At The Gallery
Natural Celebrations
APRIL 19 –JUNE 25, 2013
Glories of the natural world, forests, meadows, gardens – celebrating the color and beauty that nature adds to our lives.
Gallery Talk, Monday, May 13 6:30–8PM
Coming Round the Mountain, watercolor ©2013 Diane Kosco
Natural Celebrations – For each artist in this inspiring exhibit, it is the interactive experience with nature that sets the process of celebration in motion. The colors, the light, the setting, the season, a single moment in time—all have inspired in our 15 artists a sense of elation; and we, the viewers, are the beneficiaries. I considered as I viewed each work, how does the artist engage?
In the representational works of Barbara Hochberg and Wendy Heisler, Dancing Sunlowers and Ginger Plants, the skill of each artist draws us close in with detailed depictions full of energy and focus. In Carl Frankel’s, Wild Horses and Stones, we remain at a distance, witness to the exuberance of animals in the wild. In Indrani Choudhury’s North Shore, Prince Edward Island, man-made and natural share a setting and a vibrant palate, amicably, and in Joan Arbeiter’s Meadow II, an impressionistic interpretation of a classical scene gives a static moment endless emotional variation.
The Splendor Tree, mixed media ©2013 Nancy Scott
I am struck particularly by three paintings that translate stillness in deeply moving ways, rendering the quietly celebratory experience almost fantastical. These works — Misty Lake, by May Lee, Coming Round the Mountain by Diane Kosco and Colored Mountains by Lakshmi Durga –merge inner and outer sight, and in each case an almost dreamlike effect results.
As we depart the representational, nature inspires in broader terms, with color and shape the defining characteristics. In Lake View Sunset, Vadim Levin heightens color and removes visual depth with the result that a familiar theme of sunset is almost archetypal. But in Galaxy, by Rosalind Orland, Still Life with Shells and Skulls by Don Bloom and Stephanie Barbetti’s The Glory of Nature, the mission is to distill and move the audience without context or story line.
In Nancy Scott’s The Splendor Tree and Ahuva Arie’s First Light in the Forest, the two collage works in this exhibit, that distillation takes a different form. Images of nature and the human imagination blend in intriguing ways. Here Scott works nature into her portrait with her use of fabrics and found materials, while Arie plays with the juxtaposition of photographic images; yet both artists have created works that act as witness and express personal transformation.
It is fitting that our one 3D work, the ceramic bowl by Susan Chiu, Autumn Grace, offers ceremonial formality to the act of celebration. Stylized in its depiction of autumn leaves and in its shape, it suggests a role of ritual remembrance.
Thank you artists for each of these carefully rendered works of art. I have enjoyed my mediated interaction with the sublime, and hope others will as well.
—–Cory Alperstein, juror
Exhibiting Artists
Ahuva Arie
Joan Arbeiter
Stephanie Barbetti
Don Bloom
Sue Chiu
Indrani Choudhury
Lakshmi Durga
Carl Frankel
Barbara Hochberg
Wendy Heisler
Diane Kosco
May Lee
Vadim Levin
Rosalind Orland
Nancy Scott
The Gallery
South Brunswick Municipal Building
540 Route 522, Monmouth Junction
