GREG SAULMON, The Birds Downtown: Urban Birding in Holyoke, Massachusetts

Due to snow cancelation the evening reception has been moved to next Wed. Feb 19 5:30pm - 7:30pm

Jan. 27th - Feb. 27th, 2014

Gallery talk/reception - Wed. Feb. 12th

11am - 1pm - gallery talk begins at noon

Artist's statement:

What do you see in a city? It depends on how closely you look, and it depends on what you expect to find.

Before I began birding in downtown Holyoke I assumed there were no falcons or owls or warblers here. It wasn’t a vision of the city that made sense. But, I was wrong.

The birds featured in this exhibit were all photographed in the heart of Holyoke’s urban core. It’s a landscape shaped by industry; a world of canals and factories and tenements. It’s a world far removed from the pristine wilderness many birders seek, but it’s no less rich a realm for discovery.

Bio

Greg Saulmon is a writer and photographer living in downtown Holyoke. A lifelong resident of the Pioneer Valley, he has worked as an editor for the region’s major daily newspaper, The Republican, since 2009.

His photographs have been shown at the Hosmer Gallery at Northampton's Forbes Library; Holyoke’s Wistariahurst Museum; the Vermont Center for Photography in Brattleboro; and during the Solid Sound Festival at MASS MoCA in North Adams. He chronicles his bird sightings in Holyoke and other cities at the website BirdsDowntown.com.

The Social Onion: Imaging Identity

NEAL PARKS

The Social Onion: Imaging Identity

Nov 20th - Dec. 19th, 2013

Gallery talk/reception - Wed. Dec. 4th

11am - 1pm - gallery talk begins at noon

Evening reception Thurs Dec. 5th, 5:30-7:30pm

Gallery Hours: Mon thru Thurs 10am - 6pm. During regular school sessions.

Left image: Holier than Thou, 10” x 5.5”, Pen on photo, 2009

Right image: Good wife Parke, 10” x 5.5”, Pen on photo, 2009

 UNTITLED 

Works by

Alix Hegeler and Frank Cressotti

 Oct. 14 - Nov. 14, 2013

Reception/Gallery Talk: Wed. Oct. 23, from 11am - 1pm,

Gallery talk begins at noon

                                                  Alix Hegeler - Artist's Statement

I would prefer to say as little as possible about this group of pieces to let the viewer approach without preconceptions. But it is traditional to give a few hints from the studio and this is only fair.

Several ongoing series are represented in this exhibit and although all are related with overlapping themes and processes, each series required its own form.

I have included all the books I have made in the last 15 years that remain in my possession. Locations and people are the primary points of departure.  There are people who interest me, visually and otherwise. Writers, friends, colleagues, notorious characters and historical figures have been considered. Familiar streets and cities are sources for many books in this group. 

The Surveillance Panels began as a response to the ever-watchful eyes of surveillance cameras in the United Kingdom. 

The other panels were assembled from all kinds of interests. The process of drawing and painting can be a part of the collage along with found materials, tabloid headlines, Polaroid lifts and paper army men. This series has been a way to manage the constant assault from news items and the activities of our fellow citizens. I'm rather fond of the London tabloids and they have suggested several projects.

The City Street views are more difficult to describe. Perhaps I am working with architecture as Dr Frankenstein worked with the human body; assembling, disassembling and reconstructing from assorted components. Both pieces are from Commercial Street in the East End of London. 

.....

Alix Hegeler was born in Danville Illinois in 1957 and has lived in the Pioneer Valley since 1978. She received her BA in Drawing from Hampshire College and MFA in Printmaking from the University Of Massachusetts/Amherst. Hegeler has been teaching Printmaking and Design at Holyoke Community College since 1986 and enjoys time in S. Illinois and London when school is not in session.

                       Frank Cressotti - Artist's Statement 

I have always been attracted to pictures. I grew up drawing from comic books, sports and news

magazines, art books, and more. When I attended Gettysburg College I studied painting with a strict

formalist named Ingolf Qualley who was adamant in expecting that a formal and structural language is

essential to making visual art. Structure was to be discovered in every source for every painting and

drawing, whether observing objects in nature or looking at a photograph. Once discovered it was

essential to the development of the artwork being produced.

The idea of visual structure involved an exploration of form and space, light and shade, color, or

texture as they might be found in the source the artist worked from. Similar structural expectations

applied to the medium itself, the surfaces worked upon, and the processes through which the medium

was applied. A picture could never simply be a picture. A resolved painting or drawing had to express

this search. Paul Cezanne, and many of the Post-Impressionists, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso stood

as key examples of this point of view. Later I discovered other figures whose work was valuable to my

own approach: Georgia O'Keefe, Charles Burchfield, Arthur Dove, to name a few.

After grad school I worked with Dada and Pop, color field, and geometric abstraction. These helped me

to understand the page upon which I worked, to develop a palette, and exercise my capacity for markmaking.

