Lithos Sarkophagos Press Release

Guttenberg Arts Gallery is pleased to present Lithos Sarkophagos  a solo exhibition of works by Heidi Lau, currently an Artist in Residence, on view May 9 through June 1, 2015.

Heidi Lau’s work creates an alternate world through excavating fragmented narratives from personal and collective memories that highlight the archaic and invisible and recreate what has been lost to natural or human causes. Lau has worked exhaustively with a variety of traditional mediums including printmaking, ceramics and bookmaking, where printed works on paper function as proposition and contemplative manifestations of darkness and an invisible order of the universe. Lau’s geometric forms, inspired by magic charts and mandalas are juxtaposed with tusche renderings and acid washes resembling nebulas or alchemy. These created artifacts take the form of various objects of remembrance – towers, funeral monuments and fossilized creatures that are disintegrating or infested that compose the history of a mystical world by suggesting its existence and decline.

Being from Macau, a colony of Portugal during its transition into a Chinese province and then an immigrant in the United States, Heidi Lau’s work further examines the anomic nature of history and cultural migration. As well as delving into the nostalgia for collective memories that have inspired to recreate and highlight what she believe is crucial to her identity. In her ceramics works, the flexibility and strength of clay allows her to experiment and create pieces that are a surprise even to herself. Additional methods of scratching, scribbling and engraving the surface of pieces form works that are texturally rich in details, surfaces and that embody memories of many forces. These memories range from the observing colonial houses and monuments from her own childhood and their decay, while strange and wild plants began to take over.
Most of these structures are now demolished or unrecognizable, and thus recreating becomes the only way Lau is connecting to these structures, place and their history.

Heidi Lau grew up in Macau and currently lives and works in Ridgewood, NY. She received her BFA from New York University in 2008. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally; Macao Museum of Art (Macao, China), Wave Hill, Newhouse Center for Contemporary, TSA New York, Rush Corridor Gallery and Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, among others. She has participated in the Bronx Museum Artist In the Market Place Program, Center for Book Arts Workspace Residency, Snug Harbor Artist Residency Program and Emerging Artist Fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park.

Meet our Community Based Artist in Residence!

Guttenberg Arts is please to announce our new summer pilot program: Our first COMMUNITY BASED ARTIST in Residence Elisabeth Smolarz.

Ms. Smolarz’ s work utilizes the multidisciplinary forms of photography, video, sculpture, performance and drawing to explore the social structures which constitute human interaction within a culture. In order to expose collective consciousness and patterns of behavior, she often ask strangers to become participants and collaborators in her projects. The immediacy of her working method, wherein participants are invited to act freely and with little or no direction before the camera, fosters an improvisational approach that reveals hidden aspects of these structures and allows individual voices to be heard. The resulting bodies of works often consist of series of case studies which focus on questions of the strategies of our self-definition that are often rooted in our economic, social and cultural surroundings. Ms. Smolarz’s work aims to expose the ways in which the human psyche is shaped by one’s cultural, political, and economical surroundings.

Bio: Immigrating from Poland to Germany, Elisabeth Smolarz grew up on the cusps of two different cultures affected by a communist and democratic system. Consequently, she became involved in the idea of how consciousness and perception is formed by one’s surroundings. Since then her work has been shown nationally and internationally - in venues such as The Bronx Museum, New York, Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, New York, Galeria Aleksander Bruno, Warsaw, Oberwelt e.V, Stuttgart, Kunsthalle Galapagos New York,  Baden Württembergischer Kunstverein, Photography Triennial Esslingen, Carnegie Mellon, Independent Museum of Contemporary Art (IMCA) Cyprus, Brooklyn Arts Council, Reykjavik Photography Museum, Espai d'art contemporani de Castelló, the Sculpture Center and the 3rd Moscow Biennale among others. Awards and residencies include the LMCC Swing Space Residency,New York, AIM Artist Residency, Bronx Museum, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen Travel Grant, Karin Abt-Straubinger StiftungGrant, Sarai Artist Residency, New Delhi, India, Capacete Artist Residency, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Red Gate Gallery Artist Residency, Beijing, China among others.

Elisabeth Smolarz received her BA and her MFA from the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart.More of Elizabeth Smolarz’s work can be found at: www.smolarz.com

The Community Based Artist in Residence pilot program provides the artist with support and resources within the local Guttenberg community that the artist has proposed to work with, a small stipend, 24/7 access to studio space, group show, three visiting critiques, promote the work and exhibition through our social media platform and art world network. We ask the artist to give a free public talk and workshop within the community.

