Press Release: Bernice Faegenburg: "Water"
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Bernice Faegenburg
“Water”
May 10–June 4, 2022
Opening reception: Thursday, May 12, 6 – 8PM
&
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 14, 4–6PM
Chelsea: Viridian Artists Inc. is pleased to present an exhibition of art by the artist Bernice Faegenburg entitled “WATER”. The show opens May 10th and continues through June 4th, 2022. You are invited to meet the artist and celebrate the openings of this exhibit on Thursday, May 12, 6 – 8 PM & on Saturday, May 14th, 4-6 PM.
Bernice Faegenburg has been represented by Viridian Artists since 1977 and her 4 decades of art making have included a wide variety of techniques and imagery. For this exhibit, the artist has decided to focus on her lifelong love of water. Fittingly, her sign is Pisces. Living for much of her life in the Hamptons of Long Island has given her reason to create many kinds of images relating to the liquid part of earth.
In this exhibit, the artist has elected to show both artworks from her early years as well as more recent iterations of aqueous imagery. Her earliest paintings were hard edge depictions of the reflections and distortions of the ocean’s surface. During those years she snorkeled, and scuba dived and so saw the bottom of the ocean which also has inspired much of her imagery, particularly the painting the artist calls "Underwater" that abstractly depicts the ocean's floor.
Faegenburg’s most recent work in the show will be large canvas & mesh works with paint & collage combined with her photographs of the ocean and other bodies of water, harking back stylistically to much of the mixed media art she has created over the years as a printmaker and practitioner of Japanese brush painting.
The artist earned a Bachelor of Science degree at the Tyler School of Fine Arts at Temple University with post graduate work at the National Academy of Design, a Masters of Science degree in Art Education from CW Post College and did workshops in Asian brush painting with Okimoto, a noted Japanese American artist, among others. She was a past president of the National Association of Woman Artists. Her art has been featured in the Zimmerli Museum, the Nassau County Museum of Art, the Parrish Museum and the Richmond Art Museum. An exhibit at the Chelsea Museum was a prize. in addition she has been invited to participate in the Biennale Internazionale Del’Arte Contemporanea in Florence, Italy on numerous occasions.
We look forward to sharing with you this fascinating collection of watery images by Bernice Faegenburg.
For further information please contact
Vernita Nemec, Director or Jenny Belin, Assistant Director
visit Instagram @viridianartistsinc, see us on Facebook & YouTube at Viridian Artists Gallery or visit our website at viridianartists.com.
A 1998 dialogue between Vernita Nemec and former MoMA curator, Robb Storr
Before becoming director of Viridian Artists, Vernita Nemec (aka Vernita N'Cognita) was the executive director of ArtistsTalkOnArt in Soho. While there she instigated interviews & dialogs with important artworld figures. Hoping that you enjoy this look back at ArtWorld History!
"As a part of their ongoing “Legacy Series”, ArtistsTalkOnArt is re-broadcasting a 1998 dialogue between performance artist and former ATOA executive director, Vernita Nemec and former MoMA curator, Robb Storr."
Press Release: Wally Gilbert: “Images from Life”
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Wally Gilbert
“Images from Life”
April 12th - May 7th, 2022
Opening reception Thursday, April 14, 6 – 8 PM
Second Reception: Saturday, April 23, 3–6PM
Chelsea: Viridian Artists Inc. is pleased to present an exhibition of new digital imagery by the artist/scientist/photographer Wally Gilbert, entitled “Images from Life”. The show opens April 12th and continues through May 7th, 2022. You are invited to meet the artist and celebrate the opening of this exhibit on Thursday, April 14, 6 – 8 PM. There will be a second reception on Saturday, April 23, 3–6 PM.
Wally Gilbert is a prolific artist/ photographer who has been exploring color and form in a multitude of solo exhibitions at Viridian as well as other locations since the early 2000’s, digitally experimenting and analyzing a range of imagery. Sometimes he explores the details of beautiful decay as in his Norblin Project, the documentation of a former factory in Poland, while at other times he digitally alters and transforms the imagery of machines, towers, plants, doorways, fruit – beginning with images of daily life that he encounters with his camera, perhaps in travel or perhaps on just a walk through a park.
