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GREENPOINT GALLERY PROVIDES A SPACE FOR NEW ARTISTS
The Greenpoint Gallery, a non-profit art space, first opened its doors near the banks of the Gowanus canal in 2005. Since then, the non-profit gallery has served as a space for new, up-and-coming artists to exhibit and sell work, network with potential buyers and collaborators, and join a burgeoning and vibrant visual community.
Shawn James, the founder and director of Greenpoint Gallery and an artist and musician in his own right, curates new open-call exhibits nearly every week. James reviews each submission personally, and says that in the past ten years, hundreds of thousands of works have been sold by new and accomplished artists alike. At each exhibition, a small jury elects a winner, given a $200 prize and a solo show, with three runner-ups to be featured in a smaller group show as well.
Artists and viewers pack Greenpoint Gallery's second floor exhibition space at a show earlier this year.
Greenpoint Gallery also offers portfolio review days, silkscreen classes and studio space, and gallery space rentals.
If you’re someone like me, who loves supporting artists but has little funds, a Greenpoint Gallery event is a great place to start a collection, where pieces generally run from $100-$500. And if you’re an artist starting a career in New York City, then joining the Greenpoint Gallery community by submitting work to any of its up and coming shows is a great place to start.
Work displayed on the first floor at Greenpoint Gallery earlier this year.
Coming later this month at the Greenpoint Gallery is the Annual Drawing Exhibition and Kimberly Donlon Solo Show, which will exhibit works in pencil, charcoal, pastel, and colored pencil. Stop by to see great work and hear great music by local NYC artists!
For more information visit Greenpointgallery.com, or friend them on facebook at facebook.com/greenpointgallery.
All photos courtesy facebook.com/greenpointgallery.
-Aaron Mayper
INSIDES: HOWARD KALISH AT SIDESHOW GALLERY
Howard Kalish’s sculpture isn’t meant to be seen from only the front or the back; better to view it from the inside out.
Insides, on display at Williamsburg’s Sideshow Gallery through November 2, exhibits Kalish’s idiosyncratic, transparent sculpture. Kalish has a reputable background as a sculptor. He studied at the New York Studio School and Cooper Union, received a National Endowment for the Arts in Sculpture, has taught at N.Y.U. and several other academies, and has sat on the Executive Board for the New York Sculptors’ Guild. His public works can be found all over the U.S.
Kalish’s sculpture reflects an artistic maturity one would expect from a man of his experience. Built from the core outwards, the pieces in Insides reflect Kalish’s desire to express in a finished work the nature of its genesis and growth. Some of the pieces, like Inside 1, or Inside 8 (Mandala) are abstract, representing nothing outside themselves. Others, including Little Universe, Inspiration and Inside10 (Sea Leaves) are built out of more familiar forms indicating human figures, leaves, or sheaves of wheat.
Howard Kalish, Inside 1, Resin, 24"x24"x20". (c) 2014 Howard Kalish.
Howard Kalish, Inside 8 (Mandala),painted steel, 21"x21"x21". (c) 2014 Howard Kalish.
Howard Kalish, Little Universe, resin stell and paint, 21"x21"x21". (c) 2014 Howard Kalish. Howard Kalish, Inspiration, resin steel and paint, 21"x21"x21". (c) 2014 Howard Kalish.
Howard Kalish, Inside 10 (Sea Leaves), urethane acrylic, 18"x22"x19". (c) 2014 Howard Kalish.,
Yet in all of these there is an undeniable sense of the natural world, of development and expansion. Kalish, who is profoundly influenced by nature, works on each piece by “following principles…which are analogous to the way forms are made in the universe.” And because the works are “open,” conveying their internal structure as well as their final layers, they seem to breathe and alter as the viewer circles them.
Insides perfectly melds Kalish’s conceptual and visual curiosities. His interest in natural formations and the dependence of finished form on creative principle is evident not only in the press release, but in the works themselves. This is a show by an artist who thinks clearly, crafts clearly, and makes a conceptual statement in an aesthetically beautiful way.
Insides is on display at the Sideshow Gallery, 319 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, through November 2, 2014.
All photos courtesy and quotation courtesy www.howardkalish.com.
-Aaron Mayper
http://www.howardkalish.com/about/
G.O.S. Highlight: Cheryl Molnar
Cheryl Molnar’s studio, located on the Eastern edge of Greenpoint, was the first stop on my tour of the Greenpoint Open Studios last weekend.
After climbing a tall staircase and pushing open a heavy fire door, I was welcomed into Molnar’s studio by several earth-toned yet luminous landscapes, some small, some very large. Most were hung up, and one sat on the wooden floor, propped comfortably against a wall.
Cheryl Molnar's Greenpoint Studio. Photo courtesy the artist.
Molnar, who attended the Rhode Island School of Design for graphic design, and Pratt Institute for a master’s degree in painting, told me that she has never considered herself a painter. One of the landscapes that greeted me, East Egg, is a collage composed of hand-painted paper on a large wooden panel. Molnar has been creating collaged paintings since her M.F.A. days, and says they have progressed from a Diebenkorn-esque minimal abstraction to the spacious landscapes she creates now.
Cheryl Molnar, East Egg, oil painted paper collage on wood panel, 48"x56" (c)2014 Cheryl Molnar. Photo courtesy the artist.
Cheryl Molnar, Asharoken, oil painted paper collage on wood panel, 48"x96" (c)2014 Cheryl Molnar. Photo courtesythe artist.
In East Egg, as well as Asharoken, there is a precise geometry, and a play between flat plane and illusionistic three-dimensionality, that reminded me of old Italian intarsia wood paneling. But in others, like After the Rain, the paper comes together in a more haphazard-looking way, creating a sense of lush vegetation.
Cheryl Molnar, After The Rain, Oil painted paper collage on wood panel, 48"x48" (c)2014 Cheryl Molnar. Photo courtesy the artist. Cheryl Molnar, Taken Aback, oil painted paper collage on wood panel, 48"x48" (c)2014 Cheryl Molnar. Photo courtesy the artist.
Molnar explained to me that her landscapes are collages in more sense than one. She has held several artist residencies in the thirteen years she has lived and worked in New York, and the spaces she’s worked and lived in pop up, albeit chopped up and reconfigured, throughout her work. Taken Aback (see this article’s header image), for instance, was made while in residence at the Wave Hill botanical garden in the Bronx. It features an elegant glass dome and rolling hillside that nods to its Bronx companion without recreating it.
Molnar’s are inviting, whimsical landscapes in which to lose yourself.
For more on Cheryl Molnar, visit her website at cherylmolnar.com, or friend her on facebook at facebook.com/cherylmolnar.
-Aaron Mayper
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