Kathleen King “Life After Life”

 Kathleen King     
 “Life After Life”
October 16 – November 10, 2012
Opening reception, Thursday, October 18th,6-8pm

Chelsea: Viridian Artists. INC. is pleased to present, “Life After Life” Kathleen King’s 4thsolo exhibition of her most recent drawings, monoprints and 3D work. The show continues from October 16 – November 10, 2012 with an opening reception on Thursday, October 18, 6-8pm.

Textures and surfaces of objects found in nature have always held a fascination for the artist.  Both working directly and referentially with actual plant detritus, King inserts digital processes into her artistic method before applying more classical media to her finished work. Ms. King comments: “I consider 2D and 3D scanning and printing to be midway processes that enable me to visualize what form the final work may take before I complete it with more hands on traditional drawing and painting.”

Botanical detritus, which have had a past life as plants, dry and age, to become insignificant leavings. These humble fragments are treated as “relics” by the artist and constructed into “Divas” and “Dragons.” In turn, these 3D assemblages serve as the benevolent or sinister iconic subjects giving the dead botanical cast offs a new “life” in the improvised visual narratives that emerge in the finished works of art.

Kathleen King lives and works in Chicago and exhibits her work there as well as in New York, Seoul and Tokyo.  Her work is included in many collections, nationally and internationally.  For the past six summers, Ms. King had been invited as a visiting adjunct professor to teach watercolor and drawing courses in theInternational Summer Campus Programs at Korea University.  Kathleen King is also on the board of the Skopelos Art Foundation, in Skopelos, Greece where in addition to serving on the board, she has taught and held workshops in artistic practice.

For further information please contact the gallery at 212-414-4040 or  viridianartistsinc@gmail.com Viridian Artists

Carol Brookes: "Pulse"

                              Carol Brookes: "Pulse"

September 25 -October 13, 2012
Reception Thursday, September 27, 6 – 8 PM

Wine And Words reception and meet the artist, October 13, 4pm

 Chelsea: Viridian Artists Inc is pleased to present “PULSE,” an ongoing series of mixed-media wall sculptures by Carol Brookes in her solo exhibition at Viridian Artists, Inc. in New York City, opening September 25, 2012 through October 13, 2012. There will be an opening reception on Thursday, September 27 from 6 to 8 PM and on October 13 at 4 PM, a closing event,”Wine and Words”, when the artist will talk about her work.  Viridian Artists, Inc. is located at 548 West 28th Street, 6th Floor, in the Chelsea area of Manhattan.

Nails, washers, rope, tubing, wire, rubber mats, dowels, leather buckles, industrial honeycomb insulation, and tacks are some of the materials that artist Carol Brookes incorporates into her work.

Brookes’ frame-like boxes are constructed from wood and canvas and filled with mixed media materials.  “The ‘PULSE” series is material-driven and is constantly evolving. I consider the world my art supply store,” says Brookes.  “I see the world as layers of structure and surface, one upon the other – a concept that drives my work.”

“PULSE” examines the hemisphere as a structure, the ordinary forms we see each day in their many incarnations, such as an egg, a pod, an eye, the earth, planets, and domes.  The various concepts that these forms evoke are explored in the series, including thoughts and insights into life, birth, and the mystical and mysterious.

All of the works in “PULSE” involve repetition, which Brookes considers a visually stabilizing force.  In addition to the multiple hemispheres, she has also created repetition of forms in groups of structures that are the same size.  These pieces are presented in sets of two, three or larger sets forming rows or grids. The groupings establish relationships between the forms and surfaces – one to the other – and set up visual identities, similarities and differences that can be compared and contrasted.

“My work is spontaneous and controlled, playful and serious, my own personal yin and yang. Creating these constructed worlds is a mystical event for me. Although the ideas flow from one piece to the other, there are always surprises. Art is the magic of my life, and like magic the excitement comes from not knowing what wonderful new ideas, objects or materials will appear and exactly what will happen next.”

Carol Brookes’ artwork has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and cultural centers throughout the United States, including the McLarry Modern Gallery in Santa Fe, Illinois Central College in East Peoria, the Maryland Federation of Art in Annapolis, B. J. Spoke Gallery in Huntington, New York, the University of North Iowa in Cedar Falls, the Women’s Center in Los Angeles, and the Miami Metropolitan Museum and Art Center.  In addition, her work is in public and corporate collections, including those of the American Cinema Corporation inBoston, Grayco Paper Company inMiami, theMiamiDadeCommunity College, and theWaterlooArtCenterinIowa.   Brookes received a B.F.A. in painting and drawing from theUniversityofMiami, an MA in painting from theUniversityofIowa, and an MFA in multimedia art from theUniversityofIowa.

The exhibition will include:
Pulse Axis is based on the symbol “X.”  Each of the five hemispherical forms is covered with textured epoxy.  An “X” is formed on each structure with the use of a variety of materials, including hardware and found objects, leather and copper tube straps, and buckles.

Pulse Trinity is a triptych that incorporates epoxy, cut nails and washers to create strange organism-like forms.  Although at first glance each part of the triptych appears to be the same, they are actually different, challenging viewers to explore and make comparisons. The copper, silver and brass play to the “trinity” concept.

Hive Genesis is made of hemispheres wrapped with cotton rope. Rubber mats and industrial honeycomb insulation material creates a background that is dotted with bolts.  The piece creates an illusion that the hive is dissolving into honeycomb but with the promise of re-emergence.

Pulse Hydra consists of four 30″ square boxes, 10″ deep.  Made of sculpting epoxy and embellished with nails, tacks and washers, each box is filled with organic forms representing imagined worlds of sea creatures, sea flowers, and tide pools.

Pearl Synergy was inspired by shells and their pearl-like surfaces, contrasting shiny and metallic surfaces against matte, porcelain-like surfaces.  The piece explores the notion that in life, something that seems simple or plain on the outside can contain beautiful and wondrous treasures.

Pulse – Small Works consists of four sets of four 15″ square pieces that were either inspired by larger works in the “Pulse Series” or are concepts for exploration in creating new larger pieces.

“Yin & Yang: Fusing Complementary Opposites”

“Yin & Yang: Fusing Complementary Opposites”

September 4th – 22, 2012
Reception: Thursday, September 13th, 6-8pm.
Wine & Words: Saturday, September 22nd at 4 PM

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Chelsea: The opening exhibition of Viridian Artists’ fall season is a group show of gallery artists’ work that embodies the fusion of Eastern and Western artistic practices. The title of the opening show -“Yin & Yang: Fusing Complimentary Opposites” – addresses the differences & influences Eastern Art principals have had on Western Art & vice-versa.

