40/40: A Double Vision

40/40: A Double Vision

Beautifully installed in 4 separate gallery spaces by the curator Lilly Wei. Disparate artworks are organized and divided into complimentary groupings – an installation/ projection space, a minimalist area, a nature space, and a fantasy gallery. The exhibition has an essential spaciousness and careful placement that is rewarding.
 
There is no over arching theme to the exhibition – it simply celebrates the occasion of A.I.R. Gallery’s 40th anniversary. There are 40 artworks - 40 individual personalities. Each work stands alone representing gallery's artists, alongside invited guest artists.
 
Entering into the main gallery room the viewer is met with a bookstand with cutout/ collaged pages from a phone book on a worn and peeling wooden stand. I imagined it as a directory of the exhibition. There is sculpture, photography, painting, drawing, projection, prints, installation pieces – brilliant color & monochrome, handwork & conceptual work, scruffiness & sophistication. Small screened prints on silk bridge a corner; nearly invisible scorings shape black paper; minute drawings cluster like bees on the wall; flamboyantly, brilliant artificial flowers hover; vibrant vertical slashes of landscape edge the window, subtle lines drift above color. 
 
A small diptych painting in B & W - one side an open suitcase on the other side a closed suitcase - entitled  “Hi” stands out for me as a metaphor. In its one syllable title, it expresses the sense of the exhibition – a greeting, an opening, a journey. 
 
I am not writing a review of the exhibition: I am extending an invitation. 40/40: A Double Vision is open until March 30th, 2013. Contact http://www.airgallery.org/ or 212-255-6651 for more information.
 
Nancy Storrow
A.I.R. Gallery Artist
2013

Read More

Interview with K.A. Letts

A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce Celebrating Kindred Spirits and Strange

Bed Fellows, an exhibition by A.I.R.’s national and international members, curated by Catherine J. Morris.  Artists in the exhibition include: Kate Ali, Judy Cooper, Leigh Craven, Phyllis Ewen, Melissa Furness, Ann Ginsburgh Hofkin, Terry Gips, Nicole Jacquard, Jan Johnson, Julia Kim Smith, K. A. Letts, Gladys Tietz Mercier, Haley Morris-Cafiero, Nancy Morrow, Esther Naor, Ardine Nelson, Meghan Quinn, Belle Shafir, Marie Sivak, and Erin Wiersma.

This exhibition brings together twenty different artists, all of whom create work within the enduring feminist concept: the personal is political, and with Catherine J. Morris’ curatorial eye, each artist is represented as an individual. As A.I.R. Gallery enters its 40th Anniversary year, it is apparent to the observer that the women showing in this exhibition carry on the priorities that have been part of A.I.R.’s mission since it’s inception in 1972. As Morris writes in the accompanying catalogue, the artists “speak to the fluid strength of the methodological framework offered by feminism.”

As we get ready to exhibit these wonderful artists, we will be interviewing some of these women to get a clear insight into their own unique artistic visions.

This interview is with A.I.R. National Artist K.A. Letts.

1) Where do you get your intricate ideas for your paintings?

 I usually start from a simple premise, as in the “Here comes the Sun” series, with a shape that I repeat and develop.  The picture takes on a life of its own and pretty much tells me what it wants and I struggle to comply. (The picture shown to the left is for reference to this).

2) What inspired your series, "A Hundred Days A Hundred Drawings"?

My Chicago artist friend Jeff Stevenson was engaged in a similar project and asked if anyone cared to join in. I think I was the only one of his friends foolish enough to respond!  I found the series was very helpful in developing new ideas for future works; it really gave me some momentum.  Mostly I don’t think artists (including myself ) draw enough—this was a way of making myself produce.

3) What influences your color choice in your work?

I fear color because it is so emotional, but I find it exciting too.  I’m not sure where my color choices come from—they are entirely intuitive. I know this isn’t too helpful as an explanation—sorry!

It must have been easier for artists when there were fewer colors to choose from since they had to grind the pigments, or when art patrons specified which colors could be used as they did in the Middle Ages (i.e. Virgin Mary gets lapis, and 2 oz of gold leaf on the angels!)  

4)  What artists inspire you to create?

I’m a big fan of painters of the early 20th century, esp. Braque, Miro, Klee.  I think it’s pretty easy to see their influence in my work.

5) Is there a new series you are currently working on?

 I’m working on a series called Singularity—in it I explore a world beyond the event horizon of the Singularity, when human biology and artificial intelligence converge.  I’m inserting a couple of images to illustrate.

Read More

Interview with Jan Johnson

Jan Johnson's work simultaneously embraces and rejects the image of the domestic. Growing up in the South, Jan shares a deep tradition of women's domestic activities-quilting, embroidery, samplers and quilling. She learned to "make do" with what one has at home, efficiently and effectively. Her interests lie in the appropriation and subversion of these handiwork techniques. These methods of homespun production were passed down from generation to generation; the crafting of cloths, handkerchiefs and quilled paper forms were gifted to Jan. She thus retains a certain notion of duty to what she has been provided. She lives and works in Lowell, MA. 

