NYAB Event - “Re-Emerging NYC Artists” Exhibition

“Re-Emerging NYC Artists” Exhibition

Carter Burden Gallery

This event has ended.

Carter Burden Gallery presents three new exhibitions: Recent Work in the east gallery featuring Betty McGeehan, Susan Newmark and Sumayyah Samaha, Paintings in the west gallery featuring Helen Iranyi and On the Wall featuring Olivia Beens.

In Recent Work, Betty McGeehan presents sculptures and wall pieces for her first exhibition at Carter Burden Gallery. McGeehan’s work draws attention to the natural beauty that she sees in wood. She sculpts the wood and adds materials to highlight the colors, growth patterns, and embedded history. The addition of the copper, glass, brass and steel are, at times, subtle and initially overlooked. The carefully constructed compositions are elegantly simple, allowing the inherent beauty of the materials to stand out. McGeehan’s work with wood has been profoundly influenced by her awareness of deforestation around the world. The juxtaposition of the natural wood with the human-manipulated objects is a metaphor for the struggle between man and nature.

Betty McGeehan, b. 1934, Passaic, NJ, is a sculptor. McGeehan has exhibited her work extensively nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions for over 40 years. Solo show highlights include exhibitions at Nicholas F. Rizzo fine Arts (Chatham, NJ), William Paterson University – Ben Shahn Gallery (Wayne, NJ), Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (Wilmington, DE), and Gross McCleaf Gallery (Philadelphia, PA). Group exhibition highlights include “100 Curators, 100 Days” at Saatchi Gallery (London, UK), “arc-types and well-rounded characters” at Gallery 371 (Jersey City, NJ), “Self Contained” at Supermarket (Stockholm, Sweden), Art Cologne Art Fair (Cologne, Germany), and “Art Explores Religion” at the Newark Museum (Newark, NJ). McGeehan’s work is in the collections of many museums and universities including private and corporate collections such as Sprint (Kansas City, MO), Coca-Cola (Atlanta, GA), AT&T Capital Corporation (Morristown, NJ), Toyota Motor Corporation (New York, NY), and Nabisco Foods Group (Parsippany, NJ). McGeehan received a New Jersey State Council for the Arts Fellowship in 2003, in addition to other grants.

In Recent Work, Susan Newmark presents collages for her first show at Carter Burden Gallery. The collages on view are Newmark’s visual interpretations of selected Mary Oliver poems such as Roses Late Summer Marango and The Hummingbird Pauses on the Trumpet Vine. The compositions are dense and complex with a layering process that involves painting, sanding and re-sanding. Newmark works in a planned but improvisational approach that invites discovery as reality is peeled away from surface appearance. The work is an inquiry into her identity as a woman through images of traditional domesticity – jewelry, mirrors, glass, flowers, wall paper, wrapping paper, lace, collectibles, family portraits – in contrast with issues of sexuality and gender communicated by society, the media and lived experience.

Susan Newmark lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Newmark received her MA from Hunter College and her BA from Hofstra University. Newmark has had solo exhibitions at the Figureworks Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the Garrison Art Center in Garrison Landing, NY, the Grand Army Plaza Library in Brooklyn, and the galleries of Long Island University, John Jay University and St. John’s University. She was selected for a three person show at the Southampton Cultural Center in Long Island, and a two person show at St. Joseph’s College with artist Miriam Schaer. Her work has been in many group exhibitions including those at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Parrish Museum, the Islip Museum, Brooklyn College, the Center for Book Arts‚ and Gallery North in Setauket, N.Y. Newmark has had several residencies and is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Lower East Side Printshop, the Center for Book Arts, and the Bio Medical Library of the University of Southern California. She coordinates Dialogues in the Visual Arts, a series of conversations with artists, at the Brooklyn Public Library previously at Tribeca Performing Arts Center, and teaches collage and mixed media. She is a board member of the Center for Book Arts and Elders Share the Art, and on the advisory committee of the Kentler International Drawing Space.