The show will open September 4th and continue through September 22nd with a reception on Thursday, September 13th, 6-8pm. On Saturday, September 22nd at 4 PM there will be an Artist’ Coffee & Conversation giving gallery visitors an opportunity to talk with the artists and listen to them talk about their art and inspiration.

This mutual influence between the East & the West artistically has become even more defined since the artworld has become more globally connected and all is immediately viewable via the Internet. For this opening exhibit of the season, Viridian Artists were invited to explore this balancing of sensibilities of the East & the West in their creative process, though many already do. Virginia Smit, Barbara K Schwartz & Bernice Faegenberg have consistently shown the influences of Eastern art in their use of color, form and subject matter as well in their execution of line.

Many of Carol Brookes works are influenced by the art of the East. In the “Hive” group, the influence comes out in the fluid simplicity of line created by coiled rope and textured materials. The same can be said of Stacey Clarfield Newman whose collaged art was filled with an eastern edge, even before she spent a summer in an Indian Ashram.

Viridian has had a long relationship with Eastern artistic influence representing 4 Japanese artists and a Korean artist whose work all definitively demonstrates the influence of contemporary American art. Too, many of the gallery artists have shown in Tokyo over the years at the invitation of Onward Gallery. Tazuko Fujii creates three-dimensional collages of paper and fabric fragments embedded in resin and Oi Sawa creates cubist like imagery painted and drawn on tin. Kiyoshi Kawaguchi’s paintings show a distinct homage to Stuart Davis and that era of American realism while Korean artist/photographer Young Sam Kim creates totally 21st Century digital photomontages of urban scenes.

Some of the artists have chosen Asian influenced subject matter for their works in this exhibit.
Susan Sills with her painted birch figure of a Japanese woman & child modeled “After Eizan” and Deborah Sudran with her still life of “Thistles & Bamboo” are both realists who have used eastern subject matter to express this influence. With her usual political overtones, May de Viney shows a new Madonna, this time as a Geisha. Robert Mielenhausen has incorporated the enso or unfinished circle that is the emblem of Zen Buddhism, a symbol of infinity representing enlightenment and related ideas in his mixed media painting.

Dave Dorsey, a writer & painter, shows 10 digital prints of drawings he made for an unfinished novel which become illuminated haiku that parallel the progress of the figure in the Ox-Herding Songs who seeks to tame the ox–his own nature. John Cullen’s abstractions suggest a watery landscape with Asian overtones in their pattern and line while Arthur Dworin goes a step further with “Frolicking Lorentz”, a physics term for the interplay of dynamic forces- the yin & yang of energy. Photographs Robert Smith and Darryl Moody translate their vision of reality with a hint of the influence of the East in their subject matter and their approach, yet Alan Gaynor beautifully dying flowers express the ultimate Yin and Yang, that of Life and Death.
Husband and wife, Kathleen King and Michael Miller spend their summers in Seoul teaching art. King’s work seeks a consistent balancing between abstraction and realism allowing her to creatively react to her “scientific” recordings of the natural world with internalized musings that inform the narrative content of her art. Miller’s recent solo show in Seoul of his often humorous prints whose message spoke clearly through the imagery to the Korean audience.
Elizabeth Featherstone Hoff’s mixed media on wood artwork, “An Autumn Song for Toshie”, was made to honor her friendship with Japanese artisan Toshie Dowd. In fact, the core of the art in this exhibition exemplifies the need for balance in the world despite our differences and what better way to show this but through our art.

Janet Bohman, Renee Borkow, Carol Brookes, John Cullen, May DeViney,
David Dorsey, Arthur Dworin, Bernice Faegenburg, Tazuko Fujii,
Alan Gaynor, Wally Gilbert, Elizabeth Featherstone Hoff, Kathleen King,
Kiyoshi Kawaguchi, Young Sam Kim, Valerii Klymchuk, Namiyo Kubo,
Robert Mielenhausen, Michael Miller, Darryl Moody, Stacey Clarfield Newman,
Bruce Rosen, Oi Sawa, Barbara K Schwartz, Susan Sills, Virginia Evans Smit,
Angela Smith, Robert Smith, Deborah Sudran, Bob Tomlinson
For further information please contact the gallery at 212-414-4040 orviridianartistsinc@gmail.com& www.viridianartists.com
Gallery hours Tuesday – Saturday 12-6pm

Director's Choice: From Virtual to Actual

Director's Choice: From Virtual to Actual

Chelsea NY: Viridian Artists is pleased to present “Director’s Choice: From Virtual To Actual”, the art of artists from the powerpoint presentation that occurred during our 22nd International Juried Competition. The gallery is located at 548 West 28th Street, also accessible from 547 W 27th Street. Curated by Vernita Nemec, the gallery director, the exhibit will extend from June 5-23, 2012 with an opening reception Thursday, June 7, 6-8PM.

The title of the show originates from the fact that these artworks were previously shown virtually in a power point presentation during the Juried exhibition last season. The gallery director felt the images to be worthy of their own exhibition and hence, the actual works have been brought now together in their physicality. That change from virtual to actual becomes the theme of the show.

Each of these artists has hers or his own personal obsession that serves as the starting point always present in the artistic search for ways in which to transform inner investigations into reality. The results of transforming these realities into art, remains open to each viewer’s interpretation and becomes another translation of the virtual into the actual.

Although these artists were not “winners” of Viridian’s 22nd International Juried Competition juried by Elisabeth Sussman of the Whitney Museum, Vernita Nemec, the gallery director of Viridian felt the art of these artists to be as uniquely interesting as some of those chosen by the Whitney Curator. And as we all know, professional opinions vary widely regarding what is the “best” art, for in the end it is a question of taste, even in the eye of the professional. And one of Viridian’s missions is to provide meaningful exposure to under-known artists.

Included in this exhibition are artworks of all media of the following artists:

* Jacqueline Ehle Inglefield * Katherine Walton * Kim Seieroe *

Eric Whitman * Margery Freeman Appelbaum * Mark Schmidt * David Yendes *

* Suzanne Morlock * Melissa Shelly * Joyce Litting Schutter *Patrick Luber *

Kinuko Imai Hoffman * Suprina * Carolyn Applegate * Byron Lacy *

Joan Giordano * Eileen Starr Moderbacher

Oi Sawa: Oil Paintings on Tin and Drawings

Oi Sawa

Oil Paintings on Tin and Drawings
May 15- June 2, 2012
Opening reception Thursday, May 17th, 5-7p.m.

 Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is extremely proud to present the 12th solo exhibition of Oi Sawa in its new space at 548 W 28th Street. Her exhibition of “Oil Paintings on Tin and Drawings”  extends from May 15th to June 2nd, with an opening reception Thursday, May 17th, 5-7p.m.
 
