Marie Roberts “Coney Island”

Figureworks

[Image: Marie Roberts "Twins" mixed media on paper (2018) 11-1/2 x 8 in. ]

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Figureworks presents Coney Island artist Marie Roberts. Since 1997, Marie has been the artist-in-residence at Coney Island USA, where among many other contributions, she is the banner painter for the world famous Coney Island Circus Sideshow.

Marie was born near Coney Island in 1954 and raised in a sideshow friendly family. Her Uncle Lester was the talker for the Dreamland Circus Sideshow and her grandfather, the acting battalion chief of the Coney Island District, battled the tremendous Dreamland fire in 1911. Marie says, “This is rich, fertile, ground. My family’s ghosts are very important to me. My father would drag me around as a child in the 1960’s and point out: this is where the rum runners came in during Prohibition, this is where Dreamland was, here was Luna, there was the Gravesend Race Track. I look at Coney today in layers: my family’s memories, my memories and my present Coney Island USA family”.

After Marie received her MFA in painting from Queens College (CUNY) she pursued studio art in Manhattan but was pulled back to Coney Island in the 1990s when she met Dick Zigun, founder of the Coney Island USA Sideshow. She began working there in 1997 and fell in love with the tradition of large format sideshow banners. These adorn Coney Island USA’s landmark facade, beautifully merging her academic training with her family history.

Coney Island: From the Studio celebrates many aspects of Marie’s life there, including sketches of boardwalk sitings, color studies from the famous Mermaid Parade, and some rarely-seen, intimate, self portraits. Accompanying some choice banner paintings is a fabulous new “Figureworks” banner installed outside the gallery.
Marie has been the subject of several documentaries and a recent, exceptional one will be shown during the exhibition - “This Side of Dreamland” by Joshua Glick and Patrick Reagan.

Marie Roberts received a BA in art from Brooklyn College and an MFA in painting from Queens College (CUNY). She is a Professor of Art at Fairleigh Dickinson University and Artist in Residence at the non-profit arts center Coney Island USA. Roberts’ work has been shown at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Museum, PS 1, MOCADA, Deutchbank Galleries. Salina Gallery, LIU, 32 Edgecomb Gallery, Yale School of Art, Gallery SoBab in Seoul, South Korea, and Rivington Gallery in London. Her work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Transit Authority NYC, The Village Voice, Merk, CNN, DiDomenico Partners, Laughing Lotus Yoga, Feld Entertainment, as well as in private collections.