Fall '15 Residency Call for Artists! Apply between 4/15 - 5/15

Meet our 'Women in Print' Panelists

Get to know our panelists before our 'Women in Print' discussion on April 22nd at IPCNY

Rocío Aranda-Alvarado

Graduated in art history from the City University of New York – the CUNY Graduate Center, USA (2000). Her dissertation was dealing about modernist movements in Harlem and Havana between 1925 and 1945. Rocío Aranda-Alvarado works for the Museo del Barrio as associated curator and then curator, since 2009, and after the renovation of the museum. There, occupying this position, she participated in curating El Museo del Barrio’s biennials, The (S) Files. Lately, she was part of the curatorial team of the exhibition Caribbean : Crossroads of the Worldat the Queens Museum of Art, at El Museo del Barrio and in The Studio Museum in Harlem, in New York, USA, 2012-2013. Before that,  Rocío Aranda-Alvarado was curator for the Jersey City Museum, from 2000 to 2009. There she curated, amongst others, the exhibitions Hair Tactis, 2010 ; Beth Gilfilen : The Big Hunch @ The Majestic, 2008 ; 99 Cents, by Colwyn Griffith, 2007 ; The Feminine Mystique, 2007 She also curated independently : Dominican York Proyecto Grafica at the NoMAA in New York (2012) ; Viewpoints at Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art in Newark (2011) ; Boundless Discourse at the Ramapo College of New Jersey Art Galleries, USA (2010) ; Encountersat Governors Island, USA (2010) ; Color/form at the Praxis Gallery in New York, USA (2010) ; Contemporary Humanism at the A.I.R Gallery in Brooklyn, USA (2009) ; Flo : art ,text, new media at the Center for Book Arts in New York, USA (2009) or Urban Renewal : Afro-Caribbean Art & Artists in New York City at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, USA (2000).In 2011, she was jury for the NEXUS NJ, a contemporary art exhibition in the Arts Guild in New Jersey.

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Dusica Kirjakovic

Dusica Kirjakovic, the Lower Eastside Printshop’s Executive Director, holds a MFA in Printmaking from Belgrade University in former Yugoslavia. She is an arts administrator and educator who has served the Printshop since 1992. She oversees all programs and activities, supervises staff, instructors, and volunteers, and worked closely with the Board of Directors and the Board Committees. Kirjakovic has overseen the residency programs since joining the organization. She implemented critical improvements in the programs, such as expanded financial support for artists, hiring two master printers to collaborate with artists, improved selection and evaluation process, improved outreach and information dissemination, more exposure opportunities for artists, and other augmentations. In 2005, she led the Printshop’s capital expansion in order to provide more studio space and better working environment for artists in residence.

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Judith k. brodsky

Judith K. Brodsky is Distinguished Professor Emerita, Department of Visual Arts, Rutgers University; Founding Director of the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper renamed the Brodsky Center in her honor; co-founder with Ferris Olin of the Rutgers Institute for Women and Art  (recently renamed The Women and Arts Collaborative) and The Feminist Art Project, a national program to promote recognition of women artists and with Olin; co-organizer and co-curator of The Fertile Crescent: Gender, Art, and Society (2012), which focused on women artists, filmmakers, writers, and composers of the Middle East; she was also founder and  chair of the international city-wide print festival, Philagrafika (2010), which took place in Philadelphia; past national president of ArtTable, the College Art Association, and the Women's Caucus for Art; a former dean and associate provost as well as chair of the art department at the Rutgers campus at Newark. She was a contributor to the first comprehensive history of the American women's movement in art, called The Power of Feminist Art. Brodsky along with Olin and Muriel Magenta was an organizer of Momentum, a project focusing on women and transgender artists who use technology, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.  She is currently working on a catalogue raisonné covering the first 30 years of the Brodsky Center.  The publication date is projected to be 2018 and will coincide with an exhibition celebrating the Brodsky Center’s 30th anniversary at the New Jersey State Museum. Active in policy-making positions in the art world, Brodsky presently serves on the boards of the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the International Print Center New York.

A printmaker and artist, Brodsky's work is in the permanent collections of over 100 museums and corporations, among them The Library of Congress; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; The Stadtsmuseum, Berlin; the Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Rhode Island School of Design Museum; The Newark Museum; and the Fogg Museum at Harvard. She has a Master of Fine Arts from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University where she majored in art history.  She works in series.  Her last series was titled Memoir of an Assimilated Family.  It consists of over 100 etchings based on old family photographs. Her current series is The 20 Most Important Scientific Questions of the 21st Century.