The noted Japanese artist Oi Sawa has made a unique choice of materials in her artmaking. For years she has created oil painting on tin and drawings on film and paper. Her images too are unique in that they transcend the influences of both Eastern & Western art, focusing on abstract structures in black, grey and silver that utilize architectural imaginings. 

One senses an Escher–like vision combined with the influence of cubism in her complex rendering of space that create both a geometry of images as well as a sense of three dimensional structures. Originally inspired by reflections on a stovepipe in her studio decades ago, she uses tin with a signature approach that has intensified and matured over the years. The artist’s limited palette of silvery gunmetal grays has deepened with the spirit of those reflections with the flames of the fires within the stove remembered with touches of reds and golds, adding the sense that nature has not altogether departed. 

Oi Sawa’s oil paintings on tin as large 56 inches by 86 inches distinctively evoke towers and orbs floating and swirling in an unknown atmosphere of perhaps the future, perhaps the past. Her tiny collage drawings on film and paper are graphically rendered and the complex images echo structures of dark and futuristic places akin to those in her large paintings. 

Until 2007, the artist was a professor at the Musashino Art University in Tokyo in their Department of Scenography, Display and Fashion Design and this year also worked with survivors of the Fukushima nuclear disaster site.

 Oi Sawa has won numerous prizes including the Noma Prize in the 27th Annual Ichiyokai Art Exhibition. Her art is included in the collections of the Russell Sage Foundation, Ishikawa Prefectual Museum of Art in Japan, the Manhattan Laboratory Museum and the Nomura Computer System America both in New York, among others. We hope that you will be able to meet this outstanding artist and share her view of life through the vision of her incredibly fascinating artworks.

Tazuko Fuji – Oil Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture

Tazuko Fuji – Oil Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture

Dates: May 15- June 2, 2012
Reception: Thursday, May 17th, 5-7p.m.

Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is extremely proud to present the 12th solo exhibition of Tazuko Fujii in its new space at 548 W 28th Street. Her exhibition of Oil Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture extends from May 15th to June 2nd, with an opening reception Thursday, May 17th, 5-7p.m.

The noted Japanese artist Tazuko Fujii has been exhibiting her art for 60 years and yet the art she creates remains always in touch with both the spirits of these times and the spirits of the past. Her artistic career began with the study of KANA, the Japanese phonetic alphabet originating in China in the Kan Era. Tazuko Fujii has incorporated this beautifully executed form of brush writing into her drawings, paintings, collages and sculpture as well as in the artistry of her letters to friends and family.

May is the perfect month to see an exhibition of Tazuko Fujii’s art for her work evokes the spiritual beauty of nature that Sakura or the cherry blossom symbolizes in Japan. The abstract imagery of Tazuko Fujii’s fine art, composed of a wide variety of handmade Japanese papers, inks and kimono fabrics, create a swirling world of the past, present & future, echoed in the Kawachi Fuji Gardens in Kitakyushu, Japan. The artist believes there is a symbiotic relationship between all things, that everything contains the souls of the deceased and that all in nature must be honored.

Though Tazuko Fujii’s early paintings were influenced by contemporary American art, the roots of her exquisite black-based abstractions arise out of Japan. Akin to the collage drawings and paintings that Tazuko has created over the years are the resin sculptures the artist has made for the past 25 years in which she embeds ceremonial paper strings, hand-made papers and other materials. Her profound internal thinking which encompasses modern and classical literature, philosophy and religion has been cultivated over many years, deepening the complexity of her art.

Tazuko Fujii’s art has won numerous prizes including the Mayor Prize in the Hokuriku Modern Art Exhibit in Kanazawa City, Japan and the Mainichi Newspaper Company Prize in the Women Artists Association of Japan Annual Exhibition. Her art is in the collections of the Ishikawa Prefectual Museum of Art in Japan, the Georgia University Collection in Atlanta and the Manhattan Laboratory Museum in NYC, among others.

We hope that you will be able to meet this outstanding artist and share her view of life through the vision of her incredibly fascinating artworks.

Bernice Faegenburg – Iris a la Warhol and …

Exhibition: Bernice Faegenburg – Iris a la Warhol and …
Dates – April 24- May 12, 2012
Reception – Saturday, April 28, 2-5pm

Chelsea: Viridian Artists Inc. is pleased to present the exhibition “Iris a la Warhol” by artist BERNICE FAEGENBURG. The show opens April 24th and continues through May 12, 2012. In celebration, a special reception for the artist will be held on Saturday, April 28th, 3

A graduate of the Tyler School of Fine Arts of Temple University, Bernice Faegenburg is an artist committed to experimentation and incorporation, constantly learning new creative skills that include egg tempera, Japanese brush painting, photo transferring and a variety of methods of printmaking. Her most recent addition is digital photography printed on canvas which she then alters by hand.

In addition to being fascinated with process, Faegenburg’s art evolves out of her travels & life experiences. This predominately new body of work is informed both by Warhol’s silkscreens and the skies of Puerto Rico. In a recent trip there, the artist found herself enthralled by the constantly changing skies and cloud formations, returning with a multitude of images.

Faegenburg has always been an artist who roams media, using all that is at her disposal. Adding digital photography to her already extensive repertoire, she captured images of the cloud filled skies of PR, cropping, altering the color and even adding paint when moved to do so. These photographic images on canvas of cloud filled skies have been juxtaposed with silk screen images of irises, recreating an illusion of the lush landscape of a tropical island in the confines of a Chelsea gallery.

Faegenburg most often works in a triptych format but in this exhibition, she juxtaposes the clouds & the irises in distinctly separate formats, constructing a sensation of sky & ground through the positioning of the works on the gallery walls. As a result the viewer is immersed in the landscape as if they were actually there, but in two dimensions, not three.

MAY DeVINEY “Madonnas, Monsters, and Marie Curie”

MAY DeVINEY   
“Madonnas, Monsters, and Marie Curie”
   April 3 – April 21, 2012
Reception:  Saturday, April 7, 4-7 pm

Chelsea: Viridian Artists Inc. is pleased to present the exhibition “Madonnas, Monsters, and Marie Curie” a mixed media exhibition by May DeViney. The show opens April 3rd and continues through April 21, 2012. In celebration, a special reception will be held on Saturday, April 7th, 4:00-7:00pm.

At Viridian Artists, DeViney will show a variety of new work in the form of mixed media constructions, paintings and installations. She highlights a spectrum of issues affecting both sexes and the 99% strata.   This international provocateur continues to prove her reputation as “the thinking woman’s Red Grooms”.

DeViney is creatively inspired by a number of politically tinged issues and continues to surprise with each presentation, opening up whole new worlds of thought for viewers to consider as they meander through the artworks presented. She creates with no holds barred.

