CURRENT EXHIBITION


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2024

Metal, Paper, Glass
Dolores Poacelli and Hank Murta Adams
Closing Reception, October 12, 5 to 8pm

​Gallery open October 13, 12 to 5pm
Opening Reception- May 25, 5 to 8pm
Open Sunday, May 26, 12 to 5pm
​Show runs through November, 2024
Dolores Poacelli, Master Race, aluminum, acrylic paint on wood panel  ​           
Hank Murta Adams, Ocupatto, glass, steel
Picture

​Hank Murta Adams-
​"Ocupatto" is the name given to this series of work. It derives from the work "occupied" and refers to reuse and reclamation; like hermit crabs, making a reoccupation. Ocupattos were first made as one of many alternate mold blowing demonstrations for student in the early 200s. The first exhibit of them was held at Heller Gallery in New York City in 2005.

Early on Hank Adams blew most of these himself with students assisting, but soon realized they were a great community engagement practice as well as being pedagogical. He continued making them where and with whomever was in residency at the time. The pieces were successful because they were fun, relatable, and allowed a wide variety of skill sets to participate.

Having also been a designer where one is required to work collaboratively, it was soon realized these were more than just objects, teaching tools, or ecological statements, but fulfilled a communal and ambassadorial role.

Hank made the metal work ahead and then explained a set of design parameters to the participants. Then, within those strictures, the freedom of the blowers is left open for interpretation. Through the years of various visiting artist residencies and teaching venues, these have become a communal grounding project where they are made and shared with the participants. Each of the pieces is descaled, cleaned, patinated, dated, and 
signed by Hank with a notation of where the pieces were made.
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​Dolores Poacelli-
​I start my statement by saying that Relationships are never easy...especially those between color, shape, texture, and space. But intent, obsession, and process is where it begins.

Many times my work is materials driven; sometimes it's opinion driven, but always it brings together various materials from metal to cardboard resulting in some form of mixed media. In a sketchbook or on the computer, I will make 50-some idea/drawings and when I finally step up to the white surface to start a painting I use none of them, but a compilation of them all, allowing the vocabulary of the shapes and colors to jump in where they're needed.

In my paintings, I build each with layers of indecision. Working and reworking over what I instinctively know doesn't work, while searching for some essence, some simplicity.  Then, there's attitude - the attitude of shape - almost like body language that suggests a feeling. 

Over the years I have worked on many different series. The process has become somehow more important than the final pieces. And if, as they say, that art making is problem solving, then the problem begins when the artist makes the very first stroke.

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2023
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Master and Apprentice
Stefan Martin and Michelle Post
Opening Reception- Saturday, October 14, 5 to 8pm 
Gallery open on Sunday, Sunday, October 15, 12 to 5pm
Michelle Post Sculpture, wood engravings

Post Industrial, 2012, Carved styrofoam, plaster gauze, resin, acrylic paint, leather, wood, iron. 54”Hx35”Wx108”L

Michelle Post apprenticed with Stefan Martin for wood engraving in 1976 and was his only apprentice. Her style combines the linear qualities of the past with the creative freedom of the present. 
Post's 3-dimensional “Tronies” are not traditional portraits. Colorful, expressive, engaging and humorous, describe these inventive concoctions of observation, imagination, and artistic style. They are informed by a lifetime of stored observations and arise primarily from her imagination. The original pieces are carved directly in Styrofoam then modeled over which softens and unifies them, then painted in an expressive manner. They are not idealized, not a pretty or handsome media face, nor a particular person; yet, they are somehow familiar.
In the later 16th and 17th centuries, a “tronie" referred to heads, faces, or expressions of anonymous people depicted in works that were not intended to be formal portraits but rather used as studies of interesting expressions or facial character. Frans Hals' painting 'Jester with a Lute', in the Louvre, is a good example of this genre, as are well known works by Rembrandt and Vermeer.
Stefan Martin  1936-1994  Incised collages, paintings, wood engravings
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Couple, 1971 Incised collage, 36"x48"

Stefan Martin, born in 1936 in Elgin, Illinois, is a graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago. He majored in painting, drawing and graphics. He was awarded first prize for painting in the Metropolitan Museum's Young American Artists show in1960. During his schooling, he learned the fine art of wood engraving at the Sanders Engraving Company in Chicago, one of the last remaining commercial wood engravers whose work was featured in mail-order catalogs, such as Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Montgomery Ward.​ Stefan's paintings evolved int what he termed: "incised collages", by cutting, peeling, removing, and rearranging chip board sections to build a textural surface to convey his image.

Martin lived in Roosevelt, New Jersey along with his father, David Stone Martin (1913-1992), and his brother, artist Tony Martin (1937-2021). The Martin men were among other artistic luminaries living in Roosevelt in the 60s and 70s including Ben Shahn (1898-1969), Jacob Landau (1917-2001), and Gregorio Prestopino (1907-1984). 

Stefan Martin drowned in a boating accident on Oct. 7, 1994 on the Assunpink Lake in Millstone Township, NJ. He was 58.