Group Exhibition July 5 , 2014 – August 3, 2014

Kris Lewis, Mary O’Malley, Kate Zambrano, Shawn Huckins, Melodie Provenzano, and Adam Wallacavage.

A consistently wide-eyed wanderer, Kate Zambrano explores the human condition though visual stimulation. Often coupling the standard idealization of beauty with a deep, haunting melancholy, she uses monochromatic and subtle colors in her paintings to create a genuine and simplified journey into individuality. She works with different mediums and techniques as well as incorporating texture and drips to create an unsettling concept of what is attractive. Her work is made to bring up the emotions, ideas, and opinions of the viewer. It forces self-exploration and internal dialogue. She starts most paintings with the eyes, the fingerprint of the soul, which leads the viewer to reflect on him or herself. Kate is an American painter hailing from across the United States. She grew up, with her sketchbook in hand, having a fervent desire to recreate the things she found beautiful. Self-taught and ambitious, she works night and day on her passion for art with a temporary headspace in the Bay Area.

Melodie Provenzano graduated with a BFA from the Parsons School of Design in 1996. She has exhibited in numerous national solo and group shows, including Playing Around at the Brattleboro Museum, Brattleboro, VT. She has been commissioned for selected projects by Saks Fifth Avenue, Chanel, DKNY, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, and several private collectors. She lives and works in New York City. Still-life drawings of toys and figurines are the subject matter included in Melodie Provenzano’s artwork, but their arrangements and iconography are the crux of it. These meticulously rendered compositions allow a brief glimpse into the artist’s personal world. They function as dreamscapes that offer many interpretations but are based upon root emotions like love, longing, and hope. Set forth as mock dramas, the paintings tell a tale that oscillates between fantasy and reality, accomplishment and disappointment, understanding and bewilderment. They build narrative momentum as the audience begins to assign meaning to the objects, and unravel the specificity of the icons. Deciphering each painting and drawing, the viewer begins to see the ‘bigger picture’ as they assess and assert how the set-ups that are drawn from life actually imitate it.

Kris Lewis, b. 1978, Ocean County, NJ, is a Los Angeles-based artist whose influences include Alfonse Bougereau, Andrew Wyeth, Hans Holbein, Albrecht Durer, Hieronymus Bosch, Gustav Klimt, and Jules-Bastien LePage. His reverence for masters of old is apparent in his depiction of the human figure, which he uses as a vector for hidden stories, delicate emotion, and finding truth. His affinity for people-watching also informs his paintings, collecting glances, gestures, miens and hints and channeling them through the canvas for the viewer to share in the experience.

Kris studied illustration at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His paintings have been featured in galleries and museums in cities around the world; including L.A., San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Denver, Miami, London, Rome and Hong Kong. His work has also been seen in the publications Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose, Modern Painters, and American Art Collector. Kris Lewis has been featured in the books Suggestivism, Copro/Nason: A Catalogue Raisonne and Two Faced: The Changing Face of Portraiture.

Darla Jackson is most notably recognized for her bizarre animal sculptures that have been seen infiltrating spaces throughout Philadelphia. Past exhibitions include While you were out… at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Anatomy Now at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Eons Beyond the Rib at Seraphin Gallery, and On the Rise at the Gallery at City Hall. Jackson graduated with a BFA in Sculpture from Moore College of Art in 2003 and continues to live and work in Philadelphia, PA. She currently teaches sculpture classes at the Fleisher Art Memorial and runs the Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, which she started with the help of a Knight Arts Challenge grant in 2011. Jackson likes peppermint patties, getting things in the mail and mold making. She dislikes slugs, zombies and mold making. Artist Statement My sculpture is an exploration of the human psyche in which I strive to show duality of emotions. In order to express these ideas, I use feelings that have been turned into recognizable visual objects, or symbols, and juxtapose them with other elements to create this duality. Through the anthropomorphism of animals, the use of strong body language of figures and the use of symbolism, I can convey my emotions and ideas in a way that is more approachable for viewers. The end result is familiarity with an oddness that makes it compelling.

Mary O’Malley “After receiving my BFA from The University of the Arts and living in Philadelphia I recently returned to my home near the ocean on Long Island, NY. Using my skills as a potter trained in traditional English and Japanese techniques I began to create a series of formal service ware in porcelain, my favorite medium. During this time I was also enjoying working on a scale that only the delicate properties of porcelain allow, creating intricate sea creatures that employed imagery inspired by childhood memories and my newly familiar surroundings next to the sea. The technical difficulties I began to encounter when enveloping the service ware with ferocious and unforgiving aquatic life got me thinking about a common need we all have to control our own representation of beauty. There is so much fastidious control involved in creating each one of the Bottom Feeder pieces, but with ceramics there is always a margin for error, and some degree of control must be sacrificed. The composition of barnacles and crustaceans populating each piece, the way the iron oxide discovers every nook of the creatures I’ve created, the way the tentacles warp in the firings, etc., is always a surprise. I’m never exactly sure how anything’s going to turn out. By allowing myself to be fully present in the creation of the different parts of these pieces but then giving in to the composition and glazing process gives each piece its own identity. In the end, one type of beauty is enhanced by complementing its foil, resulting in two completely different aesthetics existing harmoniously as one piece. This play between total control and inevitability has sustained my interest and attention because it mimics life in so many ways: we try our hardest to compose the aesthetics surrounding us—from the buildings and environments we live in to the way we dress and present ourselves. Our daily fight against nature is a fruitless pursuit, yet one we never seem willing to abandon. I find this play between forces endlessly challenging. The dance that results from trying to find a balance between what we can control and what we cannot is where I believe true beauty lies.”~ M. O’Malley