The artist has, in the past & now, demonstrated an ongoing interest in workers and domestic drudgery, often dangerously spoofing the grateful, subservient attitudes expected of those who work, most often exemplified by the Madonna. No subject is taboo to her, and her themes can overlap as when she shows the Madonna doing the laundry, nuns or burka clothed women wearing the American flag, as they remind us of the mysteries of religious practice & the ongoing situation of women.

DeViney has won many awards for a past series she did based on “home shrines” which were created to exalt and commemorate not the usual saints, but instead, the common “everywoman”. She is the one who has suffered in all cultures from the expectation of perfection and purity enforced upon her by both society and herself.

In “Unauthorized Autobiography” a show from 2000, DeViney made us privy to not only what she intended us to see, but, realized that she also unknowingly revealed “secrets”, and those “secrets”, those unintended revelations, can be as telling as the subject matter at hand. The same holds true in ordinary life, especially in this world of social media, where unknowingly, we often reveal more than we intend.

DeViney is drawn to used and aged materials, allowing us to view the art through the haze of accumulated historical value. Whether it is clothing, furniture or a gynecologist’s examining table, she is able to resurrect and transform the objects she touches with new meaning more fitting to today’s world. Her costume installations are partially inspired by the work of British artist Yinka Shonibare, but too they are emerging out of her own creative imagination.

PRESS RELEASE: 2nd Annual Juried Photography Exhibition

PRESS RELEASE: 2nd Annual Juried Photography Exhibition

Juror: Jennifer Blessing
(Curator of Photography, Solomon R Guggenheim Museum)
Exhibition: 2nd Annual Juried Photography Exhibition
Dates: March 13- March 31, 2012
Reception: Saturday Mar 24, 4-7pm

Chelsea: Viridian Artists Inc. is pleased to present their 2nd International Juried Photography Exhibition. Curated by Jennifer Blessing, Curator, Guggenheim Museum, New York, the exhibition opens March 13th and continues through March 31, 2012. In celebration, a special reception will be held on Saturday, March 24th, 4:00 – 7:00 pm.

This exhibition is a diverse gathering of twenty-three photographers from the United States and abroad. They share a common interest in capturing a specific moment and situation using the photographic image as a starting point with a variety of ending goals.

Viridian Artist, Robert Mielenhausen, chair of the committee that organizes the Juried Photographic Competition at Viridian, selected Jennifer Blessing as the Curator for this season competition. Blessing joined the Guggenheim’s curatorial staff in 2002, after previously working at the museum from 1989-97. In addition to organizing photo-based exhibitions, she is developing the museum’s photography collection. In her role as Curator of the photography competition at Viridian Artists, Blessing spent many long hours viewing over 800 images sent to Viridian from around the world.

In her curatorial statement, Blessing states: “The artists whose photographs are installed here arrested my attention because they obsessively and exquisitely represented their subjects. Whether exterior or interior locales, natural or manmade sites, portraits of humans or animals or insects, these photos all convey their authors’ investment in their images, both in terms of form and concept.”

Because she feels there is so much interesting and exciting work being done today in photography and because part of Viridian’s mission is to give exposure to outstanding under-known artists, the gallery’s director, Vernita Nemec, selected the images of twenty-five photographers not selected by Blessing to be shown in an ongoing Power Point presentation during the exhibition. She states: “the multiplicity of creative expression in photography today is staggering. I was inspired by the ability of some photographer/artists to capture unique moments of reality and the impetus that others felt to create their own imaginary reality – not an oxymoron in today’s digital & virtual worlds.”

Viridian Artists is proud to share these images and feel viewers will find this an exciting and rewarding exhibition of new art.

Group Exhibition: Juried by Jennifer Blessing
First Prize: Megan Mette Second Prize: Angela Smith Third Prize: William Atkins
Honorable Mention: Rachel Nemecek * Dahirwe Rushemeza * Shreepad Joglekar *
Colin Avery * Theodore William Arnold * Ellen Gaube * Ashley Jones * Elizabeth Jones * Sarah Nesbitt *Andreanne Michon * DeeDee Maguire * Emily Hanako Momohara *
Paul Morrison * Donna Pinckley * Harold Ross * Jane Rothman * Jimmy Salmon *
Seena Sussman * Chieko Tanemura * Samantha Vandeman

On Power Point: Director’s Choice Juried by Vernita Nemec
Juliette Argent * Stephanie Aust * Susan Barnett * Mimi Botscheller * Deborah Cahn *
Tina Carter * Virginia Coleman * Manuel Cosentino * Victor Currie * Nicholas Fedak II *
Cynthia Fleury * Jill Flyer * Amanda Gahan * Joshua Greenberg * Ken Green *
Susan Evans Grove * Barbara Habenstreit * Teri Havens * Melissa Haviland * Joshua Hobson *
Anwyn Hurxthal * Gisa Indenbaum * Thomas Jackson * David Jakelic * Lynne Johnson

Mary Wells “Ensemble: Paper Mosaic”

Mary Wells
“Ensemble: Paper Mosaic”
Feb. 21 - Mar. 10, 2012
Reception, Thursday, Feb. 23, 5 – 8p.m.

Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is pleased to present a solo exhibition of work by Mary Wells in its new gallery space at 548 West 28th Street #632, also accessible from 547 West 27th Street. Entitled “ENSEMBLE: PAPER MOSAIC” the exhibit runs from February 21 – March 10, 2012 with an opening reception on Thursday, February 23, 5 – 8p.m.

Variously described as “paper magic”, “enchanting”, and “a sterling feat, piecing together something with a grand romantic sweep on a tiny scale” each of award-winner Mary Wells’ paper mosaics is a multi-hued, intricate, jewel-like and precisely detailed rendering of a lifelike image. The finished pieces glow with reflective light and a strong feeling of three-dimensionality.

Every one of Wells’ paper mosaics contains some aspect of landscape, memory or journey and each marks a moment and contains a story from her life, acting as a specific entry in her ongoing personal visual journal. While based on Wells’ life experiences, each mosaic also embraces a more universal view. The artist’s compositions are derived from her photos. Some present glimpses of places she has seen only once, while others are of places where she has lived or revisited over time. Images of sky and water are consistently featured in Wells’ work.

The focal point of this exhibit is four visual tone poems. Each is of the same panoramic view as seen from Villa Vignamaggio in Tuscany, shown in a different season. The artist’s intent is “to create a visual interpretation of the sonnets composed by Antonio Vivaldi that he used as the basis for his well-known concertos ‘The Four Seasons’, his musical version of these same sonnets”. Wells’ paper mosaics form a third component, harmonizing with and enhancing Vivaldi’s written words and music. Augmenting the four large visual tone poem mosaics are a number of smaller mosaics that highlight specific views of the gardens, flora, vistas and architecture that make up the villa’s surroundings.

