ART TALK
Here is where we publish our writings, videos, photos, and general happenings about our talented WFA artists and exhibitions.
If you haven’t seen our Flatfile tours featuring our represented artists on our socials, you can view the first five episodes right here on Art Talk.
Artists featured in order:
Email art@weinbergerfineart.com for pricing and availability. Thanks for watching!
Flatfile Tour Episode One: Madeline Gallucci
Flatfile Tour Episode Three: Cheryl Gail
Flatfile Tour Episode Five: Kyle Goddard
Flatfile Tour Episode Two: Andy Julo
Flatfile Tour Episode Four: Erin McIntosh
The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art has created a wonderfully filmed collector spotlight series and has included the delightfully eccentric collection of our beloved artist, Linda Lighton; filmed by Graham Carroll.
Linda has been beautifully captured here showcasing her ceramics driven collection. As a full time ceramicist herself, she explains that she’s always been drawn towards collecting ceramics and sculptural work, but she has her fair share of two dimensional works as well. Linda is also the founder of Lighton International Artist Exchange Program. Take a look.
Conscious Reverie: Cynthia Bjorn’s Story In Color
The collection of works displayed in Cynthia Bjorn’s solo exhibition Story In Color offer us an intimate glimpse into her evolution as a person and an artist. In a culture currently consumed with self-care and wellness it can be easy to scoff at the notion of presence but Bjorn’s utter lack of pretense makes engaging with her dialogue fluid. Her current practice has veered away from the aggressive action and large gestures of her older works and into new territory. Bjorn likens the changes in her aesthetic to her own life and a realization that her practice could be used to self direct her thoughts and feelings. The staccato energy of her former creative angst has simmered into a mindful legato intent on conscious reverie. Much like her work, Bjorn herself has a bright and steady energy and with this energy she has blended mark making and color into personal meditations.
Left, right : Grey 12 , Grey 13, Metallic Buzz, Bendable, Lime 11, acrylic on panel with resin - 12/24/12/36/12 X 36
Gratitude, acrylic on panel with resin,104x24 + detail
The long, feathery brushstrokes Bjorn’s current work has become known for are the result of expertly blended paint and a still hand. Bjorn uses acrylic paint mixed with medium to create the proper consistency needed for the thousands upon thousands of fine lines in her subtly detailed, minimal pieces. Each line is made with purpose and intention, and each set of colors is a reflection of Bjorn’s spiritual interior. At a distance her works communicate oscillating colors and an organic hatching, but up close her paintings give way to much more. Dense layers reveal themselves in fragments, nuanced colors emerge as fine lines momentarily cross paths, and the rich coating of resin cascading across the surface of the panel becomes more than just sheen. The resin Bjorn applies to each of her paintings captures a fantastic dynamism that allows the deepest layers to peak out as the top layer tucks in. The meditation that Bjorn brings into her mark making is matched by the meditative headspace required for the precision of her resin work: both meditations are frozen in time as the resin tightly glosses the panel before curing in sterile isolation. Once the panels have fully dried they emerge from their studio quarantine imbued with Bjorn’s energy.
Bjorn’s panels each carry their own emotional weight, but their mutual dimensions allow the pieces to be arranged in family units that create their own narratives. With each panel sharing the same measured length alongside differing widths they cluster and pair together in seemingly endless conversation. A trio of deep gray and black pieces partner with a pair of citrusy lime panels creating a vision of a somber mood turned hopeful. This group of panels is a reminder that a bad morning hasn’t stolen the day and that sometimes the best we can do is surrender. A stack of panels in deep neutral tones titled Gratitude appears almost figurative and deeply grounded in the Earth: the steady energy of Bjorn’s gratefulness buzzes lightly beneath the luster of each piece.
Left: Be Still, acrylic on panel with resin, 24 x 36 Right: Underfoot, acrylic on panel with resin, 36 x 36
A panel dressed in a lattice of chilly blues and creams atop a base of rich grey feels like a crisp inhale while a mossy green panel ebbs and flows in its verdancy like a nice deep exhale. A family of panels in rosy pinks and peachy tones elicits the warm energy of a hug or the deep breath needed to conjure hope. This color family is unified by a thin web of shimmering gold lines resting upon the surface as a sort of suture or embrace. The largest piece in this family is titled Talking to Angels and the smallest is the aptly named Mother’s Song — the details of Bjorn’s meditations remain private, but these panels seem to invite viewers to experience a sense of both loss and hope.
