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Hera
Gallery Presents Summer Salon -- a group exhibition
with work by six
gallery members,
on view from August 26th through September 30th.
An opening reception will be held at the Gallery on Saturday, August 26th,
from 6:00 pm to 8: 00 pm.
Hera brings the summer to a close with an exhibition by member artists,
Kim Salerno, Jill McLaughlin, Katherine Veneman, Naomi Sultanik,
Linda Denosky-Smart and Heejae Suh. Working in two dimensions, these
artists present paintings, drawings, mixed media collages, works
on paper and
etchings, each expressing personal style, interest and focus.
Artists Kim Salerno and Jill McLaughlin present mixed media works,
different in scale,
aesthetic and intention.
Kim Salerno, with bold color
and wildly arranged patterns, creates large domestic scenes, baroquely
decorative, yet intimately familiar. Salerno blends painted shapes,
and silhouette figures, tantalizing the viewer with quiet human
interactions camouflaged in a psychedelic
world of design.
The relationship between
decoration and fine art is explored in all of Salerno's work. She
writes,
"This work embraces decoration and design,
which are often associated
with women's work. This work stands in one place and holds up two
mirrors, both enthralled
and critical of high art and popular culture." Using
materials such as glitter, beads, fur, foam, tulle and fringe, dug up from what
Salerno calls, "big box craft and fabric stores", a visually arresting world
is created using materials from
after-school art class.
Working in the same medium, Jill McLaughlin creates
on a smaller scale, using found objects, and materials that evoke
a strong sense of femininity and nostalgia. Working in
layered paint,
stamped text and
personal photographs, McLaughlin presents images verging
on voyeuristic.
The viewer is coaxed into tender scenes, a photo of a young girl
captured in
black and white, details like those of her tiny buckled
shoes, are given to the viewer, yet her
face remains obscured by
layers of paint and overlapping images. Behind her technique McLaughlin
writes, "These layers represent the protective
walls, windows and doors that we
put between us and other people. I use colors and images in my artwork
that may seem"pretty" at first, but they hide layers of insecurity,
pain, jealousy and other emotions that can
be uncovered if the viewer
takes the time to look further."
Representing painting in Hera Gallery's Summer Salon, are Katherine
Veneman and Linda Denosky-Smart. With sensuous brushstrokes, lavishly
applied paint and ink, both artists create inviting environments
where shapes are both abstracted and given form through these tactile
mediums.
Katherine Veneman, working on large canvases
painted in oils and ink and related
smaller canvases and ink drawings, develops environmentally complex
worlds through a painted, overlapped, and reworked surface of geometric
and organic forms. If her bold canvases appear to be in a state
of chaotic unrest, they have achieved the artist's goal. Veneman
writes, "My intent is to create spaces that inhabit
the blurry region between construction and destruction, growth and decay
. I work to
show how space is built and destroyed, or grown
and dissolved."
Elements of
creation and destruction dominate in Veneman's work. Forms push
through
ground-like surfaces, only to be swallowed by brushstrokes in shapes
like crashing waves,
that quickly dissolve into plumes of smoke or
billowy clouds. A reflection of the ever-changing physical world,
and perhaps the tumultuous realm of the mind, Veneman's paintings
embody both natural and human forces.
Fellow painter, Linda Denosky-Smart creates
work that occupies a quiet space, repre-
senting qualities of light, and
color on still-lifes, objects, and landscapes. Her focus represents
a strong
connection between daily life and art making. Using lush brushstrokes
and warm inviting colors, Denosky-Smart captivates the viewer with
genuine emotion and raw beauty.
With an interest
in evoking an emotional
response, she emphasizes "common but valued
materials, a scrap of fabric
or printed paper, an old dress pattern or a red button."
Denosky-Smart's paintings achieve this re-
sponse as naturally as
if the
viewer were to stumble upon theses objects and scenes for themselves.
With works on paper, Hera artists, Naomi Sultanik and Heejae Suh present
non-representational color and textural explorations and whimsical,
inventive etchings.
Naomi Sultanik, working
with large pieces of paper, cut and rearranged
using
wire and other mixed media creates vast landscapes where color
and texture combine to create form. Without delineating forms,
or representing images, Sultanik allows the simplicity of natural
paper, and minimal nature of
metal wire to create land formations of their
own. Emotionally provocative, these barren constructions lay space
for contemplative thought. Sultanik writes, "Mounds,
surfaces, measured spaces, boundaries reflect an historical essence
that projects
on our psyche, yet there is that place within ourselves where emptiness
draws
us into a wordless understanding and shadows become a measurement
of
time." Lost in her own emotions and thoughts, Sultanik's
work provides
the viewer
an opportunity to join her in a meditative
form of
interpretation.
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Printmaker Heejae Suh has also created
her own
world through the drawing and etching process. Decorative
and playful, Suh lets her imagination run carefree, inventing creatures
and perfecting the childhood art of doodling. Romantic swirls and
curlicues dance across
her prints,
and fantastic stories and plants and animals unfold.
Speaking of one of her pieces in
this exhibition
Suh explains, "The
image I'm showing is about the triplet plant which has three heads
but
one body. It could say it
is a kind of self-portrait that is always
thinking about multiple worries or imaginations in one body."
Left:
Heehae Suh, Triplets
Whether exploring in paint or collage, printmaking or drawing,
the
artists of Hera Gallery's Summer Salon are each immersed
in a body
of
work that is uniquely their own.
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These programs are presented with partial support from The Rhode Island
State Council on
the Arts, Hera Educational Foundation, and The Friends
of Hera. |
