Leah Oates, Visiting Critic

We are super excited to welcome Leah Oates as a visiting critic Feb. 10th, 2015!

Leah Oates is the founder of Station Independent Projects, a Lower East Side gallery in NYC that opened in September 2012.

Prior to open Station Independent Projects, Oates curated exhibitions in the New York City area with The Scope Art Fair, The Bridge Art Fair, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Asya Geisberg Gallery, Chashama, Artists Space, Nurture Art and The Kauffman Arcade Gallery and in the Chicago area at Randolph Street Gallery, The Peace Museum and The Noyes Cultural Arts Center.

Projects organized by Station Independent Projects have been written about in Fanzine, WNYC, The Brooklyn Rail, Crain's NYC, The Village Voice, NY Arts Magazine, Artefuse, Chromogram, Heart as Arena, Tribeca Tribune, New Art Examiner, The Chicago Tribune, New City, Blouin Art Info, Artforum, Collector Daily, Bedford and Bowery, Lid Magazine, French Photo, I-Ref Magazine, Sleek Magazine, Musee Magazine, Slate, Photo District News, Women's Wear Daily, The Tory Burch Culture Blog and Le Journal de Photographie.

Oates received a B.F.A. from The Rhode Island School of Design and an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for Post Graduate study at Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland.

http://www.leahoates.com/

http://www.stationindependent.com/

Installation in Progress

Everyone at Guttenberg Arts is excited for our next exhibition: Studio Wallpaper 2014 (work in progress) by Susan Graham.   Check out these installation pics!  

Studio Wallpaper 2014 (a work in progress) by Susan Graham

February 6 through March 2, 2015

Opening reception: February 6, 7-9pm

Artist In Residence Winter 2015

Guttenberg Arts Gallery is pleased to present Studio Wallpaper (a work in progress), a new site specific sugar and porcelain toile installation by Susan Graham, currently Artist in Residence, on view February 6 through March 2, 2015.

Susan Graham’s works are built upon a conceptual standpoint of her unbreakable link with her hometown, family, and childhood. Utilizing her memories, dreams, and personal stories as her topics, Graham ultimately broadens their focus and addresses larger social and political issues that affect us all. This is most evident in her ongoing series of wall installations. Her process, based on the layout of the toile patterned wallpaper from a childhood bedroom, pushes this method to encompass entire rooms with various sized sculptural elements made from both sugar and porcelain that creates patterns representing repetitive acts or actions. These often result in the making of a multitude of similar objects which are linked to a particular psychological state. These materials give the work a deceptive feeling of domesticity or sweetness while the subjects are challenging in their high-low contradictions. 

For Studio Wallpaper (a work in progress), Graham has created a gorgeous, spiral site-specific installation. Referencing to Guttenberg’s long history as the “Embroidery Capital of the United States”, she begins at a corner as the central central point and works outward into the gallery space. The patterns are drawn directly from the embroidered lacework produced by local businesses to form recurring narratives of complex pastoral scenes and the storytelling qualities found in traditional Toile de Jouy wallpaper using the same delicate look and a conceptually similar idea of preciousness, fragility, and intense process. Graham's works again takes these themes to a broader level and addresses human encroachment on nature using decoration that poetically depict the eternal struggle between nature and technology. 

Susan Graham attended Ohio State University and the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work has been shown at galleries and museums including Neuberger Museum of Art, Musee International des Arts Modestes, Sete, France and the Tucson Museum of Art. Graham has received several fellowships and grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation,  Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Smack Mellon Artist Residency, Ruth Chenven Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Recently, she completed a commissioned public work for an elevator lobby in the Johns Hopkins Hospital’s new medical facility in Baltimore, Maryland.

Exhibition: February 6 - March 6, 2015; Opening reception: February 6, 6-8pm. 

For more information please contact studio@guttenbergarts.org or 201-868-8585.

