Press Release: "Alone Together"

“ALONE TOGETHER”
ARTISTS WORKING COLLABORATIVELY
 September 30- October 17, 2020


Kiffi Diamond & Alan Gaynor            Renee Cuny & David Fitzgerald
Kat King & Angela Smith       Ellen Burnett & Vernita N’Cognita 
May DeViney & Marco Lando            May DeViney & Pavel Muller
Dorothy Braudy & David Fitzgerald 

 

Chelsea: “ALONE TOGETHER”: Artists Working Collaboratively will be Viridian’s first exhibit in the gallery since March. This exhibit features 7 pairs of Viridian Artists working to create artworks together, a fitting reminder that though we are in isolation, we are not alone. During our Pandemic schedule, the gallery will be open Wednesday through Saturday, 12-6 PM, with all visitors requested to make appointments and to wear masks. Viridian Artists will  continue to present Virtual Exhibitions, viewable on Viridian’s website at www.viridianartists.com.

 The “ALONE TOGETHER” exhibition was conceived by Pavel Muller, a Viridian Artist who lives in Canada.  Muller proposed that gallery artists pick partners and work together distantly, however they see fit, to create collaborative artworks.  During these times of isolation, creating collaborative artwork seemed a perfect antidote to the remoteness of our current seclusion. As one of the collaborators, Dorothy Braudy, states, “with the pandemic, I’ve had a hard time getting down to work, and the prospect of this artistic partnership gave me a new burst of energy.”

 The resulting works ranged from the humorous to the frightening to the surreal but for some it proved to not be an easy process, balancing the efforts of two artists working to make one coherent artwork. Some artist/collaborators sent one another simple images for the other to add to, others sent completed works of their own which were then transformed by the additions of the other. The artists were free to use any media for their working process, though for the exhibit, all the images have been digitally printed in limited editions on canvas and hung in groups to be viewed by masked viewers coming to the gallery by appointment.

 When Renee Cuny & David Fitzgerald decided to collaborate, they found a connection in their fascination with boxes as containers of memories, secrets, and gifts. This led to Renee’s discovery of "Tear Catchers" - Vials people once believed were used for holding people's tears during mourning. When the tears evaporated from the vials the mourning process was over, but it turned out that the vials are just old decorated perfume bottles.  Not only mourners’ tears, but messages in a bottle have been a long-held fascination for many of us, the thrill of finding a letter from someone in the past reaching out into the future.

 Fitzgerald did a second collaboration with his mother, Dorothy Braudy, a painter who was a Viridian Artist more than 40 years ago. “I’ve been around my mother’s work, primarily paintings based on photographs, since I was born and have been influenced by it in subtle and not so subtle ways. When the pandemic started in March, I had been working on a series of owl sculptures which no longer seemed viable. I once again started working with photographs tracing, drawing on them and adding colors to them. When Viridian Artists came up with the theme of collaborating with other artists is was a opportunity to work with my mother. The surface image may seem prosaic, an ordinary moment in human lives. But the overlays of color and line entice you to wonder what underlies the moment, the turmoil below the surface.”

 For Marco Lando & May DeViney the collaboration was begun with images Lando sent to DeViney from part of a series originally imagined by him of young women playing with toys that held for them sacred meanings. Lando who lives in Italy often creates photographic images with darker overtones that emphasis his fascination with the hidden meanings and metaphors in objects and garments.  DeViney, whose art often has political overtones, works instead with found materials that she always juxtaposes in provocative ways. She picked two of his images and then added her own visions of meaning to them.

 DeViney also did a second collaboration with Pavel Muller involving Muller’s photos. DeViney added collage elements resulting in a new surreality being added to Muller’s original imagery that was created by the scale and strangeness of her additions. 

Kat King and Angela Smith’s collaboration involved the layering of Smith’s photographs of her own body with hand-drawn tattoos of organs & muscles under King’s improvised 3D dragon models. King hand-rendered passages of color media using ballpoint pen, color pencil and pastel. This final layer of color over the original black and white photograph, added a different presence, bringing the artwork into the realm of fantasy as opposed to the depiction of reality in Smith’s original photograph. 

The collaboration of Alan Gaynor and Kiffi Diamond also was a colab between a photographer and an artist who works primary with found objects composed into low reliefs. In this situation. Diamond sent Gaynor fragments of images which he then added to his photographs which served as the backdrop for strange creatures in urban settings.

 Ellen Burnett sent photographs to Vernita N’Cognita who sent Burnett abstract watercolor washes. Each used the images of the other to create overlays incorporating abstract as well as realistic imagery to create their self-defined works. N’Cognita added a layer of collaged imagery over Burnett’s photographs while Burnett added her photographic imagery over the watercolor washes of N’Cognita.

All the collaborative artworks in this exhibit have been printed digitally on canvas in limited editions of 10, available in 11x14 or 16x20 or sizes near to that. The smaller will be available to collectors for $150, the larger images for $200 & all will be accompanied with a certificate of authenticity. The works have been priced low purposefully with 30% of the sales being donated to Doctors Without Borders.

 Viridian Artists asks that guests email the gallery at viridianartistsinc@gmail.com to make appointments for viewing and to wear masks while there. For everyone’s safety, the gallery also will allow no more than 5 people in the gallery at a time.