They also helped me to respect the value of chance as a means of proceeding productively in

the art process.

Nevertheless, all this led me back to the formal direction established at Gettysburg College, and an

earlier impulse to look at and make pictures

......

Frank Cressotti is a lifelong resident of the Pioneer Valley. He grew up in Westfield where he attended

public schools. He has lived in Southampton since 1971. He received his BA with a major in art from

Gettysburg College, and his MFA with a major in painting from Ohio University. He has taught art at

Holyoke Community College since 1969.

OVERLAP

OVERLAP

Jen Simms & Sandy Litchfield

Sept. 3 - Oct. 3, 2013

Gallery talk/reception - Wed. Sept. 18, 

Noon - 2pm, artist’s talk begins at 12:30

image: detail Playground #2, 22x30” mixed media collage, digital print on paper, 2013

Since they first met in graduate school over ten years ago, artists Sandy Litchfield and Jen Simms have been in conversation about their artistic visions, processes and goals. Throughout the years, there has been significant overlap in their work, which includes similar media, forms and ideas. Both artists are interested in the tension and/or balance between the abstract and the representational, both trust the caprice in their search for new forms, and both take inspiration from the intersection of the domestic and the wild.

In 2012, the two artists began a visual dialogue through the mail. This interchange of ideas concluded with a series of artist books meant to explore an alternative to written language. Like a verbal conversation, each piece began with a proposition; there was a point and then a counter-point with moments of revelation as well as moments of clarification and repair. This became a negotiation between two visions and what the artists refer to as ‘collaborative play’.  

This year, the artists engaged in a week-long retreat in the Adirondack National Forest where they began a series of collages on paper. When they returned to their studios, they continued to revise and reinterpret this work.  In addition, both artists began using more sculptural materials. Their vocabulary evolved to included forms that reference not only the home and wilderness but also the playground as an intermediate space for shared expression- a place that is both fun and sometimes rough, but almost always imaginative and reciprocal.

 ROBERT MARKEY

SAFE?

July 1 - Aug 1, 2013

Closing Reception

Thursday Aug. 1st,  5:30-7:30

an informal artist talk will be given at 6pm

Artist's Statement

   SAFE? was inspired by doing mosaic murals with disadvantaged kids in Brazil and Cambodia. While doing this work I became aware of the magnitude of human trafficking - both sex trafficking and slave labor trafficking - and the brutality which is part of it. I also became aware of the huge increase in trafficking in the U.S. in recent years.  The visual presentation in SAFE? is just paintings of kids, some laughing, some serious, but all beautiful. It is the conceptual basis of the work that is so brutal.  It is always my hope that the beauty of the artwork will open a person’s heart to be able to let in the underlying issues.  The paintings are also my way of honoring these kids, who have had and will continue to have difficult lives.

2013 HCC Student Art Exhibition

BRUCE FOWLER

DADDY’S APPURTENANCES

Feb. 27 - March 28, 2013

Gallery talk/reception - Wed. March 6th, 

11am - 1pm, artist’s talk begins at noon

Hours: Mon - Thurs.10:00am - 6pm,  during regular school sessions.  

Bruce Fowler is a sculptor, teacher, curator, co-founder and arts director of Paper City Studios/PCS80, in downtown Holyoke.  PCS80 is a multi use arts building in a former historic warehouse, located along the 2^nd canal.  As arts director, he has been curating art exhibitions in two storefront galleries, and alternate spaces.  Presenting work of numerous local and regional artists.  In addition, he has been actively involved in the Holyoke arts community, as a founding member of The Friends of the Canalwalk and a member of the Holyoke Redevelopment Authorities CPC (citizen’s participation committee).  He is also the co/creator of The Great Holyoke Brick Race.  Now in its 3^rd year – racing brickracers each year on Race Street.  

His current work is a series of sculptures called Daddy’s Accessories.  Each work contains an element from childhood such as a tricycle or ride-on plastic toy.  The object is then fitted with a long steel bar with a trailer hitch at one end. The object is painted pure white giving it an innocence and yet the object itself is dangerous to use. The objects when completed become surrealistic. In each finished piece there is a small amount of red white and blue to give it an Americana ID. 

Daddy’s Accessory #6, Steel, plastic, rubber, epoxy paint, 33” x 49” x 84”, 2012

 VITAL TRANSFORMATIONS

Traditional and digital collage by

Lillianna Pereira and Wendy Seller

 Wendy Seller, Fragile Ego

digital collage, 20" x 18",  2012

Lillianna Pereira, Who can bear the thoughts in my head?

collage, 5" x 5.5",  2011

Jan. 28th through Feb. 21st 2013
Hours for this exhibition: Mon - Thurs 10am - 6pm

Reception and Gallery Talk: Wed. Feb. 6th, 11am - 1pm 

Artist's talk begins at noon

Also on 2/6/12 - an evening reception from 5:30 to 7:30pm