Joan Mellon, Sumayyah Samaha Bette Klegon and Vera Sapozhnikova Exhibition

Carter Burden Gallery

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Carter Burden Gallery celebrates its 10 year anniversary and present three new exhibitions: Lines, Forms, Substance in the East Gallery featuring Joan Mellon and Sumayyah Samaha; Confrontation: It’s as Clear as Black and White in the West Gallery featuring Bette Klegon Halby; and On the Wall featuring Vera Sapozhnikova.

Carter Burden Gallery (CBG) exclusively features the works of professional NYC artists over 60, fostering a supportive and culturally diverse community of re-emerging artists. Beginning ten years ago with 15 artists in a small alternative space on 7th Ave CBG moved in 2013 to a beautiful 2,000 sq. ft. gallery in Chelsea and has now exhibited over 300 different artists in 223 shows. We celebrate our 10th year of this community’s unique ability to share lifetimes participating as vital members of New York’s arts culture.

In furtherance of the CBN’s goals, and in recognizing the unique cultural wealth possessed by older professional artists, CBG was born. While giving older artists an opportunity to show their work and engage in current contemporary artistic discourse, CBG recognizes that these opportunities are hard-won and often difficult to achieve. Therefore, CBG is committed to empowering re-emerging, professional older artists through the exhibition and cultivation of their work.

In her second exhibition at Carter Burden Gallery, Bette Klegon Halby tackles the dramatic social, economic, and political divide that is becoming more prevalent in our culture in Confrontation: It’s as Clear as Black and White. The contrast of both wall and pedestal pieces in black and white sets a striking tone to the space. Klegon Halby’s dynamic wall work explores the potential inherent in canvas itself; once soft canvas is now made hard, once two dimensional is now made sculptural – a duel between two worlds unfolds. Text and imagery have been transferred onto the sculptures, which have been created using bags as a mold. Pallid in color and ghostly, the once hollow vessels turned seemingly to stone contain acute emotion that is reflected, not only on the surface they stand upon or in the viewer but also by society at large. The artist states, “Not unlike our world today: sharply divided into good and evil; evaluating or viewing things as either all good or all bad; black and white morality; precisely defined and clearly cut. … Sex and race, faith and ethnicity… the melting pot is boiling over.”

Joan Mellon presents process driven sculptural pieces from her series Substance and Space in the exhibition Lines, Forms, Substance, her seventh exhibition at Carter Burden Gallery. The physical act of making and the exploration of material are central to Mellon’s work. Her interest in how choice and chance are at the core of the creative process is always at play. Using both found and purchased components, the palette of the pieces was initially limited to the color of the materials until they “called out for more”. She has said, “Working with physical materials and volumetric forms led me to explore how physical objects live in space… It is my hope that these objects convey the pleasure inherent in the process of making things and the unlimited possibilities of working with tangible materials.”

In Lines, Forms, Substance, Sumayyah Samaha presents energetic abstract paintings from her series Lines and Forms for her fifth exhibition at Carter Burden Gallery. The artist’s stream of consciousness determines the composition; playful shapes and rich colors are connected by lines, which create boundaries between the negative spaces of the canvas. The artist’s focus in this series is on color, texture, contours, weight, and defining edges; these paired with her choice of appropriate medium tell her visual story. She states, “In my most recent body of work, ‘Lines and Forms,’ I paint with oil and draw with charcoal on canvas. I challenge myself to seek harmony between these two media.”

Vera Sapozknikova presents large, abstract, and vibrant oil paintings created during her time as Artist in Residence at the Carter Burden/Leonard Covello Center for On the Wall. Self-taught, her work is intuitive and full of energy and emotion. In her drive to paint, she has consistently challenged herself and continued to develop her style, evolving from representational to more abstract work. Through her artistic journey, she has adopted a signature palette steeped in rich crimson, orange, and blue. Her determination to paint results in unique and bold marks on the canvas, revealing Sapozhnikova’s optimistic approach to being a painter.