 

 

Press Release: "Sanguine Expectations"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                                                   Please List



“SANGUINE EXPECTATIONS”

Art created in moments when our lives were changed forever
A virtual exhibit online
July 21–August 28, 2020

www.viridianartists.com

40% of art sales from this exhibit will be contributed to Doctors Without Borders

Viridian will soon be open by appointment only, with masks required.


Ayako Bando * Ellen Burnett * Robert Carley * Kacey Cowdrey * May DeViney * Kiffi Diamond * David Fitzgerald * Sara Frucht * Alan Gaynor * Chris Tucker Haggerty * Joni Hand * Flora Hogman * Kazuo Ishikawa * Kat King * Bernice Sokol Kramer * Marco Lando * Pavel Muller * Carol Quint * Sheila Smith * Yana Zorina *

 Here we are in midsummer madness, wondering how long it will take for life to again be somewhat normal as our lives continue to be in a state of pause. The days stretch endlessly and yet disappear too quickly, leaving us wondering where the time went. In the midst of fighting a lethal virus, we marched and demonstrated for Black Lives Matter and for those like George Floyd, struck down by a system that no longer works for the good of all. During these strange times we hope that our new normal will be bearable, but reality can be very strange. And so we turn to art for solace and for hope.

Viridian Artists have continued making art, presenting our offerings to our public and giving half our sales to needy causes. Sadly, we must remain closed for the moment, but hope to open soon, though by appointment only with masks and just a few visitors at a time. Until then, we offer you the results of our days passed in solitude, along with the efforts of guest artists, bringing to fruition our hopes and expectations for the future.

 Kazuo Ishikawa’s mixed media relief sculpture “Fragments Of Time,” is subtitled: “We see a glimmer of hope beyond the piling hardship" while May De Viney’s mixed media works tackle politics showing demonstrators in one work and the hope & fantasy of a lost future vacation in another. Kiffi Diamond’s assemblage of 2 skeletal birds of metal are akin to dinosaur bones but instead are the leavings of modern age detritus. “Little Luminous Dragons’ Gathering” by Kat King is a painting filled with colorful delicately drawn dragonflies flying and fluttering with hopefulness and cheer.

In her collages, Ayako Bando uses Japanese paper (Wa Shi) “with the intention of living with hope” and a motif of irises with the symbology of hope, faith & charity. With collages of a vastly different style, Bernice Sokol Kramer depicts cherubs inspired by a framed print of cherubs dancing who watched over her as a child. Sheila Smith creates digital collages composed from purposefully destroyed past works, a reaction perhaps to today’s destruction of our daily lives past. “Dance Again!” Chris Tucker Haggerty’s collage/ drawing, shows a realistically rendered couple perhaps rehearsing amidst abstract threatening forms.

 Alan Gaynor’s photograph of an empty urban street documents a moment rarely experienced during daylight hours, an eerie reminder of today’s reality. Pavel Muller’s photographs of spraying water and roughly twisted trees are filled with the conflicting emotions that we all are now feeling. Humans’ survival depends on hope, but the artist goes on to say “The world on which my core believes are built seems to have been replaced by a new world. ”Flora Hogman says “I am finding ways to embrace, connect with life through artistic, inventive, creative photography.”

David Fitzgerald’s hand colored photographs are reminders of daily activities with friends and family that no longer are possible, at least for now. Marco Lando’s photograph, “Good Heart,” portrays a girl carrying a cornucopia filled with heart balloons, conveying the wish for a less materialistic and cynical world. It is part of a project that presents young women portraying sacred/traditional images, using toys both fanatically and naively.

Using traditional female skills and materials, Kacey Cowdrey sews images in fabric and photos exploring abstract thoughts reacting to this moment of probing for meaning and solutions. Joni Hand’s piece, “Seen, Sewn, Unseen,” is about a form of healing. The artist goes on to say, “when we experience traumatic events, we heal ourselves to a certain extent, but scars still remain.” Rather than her usual mixed media assemblages, Ellen Burnett’s “Birds of Fate” is a gestural painting of marks suggesting birds flying into and over a turbulent sea.

Three artists work with unusual methods and materials. Yana Zorina creates what she calls “neuro-bead” works using glass beads as her primary media.  "Tortured," represents the central nervous system after an accident, attempting to regenerate.  In “Hope,”an eye is positioned inside of an hourglass, below a stream of black sand that represents the bad news and negative emotions that bombard us during a difficult time. Sara Frucht uses leaves as a motif in various media to present the comfort that nature has been giving her during this time. One is a painted rendition, but the others are leaf structures created geometrically. One is a laser cut octahedron, the other uses a program she wrote to generate random tree fractals. Carol Quint brings her small sculptures to life creating works with bones. The crazy beauty of her work in this exhibit was inspired by the Hellenistic woman with wings, “Winged Victory,”that she saw years ago at the Louvre.

May “Winged Victory” continue to serve as a symbol of our strength and endurance, for it is our hope that the visualizations of hope created by these artists will instill the same in our viewers as we all continue to confront our new reality with watchful wariness.

                                                                                                          Vernita Nemec/ July 2020

"Sanguine Expectations": A Virtual Exhibition

Please click on an image in the grid to be directed to each artist’s work in the show.