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The Arts Center Gallery - Past

HIGH SCHOOL ALL STARS ART EXHIBITION

ARTWORK FROM SARATOGA COUNTY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

January 7 – January 28, 2011

Annual Members' Show
November 19 - December 31, 2011

Frame Story: The Narrative Within

Emma Dodge Hanson and Roy W. Stevens

October 1 - November 12

From Left to Right: Stevens, Hanson 

Jennifer Nuttall Ash, Warren Holzman and Tyson Skross

Jennifer Nuttall Ash is a Canadian born, British raised and Houston based artist who received a BFA in painting from Camberwell College of Art & Design as well as an MFA in Painting from City & Guilds of London Art School.

Warren Holzman received a B.F.A. in Sculpture from Kutztown University, Kutztown PA. He is also the current owner of The Iron Studio Ltd, Philadelphia PA.

Tyson Skross graduated from L’ecole Internationale de Geneve, along with The Maryland Institute College of Art. He studied under the painter Janis Pozzi- Johnson from 1993-1997.

Jennifer Nuttall Ash Artist Statement

Jennifer Nuttall Ash is a Canadian born, British raised and Houston based artist who received a BFA in Painting from Camberwell College of Art & Design as well as an MFA in Painting from City & Guilds of London Art School. She spends most of her time hidden amongst print rooms in Houston.

"My work explores the often uncomfortable and anti-social nature of being human; a proactive theme that has been continually weaved and embedded throughout humanity in the archaic form of storytelling and Mythology. I am practically fascinated by the audacious tales that compromise society’s rules of engagement often found within mythology, local folklore, childhood fables and fairytales.

Often working within the traditional realm of printmaking, my work creates an uncomfortable friction between themes of innocence and corruption, introducing a childlike aesthetic to wickedly corruptive narrative. The works investigate themes of immigration, exploring the aggressive insider/outsider mentality that results from the immigrant/ citizen relationship, as well as questioning broader themes of personal and national identity. 

My work spawns the story of A Wretched Little World full of fantasy and horror, in which all adults have mysteriously disappeared, leaving only millions of parentless children and horse-like creates to battle amongst each other, in hope of regaining power over a disintegrating world"

Warren Holzman Artist Statement

"In my work I search to create a child-like feeling of whimsy and wonderment; a familiar playfulness that suggests an emotive connection to the inanimate. By offering the viewer an abstract yet oddly intimate perspective on an object I seek to initiate a moment of levity within my audience. Though the use and distortion of scale and proportion I give the viewer a new way in which to see a familiar object; to breathe new life into old apparitions of childhood.  

The shapes and imagery I reference in my work repeatedly hearken back to a more mechanized time. The vast amount of metal work from the age of machines that lies rusting on the edges of our urban landscapes has become embedded in my subconscious. I feel that these decaying monsters communicate an evidence of past economies, priorities and lives that embody the drama ascension and decline that we experience today. By working in processes similar to the ones used to build these ancient beats, I have forged a connection with them and their method of communicating visual ideas. I use this vocabulary of visual communication along with the urge to create both entertain and inform my viewers and myself.

When speaking specifically about the process of making sculpture, my attraction to the use of metal comes from its historically broad visual vocabulary. The long-standing legacy of metalwork offers to me a wide pallet or processes and techniques that I can enter into partnership with the formal concerns of creating an object. The material presence of steel and other metals also helps infuse my work with a sense of authenticity, making my sculptures appear familiar; like found objects rather than like forms wrought for sole purpose of sculpture. Though my sculpture I strive to add to the landscapes that surround me and thereby hopefully adding to the collective quality of life, present and future."

Tyson Skross Artist Statement 

This is a world made of memory. It is at the same time gathering and dispersing. It is a composition of heres and theres. Memories are formed on a sub-atomic level by a mixture of experience, imagination, and symbolism, the real and the unreal, of truth and deception, consciousness and unconsciousness. The plants, trees and flowers, grow in this mineral mixture. Homes are made of them, livings are scratched out from them, children are born, friends die, and entire histories crystallize and dissolve. Only the bones remain, the traces. 

The work in its current form is comprised of sculptural objects and painted elements in various media. Skross' process takes the models of his childhood and literally re-casts and modifies them through the addition of mineral compounds. The end result alludes to the spiritual, as well as the historical and presents itself as the extension of a living organism. The installations mimic our physical world as a construction of the combined residues of history both natural and manufactured.