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JENNIFER FARRELL

Jennifer Farrell, has recently been appointed Associate Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is a scholar and curator who has a long history of working at institutions throughout New York and New England. Ms. Farrell comes to the Metropolitan Museum from overseeing the exhibitions department and curating exhibitions of contemporary art at the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia. Before that, she was director of the New York-based Nancy Graves Foundation, which maintains the archive of the late sculptor, printmaker, and painter Nancy Graves and makes grants to artists. Before joining the Nancy Graves Foundation, Ms. Farrell served as a senior fellow and then assistant curator of prints, drawings and photographs at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. The newly appointed curator’s previous curatorial credits includes “Empire/State: Artists Engaging Globalization,” which she co-curated while enrolled in the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2002, Suzanne McClelland, Found Poems from a Lost Time by Suzanne McClelland, Jasper Johns: Early Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation, Postwar British Prints, and Vinland: Recent Work by Cindy Bernard. She also published “Get there First and Decide Promptly” : the Richard Brown Baker Collection of Postwar Art, which received the Frick Collection’s 2013 Sotheby’s Prize for a Distinguished Publication in the History of Collecting in America. Ms. Farrell has a Ph.D. in art history and a certificate in film studies from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a B.A. in art history from Smith College

Graduated in art history from the City University of New York – the CUNY Graduate Center, USA (2000). Her dissertation was dealing about modernist movements in Harlem and Havana between 1925 and 1945. Rocío Aranda-Alvarado works for the Museo del Barrio as associated curator and then curator, since 2009, and after the renovation of the museum. There, occupying this position, she participated in curating El Museo del Barrio’s biennials, The (S) Files. Lately, she was part of the curatorial team of the exhibition Caribbean : Crossroads of the Worldat the Queens Museum of Art, at El Museo del Barrio and in The Studio Museum in Harlem, in New York, USA, 2012-2013. Before that,  Rocío Aranda-Alvarado was curator for the Jersey City Museum, from 2000 to 2009. There she curated, amongst others, the exhibitions Hair Tactis, 2010 ; Beth Gilfilen : The Big Hunch @ The Majestic, 2008 ; 99 Cents, by Colwyn Griffith, 2007 ; The Feminine Mystique, 2007 She also curated independently : Dominican York Proyecto Grafica at the NoMAA in New York (2012) ; Viewpoints at Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art in Newark (2011) ; Boundless Discourse at the Ramapo College of New Jersey Art Galleries, USA (2010) ; Encountersat Governors Island, USA (2010) ; Color/form at the Praxis Gallery in New York, USA (2010) ; Contemporary Humanism at the A.I.R Gallery in Brooklyn, USA (2009) ; Flo : art ,text, new media at the Center for Book Arts in New York, USA (2009) or Urban Renewal : Afro-Caribbean Art & Artists in New York City at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, USA (2000).In 2011, she was jury for the NEXUS NJ, a contemporary art exhibition in the Arts Guild in New Jersey.

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KRISTEN SCHIELE

Kristen Schiele, Received a BFA from Indiana University and an MFA from American University; she also studied at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. She has had solo shows at Lu Magnus, Sloan Fine Art, and Freight and Volume Gallery in New York City; the Soap Factory in Minneapolis, and Curators Without Borders Gallery in Berlin. Schiele has also participated in group shows across the United States, including Cheim and Read and Caren Golden in New York City, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington D.C. She has held residencies at the Provincetown Work Center, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Lower East Side Printshop. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York and co-runs KAYROCK prints.

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DANNIELLE TEGEDER

Dannielle Tegeder was born in Peekskill, NY, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York and maintain a studio at The Elizabeth Foundation in Manhattan. She received a BFA from the State University of New York at Purchase (1994), and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago (1997). For the past fifteen years, her work has explored abstraction. While the core of my work is paintings and drawings, recently begun to include large-scale installation, sculptural objects, video, sound, and animationSince receiving a MFA in 1997 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the work has been presented in over 100 gallery exhibitions, both nationally and internationally in Paris, Houston, Los Angeles, Berlin, Chicago, and New York.  Numerous institution exhibitions include PS1/MOMA, The New Museum, The Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, and Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Several  drawings have recently been purchased as part of the Contemporary Drawing Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, and work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and The Weatherspoon Museum of Art in Greensboro, NC. She has held three full time university positions at Cornell University, SUNY Purchase, and the City University of New York at Lehman College where she is currently now an Associate Professor of Art and has been a visiting artist in over forty institutions including the Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art, Rhode Island School of Design, The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, Ontario School of Art and Design, CCA in San Francisco, Brandeis University, Princeton University, Rice University. University of Houston, and others. She is the recipient of several residencies and grants including TheYaddo Foudation (2012, 2009, and 2007), The Triangle Foundation Residency and Workshop (2012), Elizabeth Foundation in New York (2012-2006), The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Studio Residency at Governor’s Island (2012), Smack Mellon Studios and Artist Stipend (2008), Banff Centre for the Arts, Artist Residency in Banff, Canada (2007), The Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2005), Lower East Side Print Fellowship Edition Award, (2004) National Studio Program, P.S.1/MOMA Affiliate, Clocktower, New York, NY, (2003) ART OMI, Omi International Arts Center, Omi, NY, (2003) Henry Street Settlement Studio Fellowship, NY, (2002) The Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio Fellowship, NY (2001), The Millay Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, NY, (2000) and The Ragdale Foundation Residency Program, Lake Forest, IL, (2000)

