Teeny Tiny #6

February is upon us...more snow, valentines, my birthhday and the Teeny Tiny Art Show!

The sixth in the ongoing series of Teeny Tiny splendor this show includes old and new friends -- 36 artists from all over the country!

The show opens Friday, February 5th, with an opening reception from 5-8pm. For those of you who just can't wait -- feel free to check out a preview of many of the work in the show here.

I'll be sure to follow up with more in-depth previews and interesting tid bits about participating artists and their new works for this sensational show!

Cheers,

~Kim

New Year, New Show!

Today I write about a fabulous new show that just opened last friday featuring two talented and dear friends of mine -- Tiffany Torre and George Beland!

"Three Graces arranged the clever, yet natural pairing of wool installations by Tiffany Torre and wood furniture by George Beland. The softness of Torre’s fabric, like elegant tweed upholstery, ideally complements the modern, hardwood furniture. Both have minimal, but graceful lines and curves, and together the work reinforces the gallery’s welcoming, homey feel." (Chloe Johnson, the Wire)

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season! Like everyone else, the past few months have been very busy -- we moved into a house, which has been extremely exciting and overwhelming at the same time. Having lived in a very small apartment for the past ten plus years I am very grateful. (and Bob has given me free reign on picking paint colors, so I've been busy painting all of the walls...perhaps I'll share some photos a little later...)

i'm back!

The past few months have been crazy busy despite and also resulting in my lack of posting! My guilt has passed and i realize the blog must go on!

The gallery is currently featuring a beautiful show of recent paitnings and works on paper by Shiao-Ping Wang..."Musings"

"I am most interested in growth and change when I make art. I find patterns fascinating: when a few shapes accumulate in large numbers the appearance and energy of the image becomes wholly different.

More often than not the gathering (or “swarming”) of shapes develops intuitively without planned organizations on my part. However, nature often emerges in my work through the movements and textures I see in the environment around me. The layers of paint and material I use generate the physical change in the process that is very interesting to observe, just like the change of seasons.

I see a color either “float” or “sink” on the flat surface of the canvas, always moving and changing in many directions. For this reason I use acrylic paint and a vinyl paint, called Flashe, to obtain both glossy (acrylic) and matte (Flashe) surfaces for a vision that is constantly changing." - Shiao-Ping Wang

Shiao-Ping Wang was born in Taiwan and immigrated to the United States in 1981. She studied both Western art and Chinese art in New York and earned a MFA degree from Queens College, City University of New York.

Shiao-Ping works both abstractly and from observation in various painting media. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US and China. She has taught painting and drawing in various colleges including the University of New Hampshire. In 2007 Shiao-Ping won a Fellowship at Vermont Studio Center and in 2008 she was the winner of the Spotlight Award for "Best Painter". (Here she is with her husband and fellow painter, Brian Chu -- Brian was one of my professors at UNH!)

Shiao-Ping Wang: Musings runs thru November 30th, so stop in and say hello -- and if you can't, all of the works will soon be available in our online shop!

PICNIC

Three Graces has a booth at Picnic tomorrow!

the Festival begins at 11 am rain or shine ... stop by and say hi if you are in the area! I'll be there with Bob (and the lovely and talented Tiffany Torre will be in the gallery.)

Cheers

opening this friday!!!

Come one, come all! this show is amazing, I am so excited to have so many amazing artists to work with, unfortunately there is so much that still needs to be done between now and the opening tomorrow night, that I don't have time to go into the details...however, you can check out the Teeny Tiny Art Blog which features pictures and interviews with many of the participating artists and will continue to do so thru the month!

See you on friday, the opening reception is from 5 to 8pm -- and for those of you who can't make it, the online shop will be launched Friday afternoon!

Luminous Landscape

Last night we celebrated the opening of "Luminous Landscape", a new exhibition featuring encaustic paintings by Linda Cordner, Charyl Weissbach, Janet Bartlett Goodman and Tracy Spadafora. The artists in this show have employed diverse encaustic-based means for exploring the subtle and mesmerizing affinity imparted by our surroundings. The use of pigmented wax, with its vivid color and translucent properties is uniquely able to convey nature's vastness and its mysterious allure, creating an illusion of timelessness.