Working with digital photography, Gilbert, the artist/scientist, approaches his imagery as he would any scientific investigation, exploring and experimenting in a thousand ways before accepting his findings. He has scrutinized color and form in extreme detail, become more and more involved with transforming and layering until new patterns emerge, almost of their own accord. Investigating and manipulating, he transforms and combines fragments of photographs into arresting artworks that are simultaneously abstract, multi-faceted and multi-layered.
In this most recent series of images taken with his i-phone, Gilbert is exploring the world around us, seeing and recording the beauty of nature and then transforming on the computer what he sees, adding black boundaries as if drawing his own version of a reality filled with the intensity of life exemplified through his intensifying colors.
Gilbert brings us into his process, not really revealing his inner self, but offering us a choice through his various interpretations of what he sees. With “Red Flower”, “Yellow Flower”, “Purple Flower”, only the “Broken Flowers” hint at more in their titles which on the surface speak to the broken image only. “Forever Red”, “Forever Blue” could be portraits of the land but it is up to us to fill in the details and “Sunset” barely reveals two hidden structures behind the black silhouettes of foliage under a burning red sky that if we let ourselves, we could think might be the fires of California.
We look forward to sharing with you, Wally Gilbert’s latest investigations, artistically inspired.
For further information please contact
Vernita Nemec, Director or Jenny Belin, Assistant Director
visit Instagram @viridianartistsinc, see us on Facebook & YouTube at Viridian Artists Gallery or visit our website at viridianartistsinc@gmail.com
Laura Rutherford Renner : Exhibiting work in Lambertville, New Jersey
Viridian Affiliate, Laura Rutherford Renner is exhibiting work at the Artists' Gallery
in Lambertville, New Jersey.
”BEGIN, Again”
Recent work by Alla Podolsky and Laura Rutherford Renner
April 7–May 1, 2022
Opening Reception: April 9, 1–3pm
Artists' Gallery
18 Bridge St, Lambertville, NJ 08530
Ellen Burnett: Exhibiting at City Gallery: New Haven, CT
Ellen Burnett is exhibiting work in a group show at
City Gallery, in New Haven, CT.
The show runs from April 1–May 1. 2022
Opening Reception: Sunday, April 3, 1:00–4:00PM
Click here to read more information about the show
Colonel Mustard by Ellen Burnett
Better Living Through Chemistry by Ellen Burnett
Press Release: Robert Smith: "Curtain Call"
Robert Smith“: “Curtain Call 9865”
30” x 20”; Archival Pigment Print
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“CURTAIN CALL”
ROBERT SMITH
March 15th - April 9th, 2022
Reception Thursday, March 17 th, 5-8 PM
Chelsea NY: Viridian Artists is pleased to present a solo exhibition of compelling photographs by Robert Smith entitled “Curtain Call.” The show opens March 15th and continues through April 9th, 2022 with a reception Thursday, March 17th, 5-8 PM. In addition to seeing this fascinating exhibit in person, you can see the exhibit virtually on the Viridian Artists website at www.viridianartists.com.
Following on his 2016 exhibition, Smith continues to explore the nexus of the material world of fabric and the physical world of motion created by the movement of air currents through cotton curtains.
While Smith’s oeuvre has consisted mainly of the closeup undisturbed natural landscape, in later years he has become absorbed with the closeup imagery of the interplay of curtains and the wind. Here, the result is a panoply of visual sensations, from the bold and dramatic to the lyrical and sublime. A breeze develops into a wind that catches the fabric, moving it serendipitously, capturing it into artistic compositions that recall the abstract paintings of Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell, and the photographs of Aaron Siskind.
These deconstructed images reveal the chiaroscuro of light falling on ephemeral folds of curtains backdropped by the sash and trim of the screened windows. Compositions range from the simple to the complex with powerful and evocative blacks measured against mysterious and magical shadows. While each image is further titled only with a digital number, they could conjure their own title, e.g., “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair” and “Shark Tank.” The artist wonders if the viewer could spot these.
Smith considers his curtain series a dynamic metaphor of the ever-changing world, offering myriad possibilities of bringing people and the environment into symbiosis with the prospect of a more positive future. Perhaps the next time you see a curtain blowing in the wind, you will be reminded of this experience. Take a bow, Robert!
