On View in the Cafe Gallery

On View in the Cafe Gallery: Young Artist Program Sampler

August 26-September 24, 2016

Kathy Eisler, Creating Home Decor

Maria Errichiello, Amazing Oil Pastels

The Café Gallery is proud to exhibit art projects made by faculty of the Young Artists Program.  The sampling of artwork showcases the variety of offerings in our children’s classes, past and present. Each semester, The Art School at Old Church runs a mixture of classes from drawing and painting; to design and fashion. Many of these classes become building blocks to help build portfolios as students decide to pursue art professionally. The projects in this new exhibit give a creative take on a child’s art project made by adults. Not only is it fun to see the faculty work and their own creations, but the parents enjoy getting a sneak peek of the work their kids will be bringing home. The faculty participating in this show include: Holly Ciccoricco, Donna Dolby, Kathy Eisler, Karen Elder, Lauren Ennist, Maria Errichiello, Marcia Oakes, Peter Scanlan and Karen Snyder-Kadish. Please stop by the Café Gallery to see this enjoyable show filled with color, youth and imagination! The Young Artists Program Sampler is on view through September 24th!

Donna Dolby, Draw, Paint & Pastel

ABOUT THE CAFÉ GALLERY AT THE ART SCHOOL AT OLD CHURCH

The Café Gallery is an exhibition space that showcases student and faculty work from the Art School at Old Church, where it is housed.  The gallery is free and open to the general public.  This non-profit cultural resource center provides community access to enriching experiences in the arts by offering art classes for adults, teens and children as well as free gallery art exhibitions, cultural events, and outreach programs for special populations.  The Art School’s programs are made possible in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as contributions from foundations, corporations, businesses and individuals.  

Register NOW! for TASOC Winter Semester

Eric Alexander Santoli, faculty

The Art School at Old Church is accepting registrations for the winter semester. The variety of courses offers creative opportunities, workshops and classes for adults, families, teens and special needs children. Classes start in the first week of January and most continue through the middle of March.

A complete catalog of classes is available online and registration is accepted by phone, fax or hand delivery. Students are admitted on a first come first serve basis and a maximum of eleven students are enrolled in each class to optimize individual attention. The faculty at the Art School is made up of experienced, professional artists. They are all committed to teaching the breadth of possibilities within their field and encourage each student to find his/her own creative voice in a supportive environment.

DeBorah Goletz, faculty

Workshops and cultural offerings on the schedule include glass bead-making, a series of yoga classes for all levels as well as collage and a one-day intensive on self-portraits. There is a variety of opportunities to experiment with ceramics from wheel-throwing and creating functional pots for food and drink to sculptural and hand-building techniques and experiments in figurative sculpture. Many drawing and painting classes are offered to all levels of experience.  Classes in life drawing, portraiture, watercolor techniques and abstraction through color, pattern and mixed media are available to students of all levels. The Art School also offers classes in digital photography, printmaking, fiber arts and jewelry making.

The Young Artists Program serves students age 5 to 12. All classes are designed to encourage the discovery of creativity, with an emphasis on process rather than product. The program offers opportunities for children to explore a variety of art forms in a fun, creative and exciting environment. TASOC also offers sessions for children with physical and developmental challenges through the Special Needs Art Experience.

Along The Line

The Café Gallery at the Art School at Old Church is pleased to have presented Along The Line, a duet exhibition that showcased work from local artists Karen Stern and Sarah Camille Wilson. Their most recent work in pottery was on display. Both Karen and Sarah are members of the Art School at Old Church community and have come together for an exhibition that highlights both the sculptural form and functionality in pottery. Along The Line was on view at the Café Gallery from July 9th through August 4th.

Face cup, Karen Stern

Karen Stern (ENGLEWOOD, NJ) is a part-time potter and a full-time clay enthusiast under the alias Dangerous Pottery. Stern has been making and collecting pottery for 10 years. Focusing on functional ceramics, Karen incorporates line work and form to create delicate details and handsome pottery.  She works from her home studio and in the ceramics studio at the Art School at Old Church, one of the few local art schools to offer pottery. She has also studied at Penland School of Crafts in Penland, NC. Her pottery has been exhibited at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Today, her work can be seen at Market House in Westwood, NJ, The Noyes Museum of Art in Oceanville, NJ, and at local craft shows and farmers markets in Bergen County. To see more of Karen's work, check out her Facebook page Dangerous Pottery . 

Vase, Sarah Camille Wilson

Sarah Camille Wilson (TEANECK, NJ) holds a BFA in ceramics from Maine College of Art and an MFA in ceramics from Syracuse University. Wilson teaches ceramics at the 92nd Street Y, Brick House Ceramic Art Center, and at the Art School at Old Church. While working in both sculptural and functional form, Wilson seeks a balance between beauty and ugliness in her work. She spotlights the textures and surfaces of the materials as they play an important role in each final piece.  She was the 2014 Teaching Artist in Residence at Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicherry, India. She has been an artist in residence at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, where she was the recipient of the Kiln God Fellowship, and at The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China. View Sarah's website for more information about her pottery www.sarahcamillewilson.com.