Linda Cordner has exhibited at Three Graces on multiple occasions, in the Teeny Tiny Art Shows and most recently in "Making Their Marks in Molten Wax. Linda was raised in Connecticut and received a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of Connecticut with concentrations in Graphic Design and Painting. She also spent a semester studying in London. An early interest in art lead her to choose this path without hesitation. After college she settled in Boston and has explored many areas of art and design throughout her career.

"I am very drawn to wax and its tactile qualities, the smell and viscosity of the medium are very different from other painting techniques. Creating organic forms is a natural extension of wax's origin. Coming from a background in graphic design, I am drawn to certain color schemes and shapes, the repetition and placement being important to the composition. My paintings are made by layering multiple coats of wax which can completely obscure the under layers at times. I use collage or incised patterns and lines to show the translucency of the wax."

Janet Bartlett Goodman currently resides in Oakland, California. A native of Boston, Janet received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art, with a major in Industrial Design.　Her early work as a Product Designer honed her eye for color, line and form.

"My father was an Artist. So the smell of linseed oil and turpentine always floods me with memories of my childhood. The work that I am doing is about people and places that are important to me. The power of imagery to evoke emotions and create memories has always fascinated me. I use color, line, and depth to create a lyrical aesthetic. Each piece holds a single moment in time. In some of the works the viewer is invited to wander in. With the grid pieces, the viewer sits firmly outside the scene, and the image is allowed to stand-alone.　

My background is in product design so, for me, material and processes are very important. Wax is a wonderful medium to work with and I love the challenges that come from working in this very ancient technique. Encaustic is a mixture of bees wax, demar resin and pigment which is heated and applied to a substrate than reheated and each layer is fused to the one below. Once fused you get a very rich, deep, luminous surface. The process of making art should not be routine; it should make you continually question and experiment. Each piece should build on the success and failures of the last."　

Tracy Spadafora works and lives in Boston. She is exhibiting paintings from her "Persistance of Nature" Series.


Tracy is exhibiting paintings from her "Persistance of Nature" Series. "Images of nature came into my work many years ago. Intrigued by the elegant and complex patterns of leaves and other flora, I began incorporating them in my work as symbols of our natural environment. In my paintings these organic forms are juxtaposed with symbols of our man-made environment, represented by schematic diagrams and architecture plans of the "Big Dig" artery project in Boston, MA. The leaves, pods, flowers and seeds often take on a whimsical quality as they hang, float, and blossom from a background of roads, parking lots, and industrial parks, ultimately reshaping these structured surroundings.


I work with an ancient wax painting technique called encaustic, which allows me to layer images and preserve them underneath the surface. The obscuring and burying of images within the layers of wax and paint helps to extend their meaning into the realms of memory and intuition. In these works natural structures and man-made structures converge and collide, creating a dialogue between these opposing forces. The natural environment has suffered greatly as a result of commercial, residential, and industrial development. Nature struggles to survive and find new life within the continuous sprawl of these man-made environments.

With these paintings I intend to convey a sense of the poetry and endurance of nature as a force - a force that seems to persist in spite of man's actions. In this work I seek to address larger questions concerning the lineage of our natural and man-made environments."

Charyl Weissbach is a Boston encaustic painter. She has a BFA in Painting and Art History from the Massachusetts College of Art. Her painting technique involves the use of hot wax(encaustic)in combination with oil paints.

"Color, texture, and light placed within familiar settings such as a landscape or seascape can evoke feelings of inspiration.　These locations contain intriguing compositions, color rich in texture, and unusual shapes that, in collaboration, emit an aesthetic sensation of harmony, and the illusion of timelessness.　The imagery of my work does not accurately represent nature, as we know it.　With this, I am able to convey nature's vastness and its mysterious allure, which is a significant theme in my compositions.　Therefore, I try to unveil an abstraction of nature's character, attempting to capture some of its infinite variations of color, shape, and ethereal beauty.I derive great pleasure from satisfying a viewer's yearning for visualizing the complexity and beauty of our natural surroundings.　It is my hope that these feelings, which have formed the basis of these paintings, will be in some way conveyed to those viewing them."