Smith’s work is in numerous private and corporate collections in the United States, Canada, Japan, South Africa and throughout Europe.
For further information please contact
Vernita Nemec, Director or Jenny Belin, Assistant Director
visit Instagram @viridianartistsinc, see us on Facebook & YouTube at Viridian Artists Gallery
or visit our website at viridianartistsinc@gmail.com
Ellen Burnett: Finalist Award Winner in the 50th International Artavita Competition
Ellen Burnett: “We are, after all, brave” : 12"h x 15"w;Mixed Media including watercolor, acrylic paint, sand, ink, bronze powder.
Congratulations to Ellen Burnett,
Finalist Award Winner for Distinguished Art in the 50th
Artavita competition with the theme of “Hope”.
Photography by Alan Gaynor featured in New York City's International Art Fair (IAF)
Press Release: David Fitzgerald: "No Escape"
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"No Escape"
DAVID FITZGERALD
February 15 - March 12, 2022
Opening reception: February 17, 6-8 PM & Closing reception: March 10, 6-7 PM
Masks required
Chelsea NY: Viridian Artists is pleased to present an exhibit of new work by David Fitzgerald. The exhibition opens on February 15 and continues through March 12, 2022, with both opening & closing receptions. The opening reception will be on February 17th and the closing reception will be on March 10th. Both are from 6-8pm. In addition to seeing this exhibit in person, you can view the work online at www.viridianartists.com.
David Fitzgerald’s practice has changed recently. For many years, he focused on making sculptural pieces but when the pandemic struck, the process involved felt exhausting and overwhelming. In the past, his three-dimensional work had incorporated photography. Over the past two years, he began to use his own photographs and appropriated imagery, drawing on a sheet of paper placed over the photograph and then fusing the sheets of paper with epoxy. The work is painterly and visually provocative. Many of the images were shot out of the window of his Brooklyn studio during the lockdown. They echo the sense of entrapment that we felt during those early days.
It’s Rear Window without the murder. People are observed doing the most ordinary things, reading, listening to music, smoking a cigarette. There’s a poignancy to these images, a yearning.
Fitzgerald grew up in New York City and moved away for many years, but he recently returned to Brooklyn. During the pandemic, he was reminded that as a city dweller you are really never alone. “There are always people in the street or outside in the backyards of the brownstones on our block,” he writes. “Home a lot, I began to take photographs of them. In a sense the images are voyeuristic, but they’re also empathetic.” Fitzgerald also includes work that features a July 4th Celebration during the pandemic at Rip Van Winkle, a miniature golf course in upstate New York, and other-worldly images taken in Taos, which was the last trip he took before the world shut down.
Viridian’s first encounter with Fitzgerald’s work was a juried competition at the gallery which he entered with three dimensional dioramas incorporating photography inside box-like structures and was selected for the Director’s Choice digital presentation that occurs simultaneously during the exhibit. With “Director’s Choice” alongside the juror’s choices, Viridian emphasizes the reality that everyone sees art in their own way and each juror selects different favorites. Subsequently, Fitzgerald became a Viridian Artist. This is his first solo exhibition at the gallery.
For further information please contact
Vernita Nemec, Director or Jenny Belin, Assistant Director
visit Instagram @viridianartistsinc, see us on Facebook & YouTube at Viridian Artists Gallery or visit our website at viridianartistsinc@gmail.com
Press Release: "Artful Realities"
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"ARTFUL REALITIES"
January 18th – February 12, 2022
Closing reception pending pandemic
Brett Poza * Joshua Greenberg * Sarah Riley Barbara Hillerman Lieske * Kathleen Shanahan
Charles Hildebrandt * Jenny Belin
Chelsea NY: Viridian Artists is pleased to present an exhibition of outstanding art by artists who are part of Viridian Artists' Affiliate program. The show opens January 18th and continues through February 12th, 2022 and includes Brett Poza, Joshua Greenberg, Sarah Riley, Barbara Hillerman Lieske, Kathleen Shanahan, Charles Hildebrandt and Jenny Belin. In addition to seeing this exhibit in person, see this fascinating exhibit on the Viridian Artists website at www.viridianartists.com.