Left: Talking to Angels, acrylic on panel with resin, 36x36 Right: Mother’s Song, acrylic on panel with resin, 24x36
Like people, each of Bjorn’s paintings has a story to tell within a malleable context. Just as our own lives are temporary and often provisional, every panel’s color and every collection of panels evokes a new story. We may have said so long to Story In Color, but it’s certainly not goodbye. Bjorn’s pieces will continue to have presence in the Weinberger Fine Art main space. We invite you to come take a look and experience your own color story by appointment or by chance.
Big Nature: Steve Snell’s Boat Show
Steve Snell is an artist interested in history, myth, and what he refers to as big nature. And though Snell hasn’t officially defined the term, a look at his art practice will give you the gist: living within, communing with, and drawing inspiration from the experience of adventure within nature. Snell has lived in a small house boat in Alaska, he’s hiked across the state of Massachusetts in search of inspiration (finding Alec Baldwin along the way), he’s trekked with his own art students in Nebraska, and he’s floated a couch boat down miles of the Connecticut River in nothing more than denim cutoffs and a coon skin cap. Simply put, Steve Snell is brother nature and we’re lucky he is also an artist. His exhibition Boat Show is a love letter of sorts to the big wild that has inspired his professional practice and his body of adventure-art.
Float Couch, wood, styrofoam & epoxy resin, 36x108 inches — Daunting Courage, cardboard, styrofoam, epoxy resin & wood, 32x34x144 inches — Pretzel Boat, cedar, styrofoam & epoxy resin, 77x125 inches
Adventure-art feels like the best way to describe Snell’s multifaceted approach to art making. Through his interdisciplinary practice, Snell reflects upon tropes of self-sufficiency and rugged masculinity, the exploration of North America, and the reality that for most of us, big wild is something we experience in an indirect and heavily mediated way. Snell describes his style of art making as a two part process, “The first part of adventure-art is all about creating an exciting and unusual life experience. The second part of adventure-art is the image of that experience.” Boat Show is the confluence of each of Snell’s various tributaries of creation.
Entering the space, viewers are immediately pulled into the majesty and comedy of Snell’s boats. His wooden couch boat and cardboard replica of Lewis and Clark’s keelboat join a giant, seaworthy pretzel. Each boat is fit for the water but embraces a certain level of humor, a levity that bridges the gap between water vessel and object: each piece holds its own simply as sculpture. Encircling the boats are Snell’s two-dimensional works (and one impossibly cute wooden pretzel fit for the mantle of a home or the walls of a brewery) that cover the adventure-art spectrum. Meticulously painted pixelated portraits of Lewis and Clark meet dreamy watercolors of Snell’s “Snacks on the River,” a series born from his observations of the found objects, natural ephemera, and snacks experienced on river adventures. In one of the pieces, Snacks on the River: Gummi Bears at Sunset, a delightful line of gummy bears hover in the center of a hazy minimal sunset. This series expresses well the levity inherent to Snell's work: where breathtaking sunsets meet unfettered skylines so too there are whimsical gummy bears, pretzels, and crushed beer cans.
(left) Snacks on the River: Gummi Bears at Sunset (right)Snacks on the River: Amazonia — both watercolor and acrylic on paper, 11x15
Another stand out piece in this show is Snell’s life size bear. Rendered in ink, Magenta Bear #2 is overwhelming in scale and realism, but again there is a lightheartedness. Where viewers meet a life size bear they also meet the humor of monochrome magenta whipped into tactile wisps with glints of teeny metallic bits embedded in the ink. This bear dominates, but he also makes you smile.
Magenta Bear #2, ink on paper, 48x60
Throughout the show the space is tied together with different plays on Snell’s dizzy pixelations. Taking images from history and the American west, Snell fractures and shatters the images and reassembles them in different ways. Ranging from the checkerboard composition of Jolly Flat Boatman On Fire to the cleverly distorted Two Clarks, viewers embark on their own journey of deciphering and discovering what they’re truly looking at.
Jolly Flat Boatman On Fire, watercolor on paper, 22x30 Two Clarks, watercolor on paper, 22x30
Boat Show provides an opportunity to briefly escape into the wilderness and to journey with Snell all over North America. Alongside his trio of boats, we as viewers become part of his fleet setting off together and disseminating from the confluence down his varying creative streams. So strap on your boots, gather your oars, and join him in The Drawing Room because as Snell says, “There are enough snacks on the river for anyone who wants them.”
