Tim Arnold
Tom Borgese
Robin Bruch
Bill Hamlin
David Mamo
Pasquale Natale
Tia Scalcione
Phil Shinnick
Mike Ware

In the Silas-Kenyon Gallery

June 6 – July 10, 2003
OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, June 6 7-10 PM
ARTIST TALKS: Saturday, June 7 Noon

Contact : Michael Carroll 508.487.4800 X 105
Mcarroll@schoolhousecenter.com

The Silas-Kenyon Gallery presents new work by these nine artists, all of whom work from similar material sources and with a fresh, contemporary aesthetic that is smart, sensible and humorous. There will be an artist’s reception on Friday, June 6 from 7-10 PM. And a Gallery Walk with the artists on Saturday, June 7 at Noon.

 

TIM ARNOLD was born in Chardon, Ohio, east of Cleveland, in 1957. He grew up near Columbus, Ohio and graduated from the Columbus College of Art and design in 1980.
He received a Master's degree in Elementary Education from New York University in 1985, then taught at a small progressive school in Manhattan. He wrote an/or illustrated five books for children. Tim has been painting since 2001. He has studied with Jim Peters and at the Vermont Studio Center. He lists as influences the philosophers Bronowski, Searle and Singer, the scientist Lovel. For this show he will present new drawings and small paintings.

 

TOM BORGESE makes art and situations that have an uncanny way of seeming to participate in the architecture and fabric of our times, rather than being made from it’s ingredients. For this show he will concentrate on outer-space phenomena and some paintings of gemstones. His choice of subject is particular and important. Borgese paints Geary buildings, Japanese fashion, gem stones and outer space – all examples of elegance and design where beauty is assumed therefore becoming a necessary function of design. (if perhaps only to a select class of world citizen). Borgese focuses specifically on the this area as he feels it parallels a pre-modern function of art, one which acted like science in it’s desire to explore and understand the then current unfolding world. In the same way a Renaissance artist might have grappled with a physical problem like perspective, these paintings represent the philosophical ramifications brought on by knowledge. How do you think about a dying star? What is it like to know about that and see pictures of it? Borgese gives us an opportunity to consider our position in the universe and to ask what defines our unfolding world.

 

ROBIN BRUCH paints relaxed but quietly ecstatic versions of geometric abstraction. The images often recall bold textile patterns or the symbolic meditative diagrams of India called yantras. An association with Western manuscript painting is also present, but overall her work is rooted in the picture of contemporary abstraction. For this exhibition she will show works on paper that are smart, quirky, colorful, and thoughtful. What is remarkable here is way each contributing factor (color, scale, picture, texture, line, etc.) is simple and fascinating, while the resulting works seem to glimmer as if perfectly nourished by each step of it’s construction. Bruch seems aware of every possibility for the success and failure of an image. Clouds of determination and hesitation may surround her intentions. Yet denying nothing she makes mark after perfect mark. Then again: perfect. And on: perfect, human marks which deny nothing. The final pictures are like topographical renderings the architecture of mind. Maps of non-narrative experiences without ends or beginnings. Her work is a generous reminder that the unknown can be a lot of fun.

 

"Geometry is very personal to me, serious business but at the same time no more cosmic than comic. My geometry is infused with aspects of calligraphy and the color field, following a path both formal and intuitive, ostensibly structured yet open to improvisation. My geometry builds figures of contemplation perhaps more informed by Tibetan mandalas and Navajo blankets than the constructivist grid, and I have found similar kinship in the art of India, Africa, and Islam. Like the art of these cultures, my work examines the infinate permutations of ur-forms, subtle inflections of the square, diamond, triangle, and circle. I have found that painting is related to and even part of my own meditation and spiritual search and that the daily process of saving my own life is extended to exploration and dialog with the world around me, hopefully providing a meditative respite and/or challenging invitation for the viewer."
- RB

BILL HAMLIN’s work is about the constraints of photography - the limitations of trying to capture a three-dimensional world in a flat photograph. By weaving photographs together he is able to transform two-dimensional images into three-dimensional interpretations of the original. The final pieces are a combination of two copies of the exact same photograph woven together to create a new version of the original. In this way the images are also about a manner of looking at things. It is a way for Hamlin to further re-create what he is seeing with the woven image as more true to the experience of viewing a subject. The work explores how we see the world - not all at once but in separate glances that are built up. Just as we continuously accumulate details across time, the woven images layer time and also layer observation. The viewer is compelled to examine and re-examine the woven photograph.