"Luminous Landscape" is on view thru August 31st. You can also view all of the paintings from this exhibition in our online shop!

flea market finds + Amy Gross!

Bob and I got up extra early this morning so that we could drive to Rowley, MA to check out the Todd Farm Flea Market...


It was much larger than either of us had expected, but we managed to cover the entire thing in about two hours -- taking our time and looking closely at first then quickly scanning by the end. There were some wonderful things and lots of, well, crap (literally, there was a guy pedalling plastic poo!)

We made two small purchases - the first was a lovely little della robbia, we have one that I made Bob for his birthday two years ago, but I love these things, and I need all the luck I can get in the kitchen! I also purchased some doilies...



I have big plans for the doilies...I recently came across this photograph in Amy Gross's flickr photostream:

She covered the cat scratches on her sofa with flea market doilies, Solomon (her cat) soon lost interest in the sofa as scratching post. Personally, I'm going to need many more doilies, however, it's a start...

Amy is a brilliant artist and textile designer. She is participating in the upcoming Teeny Tiny Art Show #5 in September! In fact, I just posted an interview with Amy to our Teeny Tiny Art Blog. You can read about Amy and some of the other participating artists HERE!

Teeny Tiny Art Blog!

The Teeny Tiny Art Show #5 is coming in September!! Forbidden Fruit leading us into temptation...

AND I've created a special blog dedicated to this special show.


In the coming weeks I will be posting about participating artists - interviews, pictures, random things...more than you would ever need to know!! Read all about 'em here.

i heart wide-angle lenses

Robin came in and took some shots of the gallery with her fancy wide-angle lense, they came out great! The space looks huge...


And here's Robin with the work!

Robin Luciano Beaty: Above and Beyond...

We have the most beautiful show in the gallery right now! "Above and Beyond" is an exhibition of encaustic paintings by Robin Luciano Beaty.

Robin works in the ancient medium of encaustic: a molten beeswax paint mixed with resin and dry pigments. She describes in her statement how the medium allows her to escape the confines of everyday artist's techniques and provides her with more exploratory means of expression. “Its qualities are sublime and unpredictable, additive and subtractive, translucent and sculptural, which strongly influences the direction of the painting.”

“My process is driven by the visceral journey of discovering something reminiscent rather than recording a specific space. The act of scraping, tearing, building up and burning down the layers of wax from the surface of the painting to reveal distinct compositions and texture is metaphor for digging into memory, and allows me to navigate that internal journey. It is the intention of my work that the viewer see the personally familiar in the most foreign, exploring the deeper roots of beauty with a new set of eyes; those above and beyond the surface or that which goes unnoticed.” ~Robin Beaty, 2009

Robin Luciano Beaty is an award winning painter out of Newbury, Ma. Her work has been featured in multiple solo exhibitions. Represented in many private and corporate collections internationally, her work can also be found in galleries around New england and numerous group and juried shows. Most recently Robin was awarded the Award for Excellence in Mixed Media at the NAA's 12th annual Regional juried show as well as the prestigious International Encaustic Painting "Conference Award" for Best in Show in the exhibition juried by Nicholas Capasso, chief curator of the Decordova Museum.
Robin's highly collected work has been described as "a compelling intersection between painting, sculpture and installation" and "beautifully conceptual, satisfying mind and spirit simultaneously".

"Above and Beyond" is up thru August 3rd - don't miss it!! If you are too far to make the journey, you can see all of the works here and here in our online shop! Enjoy.

Sara du Long + Market Square Day

Also in June...Sara du Long was here in the gallery for a Trunk Show featuring lots of new pieces. She was working away all winter to create some amazing new designs...It was great for folks to have the opportunity to meet Sara in person, and hear her talk about her process and inspiration!