Sarah Camille Wilson

Sarah Camille Wilson

Karen Stern 

The Café Gallery is open Monday-Friday from 9:00 AM-5:30 PM, please call for evening and weekend hours. 

Gina Occhiogrosso in Lay of the Land

Gina Occhiogrosso, "Nobody wants to be here, and nobody wants to leave", 22 x 30", Flashe and gouache on paper, 2012

The exhibition Lay of the Land, on view through February 20, 2014, deals with landscapes as they are perceived and reconstructed by artists. Each artist in the show focuses on a different aspect of this reconstruction. 

In mixed media paintings by Gina Occhiogrosso, the landscape is not quite settled. The viewer is presented with the materials that may one day come to rest as an observable landscape, but at present the shapes and colors must be solved like a puzzle before recognition can take place. The various trajectories of abstracted forms become a shared concern for viewers who may hope for resolution, while suspecting that the perceived tension carries a weightier message.

Extreme Measures, 11x14, oil on canvas, 2013

The artist in her own words:

"My work captures flux, slippage or time-suspended through the liquid and flexible medium of paint. The fragments interact to suggest movement, unease, or tremor. The land in these pictures is not quite finished being transformed, not in its image, nor in its process.

We can wait for the next one, 12x16, oil on canvas, 2013

It is an insecure space from my childhood and a cautionary tale for our future. Sources for the work are images found on websites that record natural disaster related damage such as FEMA (tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes). Elements dangle, merge and are transformed. The work is about our changing domestic landscape as well as our political and economic landscape, and how these forces have worked to destroy each other.

Through exploration of extreme weather events and their resulting catastrophic landscapes, more recent work is distilled into suggestive or abstracted spaces. The materiality of paint becomes reinforced by the use of a palette knife, and other much more physical practices.

Color has become more acidic, referring to an otherworldly, prophetic landscape. While I am interested in the world and it’s economic and environmental drift, I am also interested in unique personal experiences where life becomes untethered, and spaces become increasingly psychological."

- Gina Occhiogrosso

Giovanna Cecchetti: Untitled Medicine in Lay of the Land

Giovanna Cecchetti, Untitled Medicine/Garden Song/Serpiente, 30 x 64", oil on linen, 2010

The exhibition Lay of the Land, on view through February 20, 2014, deals with landscapes as they are perceived and reconstructed by artists. Each artist in the show focuses on a different aspect of this reconstruction. 

Giovanna Cecchetti reconstructs the sounds and energies of the Amazon jungle through abstract visual imagery in oil on linen. These traditional materials communicate the experience of being present in a space of immense sensory input. The paintings are devised to arrest the viewer for a moment before providing access to a vibrant world. Cecchetti's landscapes are neither real nor imaginary. Rather than offering a simulacrum of the Amazon, the artist provides the viewer with a language of symbols for plants and insects that convey the dense energy of the scene without the use of visual mimicry or literal transcription. Never having experienced the teeming serenity of the rainforest in person for myself, the paintings in this exhibit are medicine indeed.

In the artist's own words:

"The selected paintings are part of a series I initiated in 2008 titled “Untitled Medicine.” This series is inspired by my travels into the Amazon jungle of Peru. Returning to the Amazon in 2009 and 2010 brought further depth to my understanding of the magical and mystical character of the jungle terrain. The visual imagery in these works attempts to capture the density of the landscape along with its soundscape. The jungle is rarely quiet and consistently active with insects, animals, flying creatures, reptiles, and the whispering of plant spirits. The tangled growth of trees and vines, ferns and palms visually overlay the seldom seen horizon and sky. One seems to merge into the jungle environment until one can no longer distinguish a self separate from one’s surroundings.

My work is very much concerned with formal issues dealing with color, shape, line, and composition as well as with space, time, and the visionary. I work within the tradition of formalist abstract painting and mark making practices. Using traditional materials of oil paints on linen, my painting methods incorporate a considerable preparation to ground, underpainting, glazing, and varnishing. To construct the imagery in the paintings I use a process of layering marks and geometric based shapes, often combining simple shapes into complex structures. I sand each layer of paint, which produces an effect of layers dissolving into each other, serving to mutually organize and confuse time. Between each serial layer of paint, I apply a thin film of cold beeswax, which I then buff in order to give a consistency to the surface as well as to preserve the underlying imagery while furthering the illusion of space between one layer and the next. When I consider the painting complete, I then buff the surface with a final layer of beeswax to produce what I call a soft surface, a surface that I feel invites the observer to enter."

- Giovanna Cecchetti

Giovanna Cecchetti, Untitled Medicine/Red Squirrel Spirit/Jungle, 28 x 40", oil on linen, 2009

Matthew Albanese: Strange Worlds in Lay of the Land

Matthew Albanese, My Dream Your Nightmare, artist charcoal, sticks, crepe paper party streamers, sifted coffee, phosphorescent ink, 2011

The exhibition Lay of the Land, on view through February 20, 2014, deals with landscapes as they are perceived and reconstructed by artists. Each artist in the show focuses on a different aspect of this reconstruction. 

