“Me Oh My”

May 7 – June 12,  2016

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Artists:
Ryder Evan Robison
Multi disciplinary artist Ryder Evan Robison’s work has transgressed the age old American craft of pyrography by taking his drawings and paintings and burning them by hand into the handles of antique tools and unique slabs of repurposed wood. After ten years working as an artist in New York City, Robison relocated to rural Saint Anthony, Idaho to further push his own DIY ethos.  Robison had a tenacious career in NYC churning out solo and group exhibitions for his paintings and drawings at independent gallery spaces.  His work was also commissioned by the likes of the ACE Hotel NYC, Hugo Boss, sold to the Museum of Arts & Design and to collectors in Copenhagen and throughout the United States and Canada.Recently featured in Nylon Guys Magazine and on the JCrew blog, he was photographed by friend Daniel Mehrer where Robison’s trip from east to west was documented as he begun turning his 100 year old family homestead into a functioning artist studio and home base.

“When my grandfather passed away over two decades ago I inherited his old farm tools.  I became enamored with how worn the wooden handles had become and only imagined the stories they could tell.  These tools whether it was an axe, a shovel, a pick, a hatchet a hammer or a knife had been worn simply by use and the years of being held by once a young man and then an old man.  These pieces became retired.  They were too weathered to use, but simply too beautiful to be discarded.  I felt it was my duty to inscribe something upon their handle.  An epitaph in imagery finally laying the piece to rest.

The subject matter found in all of my pyrographic work stems from nature.  This could have been seen from the field where that axe went to work.  A crow entwined by a snake, a rabbit running through a field of thistle.  In contrast to my previous works on canvas, with these burned wooden pieces, I encourage the viewer to interact with the work: to hold it, turn it, see the imagery wrapping around its hilt and imagine who used it last and where it came from, completing its story.” – R.E.Robison

Rich Cali is a traveling artist, who splits his time between Austin, Texas and Asbury Park, New Jersey. He is co-founder of Common House Artist Studios and Gallery, in Austin.

Daniel Belardinelli
“Perfection and completion seem to be over-rated in a world where seldom can one, save for the rich and the young, find a moment to reflect. The honorable truth is this, our humanity; our frail shattered fractured humanity is glorious. In its imperfection and in its depravity and in all of its shortness and shortcomings is wholeness. In our awareness of weakness is our strength, in our inability to scale the heights we fly. We fly above the clouds, above our own inadequacies and our own shortcomings. We dare, we try, and we who are so frail become unstoppable and do the unthinkable and often the impossible.” ~ D.Belardinelli

Jeff P.
Art has always been Jeff’s way of connecting with the world—utilizing it to make friends, communicate ideas, express emotions, and to make a living.  He earned a BFA in film-production at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2003, squeezing in drawing classes along the way.

His love of drawing and painting was reignited in the following years as he began a career in tattooing and that love has continued to dominate more and more of his waking hours.

Jeff’s work leapfrogs off the backs of classic naturalist painters like Audubon, Catesby, and Redouté.  Re-contextualizing their scientific illustrations to a psychedelic world that glorifies the patterns, colors and shapes inherent in the natural world. His psychedelic naturalism paintings continue a tradition of representing nature with an eye for accuracy and detail.  However, with science’s need for naturalist painting mostly replaced by photography, Jeff welcomes the opportunity to re-contextualize the artform within realms of altered perception.  The purpose of these images is no longer to assist in the identification of species, habitats, biological systems and the like, but instead to explore different ways of seeing the natural world.  To celebrate the patterns, colors and shapes without the burden of scientific constraints.  His paintings are about the creatures and the landscapes they inhabit as much as they are about the process of the painting itself.  Multiple semi-trasparent layers build upon each other, allowing a fleeting look into the mechanisms and techniques employed, reinforcing the truth that this is a painting, not a photograph.  Whether seemingly post-apocalyptic wastelands or ancient worlds in a galaxy far, far away, Jeff presents an animal kingdom where humankind does not exist, and possibly where humankind has never existed.  The only references to humans are the occasional ethereal and natural formations referencing the symbol of the cross which can be—and are intended to be—interpreted in a number of ways.  The result is the after-image of Audubon’s dreams, or a glimpse of another world in another galaxy in another dimension.

Kelly Kozma
 Mixed media and fiber artist Kelly Kozma, grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and received her BFA from Moore College of Art & Design.  Kozma has participated in several solo and group shows in Philadelphia as well as New York, Delaware, and Miami, Florida for Art Basel.  Her current work combines drawing, painting and hand embroidery with elements of chance and probablity to create vivid, pattern-driven pieces

Mariana Montegudo
Award winning Sculptor Mariana Monteagudo is a Miami-based artist who has been working her series of doll sculptures over the last decade. Her latex, ceramic and mixed-media figures are unique, intriguing and fascinating. Her artwork shows interest in a wide range of references, from the pre-Columbian aesthetics, to fashion, tv pop culture, Japanese manga and mass-market toys.