What is reality? When we share experiences with others, often there are differing opinions of what happened. Artists see reality uniquely and in a variety of ways, focusing on different aspects of experiences and sites that few record in the same way, even when working realistically. Greenberg’s photos of abstracted reality are very different than Hillerman Lieske’s images of coffee shop table arrangements, but they are each expressing a version of reality. Brett Poza’s portraits using MRI’s, cat- scans, etc. are unlike the usual concept of portrait as are May DeViney’s portraits of Madonna’s which she portrays as ordinary women. Riley and Shanahan take printmaking to different places as do Hildebrandt and Belin take painting.
Thematically speaking, Kathleen Shanahan’s works are layered with meanings and associations. Mixed media works that are heavily reliant on print making processes and practices, these works also include collage materials that are byproducts of the print making processes.
Short order or informal dining is ingrained in American popular culture. “Still life” table arrangements including condiments, interior design, and restaurant name all define the personality of the establishment. Through her work Barbara Hillerman Lieske highlights what may otherwise be overlooked in her environment while these same elements may engender memories of similar experiences.
Charles Hildebrandt’s paintings in this exhibit were inspired by the many trips he has taken over the years across the Tappan Zee bridge. To look down at the Hudson River below and see the infinite distance of cliffs and water with a fleet of sailboats in the foreground is to him a wondrous site and the source for many of his works.
Brett Poza created these portraits from medical images; MRI's, X-rays. CT scans, Ultrasounds- technology generally used to diagnose and create interventions for healing. “Not anonymous, people close to me donated their records for this body of work. Some indicate illness, some ended up being perfectly normal. Representing people of different ages, ethnicities and race, they are portraits that reveal everything and nothing- pictures of people from the inside out.”
These images by Sarah Riley started with a photo of a palm tree from Gulf Shores, Alabama. “I added the flamingo. A flamingo proudly preens, reminding me of a cowboy I once knew. With these characters in mind, I combined photos and scans of my drawings, prints and paintings on the computer to create these montages. The two figures together bring to mind contradictory partnerships such as Mrs. Dalloway and Peter Walsh (from the Virginia Woolf novel), or the real tensions between artists Camille Claudel and Auguste Rodin.”
Jenny Belin’s focus this past year has been a body of work she calls 100,000 Flowers: an ongoing series of paintings to commemorate victims of COVID-19 and to raise funds for healthcare workers. Half of the proceeds from sales have been and will continue to be donated to New York- Presbyterian: Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. In June, she began creating digital images with intricately collaged elements from her flower and cat paintings.
Joshua Greenberg uses abstract photography to create contemporary art. In the Abstract Still Life series, he uses discarded items under an elevated railroad track to show the beauty in everyday objects. They appear as natural, but unfinished still life compositions, baked with sunlight. Discarded metals, wood, string and shoelaces covered with ivy, grass, and weeds, waiting to be discovered. This series illustrates how photo-based prints combine elements of photography with digital processing to create abstract art.
Viridian has created several programs to give outstanding “underknown” artists an opportunity to have their work seen. Our Affiliate program gives artists an opportunity to show a small series of artworks annually. Sadly, in these times of the Covid Virus, seeing art virtually is the safest way for all and thankfully websites and social media are making it possible for more & more individuals to have alternative opportunities, but people are nevertheless invited to come to the gallery to see the work in person wearing masks, of course.
For further information please contact
Vernita Nemec, Director or Jenny Belin, Assistant Director
visit instagram @viridianartistsinc or our website at viridianartistsinc@gmail.com
Press Release: "Expressions"
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“EXPRESSIONS”
RENEE BORKOW . HENRY COUPE . MAY DEVINEY.
KAT KING . KAZUO ISHIKAWA . BRUCE ROSENSUSAN SILLS . SHEILA SMITH . TOTO TAKAMORI
December 28 – January 15, 2022
Opening reception :Pending pandemic status
Chelsea: Viridian Artists Inc. is pleased to present an exhibition of recent art by RENEE BORKOW, HENRY COUPE, MAY DEVINEY, KAT KING, KAZUO ISHIKAWA, BRUCE ROSEN, SUSAN SILLS, SHEILA SMITH and TOTO TAKAMORI. The show runs from December 28–January 15, 2022 with an opening reception Thursday, January 6, 6–8PM. Because of ongoing pandemic developments, please check gallery website for reception status.