Meet our Summer 2015 Space & Time Artist Residency Jurors!

Carolyn Vega

Carolyn Vega is the assistant curator of Literary and Historical Manuscripts at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, where she works with collections that include Sir Isaac Newton's notebook, Sylvia Plath's teenage poetry, and letters of Philip Guston. Her next exhibition, on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, will open this summer.

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Ian Cofre

Ian Cofre is an independent curator and writer based in New York City, working primarily with emerging and established artists, locally based and from Latin America. He earned his BA at Columbia University, and has previously worked as Director for a Lower East Side gallery, Studio Manager for a high-profile contemporary artist, and most recently as US Director for the PINTA NY art fair. Recent projects include barriococo at The Royal Society of American Art (Brooklyn, 2014); co-curating as one of ten curators, TEN at Cindy Rucker Gallery (New York, 2014); Bigger Than Shadows, DODGEgallery (New York, 2012) with Rich Blint; and both Tracing the Unseen Border, La MaMa La Galleria (New York, 2011) and Southern Exposure at Dumbo Arts Center (Brooklyn, 2009) with Omar Lopez-Chahoud. Other shows include Behind Closed Doors (2011), a curated solo project by Manuela Viera-Gallo at Y Gallery, NY, and The Doubtful Guest (2010) at Kill Devil Hill, NY. Recent writings include co-authoring an essay for the Hyde Park Art Center and a bilingual profile of Alberto Borea for Arte al Día. Profiles and reviews of exhibitions he has curated have appeared in The Art Newspaper, Arte al Día International, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. Upcoming exhibitions include projects at Prosjektrom Normanns (Stavanger, Norway) in May and Storefront Ten Eyck (Brooklyn, NY) in June for Bushwick Open Studios 2015.

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Sara Reisman

Sara Reisman is the Artistic Director of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. From 2008 until 2014, Reisman was the director of New York City's Percent for Art program which commissions permanent public artworks for newly constructed and renovated city-owned spaces, indoors and out. During her tenure with the Percent for Art program, Reisman worked on more than 100 commissions, including projects with Pablo Helguera, Rico Gatson, Julianne Swartz, Duke Riley, Ohad Meromi, and Karyn Olivier, among others for civic sites like libraries, public schools, streetscapes and parks. Recent curatorial projects include  "Still Acts", a group exhibition at LaMaMa Galleria about the political potential of stillness in performance and choreography (2014); and solo exhibitions with artists Christopher K. Ho, Leslie Johnson, and Claudia Joskowicz, at Forever & Today, Inc., where Reisman was guest curator during 2012 and 2013. She was the 2011 critic-in-residence at Art Omi, an international visual artist residency in upstate New York, and a 2013 Marica Curatorial Vilcek Fellow, with research in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Bulgaria, which was organized by the Foundation for a Civil Society. This spring she is teaching a contemporary art theory seminar, Art as Service at SUNY Purchase's School of Art + Design and curated a related exhibition entitled I Serve Art, for the Richard and Dolly Maass Gallery at Purchase College.

THEN AND NOW: Call for Artists

Our friends at AKUA are putting together a show and you can be a part of it.  Check out the info below to submit!   

2015: CALL FOR ENTRIES!
Deadline(s): April 13, 2015 (mail-in submissions must be RECEIVED BY April 13) 
April 17, 2015 11:59pm (email submissions)

For New York City Gallery Exhibition
Exhibition Dates: Oct 8 to November 1, 2015
OffLINE at CENTRAL BOOKING
New York, New York

Eligibility: All MEDIA is eligible

Akua Inks is proud to announce its second exhibition, “Then and Now.” “Then and Now” will feature two works from (10) selected artists, one representing their past work and one specifically created for inclusion in this exhibition. Both pieces will serve to demonstrate the manner in which time, place and materials inspire and shape artists works.

Artists with limited to no previous experience with Akua Inks and/or printmaking are strongly encouraged to apply.

Click Here for Exhibition Home Page

Click Here for Submission Form & Details