Muñecas (Dolls) is the generic term Monteagudo uses to describe her creations since 1998. With them, the artist has received important awards and exposure, and her pieces have been featured in solo and group shows and fairs in Madrid, Miami, Chicago, Aruba, Caracas, New York, Sao Paulo, and other venues. Her unusual characters have attracted the attention of critics and her work is part of the  MOLAA Museum in California, Everson Museum, NY, Cesar Gaviria Trujillo Collection, among other contemporary art collections.

Virginia Fleck
Since 2002, Virginia Fleck has been working exclusively with upcycled plastic bags creating site-specific, ecologically conscious art works that have been commissioned for many green building projects including Whole Foods World Headquarters, Dell Children’s Hospital in Austin TX, the US Embassy in Rwanda, University Hospital Sky Tower in San Antonio TX and the NYU Langone Hospital for Bone and Joint Disease in New York City, NY.

Joel Ganucheau

“I’m a father, artist, musician and a daydreamer. My paintings are inspired by my current mood, recent events in my life and completely random visions. I am always experimenting with new techniques and processes to keep things exciting. Making art is very therapeutic and necessary for me. I’m not sure where I would be without it. “ ~ J. Ganucheau

Andrea Heimer
The focus of my work is monoscenic narrative painting. The subject matter is heavily influenced by mythology, both personal and shared. Much of the work is influenced by the feelings and events surrounding my adoption and some of the events depicted are biographical.
The figurative elements focus on the interactions between human beings in moments of conflict, transformation, or disconnection. Emotional themes of loneliness and detachment are expressed in various environments including houses, yards, forests, and bodies of water, with figures directly interacting with their surroundings and each other.
The ultimate goal of the work is to expose painful and embarrassing realities in a flat matter-of-fact visual manner, as a means of acceptance through serenity.

 Robert Villamanga’s work is primarily assemblage, collage, and mixed-media. Robert’s work has been exhibited at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Andy Warhol Museum, ARC Gallery(Chicago), Penn State’s Robeson Gallery, Pittsburgh Center of the Arts, The Mattress Factory Museum, Erie Museum of Art, the West Virginia Cultural Center, and the Dickerson Gallery at Tamarack. Robert has three works in the State of West Virginia Permanent Collection. Robert’s work is shown at Gallery on 43rd Street in the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh, Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, and the Annex Gallery at Taylor Brooks in Charleston, WV. Robert teaches at West Liberty University, and the Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh’s Strip District.

Gary Mellon
“All of the pieces in this body of work are made of wood and hand carved. They grow out of little sketchbook drawings.

My studio is in Brooklyn.

I love making stuff.”

Robert Santello
“About 3 years ago,  I was in Chinatown in Manhattan during the summer when a Chinese street minstrel pointed at me and my tattoos and said “Art. You are art.” I gave him a buck, turned around and went into the now defunct Pearl Paint and bought supplies. I had been wanting original artwork for my home, but couldn’t afford anything I liked. So I became obsessed by Basquiat and Gerard Richter and here I am, now a resident of the Jersey shore, chef of Pascal and Sabine, and a humbled member of this show. As a matter of fact, I still have recording of that guy playing his harp. I play it periodically as I am painting. That’s a true story.”~ R. Santello

Shane Garron
For Shane Garron, it is impossible to map the literal without exploring the landscape of the mind as well. The resulting acrylic and mixed media creations are holistic portraits of time, place, and mindset; text, commercial logos, and icons are interspersed with representational objects and scenes. Some paintings retain the recognizable graphic language of a map, while others abandon themselves to a purely abstract schema focusing on line and color. Above all, it is an atmosphere that Garron captures: one of chaos and half-remembrances, which all come together to form a moment’s state of being.

Garron’s materials match the free-form spatial conception of the work. The artist shifts between acrylic, oil sticks, crayons, and wood, with occasional experimentation in three-dimensional pieces. His inspiration is similarly incidental and unpredictable. It comes “in the things around me: books, TV, color arrangements,” he explains. “I see beauty in an undesired object, and I enjoy adding my twist to something very plain and unexciting.”

James Rosenthal is an artist, critic and teacher who resides in Philadelphia. He holds degrees in Painting from RISD and Syracuse University and has been writing art reviews and essays since 1999. Also in the works is a comic novel (Work Shy) about an artist who alienates himself from the art world. Stay Tuned! Recent exhibitions in include: Ernest Rubenstein Gallery, NY, NY, Rebekah Templeton, Selections 6 at Moore College of Art and Design and SubTerrane at the Center for Emerging Artists, Philadelphia, PA. Artist Flat Files at Perogi 2000 in Williamsburg, NY.