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.  

Narrative Strain, on view through April 23, 2014

This essay was recently posted in the Mikhail Zakin Gallery:

Artwork often tells a story. It can pluck a story from external reality, render homage to a tale that is commonly known, or even give life to an internal reality, as yet unknown to anyone save the artist. Works in this show celebrate narrative of all kinds, from the timelessness of moral struggle in the works of Henry Diebel III to the story of an object passing through flame in the work of abstract photographer Mike DiFeo. Even the quiet story of a street in Rome can unfold as witnessed by a patient observer in the work of Allison Remy Hall.

Aliza Augustine presents her chimerical photographs from the series “Is it Safe?”, where personal, historical and invented narratives collide. Behind the dollhouse vignettes of her photographs loom a foreboding backdrop of images, some found, some from family history, of those who survived or were murdered in the Holocaust. The unclear line is highlighted between scenes of socio-political commentary, personal history and events staged to deal with the confluence of the two.

Vesper Stamper is perhaps most literally a story teller, with original illustrations on view from her upcoming book. While part of a composite text-illustration work, the images include a story of a mute mother who introduces the world to her daughter through sound, touch, and movement. Part of the message is that information comes to us through many senses. The unconscious mind experiences the world in secret, awakening to mysterious insights that are known deep down.

These insights are shared through many avenues, as in the video works of Saya Woolfalk. Woolfalk describes a world of intuitive aesthetic choices, in which a journey takes place that leads to a point of personal and communal understanding. Such is the goal of her ongoing Institute of the Empathics project. This endeavor is undertaken on another scale by presenting a collective visual experience of work by multiple contemporary artists in the Mikhail Zakin Gallery.

Works in this show push and pull on the narrative limits of image making, telling a more subtle and nuanced tale than text alone can convey. I challenge you to look at the images and devise your own story before reading the accompanying texts.

-      Mary Gagler, Curator

April, 2014