Jenny Wiener

Jenny Wiener’s layered silk screen paintings translate the two dimensional surface of historic paintings into reasoned plans for events in three dimensional space.

Statement: I made my first treasure map with my father when I was 7 years old.  We measured the location of our buried treasure by aligning trees and recording distances from creeks, roads and other landmarks.  I still measure.  My work is about enquiry, about measuring and formulating questions of how we see and act in the world, a world increasingly dominated by numbers.  For me questions shape the work, they articulate the need to understand the numerical systems that we create to organise our lives. I believe art has to be able to show the process of thinking.  By measuring fairytales and prominent historical paintings, I hope to reveal and analyse the numerical systems that we are reduced to: pin numbers, serial numbers, illogical random numbers, units of measurement measuring everything and nothing.

Biography: Jenny Wiener from Tavares, Florida explores the process of thinking in her drawings, in which she measures historical paintings such as Cezanne’s painting of Mount Saint Victoire seen from Les Lauvres and redraws the prominent elements as a construction of planes of color. Jenny works with screen print in her drawings, which she layers with areas of transparent flat color.  Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the UK and the US, and is held in the collections of The V&A Museum London, UK, Clifford Chance International, The Saatchi collection, DHR Counsel, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, The Royal College of Art, Belmacz, and the College of Notre Dame. Jenny won Show Artist and five Juror’s Choice Awards in 2011, 2012.

Traci Cremeans

Traci Cremeans’ paintings are figurative, with abstract and symbolic elements.  Her painting here is Four Directions with Cake.

Biography: Traci Cremeans was born in 1988 in Parkersburg, WV. She received her BFA in Painting from Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts in 2012. This year, she had a solo show titled “Ego’s Last Bask: I Found My Answer in Your Ecstatic Substance” at Spirit Gallery, New London, CT. Other recent shows include “Sexuality in Contemporary Society” at Provenance Center, New London, CT, “2012: Year of the Goddess” at Mac650 Gallery, Middletown, CT, “In The Pink” at Six Summit Gallery, Ivoryton, CT, and “Senior Thesis Exhibition” at LACFA, Chauncey Stillman Gallery, Old Lyme, CT.

Artist’s Statement: Her recent work focuses on the space of consciousness that is pre-enlightenment, in which the ego puts up its last defenses. To be aware of one’s potential, but to cower before the void, is to be locked in the body, frozen in the moment of its present condition: breasts, ribcage, hips; desire, hunger, and image-obsession. Cremeans implements herself as the deliverer of intense experiences, photographing her own body for reference. She relates the way in which her work bridges figuration with abstraction to the moment waking consciousness becomes altered states. Deliverance from ego is not a smooth transition, but a road through hell. Painting is fixed in the material realm but aims at what lies beyond. The endurance and commitment of spiritual practice become equated with creativity, the alchemical struggle with base materials to form gold

Barbara Miller

Barbara Miller’s work Wrest, shown here, combines painting and sculpture.

Biography: I am a woman artist, a sculptor and painter, with experience in welded metal sculpture and mixed media constructions. I am a graduate of Stony Brook University where I received a BA degree in Art Studio. On exhibition I built a permanent wall relief for the Marine Science Research Center at SUNY, as well as, a September 11^th memorial sculpture for the town park of Smithtown. For the past five years I have shown at galleries and exhibitions throughout Long Island. I am associated with the Art League of Long Island where I teach weekend workshops in painting, wireworks, and drawing.

Artist’s Statement: My work for Expo 32 is a group of five mixed media constructions. The goal is to combine elements of painting and sculpture. Using combinations of diverse materials allows the work to become an exploration in relationships with the possibility of forming its own identity.

Flex Gilbert

 Artist Flex Gilbert presents an ironic view of mid-twentieth century American culture.

Bio: Flex was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1950.  Her parents moved the family to South Carolina in 1952 where she lived until age 18.  She attended Catholic University in Washington D.C. for 1 year as a painting major and later finished her education with a Diploma in painting from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.  For the next 7 years she exhibited her work frequently.  She and other artists organized two shows, one at Mass. College of Art Boston and one at U. Mass. Amherst.  She exhibited in group shows at the Museum School, Clark University, a gallery in Boston and the Brocton Art Museum, Brockton, Ma.  She was also taken on by a new Chicago gallery for 1 year.  She then took time off to raise her two daughters and start a baking business for 3 years.  The baking business made her decide to return to painting, which she has been doing for the last 5 years.  Her work has been included in two group shows and one 2 person show at the Mill Gallery in Pawtucket, RI.  Her current work is all gouache on paper and takes its inspiration from her fascination with the 1950s and American pop culture in general.

Artist Statement: I am primarily a painter. My current work is all gouache on paper, but there are times when I construct 3D pieces of aluminum flashing and plywood and paint in oils. They resemble pop-up books and depict the same sorts of scenes as the 2D paintings. I employ a cartoony figuative syle and a flat perspective. Some of the influences on my work are the ousider artists, Red Grooms and the Hairy Who from the 70′s Chicago. My work represents my observations about American pop culture. I have a particular fascination with the 1950s and the mores, social attitudes and interior design of suburban Americans of the decade. I’m also in love with the toys of my childhood, dollhouses, miniature gas stations etc. The stories I create and paint allow me an adult form of that play.

Michael Ananian

Artist Michael Ananian’s portraits have strong brushwork and an expressive intent.

Artist’s Statement: Other painters describe me as a ‘gritty realist’ and ‘painterly realist.’ I believe all the descriptions are apt because my influences and concerns cover both extremes of the figurative tradition. I seek particularity, description and nuance of form, but I also love bold, vigorous paint handling and execution. My paintings’ surfaces are treatment of paint and form to echo the visceral reactions and mental states of the people depicted in my paintings, with the end result being a fusion between the visual and psychological elements.