“EXPRESSIONS” is an exhibit gathering the art of outstanding Viridian Artists not having a solo exhibit this season. For each, we are sharing a small selection of their works, an appetizer for the solo show some will have in 2023 or 2024. The art of Bruce Rosen (1931-1996) and Henry Coupe (1924-2015), still speaks to us, as if each were still living among us and sharing the beauty & meanings expressed in their art.
Bruce Rosen, both a poet and a painter, first showed at Viridian in the 90’s though his career spanned three decades with exhibitions in New York City and the East End of Long Island. Joan Krawczyk, former art editor of The Paris Review, independent curator and former director of Viridian, wrote about Rosen’s art in a 1997 statement: “Rosen’s paintings, like the artist himself, are small and quiet, at first. They reveal themselves slowly. First the color, definite and infinite. Dry, matte surfaces, like a skin, are creased, scratched and scarred… It is as though we are seeing a passage of time and an accumulation of experience… The works mirror the artist whose life integrated the noble poetics of two languages, the written and the visual.”
At the time of the juried exhibit at Viridian in which Henry Coupe won Honorable Mention, he was 90 years old and had fallen into a coma, finally succumbing at the age of 91 in December of 2015. But his art is alive still and continues to show us portraits of people we will never meet, but that remind us of those we have known. Henry Coupe spent his life creating small paintings, most under 24”, executed in strong, simple strokes, of people in landscapes. His people are shown both alone and in small groups. Tiny in scale, his delicate oils are filled with feeling and speak of love, portraying life’s simplest and most important moments, shared with others or experienced in solitude.
Kathleen King employs a layered approach in these mixed media paintings by first fashioning small figurative models from plant detritus. She then photographs these models into compositions and further develops her fantastic subjects with painted passages of acrylic and oil over the digital print on canvas.
Sheila Smith’s newest series of collages were created from photos she has taken over the years. Combining various fragments of these photographs of all sorts of objects and scenes that she rejected as finished art, the artist has re-created her latest series into a mixed bag of collaged abstract imagery. A prolific artist whose art usually begins with photographs, Smith works in her contemporary Photoshop darkroom, continually altering her images digitally until she feels they have reached that decisive moment of acceptance.
Living in the suburbs of Tokyo with forests, mountains and nature nearby, Kazuo Ishikawa feels his senses stimulated and that nature enters his consciousness and his art. He feels that his task is to sense abstract information from nature and symbolize these unseen systems in his art. About his creative practice, the artist says that “I think art is a missing piece of myself and might be lost forever. Every day I try to enter this space to find it. Throughout the pandemics, I am galvanized against the tragedies of the world and my creative juices are stirred. I was reminded again that I cannot live without nature. In a forest, for example, all of my senses are stimulated and the surroundings are ever-changing.”
Susan Sills is most known for her wooden cutout paintings and portraits but for this exhibit she decided to show ink on paper drawings the artist makes without any pre-conceived notions of what she will draw. Coming from her sub-conscious and done freehand, she begins these automated drawings with chance being the guiding force behind each opening gesture that forms the final image that emerges.
Toto Takamori spends months creating his tiny 4x6 or 5x7 paintings. His paintings consist of layers and layers of oil paint, sometimes as many as 70 layers says the artist, but we must take his word for it. The paintings often take months to dry, but the wait is worth it.
About her creative process Renee Borkow says that “color is a major focus, along with line and shape, in my work. My images are mostly based on composition and the slowness or immediacy of the moment.” The artist has immersed herself in history starting with the Greek Gods & Goddesses and filled her works with images and words some might think possess traditional female associations – corsets, diamond rings, bows – things that at first glance are not considered necessarily strong but which have perhaps acted over the centuries as objects of sublimation of the female-ways to woo her and overpower her.
May DeViney is an artist who uses feminism and politics as a starting point for her art making by recreating conventional ideas with images that visually clarify her interpretation of their meanings. “Butcher Madonna” is part of a series of works envisioning the image of the Madonna – the “perfect woman”- as a modern woman with a modern profession, carrying on an ordinary life. Can a woman be judged by standards of perfection when faced with daily toil and struggle? In “Yet He Remained Unmoved” we are surrounded by major social and environmental concerns that can be overwhelming and emotionally draining and yet there are those who seem entirely oblivious to these concerns. It is dumbfounding that they are able to remain unmoved.