"My work has been described as being about memory, fear and loss, and that is in part true. But I think that my real subject matter is the attempt to form a new way of understanding history, not as a sequential narrative leading from one point to the next, but as the residue of data and memory that accumulates to create the network within which we live our lives." 

Tyson is currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He recently received a 2009 Efroymson Contemporary Art Fellowship and has exhibited his work internationally.

Impasse & Motion
Ten Photographers' Journey Through Instants in Music

Curated by Andrzej Pilarczyk

June 4 – July 30, 2011

Guest Curator Andrzej “Andre” Pilarczyk joins Saratoga Arts to present Impasse & Motion, an exhibition which brings together ten regional photographers from various backgrounds, experiences and trades to approach a single subject: music. Music is a universal language that evokes curiosity and emotion and can be experienced everywhere, from concert halls to subway stations.

The photographers’ range is as diverse as their subjects. These ten artists cover the entire music spectrum from journalistic documentation to fine art photography and all have captured the passion, drama and energy of a musical performance. Impasse & Motion features the work of Lawrence White, Joe Putrock, Andrzej Pilarczyk, Don McKever, Rudy Lu, Eric Jenks, Joseph Deuel, Ed Burke, Albert Brooks, and Sylvia Aronson.

These artists have dedicated themselves to understanding the essence of a live musical performance. Their devotion to concert photography will captivate viewers allowing them to re-live musical experiences from the 1970s to today and translate the energy of the artists’ passions directly to the audience through this unique exhibit.

Andrzej Pilarczyk studied Fine Arts at the Lake Placid School of Art, Junior College of Albany, Academy of Fine Arts (ASP), Krakow (Poland); attended Jagiellonian University, Krakow and University of Wroclaw (Poland), SUNY, Albany, N.Y. He currently is a local photojournalist and freelance photographer working for publications such as the “Lake George Mirror,” “Downbeat,” “The Saratogian,” and “The Chronicle.”  His work can also be seen on Nippertown.com where he is the Chief Photographer for that on-line music and arts web-magazine. He is also a contributor to Albanyjazz.com
 

Curatorial Statement
My intent with this group exhibit “Impasse & Motion, Ten Photographers’ Journey Through Instants in Music,” is to show the public one subject- music, through the eyes of ten regional photographers of different ages, races, backgrounds and experiences who have centered much of their creative energy, time and passion toward photographing musicians from a wide spectrum of musical genres. Some of these participating photographers are fine-arts photographers who use the camera as a tool to create their art, while others shoot for newspapers, magazines, and organizations that present concerts. However, all have captured the musicians’ excitements, drama and nuances from world-renowned to relatively obscure performers in a variety of contexts including intimate nightclubs, coffee houses, concert halls, festivals, arenas, or even asking for spare change on a subway platform.
 
Andrzej Pilarczyk
 
 
Artist Biographies
 

Lawrence White graduated MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1976. Since then, his photography has been seen world wide in publications such as the NY Times, Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, Vogue, People, Time, Der Spiegel and Le Monde.  His film work has been collected by the Smithsonian.  In 2001 he won the NY Press Association award for his journalistic work. For the past 3 years Lawrence has also taught highly successful photo workshops with Saratoga Arts. He is currently chief photographer for Saratoga Living Magazine.
 
Joe Putrock is a freelance photographer, and musician, who started his career in photography as a way of getting closer to music and  musicians. His photos have appeared in the New York Post, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, and regularly in the Albany Times Union. His music photography has also appeared in the Source Magazine and Metroland. He has been photographing musicians, bands and concerts for over fifteen years and has never exhibited them.
 
Andrzej Pilarczyk is a regional fine-arts photographer who has specialized in shooting musicians and music events for more than 20 years. His distinctive photographs have been exhibited in several regional galleries including The Sanctuary For Independent Media’s Underground Gallery where he curated and participated in the group show “Eye Music Portraits” ; the Lake George Art’s projects Courthouse Gallery(“Portraits In Performance,” invitational solo exhibit); Gallery 100, Riverfront Studios, and others. Pilarczyk’s works have been published in national and regional periodicals, “Downbeat,” “The Gazette,” “The Saratogian,” and are in a number of private collections.  Currently he is Chief Photographer for The Lake George Mirror and freelances for many arts and music organizations (Tang Teaching Museum, Lake George Arts Project, Eighth Step, Skidmore Jazz Institute, The Marcella Sembrich Opera Museum and others).
 