Wells technique, which she describes as ‘paper mosaic’, is her own personal adaptation of the precise Italian craft ‘mosaico minuto’, developed centuries ago in Rome using miniscule broken threads of glass in place of the usual larger stone or ceramic tiles commonly used in Italian mosaics. Wells has substituted these glass fragments with tiny bits of papers that she hand-cuts and then pieces and glues together into complex assemblages of realistic images.

Wells tools and materials—scissors, papers and glue—are simple. Her work, however, is meticulous—for example each of the four panoramic seasonal mosaics in this exhibit measures 8 1-2 x 48 inches and each contains over 70,000 individually cut and glued pieces of paper. It is also time consuming—she is able to complete only one or two square-inches-per-hour. As she works, Wells focus is on the time and place she is re-creating. While some might find this “picky work for the patient hand” Wells says she finds it meditative and soothing.

Viewers not only will see her art, but will also have a chance to meet the artist at her reception on Thursday, February 23rd 5 – 8p.m. or by appointment through the gallery (212-414-4040) throughout the duration of the show. We hope to see you there.

"VIRIDIAN AFFILIATE ARTISTS" : January 31 to February 18, 2012

"VIRIDIAN AFFILIATE ARTISTS"
January 31 to February 18, 2012
Opening reception Thursday February 2, 6-8PM
Thursday, February 16th, there will be a performance art presentation by N'Cognita at 7pm

Rosemary Lyons * Nancy Macina * Vernita N'Cognita * Lauren Purje * Sarah Riley * Katherine Ellinger Smith * Sheila Smith *

Chelsea NY: Viridian Artists is pleased to present "VIRIDIAN AFFILIATE ARTISTS" an exhibition of outstanding art by seven artists who are part of the Affiliate program at the gallery. The exhibit will continue from January 31 to February 18, 2012, at our new location at 548 West 28th Street, also accessible from 547 W 27th Street on the 6th floor. There will be an opening reception Thursday February 2 6-8PM and on the final Thursday of the show, February 16th, there will be a performance art presentation by N'Cognita at 7pm. The Viridian Artists Affiliate program is a special gallery program that is an important aspect of Viridian's mission to expand exhibition and sales opportunities for outstanding contemporary artists. Sheila Smith has been creating a series of photos she has been taking of wall surfaces in the streets of New York City for ages. After photographing her image digitally, she then reconstructs it in Photoshop to create an abstract painterly look. To complete the work, she then prints them on canvas and glues it to a gesso board so that the photographic image "becomes" a painting. Sarah Riley is the Head of Printmaking at Southeast Missouri State University. Her book on mixed-media printmaking techniques was published in December 2011 by A & C Black, London. Her artwork, too, is an exploration and mixture of media and techniques that combine drawing, collage, printmaking and paint. Many of her works contain feminist overtones and are drawn from myth, literature and personal history; the juxtaposition of images suggests both memories and re-imaginings. Rosemary Lyons is enthralled by the multitude of Latin phrases still in use centuries after the language was declared dead. Her illuminated manuscripts are inspired by that 'dead' language but she uses Latin with contemporary imagery to create Illuminated Manuscripts of 'Renaissance choir books with an ironic twist. These images are part of a larger Manu Scriptus Series. Lauren Purje's current paintings are part of what she calls "the disaster series", a series of paintings of children thrown into disastrous-looking landscapes. She sees the content of the paintings as allegories and metaphors for her own anxieties and fears: fear we all share like the fear of death and anxiety over circumstances out of our control. The characters in the works are hopeless and accompanied by universal symbols of death and/or impending doom in backgrounds loosely inspired by 19th century romantic paintings. Nancy Macina paints the great cities of the world and their environs, focusing on their beauty and how the light of nature falls upon them. Her hope is to capture the ethos of a place and how its history has evolved into the present through our perception and memory. As she travels and paints, she is recreating these places with imagination and in some situations, a sense of surreality. Katherine Ellinger Smith's new series of paintings and drawings is an exploration of her favorite films with female characters like Rebecca or Bette Davis in 'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane' who have double-edged personalities. To begin the development of a painting or drawing, she first photographs film “moments” with a digital camera while viewing the movie on television and then edits the shots until she finds an image that she feels directly connected to. Her intent is to draw the viewer directly and powerfully into the content of the piece. She is a tenured art professor at South East Missouri State University. Vernita N’Cognita is a visual/ performance artist/ curator who has exhibited her art throughout the world. Her artwork ranges across a variety of disciplines, from creating installations, m/m collages and tangible art objects such as the “Endless Junkmail Scroll to the creation of performance art that conceptually investigates theatre and its edges – using language, space, and time, silence and stillness as well as movement and voice as instruments of self-expression. In 1995, she assumed the name VERNITA N’COGNITA in homage to under-recognized artists. Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 12 - 6 p.m. For further information please contact Vernita Nemec, Gallery Director at 212.414.4040 or info@viridianartists.com or view the gallery website: www.viridianartists.com

"NEW VIRIDIAN ARTISTS"

"NEW VIRIDIAN ARTISTS"

Elizabeth Featherstone Hoff + Stacey Clarfield Newman + David Dorsey + Darryl Moody + Kiyoshi Kawaguchi + Valerii Klymchuk
January 3 to January 28, 2012
 Reception : January 5, 6-8 pm

Chelsea NY: Viridian Artists is pleased to present "NEW VIRIDIAN ARTISTS" an exhibition of outstanding art by six of the newest artists to join the gallery's ranks. The exhibit will continue from January 3 to January 28, 2012, at our new location at 548 West 28th Street, also accessible from 547 W 27th Street on the 6th floor. There will be an opening reception Thursday, January 5, 5-8PM. These 6 artists each have unique and fresh ways of looking at the world and translating their revelation onto paper, canvas, clay and whatever other materials they find necessary to elucidate and illuminate their interpretation of reality.

Elizabeth Featherstone Hoff works in multi media, sculpture, painting, (both oil and acrylic), printmaking, and occasionally, writing. She feels she is continually learning and for her, it is all about the journey and the road remains unending. The artist quotes Edvard Grieg, the composer, who said that, "Art is really the surplus of longing that cannot find expression in life or in other ways." This, for Hoff, is a succinct description of why she makes art.

A collagist and painter, Stacey Clarfield Newman has developed a unique method of recycling ephemera to create striking hand-painted papers. She then uses them as painterly “brushstrokes of paper” to produce lyrical collages containing abstracted “mindscapes” and whimsical social commentary. Most recently, Ms. Clarfield Newman spent two months living and working in Kolkata, India at the Udayan School, a welfare and rehabilitation school for children of leprosy patients.