Work by Jenny Belin is included in “Cat Daddy” : a Group show at AHA Fine Art, Brooklyn, NY.
Jenny Belin’s Cat Art is included in “Cat Daddy”: a group show at
AHA Fine Art
56 Bogart St., Suite 109
Brooklyn NY 11206
Click here for more information about the show
”It’s a Daisy Age!” by Jenny Belin: 14” x 14”, limited edition print
Press Release: Viridian Artists & Friends : “THE GIFT”
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Viridian Artists & Friends
“THE GIFT”
November 30 – December 23, 2021
Opening reception Thursday December 2nd, 6–8pm
-Masks must be worn
Renée Borkow * Ellen Burnett * Chasity Colón * Henry Coupe * May DeViney * Bernice Faegenburg * David Fitzgerald * Alan Gaynor * Wally Gilbert * Kazuo Ishikawa * Kat King * Marco Lando * Bruce Rosen * Susan Sills * Virginia Evans Smit * Robert Smith * Sheila Smith * Toto Takamori * Bob Tomlinson * Marie-Ange Hoda * Dorothy Braudy * Sabine Carlson * Arlene Finger * Joshua Greenberg * Chris Tucker Haggerty * Barbara Hillerman Lieske * Charles Hildebrandt * Rosemary Lyons * Stacey Clarfield Newman * Shawn Marshall * Nancy Nicol * Brett Poza * Michael Reck * Laura Rutherford Renner * Sarah Riley *
Karen Roth * Kathleen Shanahan * Meredeth Turshen * Jenny Belin * Vernita N’Cognita * Kelynn Z. Alder * Angelique Ellyn Anderson * Ayako Bando * Annaliese Bischoff * Kasmira Cade * Irene Christensen * Elizabeth Ginsburg * Ed Herman * Halona Hilbertz * Miho Hiranouchi * Yasmine Iskander * Bernice Sokol Kramer * Angela M. LaMonte * George Ludway * Sai Morikawa * Alla Podolsky * Mayumi Nakao * Len Rosenfeld * Jane Talcott * John Lloyd * Melissa Schainker * Victoria Webb * Myrna Minter-Forster * Vanessa Brown * Lori Horowitz * Jill Kastner * Susan Reed * Jon Melnick * Susan Grabel * Michael Drakopoulos * Chikako Nunome * Gocci * Yuuichi Tanaka * Megumi Matsukawa * Miwako Kashiwagi * Monzo Watanabe * Jenifer R. Stern * Lynne Mayocole * Sam Wiener * Ed McCormack * Sharon Wybrants * Jeffrey Nowlin & others
Chelsea: Viridian Artists Inc. is pleased to present an exhibition of art-gifts by Viridian Artists & friends, entitled “THE GIFT”. The show opens December 2nd and continues through December 23rd, 2021. You are invited to meet the artists and celebrate December, throughout the month and especially at the opening and closing of this exhibit on Thursday, December 2nd & December 23rd, 6-8pm.
December is a month of multiple celebrations and holidays of various religions and rituals throughout the world. For many, the most important aspect of this holiday time is gift-giving and getting, which is partly why this show called “The Gift”. But just as important perhaps are the other kinds of gifts we have, such as the creative gift artists have to convey an idea or image that inspires or calms and offers a respite from the dailiness of life.
In Lewis Hyde’s “The Gift: Imagination & the Erotic life of Property“ he talks about the Shamanist power of the gift-giving someone a gift gives the giver power. But there are many kinds of gifts. Talents are gifts, intuition is a gift & artistic ability is a gift. Original artwork and art objects are gifts that keeps on giving the ad man might say, but it’s true. But for a moment, reminders of the real meanings or manners of celebrating December holidays...
Christmas, which originally celebrated the birth of Jesus, has become a much more commercial holiday of gift giving, tree decorating and dinners of turkey, celebrated in different and unique ways in various countries. It is rumored that in Japan, a traditional Christmas dinner consists of KFC- “commercial” Kentucky Fried Chicken. America’s influence reaches far still.