Why did you decide to pursue art as a career? 

It is the best way for me to be authentic. I feel confident in making things and I like thinking about the ideas that are associated with the making. I can make a visual dialogue or a visual poem, a conversation, a monologue, and I get some momentary satisfaction from that. It connects me with the history of art, and also forces me to put my work out there to be seen. I am curious about the span of art as a career and how much I learn as it evolves and changes. 

 Describe your studio space. 

 Speaking of evolving and changing, I have moved twice in the past year and so has my studio space. My current studio is in Lowell, MA. I have a lot of boxes where I keep my threads and materials organized and several bags where I can make portable my materials. (Embroidery of a painting was something I did in graduate school and when my daughter was born, it was a pick-up and put-down way for me to keep my practice going.) I have many bookshelves filled with all kinds of books and sketchbooks, and another that is packed with mediums, paints, inks, brushes and supplies. My main area of work is on two tables, one for drawing and the other for my computer and sewing machine. I also have my grandmother's machine in it's own table. I have two walls for working, 7' and 12' wide by 18' high. My sewing machine looks out onto Hamilton Canal and the gate house that controls the water flow into the canal. I live in a historical live/work loft in a mill where a lot of female workers once made cloth. I'm on the fifth floor and can see the American Textile History Museum from my windows. My space prior was very tight, but sufficient. My drawing table and flat files took up half of my bedroom. I used to lay a lot of drawing out on my bed. My daughter would be asleep in the bed and I would have drawings and materials laid out around her. I tend to work late at night or early morning. 

You mentioned in your artist statement for your upcoming show I did not provide the cup, the crafting methods you use were passed down from generation to generation. Based on this particular history, does nostalgia play an integral role in your work?

 I am not longing for the past. I am passing on a culture and participating in my culture. I definitely channel my grandmothers. I imagine their world and think of how alike and different I am from them. 

 I am sorry to hear about your ailing grandmother, is this a source of anxiety that is projected onto your work? How does making art help to control your anxieties and fears? 

Thank you. My grandmother passed away two years ago, at 92 after a long illness. She left me many wonderful works and taught me many embroidered stitches, which I integrate into my work. I think the anxiety of wondering whether my brain will fail and my memory will go is part of why I record moments and memories. The process of making does quell fears and anxieties. Obsessiveness is part of that process. It's not something that is always on the surface, but can be underlying. So much of sewing and embroidery is repeating a movement and that adding up of stitches can make something, beautiful or otherwise. Making that beauty can be the opposite of anxiety, and there are areas in my work that are that as well. 

 The handkerchief pieces are described as flesh-like. Why did you choose to use embroidery and fabric to represent skin?

 A handkerchief is a cloth tissue that is kept in one's pocket or near to one's body. They were often embroidered and given as tokens of affection. I learned about the trapunto technique of sewing where the cloth is puffed up to make a textural surface. I began doing that before I knew what that was, and I was interested in making the material puff out and also cave in like skin. 

 How would you describe your process? Are you very focused when making your embroidery pieces? Do they happen intuitively or are they very structured?

 I would say my process is a combination of first acting intuitively and then very structured. I am intensely focused because stitches with thread are small scale moves and I pay attention to what happens on both sides of the cloth. Intuitively, I tend to respond to an image, like the one out of which this work grew. Then I will often use the same structure, a section of it and/or a morphed version of it as a substrate to make an image--so in that sense it is very structured. There are a lot of sources that inform my work. 

 What were the first materials you worked with? What is your favorite kind of material to work with? 

 Pencil, charcoal, ink on paper and oil paints on canvas were the first materials that I worked with as an artist. This work grew out of a hard pencil drawing I made and decided I wanted to see as a sewn piece. My favorite kind of materials are ones that I can really manipulate. I think about different types of line which translates materially to thread. There's a lot one can do with hand-dyed silk embroidery thread: a satin stitch has a lovely sheen, a bullion stitch becomes dimensional, a single in-and-out stitch over one thread of the cloth makes a tiny touch of mark, and the dye of the thread can bleed to the cloth when wetted. The variegated silks are so rich in their colors. 

 Name a few artists you admire.

Louise Bourgeois, Sheila Hicks, Mary Delaney, Gego, Anna Maria Maiolino.

Read More

Julianna Cerquiera Leite, Galeria Casa Triangulo

 Juliana Cerquiera Leite, a 2010-2011 AIR Gallery Fellowship award winner, is working with Galeria Casa Triângulo in São Paulo, Brazil. Casa Triângulo is a pillar of the contemporary art scene in Brazil.  Please visit their newly re-designed website for info and images: www.casatriangulo.com

Read More

Julianna Cerquiera Leite, Saatchi Gallery in Adelaide

Juliana Cerqueira Leite, at the Saatchi Gallery in Adelaide. Jane Messenger, the curator, speaks about the works including Juliana's piece 'Up', 'Down'. Click on the link below to watch the short video. 
http://youtu.be/E3LjKCIOdqQ

Read More