Winter Show 2012 – Featuring Richard Drake

Winter Show 2012
A Celebration of Light
January 19-February 19
Featuring the light sculptures of Richard Drake
With a percentage of all sales benefiting CERF+

26 years ago when Richard Drake first stepped foot in Williamsburg, it was a vastly different neighborhood than it is today. At the time, the waterfront and surrounding area were great for finding discarded objects and bits of rusted metal, all of which inspired him in his artistic endeavors. In his creative process Richard develops self-imposed problems and then seeks interesting and engaging solutions. His artistic goal is to create new life and purpose for these found objects.

This new life was to find a connective energy that would lend his art not only an environment within the object, but also relate to the environment that contains the art. His curiosity and passions led him to explore and experiment with incorporating light into his pieces, eventually becoming artistic representations of physical light. Within his work, you’ll find the rusty bits of found objects, along with physical forms of nature, all woven and connected with light.

Much of his early work was focused on form over function. But as he explored his creations, he discovered that function (i.e. easy access to change the light bulbs) began to drive his artistic visions. Many of these early pieces are now in private collections but will be on display during the Winter Show.

Richard’s newest works are more refined and deliberate in their execution. These light sculptures are beautiful without ever turning on the light. However, when lit, these forms come alive and create an ambiance within the space of the sculpture while offering a warm focal point for any environment. Each piece a unique experience of contained beauty, filling space with an ethereal ambiance grounded with an organic yet industrial integrity.

We invite you to come partake of this lighting experience during our Winter Show 2012. Additionally, during our winter show, we’ll spread a little more light in the world by donating a percentage of our profits to CERF+, a national artists’ service organization whose mission is to safeguard and sustain the careers of craft artists and provide emergency resources that benefit all artists.
www.craftemergency.org

CERF+ – how connections change your life

My relationship with CERF+ began with meeting a jewelry artist I had admired for a number of years. When I started my journey into jewelry making I had attended several schools and subscribed to a number of periodicals pertaining to the industry. Through these periodicals I started following an artist whose work I both admired and was inspired by – Biba Schutz.

In anticipation of opening the gallery and as a member of the American Craft Council, Richard and I had decided to attend the Baltimore craft show. Our intention was to introduce ourselves to as many artists as we could; those whose work we admired and thought would work well as a collection in the gallery. For me, the highlight of attending this first show was meeting Biba Schutz. I was more excited as a jeweler who has been following her for years, then a gallery owner hoping to entice her to join us. As it turned out she proved to be one of the warmest, most generous people you could meet. She had a number of great ideas and suggestions on doing business and became the very person to introduce us to CERF+.

When we got home, I logged onto the CERF+ website and knew it was more than just a craft related organization. Here was a group dedicated to the artist in a way I’d never seen – financial and educational assistance AND emergency relief assistance. Many artists live on the edge of financial disaster in order to create their work. CERF+ recognized a need and is filling that need in a big way. They are on the scene when an artist has met with a catastrophic event. Something you don’t think about when looking at the amazing work produced by so many talented artists while attending shows. You don’t think of the “behind the scenes” lives of these artists.

We continue to visit various events, and would run into Biba at most of them. At one in New York, she was behind the CERF+ table, talking about the organization and all it does to for artist. Through Biba we made contact with a friend of hers who coordinates benefit events, Nel Emlen, the Events Coordinator for CERF+. The rest is history.

Welcome to our Winter Show, A Celebration in Light.

Winter Show
January 19-February 19, 2012

During our winter show, we’ll spread a little more light in the world by donating a percentage of our profits to CERF+, a national artists’ service organization whose mission is to safeguard and sustain the careers of craft artists and provide emergency resources that benefit all artists.

www.craftemergency.org

 

Holiday Celebration

Please join us for two very special days of a Holiday Celebration. We have many fine artists’ work available for holiday giving along with select pieces for the collector. On Saturday, December 10 and Saturday, December 17 our doors are open from 1-7pm to our neighbors and community to stop by.Come share a holiday tale, sip some mulled cider and find that perfect and special gift for the loved ones in your life. Make this holiday amazing by giving a unique piece of jewelry, sculpture or painting that you cannot get any where else.

We have a whole selection that can fulfill your shopping needs, with many items under $150. Stop by and make your gift giving enjoyable and easy.

Occupy ART and support local artists this holiday season. We are!

(231 Bedford Avenue @ N4th Street Brooklyn)

Art Jewelry

We’ve gotten such a great response from our readers about our blog on the Radi Brothers, we thought it time to showcase our art jewelry selections overall, as we are fortunate to have a number of highly-skilled and diverse jewelers in our gallery. And with the holidays just around the corner, our jewelry selection offers options for the gift-giver and collector alike.

