The Sam & Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts
237 Bell Road
New Berlin, NY 13411
Time again for another journey out to glorious New Berlin NY for another Open Studios event at the Sam & Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts' AIR Barn. Every month the foundation hosts a new crew of globally renowned artists to play kids at the candy store with all of the goodies to be found in the Golden Artist Colors plant just up the road. What I get out of these visits is seeing what artists of ranking caliber would do when confronted with 50 gallons of whatever painting-related artmaking materials they fancy at their disposal. This batch blew my mind with two of them pursuing three dimensional forms with the acrylics itself as the substance composing them.
Ahh, but how do you make sculptural forms out of liquid paint? Let's see! and megacheers to artist Caroline Locatelli for offering to ride down & back. It's all about that gas money some days ...
First stop was in the upstairs studio space with Ali Miller, here with a mind-bending oil on wood panel painting that she told me depicts a wedding in progress. Apologies for not having a straight on shot of the painting as the hyper glossy surface defied any attempt to avoid glare from the lights, amazingly complex with a shimmering of forms floating in & out of focus. I also gathered by the face buried in the dish of dessert at lower right that not all went well with those in attendance and indeed Ali professed to having never been married and having certain anxieties about the whole ritual. Join the club!
Ali Miller -- This one made me think of an earthquake and indeed it was her vision of a smashed person's view of a party. They're always leaning the floor on you.
Ali Miller
Ali Miller
The tube!! Now this thing ruled, out at the Golden Foundation residency barn. I love tube machines of all variety and was actually disappointed to learn it was a practical device for venting fumes from the Williamsburg Oils shown on its cabinet. But still! looks like something the Daleks would use to suck people's brains out. You put that lampshade like part over the guy's head, throw the switch and out the window go them brains.
Ali's cake making table, as the flower like form on the plate is a sculptural cake form made from the acrylics spread out on the surfaces to the right. She cuts them into sections and forms the acrylic pastries, which I guess would be the wedding cakes.
Ali Miller
Ali Miller ... almost reminds me of a tacky floral decorative from an old Lithuanian church.
Huh.
Oh MY ... now that one's a keeper ;D
Next up is Josh Nierodzinski, who is amazingly still a student somewhere in Michigan who stopped to do his residency on the way home to be with family in Massachusetts for the summer. Or something like that, and produced a mind boggling quantity of high-caliber paintings during his month at the AIR Barn.
Josh Nierodzinski -- Story I heard about this series is that they represent series of moments derived from photo projection techniques modeled after Vermeer's camera obscura method. The clouds on top were done separately but I agreed that they complete that passing of time element, creating almost a film strip effect.
Josh Nierodzinski
Josh Nierodzinski -- made me think of color separation strips for film processing, and were again photo derived images exploring his fascination with series imagery, Vermeer's interiors, and the idea of progressions of time.
Josh Nierodzinski
Josh talking materials with Golden's Creative Disruptor art anarchy specialist, Chris Farrell.
Josh Nierodzinski, here using a laserprinting process to press the letters into a wet acrylic surface to seep the lettering -- Helvetica plain, size 24 -- into the liquid. The paper is then peeled off leaving the text, which in this case are the most commonly used words in the English language.
Josh Nierodzinski
Josh Nierodzinski
Blurry rock star pose!
And Natalie Abrams, here being a sport for a picture by the works of hers onhand that most closely resembled the wall art my eye is used to. Only they're not, Natalie had a great little mind-check in store for me when walking me through her process of applying the acrylics to surfaces which then serve as drying patches. After drying the paint is peeled off, sectioned up into its most arresting forms which will then be used to create two large scale installation pieces with the paint woven & sewn together to spill off the walls -- A concept she'd been struggling with using molded wax before abandoning it for the flexible sexy acrylic "matts" which result.
So in other words pretty much none of what you see here are the final works, and indeed I was trying to get shots of individual drying patches for their pure form values without knowing any of this ;D My mind was completely blown when she confessed to not having a fine arts background, no school or degrees or anything. Woke up one day, realized she was throwing her life away working her comfortable & anonymous career job and got busy.
Natalie Abrams, and the mass on the stool is about the only hint of how this will all look when prepared for installation.
Natalie Abrams
Natalie Abrams
Natalie Abrams, and I believe she said that she did plan to keep this as a separate discreet "drawing". Thank goodness!
Natalie Abrams
Natalie walking Caroline through her enjoyably laborious creative process.
Natalie Abrams
Looking for UFOs!
Just realized I never got a picture of the barn! Raining cats & dogs while we were there and twice as gorgeous gazing out the window without being drenched.
Admiring the meticulous piping in the basement, each line running from the various sinks in the facility to the barn's marvelous water reclamation processor. None of the chemicals used in the paints or other materials is introduced into the local water table.
With Emma G.! Work it, Girl, be back ASAP.
And with Barb G.! You BET I'll be back next month. Good content drives traffic and this stuff is ... Golden?
Time enough for a quick stop at the Hamilton Center for the Arts on the way home, and here's their new mascot Oscar. He seemed contented enough just to wallow. I like turtles.
;D
Knockout student paintings by one of HCA director Kathy Herold's Colgate interns. Massive!
And the reason for the visit, checking up on Utica scene musican/artist Marc Tucci's "Poster Boy" exhibit at the HCA gallery, exactly the eclectic mix of found object art, pop culture readymades and street-art sensibility that defies the traditional function of art objects. They are items selected by Marc from his collections for display in a gallery setting defying a conscious fine arts label, but we catch him above here actually getting busy making art with some old discs & records serving as balloons for one of his graphic creations.
Busted. ;D
Interesting ... and what the heck, man. That's a shrine to something. Or an altarpiece.
Now that thing rules! Cassette tape monster, ready to gobble up your old U2 mix tapes. Then you have to reel them back in with a pencil & Bono starts sounding like Daffy Duck -- remember those days?
Our God Moment on the way home with my beloved Hamilton windmills <3
Cazenovia Lake with this trip's shotgun rider Caroline Locatelli from the Project-U group! Next open studios July 30th, hope to see you there!
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