The winter solstice is the shortest day and longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. Yule, the Pagan celebration associated with it is a 12 day festival beginning December 21st and still celebrated by modern Pagans with caroling and a Yule log; once of wood, now of chocolate.
Sometimes known as the 12 Days of Christmas, the Epiphany or 3 Kings Day is celebrated after those 12 days to commemorate the birth of the baby Jesus. In Puerto Rico, the children leave a box of hay under their beds to hold gifts. In France, bakers put coins or tiny gifts in King cakes.
Hanukkah or the Festival of Lights is a Jewish festival running for 8 days in November and December, celebrated with the lighting of the candles of a menorah to the story of a time when one day’s worth of oil lasted for 8 days in the Second Temple of Jerusalem. Special foods and gifting accompany the celebration.
Marked with processions and concerts, Santa Lucia Day honors a 3rd century martyr and saint who is seen as a figure of light on the darkest part of the year. On December 13th in Scandinavia, young women dress in white with a wreath of burning candles on their heads. Dancing and singing, they wake their families bringing coffee and buns called Lucia cats.
Krampusnacht is a centuries-old Christmas tradition celebrated on December 5th in Germany and other European countries. A beastly demonic creature called Krampus (who is the polar opposite of Saint Nicholas) arrives to reward good children and take the bad ones away to the underworld.
A spiritual holiday, Kwanzaa was first celebrated in the 1960s. Meaning “fresh fruits,” Kwanzaa is celebrated from December 26th to January 1st and is based on ancient harvest festivals and honors the ideals of family life and unity in African-American history. Dressing in special garments and lighting a candle holder called a Kinara, African Americans decorate their homes with fruits and vegetables, with performances and dancing that culminates in a communal feast.
And so, now that you have a bit about the various December holidays of gift giving, think about giving art as a gift... and the power it will give you...
Gallery hours: 12–6 Tuesday – Saturday or by appointment
For further information please contact Vernita Nemec, Gallery Director at viridianartistsinc@gmail.com
or view the gallery website: www.viridianartists.com
Marco Lando: Solo Exhibition in Urbino, Italy
MARCO LANDO
FRAGMENTS
GOBBIPHOTOSTUDIO GALLERY
VIA RAFFAELLO 101 URBINO (PU)
11.18.2021 - 01.09.2022
Opening reception: Nov. 18th 6PM
Open Tuesdays through Sundays 4 - 7:30 PM
tel. 0722324214
WHATSAPP +39 3939483951 mail@gobbiphotostudio.it
Marco Lando solo show presents two important and connected projects in the artist's production: Specter of belief and Alchemy.Specter of Belief is the natural evolution of his previous project, entitled Alchemy, where we find deranged aerial scenes of the heavens where architectural images, old and new, float amid stormy skies and portentous moons.
Lando adapts the ancient Byzantine tradition of mosaic to his own conceptual ends in photo-based compositions, using the idea of fragmentation juxtaposed with the whole.
This series references the renowned 5th and 6th century mosaics of Ravenna, created when the city was the western capital of the Roman Empire, and the contemporaneous Tomb of the Julii, with its mosaic depiction of Christ as a pagan sun god.
Composed of loosely arranged tiles that simultaneously coalesce and break apart, the crowned figures that emerge evoke emperors and popes. With gaping mouths and apprehensive expressions, these fragmented, dissipating forms loom large amid dark starry skies. These constellations of half-formed, recycled powers from ancient Rome shape-shift their way through space and time, lost and searching. Contemplating the enduring potential of myth, they offer us the specter of belief and the lost promise of tomorrow.
Marco Lando has most recently shown his work at the Site: Brooklyn Art Gallery and at the Viridian Artists Inc. both in New York City, and at the Studio Psacaropulo Museum in Trieste. He won the 2021 “Special Prize” for photography and digital art at the DeSidera Art Festival, and was a finalist at the 2016 WAC in Wells, UK.
Representing gallery: Viridian Artists Inc. - 548 W 28th Street, New York 10001.
Artist website: www.marcolando.org
www.gobbiphotostudio.it
mail@gobbiphotostudio.it
+ 39 0722324214
+39 3939483051
Viridian Goes to the 14C Art Fair in Jersey City: Come & say hello... we are at booth D3..