In David Dorsey's paintings one sees objects as they really are. The artist has a dual purpose as he paints—to show objects, figures or scenes in a way that’s faithful to how they look in the world, but also with an emphasis on achieving certain color harmonies. Dorsey is an award-winning painter who has exhibited internationally. He works in a tradition that began with the Impressionists and continues in work by artists as diverse as Thiebaud, Dine, Porter, Fish, and Mattiasdottir, as well as many currently emerging painters.

Darryl Moody's digital images capture the visual remnants and torn fragments of found street posters that reveal current history worn by weather and random disfigurement. New Yorker magazine art critic Peter Schjeldahl once wrote: Moody's images are "visual paintings . . . photographically akin to the work of Aaron Siskind." The artist goes on to say "as the residue of life has continued to collect upon my creative vision, I have found the camera to be the most reliable tool in the revelatory process of meaning making. Revisiting urban settings to study public surfaces I focus on markings left behind by the ebb and flow of humanity."

Kiyoshi Kawaguchi's paintings of urban life synthesize with irony and humor the exuberance and rhythms of city life in paintings that are a perfect blend of his native Japan's love of Jazz improvisation and the classical sophistication of early modernist painters of the 30's. He returns to Viridian, showing here last in 1978, with paintings that are stronger and more enigmatically telling than before- the craziness of today's world.

Born in the Ukraine on the anniversary of the October Revolution, Valerii Klymchuk was the first in his family to earn a college degree and went on to earn a Masters in Systems Analysis. He is very ambitious and has decided to save the world with art, both a high and a noble calling. He says that his paintings are a result of subconscious transformations of thought and when he is painting, feels he can see beyond appearances of physical reality, a goal that all artists may seek unconsciously. His work was among those selected by Elizabeth Sussman for our 2010 Juried Competition. 

New Viridian Artists and Affiliates Exhibition

 New Viridian Artists and Affiliates Exhibition
December 28 - January 15, 2011
Reception: Saturday, January 8, 2011 4-7pm

Mary Wells * Carol Brookes * Katherine Ellinger Smith * Sheila Smith * Lynne Johnson * Lynne Mayocole * Rosemary Lyons * Bernice Sokol Kramer *

Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is pleased to present new work by new Viridian Artists & Affiliates. The exhibition features a wide variety of art by these exciting artists recently represented by Viridian Artists. The exhibit opens Tuesday, December 28th and extends through Saturday, January 15th with a reception Saturday, January 8, 4-7 PM. Each artist in this exhibit has been given approximately 10 linear feet of wall space to present a mini solo of their recent art. Carol Brookes and Mary Wells are yet to have a solo show at Viridian, so this will give viewers an introduction to their work which will be featured in solo exhibits next season. The other six artists are Viridian Affiliates, some like Rosemary Lyons, Katherine Ellinger Smith and Lynne Johnson returning to the gallery roster. The works by Carol Brookes are from her Construct Series, a group of frame-like boxes which are in essence wall sculptures, material driven and inspired by everyday objects. When arranged together, these ordinary materials are transformed, becoming precious and jewel-like. Katherine Ellinger Smith is showing 2 large scale polyester film images, one entitled "WATCH OUT FOR THE DEER", inspired by an article about deer attacking students at Southern Illinois University Carbondale who were supposedly taking shortcuts through a wooded area where the deer resided... "I find it amazing how similar we are to animals, emotionally, in some ways...there goes the image of deer as being non-violent and disney like…" Mary Wells creates paper mosaics of cut acrylic painted papers, which because of their intricacy and realism, appear at first glance to be photographic images. These delicately precise collages go far beyond the usual concept of cut paper and roam into the realm of ultra-realism. Bernice Sokol Kramer creates sculptural works of recycled newspapers and other mixed media sometimes painted, sometimes not. Her standing and hanging forms speak both of the figure and all that covers it. Lynne Mayocole usually thinks of her art as a sort of story. This one features "Screaming Mimis", small wall sculptures, scattered around watercolors celebrating the vibrant summer last year in Provence. "Are the "Mimis" celebrating a season seen last year but far in our snowy future? My stories leave interpretation up to the viewer!" Sheila Smith's digital photographs are from a series of images taken of New York City at night that often approach the abstract. The series is entitled "N.Y.C. After Dark", but the light that the artist has captured, speaks of the movement and excitement of the city at night. Lynne Johnson's prints and drawings focus on texture and on the many forms line can take, both in the natural landscape and in the man-made landscape of waste and recycling. She is concerned in her work with those forms & textures that bear witness to the effects of nature and time passing, as well as the odd juxtaposition of discarded objects of humans with natural forms which she feels mirror the randomness of life. Johnson was also a winner in Viridian's last Juried Exhibition. Rosemary Lyons, a Buffalo NY artist, has been making contemporary illuminated manuscripts with political overtones for a number of years. The four in this exhibition are among her most recent comments on culture and language.

"Holiday Presence" Viridian Artists & Friends

"Holiday Presence" Viridian Artists & Friends
December 6th to December 31st, 2011
Opening reception Thursday December 15th, 6-8PM

 Chelsea NY: Viridian Artists is pleased to present "Holiday Presence", an exhibition of art by Viridian Artists & Friends, December 6th to December 31st, 2011, at our new location at 548 West 28th Street, also accessible from 547 W 27th Street on the 6th floor. There will be an opening reception Thursday December 15th, 6-8PM. In addition, Viridian is bringing back its Holiday Store of art cards, prints, artist books, small art, art jewelry etc., all available for under $100. The winter holidays, over time, have come to focus more on gift giving & exchange, than on the religious origins of this time period. So, with this exhibition, "Holiday Presence" Viridian has taken the liberty of playing with the idea of "presence" to go beyond the thought of giving "presents" and presenting a more all encompassing sense of holiday "presence". The holiday season is much more for us all. It's a time of coming together with our families & friends, a time to take a break from work & spend a few days away, a time to celebrate another year almost over and a time to find just the right gift to let those close to us feel our caring. A time to write that letter about all that's happened this past year and mail it along with our holiday greetings to our whole address book. It’s a time of celebration and promises to make the future better. A time for hot mulled cider and eggnog, a time for old fashioned memories & doings, a time for home baked cookies and a time for sending greetings to those far away but still close in our hearts. It’s a time to come together with a holiday spirit and presence. Oh, and those presents of art would be the perfect! Each year, in a spirit of holiday giving and sharing, Viridian Artists take this time to enlarge their holiday presence by inviting guest artists to show their creations along with us and to give them all an excuse to create some small but special artworks to share during season of celebration, contemplation and giving. Feel free to dress up in tails black ties & beaded dresses to add to the holiday or, just come in you jeans. Come and add your holiday presence to our celebrations on Thursday December 15th! Or if not the, hoping to see you sooner or later!

