gallery35nyc

FORM AND FORMLESS
May 5  – June 9, 2018
Artists’ Reception  May 12  6-8 pm
Closing Reception  June 9  6-8 pm

Our final exhibit of 2017/2018, Form & Formless, will feature contrasting styles ranging from figurative to fanciful, representational to totally abstract.

For figurative artist John Devaney, “The gesture of figures is always prominent for me: how movement shapes both the figure and ground. I try to capture a sense of fluidity, an interplay between the seemingly solid objects and the space around them, whether in my paintings of swimmers, city crowds, buildings, and still life.”

Another representational artist, Teresa Hommel, is showing images of leaves and grass, and rocks with moss and/or lichen, where the key feature of the work is the composition.

Of Woman Dancing, Ingrid Sletten explains “In my experience the spirit has shape and texture and an almost metallic quality about it; my dancing figure shows this in her essence.”

Virginia Asman has stretched her ability to work abstractly using the magical tools of the digital media to transform her southwest imagery of a chile ristra, a coyote and a skull.

Abstract work by Susan Demmet-Harris will complement the realistic renderings of three models painted by Kevin Maxwell at Chelsea Classical Studios and Lois Ross’ painting, Still LIfe.

Of special interest is Bev Thompson’s sculpture Ghost Dog (stone carving), which will be presented in photographic form.

Also exhibiting work are Cari Clare, Denise Fryburg, John Connors, Juanita Gilmore, Peter Robinson, Valerie Lynch, and Yolande Heljnen.

An Artist’s Journey
April 7- May 5, 2018
Artists’ Reception: April 14—6-8pm

Gallery35 is pleased to present this season’s second two-person show featuring the work of two of the collective’s artists.

Pat Gericke and Denise Fryburg both have used their art to chronicle their years of artistic development. The two, who studied together ten years ago,  have followed very different artistic paths. Denise has studied and worked as an artist continuously throughout her life. Pat interrupted her early artistic endeavors to pursue a different career and later returned to creating fine art. This exhibit showcases their evolving artistic processes. 

Pat Gericke is presenting a culminuation of different approaches with still lifes, figurative and landscape works, each piece representing a lesson in developing a visual eye. Besides being a resident member of Gallery 35 and living in Murray Hill for over 35 years, Pat is also an artist member of the Salmagundi Club, sitting on the Art Committee, as Vice Chair, , jurying member applications, exhibition entries as well as hanging the art work. This summer she will be studying with Julien Merrow Smith, in Provence, in the South of France. 

Denise Fryburg’s work features a unique look into her creative exploration, from her early twenties until the present. Fortunate enough to meet wonderful mentors along the way, she has been immersed in the pursuit and study of classical drawing, the magnificent world of color and the timeless disciplines of painting and rendering.  Denise shows her process and also reveals her journey into other popular and immediate art forms.  She is endlessly inspired by the last words of Michelangelo, “I am still learning,” and looks ever forward, with great anticipation, toward the creative road that awaits her.

PEOPLE, PLACES  & THINGS: March 3- April 6, 2018
ARTISTS’ RECEPTION: May 10    6-8pm

Gallery35 is pleased to present this review by fellow artist, John Devaney, of the work of Rick Perez and Yolande Heljnen in People, Places & Things at the gallery.

The current two person show of figurative painters, Rick Perez and Yolande Heljnen, is a rare opportunity to see two sides of the figurative portrait process. Perez’s serene, even majestic, figures play an impressive counterpoint to the lively, tonal work of Heljnen, who often mounts pages from her notebooks with studies of people, interiors and landscapes. Her pages have the immediacy of the on-site reporter’s sketch, but they are fully developed in tone and mood. Her earth tones, using a limited palette, manage to convey many more colors than one actually sees. These are vignettes, but I was reminded of the spare yet rich tonalities of  landscape painters and portraitists such as  the modern realist, Antonio Lopez Garcia.

The subjects in Perez’s work, while diverse in age, physique, and costume, share a contemplative grandeur. One can see the cool finish of the French Academy, but there is a rich range character in the expressions, and poses—from the almost heroic stance of a man in Asian silks to the demure yet proud head-on pose of a young woman in a white dress. 

This exhibit is a celebration of a steady and searching gaze at the beauty and variety of the human form. There’s just enough contrast in the two approaches here to give a sense of what goes into such a process.   —John Devaney

This exhibit will run for just one month and well worth a visit to Gallery35. Meet the artists at a reception on March 10th, 6-8pm or by appointment.

RED—January 14—March 2, 2018
Artists’Reception: February 2  6-8pm
Closing Reception: March 2,  6-8pm

Gallery35’s newest exhibit, RED, celebrates a color long treasured by artists!
From the Venetian masters Titian and Tintoretto to van Gogh, who blended it into many shades in dozens of paintings, artists sought out the properties of Mexican red, which is extracted from the tiny cochineal insect, a small parasite that feeds on the prickly pear cactus. Carmine, van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in 1885, using another name for cochineal, is the “red of wine and is warm and lively like wine.”—from Elisabeth Malkin’s article, “An Insect’s Colorful Gift, Treasured by Kings and Artists”, NY Times, Nov. 27, 2017

And now, during these cold winter months of 2018, nineteen Gallery35 artists are exhibiting works featuring various degrees of this wonderfully warm redness!

Painted from life, Rick Perez’s portrait of the NY actress known as Waltrudis “attempts to capture the beauty and poise that so impressed me about her when she sat for me.  The red color of her sweater very aptly symbolizes the passion and devotion which are clearly driving forces in her profession and in her life.”

