“Natural Overlaps” a collaborative exhibition witnessing an ongoing visual dialogue between Fairfield, CT artist Susan Newbold and Portland, ME artist, Alex Rheault opening at the Silvermine Galleries February 28th and running through April 9th.
Winter brings exciting exhibits to the Silvermine Guild Arts Center, located in New Canaan, CT. Opening on February 28th and running through April 9th, are four new exhibits from a juried Guild group show to a visual dialogue between two artists and two solo exhibits. All are welcome to the opening reception on Sunday, February 28th from 2pm to 4pm in the Silvermine Galleries.
An exhibition that witnesses ongoing visual dialogue between artists Susan Newbold and Alex Rheault is what viewers will experience in “Natural Overlaps.” For almost two years, these artists have explored drawing and printmaking techniques in both collaborative and solitary practices. The results which came out of both practices have resulted in a body of work that is unique unto itself as it reflects both artists’ sensibilities. Newbold and Rheault studied and responded to several of the same photographs taken individually. The common denominator: originating in Maine’s natural landscape. Sometimes, the artists would draw from observation together and rework those initial drawings into one large scale response. Other times, they would draw the same subject, swap drawings or prints, and work on each other’s work. Ms. Newbold and Ms. Rheault’s work provides windows into moments of making, reflecting, and processing the natural and the sensory, the imagined and the perceived. They made discoveries about subjectivity, control, boundaries, and flexibility. This work bolstered their friendship and expanded their insights about the value of their work and collaboration.
Silvermine Guild Artist member Susan Newbold is a painter and printmaker whose work explores the organic flow of nature. She combines representational and abstract techniques to portray the vibrant forms inherent in the natural landscapes. A resident of Fairfield, CT, Ms. Newbold is an award winning mixed media artist who has exhibited, taught and studied extensively within the United States and abroad. Her work has been collected by private donors as well as institutions. Ms. Newbold has been invited to participate in solo and juried exhibitions at several regional museums, galleries and art centers. Susan has been awarded several distinct fellowships to work in New Zealand and France by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Maryland Institute of Art. She has taught a variety of workshops and courses at schools and art centers on topics from printmaking to book-making to drawing. She received a BA in Studio Art from Principia College, IL and an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College, as well as being a graduate of the Post-Baccalaureate program of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA.
Alex Rheault, an artist living in Portland, ME, is initiator of drawing room, an extension of her own art practice where community and drawing collide. She is an independent curator, writer, and serves as the Chair of Illustration at Maine College of Art as well as teaching privately to students of all ages. Rheault studied at L’Accademia di Costume e Moda in Rome, FIT, and received her BFA from Parsons School of Design and her MFA from Vermont College. Rheault has exhibited throughout the New England area in both solo and group exhibitions, and her works can be found in private and public collections. On the collaborative exhibit with Susan Newbold, Alex has stated “In this collaborative body of work, I participate in an open-ended series of experiments and experiences that draw me closer to nature, its infinite narratives, and the essence of things I experience through drawing, observation, and being present. Drawing is another way to feel those elusive, ethereal movements, and tell their story, which is our story, too.”
By Washington, D.C. artist, Natasha Karpinskaia “Bicycle Thieves” from her exhibit “The Doodle Series” opening at the Silvermine Guild Arts Center February 28th and running through April 9th.
The juried Guild Group show, “Inside/Out,” explores the many ways in which the concept of inside or out can be interpreted. It could be literally indoor or outdoor landscapes, or it could refer to inner thoughts, emotions, and dreams, versus the actual world as represented by objects and events. Artists were encouraged to stretch their imaginations and create work that visually expresses their notion of what Inside or Outside implies. Works in all medium were submitted to the show. Co-chairs for “Inside/Out” were Guild Artist members Tina Rohrer of Pound Ridge, NY and Jody Silver from Old Greenwich, CT. Melissa Stafford, juror for the Guild group show, is the director of the newly opened annex, Carrie Haddad Photographs, in Hudson, NY and the former director of the gallery's long-standing main exhibition space, Carrie Haddad Gallery. Both locations feature innovative works by contemporary artists from the Hudson Valley and beyond. Stafford has collaborated with many non-profit arts and business organizations throughout the region including Albany Center Galleries, The Columbia County Council on the Arts, The Downtown Albany Business Improvement District and The Hudson Development Corporation and has been a reviewer for the Center for Photography's Annual Regional Portfolio Review Event (2009, 2010). In February, 2010, Stafford will be a panelist at MCLA's Berkshire Cultural Resource Center's professional development seminar series for artists called Tricks of the Trade.