The creator of Strange Worlds, Matthew Albanese, brings us across the finish line to a place where we unknowingly accept the artifice as real, only to find that what we perceived as a landscape was in fact a table-top set, constructed down to the finest detail and photographed. What we at first perceive as part of this world we realize is part of something else entirely: a projection of the artist's imagination brought to life. But the result is not alienating. On the contrary, the photographs create a shared experience of wonder that is closer to our everyday lives than we first realize. When the illusion is revealed, a vast landscape becomes as familiar as a living room carpet. Awe is replaced by recognition of a shared fantasy of a beautiful, at times tumultuous and strange world.

The following is an excerpt from a book on Matthew Albanese's Strange Worlds:

"The poet William Wordsworth wrote about his “inward eye,” which served him like a camera, making it possible to resurrect in his mind, “a host, of golden daffodils; beside the lake, beneath the trees.” Matthew Albanese’s strange worlds, captured in radiant colored images, are also brought back to life by way of the artist’s inner vision. These are worlds that seduce the viewer into believing that the forests and lakes, waterfalls and glowing nighttime auroras, the windswept savannahs, and even the surfaces of distant moons and planets are photographically accurate documents of specific environments. It is only when one learns that these natural phenomena are constructed of the most banal and quotidian of materials-spices, bottle brushes, salt, fake fur, and deconstructed feather dusters- and that they are only as large as a small tabletop, that the viewer becomes aware of having been gently persuaded and then seduced into believing in a reality that is entirely false. Rather than feeling cheated, deceived, and manipulated by the artist’s clever wiles, a strange pleasure, sometimes approaching awe, kicks in, taking the viewer into the state of suspended disbelief that we experience at the theater or in the movies.

…

Matthew Albanese’s worlds, whether superficially gentle or blatantly violent, place the viewer in an existential quandary. Are we the anonymous and blameless witnesses to a world of deception that both entices and mocks us? Are we asked by the artist to enter a territory entirely fabricated in the artist’s mind or does our suspension of disbelief override our knowledge of what is true and what is false? In permitting ourselves to become a part of the artist’s world, are we reading his own autobiographical narrative? Which is the human presence we recognize in these landscapes?

Carl Jung wrote that our “projections change the world into the replica of one’s own unknown face.” Matthew Albanese’s strange worlds serve two masters: they are projections of the artist’s unknown face, but also of our own.

-       From “The Inward Eye” by David Revere McFadden

Matthew Albanese, Wildfire, Scotch-Brite pot scrubbers, clear garbage bags, cooked sugar, 2011

How did the Pottery Show & Sale come to be?

There are many shows like it around the country and around the world, but the Art School’s Pottery Show & Sale is acknowledged as a forerunner of shows of its kind. What makes this one so special?  Surely, success is due in part to the discerning eye of Karen Karnes, internationally renowned ceramic artist and the show’s curator since its inception in 1974. 

As a friend of the school's co-founder and fellow master potter Mikhail Zakin, Karen Karnes stepped up as curator of the fundraiser show due to her acknowledged authority in the medium.  By selecting ceramic artisans for the high caliber of their craft and innovation and placing them in direct contact with pottery enthusiasts and collectors, this once yearly honey-pot of ceramic artistry became valuable for connecting passionate and knowledgeable buyers to American artisans at the height of their craft.

While the show continues to be crucial to the economic landscape of the non-profit art school it supports, it also set a standard for shows of its kind.  The show is almost entirely staffed by volunteers from the community who donate their time and energy and even welcome potters into their homes and share meals for the long-weekend of the sale.  Here are some words from the show’s curator on how our Pottery Show & Sale came to be:

“Thirty-nine years ago when Ann and I offered to make a benefit pottery sale for the Art School at Old Church we were following the path of many organizations choosing to raise money in this way.  I thought to make an event that would consider the potters who offered their work.  Potters would only need to both bring and remove their work at the end – we would set it up and sell it and send payment for work sold within the first week after the conclusion of the sale.

In the early years I invited potters who lived nearby, but soon I was attending craft fairs to choose potters, and my attention was always aware as I traveled, looking for pottery that would make up a rich and varied exhibition, one that showed a wide range of styles.  I have always wanted each person who attended the show to see something they needed to own, and to have all the work be the best of its kind.  Soon potter friends were able to recommend new clay workers.

It was also important to make an exciting potters’ meeting, as I lured them from far away with the promise of a bed in a member volunteer’s home, a delicious potters’ supper (which I cooked in the early years), and the possibility of a day or two in New York City.

…I have a policy of inviting new potters every year, though there is also a core group who is invited every year as well.  It is always a difficult choice; there are so many excellent, sensitive and original young potters at work now, for the field is steadily widening.”

Join us as we welcome this year’s group of contemporary potters through a series of short articles and luscious images of their cutting-edge ceramic work.

A collection of pots by Karen Karnes, ca. 1950s (Image courtesy of American Craft Council Library at craftcouncil.org)