Group Show

The Schoolhouse Galleries
494 Commercial Street Provincetown, MA 02657
508.487.4800 www.schoolhousecenter.com

PRESENT

NEW WORK

Friday, June 25 - Wednesday, July 14

RECEPTION: Friday, June 25 7-10

 

In Silas-Kenyon:
Andre LaRoche, Timothy Ojile, Jenny Humphreys, Stephen Vassilakos, Jim Rann, Joyce Robins

On the Project Wall:
Catherine Widgery

In Driskel One:
Tony Mendoza, Photographs from 'ERNIE' and 'DOG POSTCARDS'

In Driskel Two:
James Shannon, William P. Hamlin

In the Driskel Library:
Ramon Alcolea

 

The Schoolhouse Galleries present new shows on Friday June 25 through Wednesday, July 14, 2004.

 

RAMON S. ALCOLEA is a Spanish born sculptor who has lived in Provincetown since 1989 after graduating from Parsons School of Design in NYC. He has received many grants and awards including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and a Massachusetts Local Cultural Grant. The work in this exhibition: "Arcadia" uses a combination of found wood and new wood together to create a unit that doesn't lose the integrity of its parts. If form follows function then Alcolea's sculpture follows the function of it's own working process. This working process is as much part of the finished piece as the visual decision making that went into its making. This exhibition features favorite images, with new work coming throughout the season as construction on his Provincetown studio is completed.

Where other photographs end is where the work of WILLIAM HAMLIN begins. The initial image is literally cut apart, separated into linear sections and then it is recreated into a semblance of the original. However, like looking through a screen, reality has been modified. What we perceive as a whole is actually a myriad of its components for the viewer to observe either individually or as a whole. Hamlin started experimenting with different techniques while studying photography at NYU's Tisch School of the Art. An added interest in Cubism and its theories led him to a double major in art history. It was a combination of the two - the practical techniques of photography and the aesthetics of art which he used together to create a series of collages in the style of David Hockney and a series of photographic extensions inspired by Lucas Samaras which eventually led him to find my own technique - the woven photograph. For this exhibition Hamlin will present favorite images, and new work throughout the season as construction on his Provincetown studio is completed.

For the last two years JENNY HUMPHREYS has worked on a series of paintings called "Vics and Perps" which depict lone females in the natural landscape. Her work for over a decade has frequently touched on themes of the abuse and degradation of women (including self-imposed) using media as varied as embroidery, knitting, quilting, cooking, performance, photography, and video. Humphreys has decided to return to the more traditional medium of paint to refamiliarize herself with the practice of making art as a kind of sensual and visual discipline - to explore the concept of beauty and what it means both in art and in nature.

The females in the paintings are a reference to the longstanding exploration of beauty through the depiction of women in art as well as a reference to the artist wandering the landscape of her own imagination, and her place in it. The figures and the landscapes are intentionally unspecific, but they spring from memories of daily excursions through nature, past memories of natural places, and depictions and descriptions of nature in the work of other artists and writers. The work is intended to be quiet and contemplative, even though some of them hint of a lurking threat or unease. Although they are set outside, the paintings are interior, as they are more about a view of the world, and our place in it.

For ANDRE LAROCHE art is a way to create 'place' with a perspective. Andre is a painter who lives and works in Canada. He exhibits frequently in the United States and Canada. This will be his first exhibition at the Schoolhouse Galleries, although his images have held interest for Cape collectors and viewers for several years. Laroche says that art-making 'also creates an environment where we can learn about each other, where we can be 'together' (to give each other strength). It is a way to communicate, to help us know each other (better)'. He focuses on the idealistic aspects of painting and looks to his process as a place where we can look for inspiration. 'Art is just life 'abstracted' and it is there to help us to try to give more sense, to make more sense to our life.'

For this exhibition he will present new paintings on canvas. The images are large and small format oil paintings on canvas. Beautifully chosen colors in somewhat flexed and elastic shaped give the sense that we are seeing the minimalist grid through a familiar filter, like rainy car window.