Don Mckever- Over the past 42 years Don Mckever has been photographing jazz, blues, and R&B musicians. A self- taught photographer, Mckever took his first photograph of a musician in 1967. Throughout the years he has photographed jazzand R&B  legends like Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, James Brown, Aretha Franklin and many others.  The main objective of his work is to capture and record jazz history and at the same time create an image that is pleasing to the eye.  Mckever has exhibited his work in art galleries and cultural centers through out New York State and New Jersey.
 
Rudy Lu is a fine arts photographer specializing n nature and concert photography. He is a graduate of Union College Schenectady, NY and Miami University Oxford, OH. He has studied photography with Carl Heilmen II, David Middleton and Tony Sweet. Photography and listening to music have been Lu’s passions since he was in college. Lu focuses pm the symbiosis between musicians and photographers- inspired by jazz’ uninhibited improvisation Lu’s photography explores the magic chemistry of moments which would be otherwise lost forever.
 
Eric Jenks is a photographer from Saratoga Springs NY, Eric Jenks has been actively photographing music events and exploring the Adirondacks for the last six years. Jenk’s work has been published in the National Geographic Adventure, Saratoga Living and various newspapers in the Adirondacks and Capital Region. Jenks is also in video production, and has had featured works on PBS’ Blue Mountain Lake. His current freelance work can be seen in the Hamilton County Express, Saratoga Living, and upcoming cinematography projects with On Track Production. His first gallery showing was in May 2007 at Spring Street in Saratoga Springs NY.
 
Joseph Deuel has been an avid photographer since grade school. A dedicated self-employed photographer and web-designer living and working in the Saratoga Springs area, Deuel has worked for several local/ monthly publications including, “Eye on Saratoga,” “The Source Magazine,” and “Buzz.” His work has appeared on the cover of several nationally distributed CDs by Dave Van Ronk, Rosallie Sorrells and Dan Hicks. He has exhibited in various invitational shows including Saratoga Visual Arts, High Rock Review, and the juried Mohawk- Hudson Regional. His photos taken at Café Lena over the past 35 years are being acquired by the Library Of Congress for their archives.
 
Ed Burke has worked at the Saratogian for over twenty years shooting more shows than he can keep track of, including three Frank Sinatra shows. Burke is mostly self-taught.  In his younger years he was fascinated by his father’s dark room loosely maintained in the household’s pantry. Burke’s father had been taught how to develop film by a German prisoner-of-war during WWII and eventually traded another GI a plundered Luger for a folding box camera.
 
Albert Brooks is a long-term resident of Albany, NY, and native of Charleston, SC, who had been practicing the art of photographing jazz musicians in performance for about ten years. A public sector attorney for thirty years, Brooks came to photography late in life as a way to get closer to the music and its creative energy.  Jazz music, performed at its best, is an improvisatory art form that embodies a standard of excellence, virtuosity and beauty. With his photography, brooks tries to capture some of those moments of artistic creation and realization. Brooks is also a student of jazz saxophone and has studied with area musicians such as Brian Patneaude, Jason Rogers and Victor Grant.
 
Sylvia Aronson's photography captures succinctly moments of life’s drama or tranquility. Aronson focuses on the traditional art form of black and white; her images have been exhibited in national shows and within the Capital Region. She was one of the key photographers in the beginning years for the Lotus World Music & Arts Festival in Bloomington, Indiana, which for the past 15 years has been attracting such renowned musicians as; Susanna Baca, Paris Combo, Laura Love and Robert Mirabel. Many of Aronson’s images from that festival were published in “Bringing the World to Our Neighborhood” Indiana University Press 2005.

The artist's "3-D political cartoons" feature fantastical contraptions inspired by Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" presented with a comic edge culled from Mad Magazine, the macabre cartoons of Charles Addams and Moe, Larry and Curly, according to the sculptor.  The meticulous work balances social criticism with cerebral shtick.  - The Post Star  

click here for the full article

 

John R.G. Roth received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin with a concentration in painting and sculpture. Roth’s work has been widely exhibited in galleries and museums across the country. He currently resides in Norfolk, Virginia where he is an Assistant Professor at Old Dominion University.