Guttenberg Art Gallery is free and open to the public by appointment. www.guttenbergarts.org

SusanGraham-2.jpg

OPEN HOUSE : Saturday, January 10, 2-8pm

We are super excited to host our Open House on January, Saturday the 10th. We will have live demos by both of our AMAZING Studio DIrectors, Phoebe Deutsch (ceramic)  and Russ Spitkovsky (etching). They will run individual, hour-long demos in their respective mediums, teaching all of you how to work in printmaking and ceramics. We hope to see you all there!

 3PM: PHOEBE DEUTSCHCeramics Studio Director Phoebe Deutsch will be demonstrating techniques such as wedging clay to prepare for throwing, centering the clay on the wheel, proper stabilizing techniques, building up tall walls, using and describing w…

 

3PM: PHOEBE DEUTSCH

Ceramics Studio Director Phoebe Deutsch will be demonstrating techniques such as wedging clay to prepare for throwing, centering the clay on the wheel, proper stabilizing techniques, building up tall walls, using and describing what tool are best for different types of mark making. 


The wheel was invented in ancient Mesopotamia around 3,000 B.C.  These first turntables were slow, but they were a vast improvement over the previous methods of shaping pots. In the 19th century the concept of throwing pottery as we know it today flourished due to potter's wheels that could achieve higher spinning speeds. Ceramic artists today utilize the wheel for both functional and sculptural prepuces.

 
 4:30PM: RUSS SPITKOVSKYStudio director Russ Spitkovsky, will give a demonstration of the etching process at 4:30 pm. Using actual plate examples to explain the different steps and states of a hard ground and aquatint etching on a zinc pla…

 

4:30PM: RUSS SPITKOVSKY

Studio director Russ Spitkovsky, will give a demonstration of the etching process at 4:30 pm. Using actual plate examples to explain the different steps and states of a hard ground and aquatint etching on a zinc plate Russ will also print several completed etchings, and introduce the audience to the etching press and intaglio culture.


Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio(relief) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types of material. As a method of printmaking, it is, along with engraving, the most important technique for old master prints, and remains in wide use today.

Kirsten Flaherty: Recent Work Press Release

Recent Work  Kirsten Flaherty

January  10 - February 2, 2015

Opening reception, January 10, 6-8pm; Artist Talk 7:30pm

Artist In Residence / spring 2015

 

Guttenberg Arts Gallery is pleased to present Recent Work  a solo exhibition of works by Kirsten Flaherty, currently an Artist in Residence, on view January 10 - February 2, 2015

 

Kirsten Flaherty’s Recent Work, examines a larger global ecological sphere and all its inhabitants, their interdependence and often complex relationships, not only to their habitats but also their economic involvement. For this exhibition, Flaherty’s works on paper focuses on the viewers own sympathies to these complex situations by using stark, monochromatic, detailed  images of the innocents affected by our systematic urbanization. Through the graphic process of printmaking and the delicate line work within the images, Flaherty exposes the fragility of life and the fallacies in human nature that come with even more devastating repercussions.

 

The most recent series of intimate portraits of animals, these etchings focus on the the aforementioned devastating repercussions through visually identifying specific critically endangered animals. Works such as “Egyptian Vultures” and Crowned Eagle” depicts these species in light of humans causing habitat destruction and poisoning. In contrast to these meticulously detailed figures, the use of stark letters and numbers featured throughout these prints represent stock quotes from various know big companies during the Global Financial Crisis in 2007-2008. Although these corporations differ in the way each makes their financial gains, all are known for the negative impact they make not only on our natural environment, but also in our own economic system.

 

Kirsten Flaherty’s works have been exhibited throughout the United States as well as internationally including the Czech Republic, Peru, Israel, and Italy. Additionally, she is a member of the Board of Directors of the New York Society of Etchers and has been dedicated to presenting exhibitions that showcase varying visions through techniques in etching, monotype, silkscreen and other printmaking processes, with the overall intention of celebrating the venerable art of print. Kirsten Flaherty lives and works in New York City.


For more information and press images please contact studio@guttenbergarts.org or 201-868-8585.Guttenberg Art Gallery is free and open to the public by appointment. www.guttenbergarts.org