“Looking Outward / Looking Inward” Exhibition

Viridian Artists, Inc.

[Image: Mari Ange Hoda Ackad “Eating Cake” Encaustic, Pigment, Liquin, Photo impression, 18 x 18 in.]

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Viridian Artists presents an exhibition of outstanding art by five artists who are part of Viridian Artists’ Affiliate program and two of our Alumni Artists.

Marie-Ange Hoda Ackad’s “Eating Cake” is a work from a new series. In it, a transparent mouth is painted over a digital print on canvas coated with encaustic. The juxtaposition of truncated facial features floating over a graphic background make these works interesting in a new way. Based in Montreal, Canada, Ackad is increasingly showing her works in the United States.

Deb Flagel’s work springs from the Japanese practice of Boro and Sashiko; traditional textile techniques honoring the reuse of materials through patching, repatching, and mending. By deconstructing past and current works, Flagel discovers interplay between the old and new, reconstructing into a grouping she titles, The Spaces In-Between… a place defined by quiet pauses between activity — a neutral space where we begin to see what is, and where we connect to authentic inspiration.

For Arlene Finger, the interplay of color and line are primary forces in her compositions that the artist says are influenced by both the English Symbolists and the Russian avant-garde. Recently, the work has become more illustrative, not intentionally, but a creative direction that has emerged spontaneously. Working with pencil, charcoal, ink & pastel in her drawings, she likes to experiment with form as well as material.

Last year Charles Hildebrandt showed painting but recently he has been experimenting with mixed media collage arising as an extension of his photography. Like his paintings, the influences of nature, architecture, and the contrast of urban environments have been a part of the works evolution. Some of them, like “Fall Sidewalk”, were influenced by the forces of nature in unexpected places, literally right underfoot.

About her recent series “STILL LIFE ON THE ROAD”, Barbara Hillerman states: “I try to identify what might be overlooked in my current environment. Condiments – salt and pepper in particular – are found on most informal restaurant tables. They are so available that we often do not recognize their potential as creative arrangements that express the personality of the establishment. These images were made during travel in the U.S.A. Perhaps you can guess what was on the menu”.

Sarah Riley uses her background as both a painter and printmaker to re-work drawings, paintings, and prints digitally. She maneuvers these traditionally created images through a series of maneuvers, juxtapositions and layers, telling the story of “the human condition, one woman, many women, issues of identity and women’s history.” Adding an ambitious scale to this new, experimental media helps to create Riley’s strong female voice. Though digitally printed, the work derives from an intuitive process. The images are built from found and personal material and reflections, often with the use of brilliant color. She challenges the audience to pay attention to a new narrative of contemporary art and life.

Kathleen Shanahan’s mixed media works owe much to print making studio practices and the processes of layering and sequentially developing unique effects. The artist creates her “pastiched” imagery through collage and the juxtaposition of diverse elements. Here, her piece, entitled “Real Concerns”, is embedded in fantasy that choreographs our imagination as she manipulates it.

“Alumna artist Carol Brookes says about this series of her work “My Warrior Goddesses were born of a large body of mixed media wall sculpture that explores textural surfaces and the play of hard and soft forms that express both masculinity and femininity in harmony and opposition. Freed from years of being “attached to the wall” and working with abstract design forms, my goddesses have opened up a new focus and direction in my work. Taking the surfaces that I have been so drawn to and the concepts of feminine strength, I have re-imagined these ideas in these powerful female forms. The armored structures, woven of shiny, textured sculpting epoxy express the protective shell we all wear to face the world. These Warrior Goddesses, with their vulnerabilities safely hidden and shielded from harm are poised for battle. I believe in facing the world as a Warrior Goddess and that there is a Warrior standing the ready in all of us.”

Dorothy Braudy, also a Viridian Alumna artist, states that “The painting is from a series called “Marking Time” which was a show of 35 paintings based on old family snapshots from the time my father was a boy in about 1906 to my meeting with my husband Leo in 1971. This is my younger sister and me in front of our Kentucky house in about 1942 or 3.” A career retrospective of her work was shown at the Ellen Kim Murphy Gallery in Bergamot Station in 2000. Her first one person show was at Viridian Gallery, when it was in Soho and called Second Story Spring Street. Other solo exhibitions include “Marking Time” (2005) and “Double Feature” (2007) at the Hamilton Galleries, Santa Monica, and in 2010 a one-person show at Northeastern University in Boston, as part of the conference “Art and Memory.”In 2014 she had a show with her artist son, David Fitzgerald, (who now is a Viridian Artist as well) and her artist grandson, Travis Fitzgerald, “3 Generations”, in Manhattan.