Yolande Heijnen is also exhibiting portraiture while Peter Robinson is showing his photograph of a sunset he captured from his apartment window when the sky was ablaze with red.

John Devaney’s painting is part of a series of swimmers that have morphed from human figures to animals, and to mythical creatures,  and back again—with no particular progress intended, just an ongoing impulse to embody the sensations of motion, flow, weight, mystery, and paradox.

Pat Garbarini’s work features the rich red color of a tree at The New York Botanical Garden in addition to a purely abstract work expressing the richness of the color. Red is also paramount in Virginia Asman’s original drawings of Southwest icons, recreated and painted digitally.

Bev Thompson’s Red Barn depicts a country holiday amongst the hay and holly with the photographer’s Best Canine Friend, Sealyham Terrier, Mollie Mae.

Also exhibiting are Beth Barry, Cari Clare, Denise Fryburg, Dianne Martin, Ellen Mandelbaum, Ingrid Sletten, Jody Leight, John Connors, Pat Gericke, Teresa Hommel and Valerie Lynch.

Enjoy the details shown below of some of the exhibited art; then, come see the complete works! We hope they will warm up your winter!

TOP: Beth Barry, John Devaney, Denise Fryburg, Pat Gericke, Patricia Garbarini, Rick Perez. BOTTOM: John Connors, Ellen Mandelbaum, Virginia Asman, Bev Thompson, Yolande Heijnen.

October 28, 2017  – January 6, 2018
Artists’ Reception:  December 2, 2017  6-8pm
Closing Event: January 6, 2018  2-3pm

Because of the times  in which we live and the challenges we face in the 21st century, Gallery35 artists have chosen to present this very unique exhibit. During this past summer, we invited Community Church of NY UU members to articulate to us the issues most important to them.

Statement posters shown with art by (l-r) Rick Perez, Denise Fryburg, Virginia Asman

Their words are presented on statement posters as part of this exhibit, along with original art—created by our artists—inspired by their thoughts on the environment, civil rights, immigration and refugees, striving for peace, affordable housing and homelessness, democracy vs. corporatocracy, jobs, voting, gun safety and the global community.

Statement posters shown with art by l-r) Lorena Pachón, Kevin Maxwell, John Devaney

Our intention is that, through the language of art, our voices will be heard! 

Participating artists:
Cari Clare, Denise Fryburg, Dianne Martin, Ellen Mandelbaum, Ingrid Sletten, Jody Leight, John Connors, John Devaney, Kevin H. Maxwell, Lois Ross, Loren Pachon, Marilyn Boddewyn, Patricia Garbarini, Rick Perez, Susan Harris-Demmet, Valerie Lynch, Virginia Asman

DOORS & WINDOWS: September 10 – October 28, 2017
ARTISTS’ RECEPTION: September 16th,  6-8pm
CLOSING EVENT: October 28,   2-3pm

Windows and doors are usually just for peering and transversing. In Gallery35 at Community’s newest exhibit, they also function as an inspiration for artwork!

For the gallery’s opening exhibit of the 2017/2018 season—Doors and Windows—member artists have created work related to the theme that is both literal and imaginary.

Yolande Heljnen’s small dramatic paintings of windows were completed during a travel grant in 2016 in France where she worked mostly out of a sketchbook.

Work by (l-r) Yolande Heljnen, Diane Martin, Beth Barry, Lois Ross, Virginia Asman

Making use of her own garden flowers at a time when she was teaching 5 days per week and only had weekends to paint, Diane Martin created Blue Spring Window. She worked each week with a different piece of stem, leaf, or flower observed from life. Since she didn’t know what might be available to use from the garden each week, she simply let “chance” compose the image over time. The architectural pediment at the top derives from memories of Italian 16th century architecture.

Within Beth Barry’s abstract acrylic painting Green Door, perhaps there lies “that secret it’s hiding”!

The adobe wall surrounding many Santa Fe homes usually features an entry door through which visitors must proceed. Using a little imagination—plus original and antique photographs—Virginia Asman’s  series Time Warped Welcome explores the possibility of “characters” of the Old West greeting the viewer. Come visit with Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull and Kateri Tekakwitha (the first Native-American saint)!

Also in the fanciful vein is Lois Ross’s collage Serenade Beneath My Window.

Bev Thompson’s Monk & Sister: The Cloistered Life was created from a series of dog training photos with Monk & Sister working on their retrieve —behind closed doors.

Come see these and the work of other gallery artists including Susan Demmet, Teresa Hommel, Cari Clare, Ellen Mandelbaum, Patricia Garbarini, Denise Fryburg and Ingrid Sletten.

Our gallery is now officially known as Gallery35 at Community to reflect our relationship with Community Church of New York, Unitarian-Universalist. Gallery35 has been operating as an artist collective since 2004 with member/exhibitors from both the church and the larger community including several artists from Murray Hill, our neighborhood.

We are also presenting a new “unofficial” art show this summer! Although exhibits are normally scheduled from September through June, we have hung a surprise “pop-up” show for the summer months of July and August. To enliven the gallery walls which are usually bare during this time of year, we gathered and hung many of the colorful exhibit posters from the past several years.  Accompanying the posters is an exhibit of art recently shown at the gallery by member artists including Ellen Mandelbaum, Teresa Hommel, Valerie Lynch and John Connors.

We hope visitors and groups meeting at the gallery enjoy our new summer look!