Daily Digital Sketch by Heather Goff

May 30 to June 13, 2015

2015 SEASON OPENING SHOW

ARTIST RECEPTION FOR: PAUL LAZES AND HEATHER GOFF … with A GROUP EXHIBIT BY A GALLERY ARTISTS, including Irving Petlin, Mariana Cook, Rez Williams, Stella Waitzkin, Cindy Kane, Doug Kent, Carol Barsha, Carol Brown Goldberg and many others.

PAUL LAZES / “Tough Chicks of Martha’s Vineyard” Series
A selection of life-sized iPhoto portraits of women who are inspiring to the artist, and who are well known across island. This series was initiated in the summer of 2014, with 38 of the intended 100 subjects photographed to date. Small prints will be available to purchase by request.  

HEATHER GOFF / Digital Daily Sketches: 
This ongoing series illustrates moments in the artist’s life on the Vineyard – spans the four seasons, moments in and outdoors, with details from the garden to the kitchen and everything in-between.

New artists who have joined A Gallery are : Julia Mitchell, Leslie Baker, Rob Hauck, Donna Straw.    

Billy Hoff : detail Untitled, oil on canvas

Billy Hoff in his studio in West Tisbury, MA

June 19 to July 1, 2015

New Oil Paintings by BILLY HOFF 

 

Billy Hoff’s narrative paintings, some set in landscapes referencing seafaring eras bygone, blur the lines between the exterior and interior worlds of memory, fantasy and illustrated story telling. Real life characters significant to the artist from his past and present, favorite films and literature populate the canvas, inconspicuously allowing emotional entry toward the basic / bittersweet / staple themes of innocence, love and loss.

He is inspired by classic illustrators, (Howard Pyle, Frank Schoonover, N. C. Wyeth), and painters such as Daumier, Bill Jensen, Terry Winters, Van Gogh, Victor Man, Albert York, Peter Doig, Michael Andrews, R.B. Kitaj.

Bold colors and the physicality of markings and frenetic energy dominate what he calls “content & form picture making.”

Julia Mitchell : Tree Trunks Orange Border, Linen, silk and wool

Leslie Baker: Question Everything 3, Monotype with graphite, 22″x 23″

Donna Straw: Menemsha Moment, Acrylic on canvas, 18″x 18″

July 5 to July 16, 2015

JULIA MITCHELL, LESLIE BAKER, ROB HAUCK, DONNA STRAW

A Gallery welcomes artists Julia Mitchell, Leslie Baker, Rob Hauck and Donna Straw.

JULIA MITCHELL’S wool, silk and linen tapestries are inspired by the natural world … the effects of wind, water, light and shadow over time. She is concerned with the beauty that surrounds us every day ~ whether we live in cities, in suburbs, or are surrounded by wildflower meadows. Her goal with every tapestry is to reveal her subject’s inner essence. 

LESLIE BAKER’S abstract monotype prints and large oils on canvas will be featured in this exhibit. Inspired by memory and marking …  opposed to the literal landscapes, detailed illustrations and portraiture she is also know for, these one of a kind works are a kind of minimalist meditation. Her larger abstract oil paintings evolve organically out of these unique mono-print studies.   

ROBERT HAUCK’S mixed media, acrylic abstracts on canvas and paper are heavily textured, layered and convey a sense of time passing. Vague remnants of dates, numbers, and text embedded or loosely scrawled are in sync with the character of an artist who doubles as a mystery writer.  His monotypes are a blend of his loose painterly style and more deliberate markings, with moody overtones.   

DONNA STRAW’S acrylics on canvas illustrates her interest in architecture, her love of color and design, and her ability to reinvent Vineyard landscapes with her stylized, clean, crisp lines.  Otherwise predictable stone wall and field scenes are distilled into dreamscapes – as geometric forms, the illusion of multiple horizons, with birds in flight within her matrix create a balanced symmetry between organic and premeditated realities.   

 

 

 

Rez Williams: Downpatrick Head, Ireland, 16 x 18″

Rez Williams paintings A Gallery Martha's Vineyard

Rez Williams, KillerDuff Bridge, Ballycastle, Ireland, 42″ x 54″

July 18 to August 5, 2015

NEW OIL PAINTINGS by REZ WILLIAMS

 A new series of oil paintings by Rez Williams following a six week fellowship, starting March 2014, at Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ireland. Thirteen paintings were completed in a small studio with skylights allotted to Williams, and several more were produced in his West Tisbury studio.