"Picture Perfect: Director's Choice" "Director's Choice"

"Picture Perfect: Director's Choice"
"Director's Choice"
Artists from our 1st International Juried Photo Competition
curated by Vernita Nemec
November 8th to December 3rd, 2011
opening reception Saturday November 19th, 4-7PM

Matthew Derezinski * Gordon Gilbert * John Haines * Barbara Hillerman * Chris Jordan * Andrea Kemler * Thomas Krueger * Jane McWhorter * Darryl Moody * Shirley Pasternak * Vera Sprunt * Soni Wallace

Chelsea NY: Viridian Artists is pleased to present "Picture Perfect: Director's Choice", an exhibition of photographically based art to occur November 8th to December 3rd, 2011 at our new location at 548 West 28th Street, also accessible from 547 W 27th Street. There will be an opening reception Saturday November 19th, 4-7PM Although these artists/photographers were not “winners” of Viridian's 1st International Juried Photo Competition juried by Elisabeth Sussman of the Whitney Museum, Vernita Nemec, the gallery director of Viridian felt the images of these twelve photographers to be as uniquely interesting as some of those chosen by the Whitney Curator. And as we all know, professional opinions vary widely regarding what is the "best" art, for in the end it is a question of taste even in the eye of the professional and one of Viridian's missions is to provide meaningful exposure to underknown artists. Previously, these images were shown only in a power point presentation during the Juried exhibition last season, but Nemec felt the images to be worthy of their own exhibition and hence we bring the actual works together now. Each of these artists has their own personal obsession in their search for images in reality to record, capture or alter which they then transform into their own reality. Many of these artists work with enhanced & nearly surreal color changes and imagery, while others take the reality of reality and leave it as is. Andrea Kemler's still lifes look like Renaissance paintings, Shirley Pasternak duets with Romantic painters while Soni Wallace creates layered photomontage of fragments from nature which she photographs with a 35mm film camera and calls still lifes. Thomas Krueger's imagery focuses on the mundane and overlooked, creating gelatin silver prints. John Haines, Vera Sprunt and Gordon Gilbert all deal with nature but Sprunt adds acrylic to her layered images while Haines captures his version of the beauty of nature as he sees it in his surroundings and Gilbert heightens his colors to a surreal pitch. Jane McWhorter focuses on the sky and nothing else in the series presented here. More urban are the images of Barbara Hillerman who captures overlooked images in the reflections on automobiles and Darryl Moody who finds torn fragments of street posters from the walls of city buildings which he isolates and gives new meanings. Matthew Derezinski's images are filled with a haunting gothic aura and Chris Jordan, a photo professor at Alabama University, gives us his view of a sublime suburbia.

NAMIYO KUBO Water Series Vol 19 'The Ocean of light'

NAMIYO KUBO
Water Series Vol 19 'The Ocean of light'
October 18-November 5, 2011
Opening reception Tuesday, Oct.18 5-7p.m.

Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is pleased to present its first solo exhibition in its new space at 548 W 28th Street: the new work of Namiyo Kubo. Her exhibition of painting on paper entitled Water Series Vol.19 'The Ocean of Light' continues from October 18-November 5, 2011 with an opening reception Tuesday, Oct.18 5-7p.m

This will be Tokyo artist Namiyo Kubo’s second solo exhibit at Viridian Artists, but instead of covering the walls of the gallery with tiny collages of camellia blossoms as she did in January of 2010, this time the artist has filled the gallery walls with large collages of blue and gold painted paper that put the viewer in the midst of a watery world. It a combination of color and the rippled painted paper that creates the textured surface of oceans.

“The Ocean of Light” is about many things. The artist states that she is continuing to create about nature, sometimes about the sea, a drop of rain, rivers, the waves of lakes, oceans and bays, but this work is also about cities and the human- made world. The “light” of stars, meteors, electricity reflecting off the waves & ripples of water reveal the cities of the world. One can discern the silhouettes of skyscrapers & the lights of Tokyo, Shanghai, London, New York City and other cities one recognizes by the shapes conjured by the “Ocean of Light” the artist has filled the gallery with. The artist “sees” twelve lights on the oceans of the Earth and the spirituality inherent in the symbol of light & water, of rebirth, discovery & unity is especially critical in our time of tsunamis, political and religious strife and nuclear disasters. Despite the calamities of our times, this ambitious artwork reminds us that meteors, falling stars and “oceans of light” are signs of the enormity of and power in the Universe.

Namiyo Kubo is active in Japan creating murals, working with children in Iwate and doing much volunteer work in connection with art and the recent disaster in Northern Japan. Viewers not only will see her art, but will also have a chance to meet her as well at her reception on Tuesday, October 18th, 5-7PM. We hope to see you there. 

"Moved"

"MOVED"
Gallery Artists Group Show" (celebrating our new location)
September 20th - October 15th, 2011
Reception Thursday, September 22, 6-8pm

Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is pleased to present "MOVED", a Group Show of Gallery Artists celebrating the move to our new location at 548 West 28h St, suite 632. The exhibition continues from September 20th through October 15th, with an opening reception Thursday, September 22, 6-8PM. It’s always amazing how quickly time flies, but then we all feel that - young & old - in this age of quick upgrades and electronic gadgets that are out of date before they are worn out. Viridian’s ten years following our move from 57th Street to Chelsea, also has just ended. We remember our beginning here in Chelsea too well, for it was Sept 2001. This September, many galleries are having shows to do with the 10th anniversary of this immense tragedy but we did our Elegy to 9/11. Thanks to the encouragement of our President Emeritus, Barbara K Schwartz, the year after it happened we presented an exhibition incorporating an immense project of artists’ proposals commemorating that tragedy, curated by the sculptor Mary Miss. So let others commemorate that moment now and let us celebrate our move and the upcoming years at our new location, 548 West 28th Street, and also accessible from 547 West 27th Street. Now the Highline has an entrance on our block and Viridian continues to continue and move forward, as do the artists of today, responding to their personal realities and the realities of the world, whatever they might be. And so our show to open this 2011-12 season is called “Moved”. We have asked our gallery artists to select works that address the concept of “moved” in all its various ramifications, whether they be emotional, physical or other. Included in the show are: JANET L. BOHMAN, RENÉE BORKOW, CAROL BROOKES, JOHN CULLEN, MAY DEVINEY, ARTHUR DWORIN, DAVID DORSEY BERNICE FAEGENBURG, TAZUKO FUJII / OI SAWA, ALAN GAYNOR, WALLY GILBERT, ELIZABETH FEATHERSTONE HOFF, KATHLEEN KING, KIYOSHI KAWAGUCHI, YOUNG SAM KIM, VALERII KLYMCHUK, NAMIYO KUBO, ROBERT MIELENHAUSEN, DARRYL MOODY, BRUCE ROSEN, BARBARA K. SCHWARTZ, SUSAN SILLS, VIRGINIA EVANS SMIT, ROBERT SMITH, DEBORAH SUDRAN, BOB TOMLINSON, MEREDETH TURSHEN, MARY WELLS

Alan Gaynor "City Views & Other Things"

Alan Gaynor
"City Views & Other Things"
June 7- 25, 2011
Opening reception Thursday June 9, 4-7PM

Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is pleased to present new work by Alan Gaynor. His exhibition of photographs entitled "City Views & Other Things," continues from June 7 through June 25, 2011 with an opening reception, Thursday June 9, 4-7PM.

