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.

bj spoke gallery’s exhibit this coming month will compare and contrast artists’ interpretations of subject matter and styles. It is another community outreach as gallery members invite artists they respect and admire to show with them.  For example bj spoke’s member Anne Thompson invited Lori Hochberg to exhibit with her.  

Anne Thompson said, “I’ve invited Lori Hochberg as my guest for this Artist’s Choice Exhibit. Lori is an artist, owner, and instructor at The Village Artist, in Huntington Village. I began taking classes at there several years ago and it was Lori who encouraged me to try pastel painting. I’ve been hooked ever since.”  

Anne continues “Here Lori’s “Grassy Fields” and my “Snow Puffs” stand together – both realist giclee pastel landscapes inspired by photographs. Lori’s photo was taken while she was on vacation in upstate New York and my photo was taken on Lloyd Neck, closer to home. In both, the white fluffy flowers stand in stark contrast against the dark background. Lori’s landscape is expansive, showing her skill as a storyteller who can capture the magic of a scene, whereas ”Snow Puffs” is a closely cropped detail of the winter landscape on Long Island. Side by side, Lori’s springtime scene and my winter moment seem like well-suited partners….celebrations of nature, beauty, and the pastel medium’s ability to capture the wonder of it all.”

Lori Hochberg

Ann Thompson

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

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.

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.

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.

Philip Gladkov

Melissa Maiello

Alexandra Galiardo

Jessica Nicastro

Maria Tsang

Amanda Reilly

Kelly Weresnick

Biography:Cheryl grew up in the Bronx and attended the HS of Art and Design.  Her BFA is from Pratt Institute and her Master of Science is from Hofstra.  The artist lives, works and teaches on Long Island.  She has won and permanently installed six public art commissions in six years.  Six copper panels were commissioned by the City of Aurora, Colorado and installed in the Tallyn’s Reach Municipal Building.  Florida State University com-missioned Cheryl twice and has installed a total of ten panels on their Tallahassee campus. University of Montana also commissioned the artist, and these panels were installed in the Skaggs Pharmaceutical Building.  Eight panels were installed on three floors of the James L. Sorenson Molecular Biotechnology Research Center on the University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City.  Recently installed in Hach Hall were three panels commissioned by Iowa State University.

Artist’ Statement: My images are rendered without the use of any paint. Instead, dynamic chemical reactions on sheet metal form the basis of my process. Changing color through reaction, crystallization, fusing, and solidification are a few of the ways chemistry informs this work.   Light’s movement on the metal, as well as the viewer’s motion, are the kinesthetic forces that alter our perception. It is really cool to watch the color change as the day progresses and the angle of the sunlight shifts.  When lit obliquely, the color appears saturated, majestic, and even reverential. Chemical reactions are highly charged visual stimuli that have influenced my work for years. My art is not created to explain chemistry, but to harness chemistry to create art. These works are not simulations or illustrations but, rather, art produced by chemical processes. Not art about chemistry, but art by chemistry.

Artist’s Statement: Drawing on ancient depictions of the divine feminine, my work explores the female figure in the act of creating. Marquesan Tattoo I and II are inspired by the adornments once worn by women in the Marquesas Islands to mark major events, like the birth of a child. Rendered in embroidery on vintage gloves, they portray the female body as simultaneous creator and creation. In other works, I rearrange existing images of women culled from magazine portraits of nude models. For example, the tiny pieces of paper composing Playboy Mandala I are reconfigured to emphasize the navel and nipple as sources of nourishment and power. Likewise, Ereshkigal Mandala examines the dark sources of this nourishment. This collage–named for the Sumerian goddess who ruled the underworld while her sister, Inanna, presided over heaven and earth–focuses on the unseen, subterranean movements of Ereshkigal’s domain that made the bounty of Inanna’s realm possible.

Biography: Peter Galasso is a painter of large gestural abstracts. His current work is an exploration of feeling, memory and a unique vision laid out on canvas in a style which is both original and inviting and offers a fresh, new look at color and form. He is especially drawn to American Abstract Expressionism made popular in the 1950’s here on Long Island by such luminaries as de Kooning, Pollock, Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell. Peter has won awards at numerous juried exhibitions throughout Long Island. He won a second place award in the first show he entered. New York Times art critic, Phyllis Braff, awarded Peter “Best in Show” at an international juried exhibition, Abstraction 2003. He has shown his work twice at the Nassau County Museum of Art. Other recent exhibits include the Heckscher Museum’s 48th Long Island Artist’s Exhibition and a solo exhibition at the Alfred Van Loen Gallery in South Huntington, New York. Peter was born in Brooklyn, New York and currently resides in Setauket, Long Island. He formerly studied the figure for five years with renowned Long Island artist, Betty Holliday. He continues his study of abstract art with Stan Brodsky at the Art League of Long Island.

Artist’s Statement: My paintings are explorations of gesture and color, light and fluidity, often suggestive of nature and more often than not, characterized by spontaneous bursts of imagination. By offering a visualization of energy, motion and emotion, I encourage the viewer to trace my movements and perhaps recognize in my work some subconscious truths which may be common to us all. These are paintings born of imagination. I have less to do with them than the viewer. Abstract painting has nothing to do with what words can communicate. There are no words that can clearly and completely explain the “meaning” of an abstract painting. To express the ineffable through abstract art, to lay down the immediate, spontaneous experience of feeling, or that which is, in essence, different from all else, is to accept and reach beyond the limitations of human language. As I begin to move paint across the canvas, forms emerge among relative color values that trigger inevitable responses. I sometimes add to the spontaneous gesture until the inherent logic of the painting begins to assert itself. I continue to react to the marks I make searching for visions and revisions, chaos, resolution, redemption and radiance . . . the often random order of life. The painting continually evolves. Even when finished, it appears as something in the state of “becoming.” In the end, I ask that the viewer “feel” the immanent, ethereal beauty within the painting, a beauty far removed from our everyday world of objects and images.