Williams focused mostly on subject matter within walking distance of the Center, which include the dramatic cliffs of Downpatrick Head, composed of layers of ancient sea bed which rebounded some 400 feet when the glaciers retreated. The home-base town of Ballycastle is surrounded by farmland, high plateaus of peat bog, clumps of smallish trees in the occasional cranny, and a powerful sky full of chaotic frontal systems rolling off the north Atlantic.

Also included are new works from the ongoing Fleet series. 

Christopher Wright: The Milky Way over Menemsha, Metal infused C-Print

Peigi Cole-Jolliffe: Polaris with Star Trails, Mixed media on paper, 57″x 38″

August 1 to August 14 , 2015

 Opening    Saturday, August 1st, 5 to 7pm

OPENING RECEPTION : NIGHT SKIES … New Photography by CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT / Mixed Media by PEIGI COLE-JOLLIFFE

New Photographs by CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT, Stars Over the Island capture the Milky Way over Martha’s Vineyard waterscapes.
Wright has always relished at being outdoors at night. Feeling comfortable with the crisp smells of night air; subtle sounds; leaves blowing and snow falling; the ocean rolling onto the shore; the light of the moon, and the stars shining overhead. For Wright, “night is like entering another world: a world of magic, where no book or film can compare”, where the stars occupy his thoughts, beckoning one to look deeper.

Stars Over the Island is a sharing of this experience of connectivity to something wondrously larger than oneself.

Night Skies: from PEIGI COLE-JOLLIFFE’s ongoing series: Lokta paper, ink, colored and metallic pencils, metallic pigment, stone.

“I have long been interested in the metamorphic quality of isolation, how values and perceptions and needs change. What is rejected and what remains. It is a kind of distillation. Moving to a small island in Maine I have experienced my own sea change, and my latest body of work reflects that.”

Cole-Jolliffe has been captivated by the brilliant intensity of the night skies of Maine. She felt attracted to the star, Aldebaran, the eye of Taurus, one particular night and began to spend more time outside, looking up, with a planisphere and a little flashlight covered in red tissue paper. She was delighted to really begin to see how the stars moved around Polaris, read ‘star-stories’, learned myths and lore attached to the constellations, and picked stones from the beach … wondering at their histories.

“From my granite outpost I watched the moon rise and set, the constellations come and go with the seasons, comets and meteors and planets, once even the Aurora borealis pulsing out a pink light.”

 

 

Alessandra Petlin: Portrait photography

Carol Brown Goldberg: Acrylic on canvas paintings from the Garden series.

August 8 to August 27, 2015

 Opening    Saturday, August 8th, 5 to 7 pm

OPENING RECEPTION : CAROL BROWN GOLDBERG, JO-ANNE BATES, ALESSANDRA PETLIN, CHIOKE MORAIS

New works by Jo-Anne Bates are the result of experimenting with the tearing and folding of her more traditional monotypes, incorporating shredded junk mail for texture, and randomly drizzling colored ink over the surface. She has also added text in the way of words in this new series, introducing “sayings and statements used by and about black people, particularly situations surrounding mistreatment of young black males by various policemen.” Bates describes this evolution as a means of “exploring methods of creating new philosophical road maps by making connections with color, shape, text, and texture.”

Carol Brown Goldberg’s bronze sculptures are cast from “found and junked” objects configured in whimsical and joyful assemblages. Items that once filled our domestic environment in either practical or decorative ways are transformed into anthropomorphic commentaries on our culture.
Colorful acrylics on canvas, from Goldberg’s ‘garden’ series, are images of blossoming abundance, where voluptuous petals and leaves imagine the fabled gardens of Mesopotamia.

Photographer Alessandra Petlin introduces a new portrait series of physically striking, aesthetically compelling women she noticed on the streets of New York City, beginning Spring 2014. The colors, textures, and distinct sense of self-expression by the subjects motivated Petlin to translate that ‘presence’ onto film.
Petlin is a subject orientated photographer, prefers color, and has earned several awards for her work in photography.

Paintings by Chioke Morais are inspired by his childhood games and those of his own children. His mixed media works typically feature acrylics, collage, found objects, and the occasional ceramic. Morais is concerned with creating art that is both meaningful and beautiful, and in 2000 founded Bent Wing Arts Group in Chicago, with artists dedicated to this end.
He is currently also working on pieces inspired by the history of African Americans and a series of portraits of some of his favorite Vineyard characters.

© A Gallery MV 2019