environment. Sources include observations of built environments as well as texts taken from journal entries and Rudolph Arnheim's Visual Thinking, which explored perception."

"My aim in these works was to record a process, or a history, which is visibly ongoing. The result is often a subjective surface that is not immediately accessible or easy to decipher, but which invites viewers to locate themselves within a shifting terrain. Instead of delineating a harmonious balance of events or an orderly, well-kept path, my paintings map a complex and often chaotic space in flux."

Oil on canvas >>

Katherine Veneman is a painter living in Houston, TX, where she maintains a studio and works as Curator of Education at Blaffer Gallery, The Art Museum of The University of Houston. She received her MFA in Painting from American University in Washington, DC. Veneman graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College, where she majored in both Fine Arts, with a concentration in Painting, and in History, with a concentration in East Asian Studies.

Katherine has exhibited her work throughout the East Coast and in Houston. Her artwork has been reviewed in Art New England, The Providence Journal, The South County Independent and the Narragansett Times, and has been featured in the Providence Phoenix, Westerly Sun, and the Providence Monthly. Veneman also served as the Director of Hera Gallery.

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