The focus of “Softening the Edge: 1964-2009,” an exhibition by Alberta Cifolelli is to look back at over 40 of the artist’s works from the 60’s through the 90’s. By pairing recent work with key examples of her past work, the exhibition will create a forum for discussing key elements and reoccurring themes. Specifically, these pairings will focus on her use of color, line and form and how these elements have evolved, and will also serve as a spring board for discussing the connections between her more representational contemporary work and her older more abstract work.
A resident of Westport, CT, Ms. Cifolelli, painter and printmaker, has had solo exhibitions throughout the United States, as well as participating in both group and solo exhibitions at the Chicago Art Institute, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Bruce Museum, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Academy of Design and the Housatonic Museum of Art, to name a few. She has also been included in numerous Japanese museums including The Bunkamura in Tokyo. In 2007, she was named one of 18 Distinguished Alumni of the Cleveland Institute of Art in celebration of the Institute’s 125th anniversary. In October 2009, she was honored by her birthplace Erie, PA in a tribute to the city’s art history with an exhibition Homecoming. Cifolelli, listed in The Archives of American Art, is collected widely and is in more than 100 public collections, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Housatonic Museum of Art, the United Nations, the Butler Institute of American Art, Francis Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, PepsiCo, and Nynex. In his essay Alberta Cifolelli’s Biophiliac Paintings: Nature All The Way, Donald Kuspit describes her work: “Raw instinct and human interest are synthesized in Cifolelli’s nature, so that one hardly notices it. That is the ultimate aesthetic triumph.”
A set of prints that began as meaningless drawings, miniscule in size, acquired a second existence in “The Doodle Series,” a new exhibit of works by Washington, D.C. artist, and Silvermine Guild Artist member, Natasha Karpinskaia. Each drawing was enlarged, giving the artist a sense of importance and beauty not seen in their original incarnation. By placing these drawings in a particular environment, they turned out to be a sort of landscape, with a definite horizon line but unidentifiable in terms of direct location. The doodle drawings were etched through a paper lithography process and incorporated into what the artist calls “surrealist landscape.” According to Karpinskaia, “Humor is an essential element in my work. I like to laugh at myself and at the ridiculousness of human nature, and I like the viewer to share this experience with me and have a good time. Sometimes a serious concept can be turned into a laughing matter. However, the sense of aesthetics is also important; I try conveying a certain sense of beauty and elegance through my work.”
Natasha Karpinskaia began as a linguist, studying theory of languages, and then switched to art history, another language of signs, and only after that did she become an artist. She studied at the Moscow University of Linguistics, St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts (art history), and Columbia University Art history Department (PhD program). She was a professor at the New York Academy of Fine Arts teaching Western European art for a few years. Currently a full time artist, and she also teaches painting, mixed media, collage and printmaking at the Yellow Barn Studio in Washington, DC. She occasionally teaches workshops at the Silvermine Guild Arts Center in New Canaan, CT. She has had a number of solo shows and participated in many group juried shows in the United States.
For more information about the exhibits opening at the Silvermine Galleries, call 203-966-9700 ext. 20 or visit their website at www.silvermineart.org.
About Silvermine Guild Arts Center
Silvermine Guild Arts Center located in New Canaan, Connecticut is one of the oldest artist communities in the United States. Its nationally renowned artist guild, award winning gallery and school of art offer more than twenty contemporary and historic exhibitions annually and a wide range of art courses and workshops on its four-acre campus. The center provides innovative arts education in Norwalk and Stamford schools through the outreach program, Art Partners and hosts a lecture series throughout the year. Silvermine Guild Arts Center is a nonprofit organization
Silvermine Guild Arts Center Mission
Grounded in the belief that art is vital to the spirit, creativity and wholeness o-f human beings, the mission of Silvermine Guild Arts Center is to cultivate, promote and encourage growth through the arts; to showcase and serve artists; and to foster arts education and appreciation opportunities for the greater community.
New Gallery Hours: Silvermine Galleries are open Wednesday through Saturday, 12p.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 1pm to 5 p.m. For more information, call (203) 966-9700 or visit the website: www.silvermineart.org.