Nicole Pilar, Sculptor/Jeweler



Susan Gabor, Hand Painted Beads



Steve Riley, Recognized Jewelry Teacher



Dori Eisenhower, Precision/Detail/Beauty



Kiyomi Yamagishi, Internationally Recognized

Featured Artists: Radi Brothers

Jewelry has always been a part of Viktor, Zef and Nick Radi’s lives. As children they were sometimes known to play with objects and figures made of silver, which might seem strange were it not for the fact that their father is a top master of filigree and is recognized as such throughout the Adriatic coast. What began as a game, with time, developed into a passion.

The Radi Brothers were born in Kosovo but at a very young age they moved to Croatia — geographically not very far, but culturally very different; the exposure to and acceptance of both cultures made things interesting.

At an early age, Viktor, Zef and Nick learned the family secrets from their father of how to make fine filigree and then both studied further in specialized schools to add knowledge of the full range of contemporary jewelry-making techniques. Their intricate jewelry is exclusively hand-made by them, consisting of hundreds and thousands of tiny pieces combined into a single unit with a lot of effort and patience and play. For their work Viktor, Zef and Nick use an elegant and very wearable combination of gold, silver, precious and semiprecious stones.

Thus, the inspiration for their unique jewelry line comes from both the thousand-year-old techniques of their family heritage and from contemporary culture, the flatness of modern shapes and modern art.

Featured Artist: Hawk Alfredson

Courtesy of Hawk Alfredson

When you meet Hawk Alfredson, you’d never guess that this quiet and unassuming man is the potent and powerful force behind the dreamy surrealistic paintings on display at Barking Lizard Art|Design Gallery. On par with Francis Bacon, his highly detailed paintings have been internationally exhibited in museums around the world.

Arriving in 1995 from Sweden, Hawk quickly made an impact on the local art scene with an impressive 20 shows within in his first year. His work is an enigmatic blend of Bosch and Poe like themes. His is a complicated and confusing weave of personal dreams, trauma and history with a full color spectrum of macabre and carnival moods.

Courtesy of Hawk Alfredson

It is hard to convey in words the impact his paintings have on the psyche. In fact, the artist himself has this to say about his work,

“The more time advances, the more reticent I feel toward verbalizing my art. I feel similarly to Jean Cocteau who once said, “An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.” Images enter my mind both day and night and I often feel compelled to express them as quickly as they come. I work intuitively. When I begin a painting, I have no definitive destination. Rather, while I work I encourage subliminal ideas and cosmic forces to collaborate with the process. What I am hoping to achieve when I paint is a sense of mystery and beauty – I wish to create a vision that not even I, the creator, fully understands. I usually describe my imagery as Magical Realism. I want to transport the viewer into an altered state of consciousness where he or she may be inclined to experience who they truly are when they are free of mundane thoughts. My paintings act as mirrors or Rorschach tests; the viewer perceiving the images filtered through their own reality.”

Courtesy of Hawk Alfredson

Featured Artist: Valerie Bunnell

photos courtesy Valerie Bunnell

When you mix the fantasy behind the Wizard of Oz with bewildering characters from A Nightmare Before Christmas and add a bit of Mother Nature, you get the kind of fantastically unique artwork Valerie Bunnell creates.

The similarly unique and eclectic art gallery, Barking Lizards, is proud to present their artist of the month: Valerie Bunnell. The artist’s work is a fitting example of what Barking Lizards is known for – an escape from reality into a serene and stimulating environment.

Valerie Bunnell is known for her porcelain figures, which are constructed out of a mix of materials. Clay has always been a primary fixture in her work, but over time she has utilized metal, glass and other naturally found objects in the artwork. Her Ceramics Mixed Media Sculpture on display at Barking Lizards brings together random pieces found in our everyday lives to create a sculpture that is from another world.

What makes Valerie Bunnell stand out as an artist is her infusion of narrative identities with her artwork. The use of dolls, marionettes and puppets are an inspiration in her pieces, as they take viewers into an alternate reality, somewhere between the make-believe and real life.

“As an artist I have always wanted to create unusual objects that could refer to other realities, and which would possess a mysterious logic of existence,” Bunnell says of her work.

Barking Lizards art gallery is the premiere spot for artists like Valerie Bunnell to display one-of-a-kind artwork. Her out-of-this-world creations are a true testament to Valerie Bunnell as a person and therefore each piece is infused with originality and passion.