Though Sara is not here everyday to share her secrets, her fabulous jewelry designs are a permanent fixture. Check out some of the new work in our online shop!

**We will be having a Trunk Show with Erin Moran in August - details coming soon!

Also in June, Portsmouth celebrated Market Square Day! Three Graces participated with a booth - thanks to the amazingly talented and generous Erin Moran for her help! It was a fun and successful day...

June was busy...Nicole Maloof!!

Dear blog, i am so sorry to have neglected you for so long! I looked at my calendar the other day and was shocked to see that june had come and gone and july is upon us...I'll write about current goings on in a following post, however, I feel the need to share with everyone the happenings of this past june...

Three Graces featured "Love Letters to Kafka", an exhibition of recent works on paper by Nicole Maloof. The exhibition was extremely well received, it challenged many viewers and made others giddy with excitement!

“Drawings for the current show were made in the spirit of Kafka's literary works. The imagery touches upon a nightmarish and fantastical world where coherency and meaning is not seemingly present. Strange creatures interact in a stage-like world, though insufficient information is available to piece a full story together. My starting point begins with the questioning of social constructs that exist around us. Man-made concepts of power, punishment, the existence of the Other, etc run through the work. Machine guns, ramen, schoolgirls, and executioners coexist. Strange relationships are forged, creating humorous but unnerving images that the viewer is left to decipher. These implied narratives are aimed at inducing an investigation of their meaning, a process reflective of our own search for meaning in the absurd and potentially godless world that we reside in.” ~Nicole Maloof, 2009

The above painting is called "The Courts Were Too Powerful for Dracula and Frankenstein". Nicole is juxtaposing historic evils (in the form of executioner and clan member) with fictional evils (Dracula, Frankenstein and blue vampiric blob)...the latter are saddened and can't bare to look...

Nicole Maloof was born in 1983 in Seoul, South Korea. She received her BFA with a concentration in Painting and her BA with a concentration in Chemistry from Boston University in 2006. She currently resides in Boston, MA. In July, Nicole will be travelling to South Korea on a teaching Fulbright. For the next year, she will be teaching English, investigating Korea's contemporary arts, and continuing to make art as well. An account of the trip will be posted on her blog (http://nicolesyearofkimchi.blogspot.com).

"Love Letters to Kafka" came down this past Monday. Many works from the show sold, however the remaining works will be available thru Three Graces. Check out our online shop for more details. Enjoy!

Robin Luciano Beaty

Finally, Robin Luciano Beaty is fabulous and the fourth artist in our upcoming exhibition, "Making their Mark in Molten Wax"!


Robin concentrates primarily on the ancient wax base medium of encaustic paint, a molten beeswax mixed with resin and dry pigments, which she incorporates mixed media, vintage materials, textiles, metals and found objects. Her work has been described as a "compelling intersection between painting, sculpture and installation" and "deliciously collectable".


In her own words: "I believe its the artists job to communicate an impression in a voice most have not heard. Traditional landscape painters strive to create a reproduction of place. My encaustic paintings derive from my own intuitive perspectives, pulling inspiration from emotion, imagination and memory, concentrating on the often over-looked and unconventional."

"My process is driven by the visceral journey of discovering something reminiscent rather than the recording of a specific space. The medium of encaustic provides me with that exploratory means of expression in a way everyday artists techniques can not. Its qualities are sublime and unpredictable, additive and subtractive, translucent and sculptural which strongly influences the direction of the painting. The act of scraping, tearing, building up and burning down the layers of wax from the surface is metaphor for digging into memory and allows me to navigate that internal journey."

"I'd like the viewer to discover a new perception of space while possibly revisiting images from their own recollections, sparked by the sensory experience of texture and touch. I choose to render this experience in a way that can be both understood and confusing. Just as one would feel walking down the corridors of a foreign market in a far away culture, making discoveries and unlearning misconceptions. Allen Ginsberg said "Others can measure their vision by what we see". It is the intention of my work that the viewer see the personally familiar in the most foreign, exploring the deeper roots of beauty with a new set of eyes; those beyond the surface or that which goes unnoticed."