"Although the photograph was taken in a small slice of time, how I viewed what I photographed was done over a period of time. By manipulating the final image it becomes more about my experience of viewing. Because the images are woven together the surface of the photograph is broken and it is both whole and hundreds of micro-perspectives. By breaking up the surface through the weaving the images become principally about vision and how we see and less about their subjects. The photograph is broken into a myriad of tiny squares, which are viewed simultaneously as whole but upon closer look each square reveals itself as a separate vision of the whole."
- BH

DAVID MAMO’s work is at once ancient and modern. In his sculptures, past and present are one. Working with wood, stone, bronze, bone, lead, teeth, fur and metal, he combines organic and man-made materials, juxtaposing the elements that conspire to make us human. But if you look closely, some of what appears to be organic (ie: teeth) are in fact created by the artist. This “trick” illuminates Mamo’s interest in the melding of form and function. Even his large sculptures, evoking the human figure, illustrate this point for what is more functional yet so strange and beautiful as the human body? Mamo’s works appear to be filled with the literal and figurative contents of one’s head; there are bones and teeth, photographs float like distant memories, and objects, both found and created, some useful some fanciful, are like the fruits of an archeological dig of the soul. The arrangements of these pieces work together to form a dream, a dream of an imagined life. Just as words are arranged to create a narrative, the contents of these works of art create their own story and like all the best narratives, it is at once specific and universal.

PASQUALE NATALE will present a series of crocheted cock warmers, in a variety of sizes and colors. As a child, Pasquale constructed shrines with fabric and real roses. “I
felt most connected with myself when I was touching, working with, and feeling objects.” Later his work became like shrines or switching stations, sites of metamorphoses where poetry, design, and architecture would intersect to transform “irreversible absence. . .into tangible presence”. The work became about AIDS, loss, and memory. His ingredients then-- fear, grief, the utter incomprehensibility of time and loss, and above all, love, were folded into each work of art - cross, door, photograph, as strata, the living material animating it from within. The sheer number of dots in the dominoes he used to construct sculpture spoke of the endless replication--of the virus, death, and now, the survivors. But there's the Freudian notion that repetition always contains the possibility of a different outcome, a persistently rekindled optimism. Like people, Natale's pieces were and remain in transition, as if beneath the narrative of loss lies some other creature struggling to be born.

This new work is that other creature. AIDS, now mature and diversified into the population, leaves some survivors. To varying degrees they can live, love and play at renewing the joyful sexualities that had become so strange. Natale’s new work is playful, colorful, wry, and too much. Cocks in all colors, shapes and sizes have been knitted using a stitching pattern familiar to most as reminiscent of our grandmother’s shawls and throws. They are politically incorrect, thankfully, too.

 

In the past five years TIA SCALCIONE’s compositions have moved from representational industrial cityscapes to more abstract sea and landscapes. They are filtered landscapes - almost always created in the studio. The work is about memory of a place and time. Tia is less concerned with depicting a specific site than of referring to a place. Observations made are distilled in and result in works that are a combination of intuited and conscious decisions. The small scale of the work is intentional and aims to draw the viewer in rather than demand attention. The quality of the color and evidence of her mark making are also important components. Tia believes that her role as an artist is to observe and translate.

 

To make art that is whole, referring only to itself as the meaning sought after, this is the art PHIL SHINNICK is doing. Silence and a sense of time and place are elements in Shinnick’s art. All allusion to three-dimensional space is avoided. The work is three-dimensional, but the linear graphite drawing is not read as an object resting on a painted wood surface or in a three-dimensional field. Rather it refers to the edges of the piece, which in turn - together with its curved and flat surfaces - refer to: the wall, the ceiling and the floor i.e. to the surrounding architecture. Shinnick carries this idea further, each piece in the series refers to the other pieces in that series. The present series refers to the previous one and is the seed for the work to follow. Using an intuitive sense of left/right balance, Shinnick attempts to counter the innate human tendency to feel a stronger visual weight on the right side, by creating a sense of buoyancy on the right side of the work. A moment of stillness is captured, everything in the piece (the relationships between the drawing and the edges, between the left and right sides, between the edges and the wall) is held in check. There is a tension though…this stillness could be right before settling in or right before shifting apart.

 

Phil Shinnick resides in Northampton, MA and New York, City. During the 1990’s he divided his time between Rotterdam and New York City. His works are in private collections in Europe and the United States. Shinnick grew up in the Boston area, receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art.

 

MIKE WARE is an artist who lives and works in Provincetown. After studying at the Art Institute of Boston he spent the next 12 years working in corporate advertising where he received numerous awards for his work in design and television. Ware decided to seek a more creative outlet for his talents, enrolling as a student at The Provincetown International Art Institute where he studied with Jim Peters, Bob Bailey, and Paul Bowen. For this exhibition he will show a cross section of recent work from his studio where he also makes sculpture, assemblages and installations.

The Schoolhouse Center is located at 494 Commercial St. in Provincetown’s historic East End Gallery District. Hours are daily from 11-10 and always by appointment. For information contact Michael Carroll at 508.487.4800 X 105