TIMOTHY P. OJILE was born and raised in Minneapolis, MN, and was graduated
from the University of Minnesota with an Interdepartmental Degree in Eastern
Art History, the Humanities and Speech-Communications. He began to paint
during the sixties, and during the seventies in New York City, and seriously
pursued painting as a career after he moved to Hawaii in 1981. Since then,
he has been in many solo and group exhibitions, garnered numerous awards, and
has shown throughout Hawaii, as well as on the Mainland, and in Japan and
France. He teaches Intuitive Painting at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. For this exhibition he will present new paintings on paper.

During the past year JIM RANN has been challenging himself by inserting non-representational work within his paintings. Rann is a local favorite who has become known for his humorous images that tell the story of what he sees on the streets and landscape of Provincetown, and in his home. He paints in the tradition of Mary Hackett and the Ashcan School, but with a contemporary twinkle in his brush. For a challenge Jim began to place abstract paintings on the walls of the rooms he paints, even having his figures looking at or responding to them. The play between his paintings and the works within was just the thing to prompt Jim's restless talent to grow.

In the new paintings we see that Jim is as interested in representing his daily life and point of view, but that his hand has been so taken with the act of painting itself, that new developments and departures are now visible. A beautiful squiggle may now represent a shoe or doorknob, and the colors now tell us much more of what the figures seem to want to turn and say. Jim is still a master of the 'naïve', but with a much wiser hand.

For some time now JOYCE ROBINS has been making clay polychrome sculptures, often in groups related by a specific three-dimensional idea. She is interested in how installation, light and color affect our perception of visual forms; how the simplest of changes can create a world of difference. Inspired by all sorts of patterns, natural and man-made, Robins uses textures and perforations to create scale and manipulate the play of light. Light can rake across a surface, penetrate the skin of a piece or seem to emerge from within. Color offers more possibilities in charging a 'simple' object with ambiguity and nuance. To achieve this she combines glazes with washes of transparent ink and opaque pigment. Joyce generally works with basic geometric shapes -- allowing for a better understanding of the implications of these strategies.

JAMES SHANNON is a saxophonist, photographer, fisherman and tree surgeon 'in
that order.' He takes stunning photos of Provincetown at slightly unusual times of day or evening, taking traditional photography and giving it a bit of attitude. The results are surprising, sultry and mysterious and offer a refreshing new point of view on a familiar landscape.

After leaving Provincetown some years ago STEPHEN VASSILAKOS has been living and working in Paris. Having experimented with different styles and mediums he has come back to a process of making art that is based on drawing. Stephen has an exciting new body of work that includes more of the 'Head Studies' with which Cape audiences are familiar, as well as a group of larger, more abstract images that he calls 'Action Heroes'. The new work is an exciting and animate progression into new holographic painting space for this artist - space no longer confined to the areas we imagine to be around someone's head, or traditional portrait space. Instead we see larger canvasses with gorgeous backdrops laid first, then new 'objects' have been introduced into the foreground. No longer heads, these are imploding and exploding considerations in the possibilities and 'heroics' of what paint can do. The resulting works are wonderfully complex and engaging canvasses with fresh, fun results.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1953, CATHERINE WIDGERY received her B.A. from Yale University in 1975, living and working in London, New York and Rome before settling down in Montreal in 1979 where she lived until her return to the US to live in Truro, Mass in 1999. She has exhibited in Canada, the US, and Europe. Her exhibit Lost Sense at the Royal Ontario Museum in 1998 received international recognition. Her work appears in the collections of the Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal, the Musee du Quebec and many other public and private collections. She has completed twenty-eight major public commissions in the US and Canada.

Her personal work uses the fragile materials of nature juxtaposed with some familiar personal or domestic item. In her public work, her main interests lie in creating environments that respond to natural elements of wind and light and translate the experience of the natural world into urban materials and vocabulary. This environmental art is woven intimately into the building or landscape. For this season the gallery will present individual projects and objects to completemnt her installation, 'Nevertheless' at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, ( www.paam.org ) that also opens on June 25.

 

The Schoolhouse Galleries are located at 494 Commercial Street in Provincetown's historic East End Gallery district.

For more information and an interview with the artists please contact Mike Carroll at 508.487.4800 X 105 or email mcarroll@schoolhousecenter.com

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