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Summer @ SONYA Exhibition
By The Changeling | August 13, 2008
South of the Navy Yard Artists (SONYA) is pleased to announce the group exhibition entitled “SUMMER @ SONYA” featuring art works that were created this year (2008) and inspired by the summer of 2008. SUMMER @ SONYA, curated by Kennis Baptiste, will include more than twenty-eight works in painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and photography by seventeen emerging and established artists members of SONYA.
The opening reception will be Thursday August 21, 2008, 6:30 pm - 9:00 pm at the SONYA Center, 394 Waverly Ave (between Greene and Gates). The exhibition runs from August 21 to September 25, 2008.
Here is a little bit of information about each of the featured artists:
Pamella Allen - Jamaican born, Brooklyn based Visual Artist & Teaching Artist Pamella Allen has been traveling the world “making art” for over twenty years, exhibiting extensively in New York, Paris, London, Costa Rica, and New Delhi. Pamella’s paintings, prints, works on paper, Journalistic Art Books and photographs are a culmination of more than twenty years of travels over land and sea. “In all of my works I speak of life through my experiences as an artist and woman of color living in many different parts the world today. To interpret the truth in all of the humanity that I have seen, I approach the creation of my works from memory and very rapid on-site life drawing, this allows them to speak in the many voices of the collective soul.”
C. Bangs - My work investigates frontier science combined with symbolist figuration. I’ve included quantum equations by Dr. Evan Harris Walker as sacred writing. These equations function as design elements and refer to the interconnectivity of everything and the relationship of time to space. My paintings on canvas or wood panels with sanded surfaces and are painted with acrylic containing mica and iron oxide overlaid with oil and powered gold pigments, which visually and conceptually references illuminated manuscripts. Archetypes of the Earth and cosmological elements are depicted from a ecological feminist perspective. One premise is that we are part of the Earth and all the elements of our bodies at one time were within a star. We contain both systems within us. My art is informed by mythology and the hope for human evolution, in a wide variety of mediums.
Kennis Baptiste - Baptiste started his artistic journey by experimenting with acrylic and oil paints. He had no idea that he could produce such work without practicing or having prior art education. Most of his initial works were figurative portraiture studies. He later started to study and experiment with different abstract ways of capturing movement and energy. During his experimental period, Baptiste was able to find his own unique style of expression. As his art form slowly evolved, the quality of his paintings improved and his knowledge and interest in fine arts also increased. As an urban artist of African and Caribbean decent, Baptiste believes that inspiration can be found almost anywhere. All one has to do is open their eyes, keep an open mind and draw their inspiration from what they see in their community and in the world.
Ramona Candy - After a long dance career, I put art to paper and canvas and call myself a “choreographer on canvas.” My approach to work, be it painting, collage or print, is like that of a dancer. With color, shape and movement, I create choreography on canvas. Though primarily inspired by dance, it is also pride in a rich Caribbean heritage and growing up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn that influence my work. I use color and shape to reiterate the vibrancy of a culture and way of life I continue to experience. Using movement, I hope to make a connection and open communication, much in the way a performer onstage connects with her audience.
Cochrane - There is no such thing as an original idea however there is innovation. Each mind that wills the hand to create something beautiful or ugly is borrowing from that force in the universe that gives us hope with our dreams or pain in our nightmares. Those of us that are covered in the arrogance of a know it all claim this force as there own and believe no one else should have access to it. They do not understand that the creative force belongs to everyone. Our balance is being shifted with each event that unfolds on earth. The force is all we have and those of us who can’t channel it rely on those who can. Artist of the world are the last line of defense on this chaotic planet and we are relied upon to keep bringing color movement and sound to mother earth.
Francks F. Deceus - continues to emerge as one of the important young painters of his generation. Born in Haiti, Décéus and his family moved to Brooklyn, New York when he was eleven years old. It wasn’t until he graduated from Long Island University with a degree in Sociology that he turned to making art as a career. Over a fifteen-year career, his work has marched chronologically from his childhood in Haiti, through his immersion into his new urban community as an immigrant, and recently, to his meditations on a conceptual vision of humanity. He has always been more interested in exploring themes and issues than in making definitive statements or creating a visual language with his art, and his work resonates with political and sociological content.
Angela Earley - Angela Earley is an artist and educator who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA in printmaking from Syracuse University in 1997 and her MFA in printmaking from Pratt Institute in 2005. Her art has received recognition both nationally and internationally and her most recent “Pigeon Series” of large drawings and etchings is permanently installed at the Radisson Royal Hotel in Dublin, Ireland. For nine years, Angela has been an art teacher at the 92nd St Y and a teaching artist in the New York City public school system through L.E.A.P and the Rotunda Gallery Education Program here in Brooklyn.
D. Lammie Hanson - The key element to my work are lights and shadows. That’s how I paint and now that is how I photograph. This year, 2008, a few projects I have been working on. I am introducing my “Trees and Branches” series, a study of nature at night; my “Music Suite”, a study of local NYC musicians; and my “City Suite”, a study of NYC at night Iand. In the painting category I am expanding on my “LOVE” series and “Introducing Abstracts” series.