In Recent Work, Sumayyah Samaha presents abstract paintings for her first show at Carter Burden Gallery. The paintings in the exhibition represent two consecutive bodies of recent work. Two of the paintings depict floating masses of colors that intentionally do not fill the entire canvas. Samaha created these paintings in response to working with monoprints, where the paper is traditionally left blank around the edges. The hovering forms are dream-like mixtures of rich colors made of oil sticks and oil paint. Samaha’s other paintings in the exhibition are playful shapes and colors connected by lines. The artist’s stream of consciousness determines the composition. Working on paper is a vehicle for her to move to new ideas and to a new body of work. Over the years, she built an extensive vocabulary with which she weaves her visual story.

Sumayyah Samaha is an Arab American artist working and living in New York City. Her country of origin is Lebanon. Samaha came to the United States on a scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh. She received her MA from the University of Pittsburgh and BA from the American University of Beirut. Her solo shows in New York City include exhibitions at: 22 Wooster Gallery, Denise Bibro Fine Arts, Skoto Gallery, Wilmer Jennings Gallery, and Kenkeeba House. Other solo exhibitions include: Blink Gallery, Andes, NY, Farleigh Dickinson University, NJ, Art Circle Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon. Her group exhibitions include: The Emo exhibition, Elizabeth Foundation, NYC, New York Chronicles, Virginia Common Wealth School of Arts, Doha, Qatar, Visible/Invisible by American Artists, Arab American Museum, Michigan, Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Loretto, PA. Her work is represented in private and public collections. Public collections include: Arab American National Museum, Dearborn, Michigan, Cintrum Sztuki Museum, Warsaw, Poland, New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, NYC, Chemical Bank, Prudential Insurance, Pfizer Pharmaceutical, Bank Audi, Beirut, Lebanon, and Kenkeleba House, NYC. Samaha is the recipient of a Gottlieb Individual Grant for 2015.

In Paintings, Helen Iranyi presents five large acrylic paintings for her first show at Carter Burden Gallery. Helen Iranyi’s paintings are immersive explorations of color. Iranyi paints on unprimed canvas in washes. The washes build up to overlap and blend to create rich luscious colors. Iranyi’s unique compositions present different stories and environments. Three of the paintings depict bands of layered colors that intersect. Iranyi’s skilled use of color pushes and pulls the viewer, creating a sense of space. The overwhelming intensity of colors becomes whimsically optimistic.

Helen Iranyi was born in 1937. As a teenager, she attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She received a B.S. in Computer Science at the N.Y. Institute of Technology/SUNY (NY) in 1990. She has shown her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions including Pittsburgh Corporations Collect at the Heinz Galleries at the Carnegie Institute. Her exhibitions include Kingpitcher Gallery (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), MJS International (Fort Worth, Texas), Gallery Reese Paley (New Jersey), West Broadway Gallery, Barney Weinger Gallery, and the Multi Media Arts Gallery, (New York City). Her works are in numerous private and corporate collections. Her artist files are included in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries Collection, Yale University Library collection, the Museum of Modern Art DADABASE, and in the Artist Files at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Archives in New York. Her personal letters are included in Columbia University Library collection.

Olivia Been’s large-scale installation will be featured in the gallery space On the Wall. The artist is presenting an installation comprised of a painted scroll with collaged photographs and text. The work is homage to the artist’s mother. Beens painted the scroll on an Amtrak train trip from New York to Arizona to her mother’s side following a fall. The handwriting, text, and the photographs are all from her mother and link the artist’s life to her mother’s past. The entire installation reveals the artist’s memory of her mother.

Sculptor/educator Olivia Beens, born in 1948 in Holland of Czech and Dutch parents, lived in Portugal until age 7. After receiving a BFA from Pratt Institute in 1977 and an MFA from Hunter College in 1982, she moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan where she still lives and works. During the 1980’s, she exhibited installation and performance work in many alternative art galleries including Franklin Furnace, ABC No Rio, PS 122 and was a member of artists groups such as Colab, PADD, and other political art groups. In 2014 and 2015, she was an Artist In Residence (SPARC) at Sirovich Senior Center and completed a series of ceramic murals that are permanently installed in the grand auditorium. She has taught through many arts organizations, worked for the New York City Department of Education, Brooklyn College and Pratt Institute. Beens has received commissions for public art works through Public Art for Public School and has been awarded a New York State Council on the Arts fellowship, as well as residencies to the Mac Dowell colony for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Hambidge Center and received a Fulbright-Hayes fellowship to Turkey, and traveled to India and Portugal with grants.

Media

• Painting
• Sculpture

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