Kiffi Diamond: Gallery & Studio Review
Press Release: Kiffi Diamond: "Found Inspiration"
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Please List
KIFFI DIAMOND
“FOUND INSPIRATION”
November 2- November 27, 2021
Opening reception: Thursday November 4th, 6-8pm
Closing reception: Saturday November 27, 4-6pm
Chelsea: Viridian Artists Inc. is pleased to present an exhibition of assemblages by Kiffi Diamond entitled “FOUND INSPIRATION”. The show opens November 2nd and continues through November 27th, 2021. You are invited to meet the artist and celebrate the opening on Thursday, November 4th, 6-8PM.
Kiffi Diamond has been collecting all her life. Her passion for ephemera from the past began when she was just 8 years old and was given an old Victorian scrapbook. Diamond’s assemblages exemplify her ongoing fascination with detritus and ephemera which she combines into both fascinating and at times somewhat frightening creatures and scenarios.
Many of Diamond’s works become visual narratives as she creates series that follow predators and symbolic ancestors through the adventures of her creative imagination. Both humor and cynicism play equal roles in her works, but the works in this exhibit have become more “painterly” than her earlier assemblages. Disasters, insects, guns de-volving, sunny days and secrets are all given equal representation by the artist who creates evocative stories from old objects, rusted and filled with their own history that she then translates into her own.
Sometimes she is surprised by the creatures that emerge from assembling of fragments that at first are unrelated but begin to take on new personas as she works with them. “Ancestral Reckonings” are pieces quiet in nature while other works are more disturbing, reflecting the panic and anxiety that has been created by the Pandemic. The environment is a real concern for Diamond and she feels she is expressing a love for the earth as she rescues a rusty bit of detritus from the trash and combines it with fragments from other trash creating an idiosyncratic artwork that hopefully will never be discarded.
Her works have been featured at museums and galleries across the country including Attleboro Museum, National Collage Society, Moorhead State University, Hiram Blauvelt Art Museum and The Katonah Museum of Art. Diamond was educated at Chouinard Art Institute in LA, the Rhode Island School of Design, School of Visual Arts, and The New York Botanical Garden.
In addition to a life-long pursuit of the creative arts, Diamond also nurtured robust careers early on in graphic design and, later, in landscape design. For a decade ending in the 1980s, she ran her own design studio, working for a variety of clients from book and music publishers, to Memorial Sloan Kettering Center. In the early 2000s, Diamond parlayed her love of gardening into a full-fledged landscape design business, maintaining her belief that “landscape is like a living collage.” Since 2015, Diamond has devoted her energy and spirit to creating collages and assemblages full-time.
Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday 12-6PM
For further information please contact Vernita Nemec, Gallery Director or at 212 414 4040 or viridianartistsinc@gmail.com
or view the gallery website: www.viridianartists.com or instagram @viridian artists
"THE WEIGHT OF PAPER: ENDLESS JUNKMAIL SCROLLS " : An exhibition of work by Vernita Nemec currently on view at Rowan University Art Gallery.
Endless Junkmail Scrolls by Vernita Nemic:
The Rowan University • 201 Mullica Hill Road • Glassboro, New Jersey 08028
THE WEIGHT OF PAPER: ENDLESS JUNKMAIL SCROLLS
Vernita Nemec a.k.a. N’Cognita
Exhibition Dates: October 18 - December 17, 2021
Opening Reception: October 28, 5 - 7 pm
Click here for more details
The Weight of Paper: Endless Junkmail Scrolls is a response to the complexities surrounding the paper industry and the production of junk mail waste. Junk mail waste continues to be a problem for our landfills and contributes to deforestation. Reducing unwanted mail helps to conserve natural resources and decreases reliance on landfills and incineration.
Vernita Nemec a.k.a N'Cognita began the Endless Junkmail Scrolls project in 2006 as an environmental statement about the oppressive amounts of junk mail produced every year. It has now grown to over 400 ft long. As a feminist and activist artist, recycling has become an important component of her practice. In 1969-70, she co-curated “X12”, an important early feminist group exhibition, and worked with Art Workers' Coalition (AWC), Women Artists in Revolution (WAR), and Artists Meeting for Cultural Change. She began to use the pseudonym N’Cognita, to honor under-recognized artists. She is currently the director of Viridian Artists, an artist-owned contemporary gallery in New York City.