Natasha Harsh - After graduating from Philadelphia College of Art, Natasha Harsh moved to N.Y.C., working primarily in art-related fields, she never stopped painting. Over the years, she has had several solo shows and exhibited in numerous group shows. While working in her studio at 41 Union Square West, she was intrigued by the “organized chaos” of the Farmers’ Market. The overflowing arrangements of vegetables seemed to have intrinsic abstract qualities. An ever-evolving series of oils, watercolors and aquatints ensued. With “still-life” as predominant focus, Natasha has also produced a large number of other representational works. Having painted at least six very large commissioned portraits of the Minsky family, she feels like their artist-in-residence. She even painted a “portrait” of another friend’s back-yard; trying to capture the essence of this garden by combining images from different seasons into a final painted image. Her painting’s ultimate goal is to evoke a basic, familiar responsive chord in the viewer.
Kathleen Hayek - I am in humbled awe of the power of life to destroy and create itself endlessly. In most of my work, I am attempting to dialogue with this fracturing, displacing, churning cycle—devastation to re-creation—of natural life force. My current works are landscapes of memory and dreams inspired by long drives on open road, along rolling terrain in all seasons. I use simple symbolic markings of trees and horizon line, scraped into printing plates, building the landscape mostly with layers of paper and colored inks in the printmaking process. Although I work in small series, carrying a theme through its natural evolution, each print in the series is unique and thus called a monotype or monoprint. All are created in the spirit of spontaneity, joy and love of natural forms and color harmonies.
Nikita Hunter - Art and spirit are one. Realizing this, I integrate my spiritual and artistic experience to understand the spiritual aftermath of the middle passage that has left many African Americans void of links that connected them to their ancestors and traditions from the continent. In my work, I have sought to find those links and bridge the gaps by studying Yoruban religion, and compare it to my grandmother’s spiritual survival tactics. I have used my paintings to convey my questions about traditions. Particularly in “What’s Your Identity”, I integrated a primitive application of paint with fragments of oral traditions, masks, maps, and images to illustrate how African culture and spirituality transcended the middle passage and impacted my sense of identity today, despite my confusion on how to honor cultures of an intermixed heritage of African and Seminole Native Americans. I used the hair, black and red to illustrate that fusion of cultures, and I used the patchwork quilt format to unify all of the questions and fragments the summed up my existence.
Musa - Musa is an Installation Artist and Sculptor. Brooklyn has been his home throughout most of his childhood and adult years. He lived in numerous places during his formative years. He has lived in Cleveland, Akron, Dallas, Virginia, and Upstate New York. Throughout those years, he found traveling to be a true education. Through practical application, his journey has given him a foundation for understanding life, people, and culture. Musa is now living and working in his childhood neighborhood of Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. He uses the activities and experiences in the past and present as inspiration to make his work more interactive. He is currently engaged in developing installation, video and public art projects.
Douglas Newton - I have been painting in a surrealistic style since about 1990. Images of houses, suburbs and cities, pools and gardens create an alternate world based on memories, observed reality and my imagination. I have shown in many group shows in New York City in both commercial and public spaces. I also had a solo exhibition at the Educational Testing Institute in Princeton, New Jersey, and was in two group exhibitions at the Hudson River Museum. Presently, I am represented by Gallery in the Woods in Vermont. My work is in a number of private collections. I live and work in Brooklyn, New York.
Kathleen Migliore Newton - I believe strongly that subject matter in art is the force that drives style, My canvases are peopled with characters, mostly taken from photos that I take. The figures are in an urban setting on the subway or moving across the geometry of the built environment. Living in New York City, I am a witness to the human panorama of people of diverse cultures going about their daily lives. I have tried to dream their lives. My most recent series is of people looking at paintings in Museums. I am interested in the contrast of time, place and culture between the images in the paintings and the viewers.
Sally Mara Sturman - is a working artist living in Brooklyn with her English bull terriers, Henry and Violet, who often make their way into her illustrations. She has continually painted and exhibited her work since graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design and her paintings have been used by such clients as Tiffany &Co, Godiva Chocolates, Random House, Conde Nast Traveler, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Gourmet, Country Living Gardener and McGraw Hill.
Lawrence Terry - I use smoking, burning & line carving in varied hues assembled. At the center of the piece, the circle, represents the human journeys wholeness. My work continues to spring from the region of instinct and interior, and brings to the viewer an opportunity to experience a bridge between the superficial and the mystical.
Iram Yeates - Iram’s art work reflects the passion he feels for jazz and dance. “Jazz to me is the embodiment of freedom. Every struggle with social and humanitarian issues leaves me with a note, a chord, and a melody. Jazz is the essence of modern music. Jazz is learning to speak the blues for all to hear. In my paintings, I hope to voice the history of jazz and its development so others can learn to love this true American art form”. When ask about dance his response was “at times it may take a paragraph to say what a dancer can express in a few moves. My paintings freeze those moments in time the energy, intent, drama and spirit still intact. I can speak endlessly on these paintings because they never stop for me they keep dancing”. Dark, black, ebony, and noir are words that can be used when describing Iram’s artwork. The base of his work is always built on the foundation of black from there he sketch in white charcoal then, work his color into and out of the darkness. “I don’t paint pretty colors for the masses; I do paint beautiful colors for the individual against the darkness which is the performance. The vision lives because my paintings are the windows, the night clubs, the stage, backstage, and the rehearsal the darkness is the emptiness before the performance. It is the mirror just before energy manifest to life, the performance begins”.
Topics: , Art and Artists |
August 13th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
fantastic info. thanks!
August 13th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
You’re welcome.