Alan Gaynor's evolution as a photographer is an outgrowth of his interest in architecture and urbanism. As architecture is often said to be "frozen music", Gaynor feels his photographs demonstrate that in a city, it is the layering of the buildings played against one another elements that create an overall ensemble that one could say resembles music.

The artist has studied with the master photographers George Tice (urban landscapes), John Sexton (black & white imagery of nature and Ansel Adams' assistant) & Jock Sturges noted for his B&W photographs of Naturists & beautiful people.

Nevertheless, and perhaps because he is a licensed architect, Gaynor's constant focus to date in his photography is an encompassing examination of the architecture of the urban landscape. Looking at his photographs, the viewer is made aware of the structural elements and the repetition of patterns and form in man made design.

Combining traditional photographic equipment with digital processing, Gaynor created color and black and white photographs in the show using 4"x 5" T Max 100 Film with a View Camera, or with a medium format digital back on a view camera. The photographs were output with professional inkjet printers.

This will be the artist's first solo exhibit at Viridian, though he has exhibited previously at FotoFusion, Spectra '07, Saf-T-Gallery, Black Box Gallery, Camera Obscura and Soho Photo, when in 2002 & 2003 respectively, he was awarded 1st & 3rd prizes in the Members Shows. He also received a Think Tank Photo Award in 2007. 

Robert Mielenhausen “ROME"

Robert Mielenhausen
“ROME"
Mixed-Media Reliefs
May 17, - June 4, 2011
Reception Saturday, May 21st, 4-7p.m.
Artist's Talk, Thursday, June 2, 6-7pm.


Chelsea, NYC. Viridian Artists Inc. is pleased to present "ROME", an exhibition of mixed-media reliefs by the artist Robert Mielenhausen. The exhibition opens Tuesday, May 17th and continues through Saturday, June 4th. There will be a reception on Saturday, May 21st 4-7pm. The artist will be present to give a talk on his work Thursday, June 2, 6-7pm. All are invited and admission is free. Mielenhasusen's latest body of work explores architectural remains of ancient Rome. The artist ingeniously conjures fragments of temples, villas, and scenographic walls that are scattered throughout the Italian peninsula. As a result, the Viridian Artist’s gallery space is transformed into a sumptuous departure of times past. The conceptualization of these artworks is derived from photographs of what once stood and still does which the artist has taken and gathered while traveling in Italy. Acting almost as a visual historian or anthropologist, Mielenhausen depicts visual elements and rhythms found in early Roman art and architecture. Through his compositions, the artist investigates spatial relations, textures, and atmospheric light which he feels set the stage for western art to follow. ”Villa Poppea”, a prominent work of the group, and recently published in the April 3rd issue of The New York Times is imbued with a sense of both solidity and decay. This theme of impermanence is reflected throughout the exhibition. The artist has layered the surfaces of his art works with glue, polyurethane and textural materials along with his photographs and occasional found objects. Mielenhausen’s intent is to interpret in a contemporary manner, by means of construction and deconstruction, what has come before. The art embraces both the literal as well as the abstract and gives the contemporary viewer a fresh look at the ancient world, stepping outside the realms of trend and sensationalism. This is Mielenhausen's first solo exhibition at Viridian, though he has previously had solo shows at Adelphi University, the Old Watermill Museum, Michael Peter Hayes Gallery in East Norwich and other locations. His art has been featured in numerous group shows throughout New York City and Long Island including OK Harris Works of Art. Most recently his work was featured along with a select group of Viridian Artists at Onward Gallery in Tokyo, Japan. His work is in numerous public & private collections.

Dorothy Dierks Hourihan "The Flower Show"

Dorothy Dierks Hourihan
"The Flower Show"
April 26 - May 14, 2011
Reception: Saturday, April 30, 2011 4-6pm

Chelsea, NYC: Viridian Artists is pleased to present a retrospective exhibit by Dorothy Dierks Hourihan spanning over 40 years. The watercolors & oils in the exhibit focus on flowers not imitated, but interpreted as energies of growing things. The exhibit opens Tuesday, April 26th and extends through Saturday, May 14th with a reception Saturday, April 30th, 4-6 PM. Dorothy Dierks Hourihan is an artist who uses her art and artmaking to celebrate life. A painter and educator, her passion for painting she says is "like a natural high that comes from interpreting and transforming visual perceptions." Her studio production is determined by her obsession with energy as a symbol of life opposing stagnation and death. In 2009 she had a 50 year retrospective in New York City at The Pen & Brush Club and continues both through her painting and her writing to pursuit a life lived passionately. Over the years she has created images both realistic and abstract covering the wide range of topics of life: Politics, sports, landscapes, living creatures, patterns and just plain energy. Again, in the artist's words, "Energy fields, both terrestrial and celestial, observed and imagined, seem to me expressions of spiraling, meandering, cascading and rippling in life itself, as well as a reminder of the beauty in nature's taking on a similarity of patterns in all flowing forms." Hourihan, like many passionate artists, sees communicating through art as "perhaps as strong a human need as drinking, eating and loving." Alejandro Anreus, Associate Professor of Art History, first met her in the mid 80's when he was an assistant curator at the Montclair Art Museum. Though art for her is a celebration of life, for her, as for us all, life also has had its darker moments with the loss of her husband Tim and her son. Anreus saw her struggle and survival through those times. He stated in the catalog from her 2009 retrospective, "through it all, her paintings have remained banners against despair constructed through her hard earned vision of survival through transcendence". The artist has a Doctor of Education degree from Columbia University and is the retired Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and Professor Emeritus at New Jersey City University. Her paintings can be found in numerous public and private collections and she continues to paint and write in her Blairstown NJ home and studio. Though now a septuagenarian, retirement is not on her agenda. She has written a novella, "1919, A Kansas Tale", available on Amazon, but is already working on a full length novel, that she works on while not painting