SENTIMENTAL SHIPBUILDING

Opening Reception: Friday, June 12 from 6:30-8:30pm.

Biography

Lori Warner was raised and lives in Lyme, Connecticut. The interesting and layered history of this area, its founding families, shipbuilding, boating, river life, and art have influenced her life from a young age. From the age of seven to sixteen Lori lived aboard a boat for six months a year and travelled the East Coast from Maine to the Bahamas. As an adult, she lived and worked in Providence, Rhode Island and Nantucket and Charlestown, Massachusetts where she gained recognition as a thoughtful and provocative artist and community member. Long hours in the libraries of Brown, RISD and in downtown Providence used bookstores influenced her work. She found an old scrapbook about a home in Nantucket while in one of those old book stores, and moved “on island” year round after graduating. Living on the edge of the Atlantic in Nantucket, it was the days spent retouching pixellated photos and the long winter nights hearing fishing stories and trading beer for shells that led her artwork in what she calls narrative and complex in representation, but pure in form. After a stint in Charlestown, where she found access to an etching press, Lori is now once again back in the area making her art on her own press in her printmaknig studio in Hadlyme, CT. Lori’s experiences have given her a sensitive view on her world both big and small. Her perspective has been enriched by the family she is building and cherishing on Brockway’s Ferry Road in Lyme.

Artist Statement

Lori Warner is an educated printmaker in Lithography, Intaglio and Screen Printing. She is considered a master printmaker in Monotype. While an undergrad she studied Photography as a double major and graduated with the highest honors from RISD, receiving the award for Excellence in Printmaking. Upon graduating, she worked primarily in photography and became a specialist in photoshop and art director for clients such as Ocean Spray. Her work exhibits a mastery of these numerous fields of study, as well as painting and sculpture which result is Lori’s unique style. In her one of a kind prints the inherent and traditional boundaries of printmaking are abandoned as it relates to shape, size and the use of the multiple.

Abstract forms and gestural marks of color using monotype techniques are painted on plates and run through the press. Each print has from three to ten monotype printings. Then, layers of translucent Asian papers are applied by slicing and weaving one print into another, and/or by chine colle (adhering with the use of the press). Photo imagery and charcoal drawings are added by using a paper lithography technique after the image is digitally manipulated to conform to composition, exposure and reversal issues. Pieces that become larger than the bed size of the press are often folded and printed, which leads the imagery in an unexpected direction. Once the printing is complete, the prints are mounted onto shaped wooden panels with seams repeating the lines of the woven areas in the piece. In the end, Lori Warner is taken by the process and the many different directions it leads her.

Opening Reception: Friday, May 8 from 6:30-8:30pm.

Lori Lohstoeter was born and raised in the deep south. Since 1989, Lori has been a resident of Norwalk, Connecticut. In a new series of mixed medium drawings, she explores a technique of rubbed and scratched markings on vellum. The original images are repeatedly erased and replaced. The history of the image remains but in an altered state. Apparent beneath the final surface is the ruins of original intent. What remains are drawings filled with diverse layers of delicately connected veins of toner and pastel.

     
Above, Left to Right: Breach, Intersect, and Untitled.

Artist Statement

There is a boundary in physics between turbulence and order. There in exists a zone where no rules apply.

My current work is an intended exploration of emotion. No rules. Directly applied toner, pigments scratched and smudged into vellum. The controlled palette is deliberate. The contrasting line work of calm and opposing frenzy is intentional. I’m inviting the viewer to look beyond the surface of chaos and find beauty and order.

House Project
April 25: 10am - 7pm
April 26: 10am - 6pm
At 54 Bayberry Lane, Westport
$5 Admission, at the door

In conjunction with Westport Arts Center’s fortieth anniversary and the exhibition HOME, Westport Arts Center Director of Visual Arts, Terri C. Smith, and Visual Arts Assistant Maura Frana are curating an exhibition event called House Project. The art exhibition will take place in an unoccupied home over the weekend of April 25 and will include individual artworks and installations as well as a handful of ephemera and objects from nearby collections. The artists in the exhibition are cross generational –for example, veteran photographer Larry Silver and Yale MFA student/photographer David Bush are both exhibiting work. The show will take on the feeling of a project space that embraces fluidity and energy by creating relationships between artworks, crafts associated with home (including Denyse Schmidt's quilts and Frances Palmer’s vases), and the architecture of the house itself. Straddling a traditional gallery installation, a studio situation, and home staging, House Project hopes to expand the idea of how home can influence, enrich, and perhaps complicate the artistic process – sub-themes include: studio as home for creativity (Joe Fucigna will create a version of his studio in one room), how the meaning of sentimental objects can shift when inserted in a new context (stylized photos of family members that conjure specific eras, the abstracted drawing of a turkey by an artist’s child, a Yale MFA student’s conceptual graph about her family’s Thanksgiving dinner, etc.), and the transformation of materials associated with home through the creative process (a hollow core door becomes a sculpture, a toilet seat becomes a painting, a broom is co-opted and transformed into sculpture). The associations, like the installation, are loose and improvisational, giving each viewer the room to incorporate his or her own perspective about how the works might allude to or question domestic spaces and experiences.

Opening reception Saturday, April 25, 5 - 7pm (free admission)

Artists in the Exhibition: Lauren Adolfsen, Meredith Allen, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Keyvan (Kvon) Behpour, Ivan Biro, Jocelyn Braxton Armstrong, Janine Brown, David Bush, Lorraine Chamberlain, Alberta Cifolelli, Alex da Corte, Honoré Daumier, Jim Dine, Xenia Fedorchenko, Sandi Fifield, Joan Fitzsimmons, Joseph Fucigna, Nathan Heiges, Mauricio Higuera, Jahmane, Paul Kaiser, Richard Klein, Samantha Knapp, Bernd Krauss, Loretta Lux, Dorothy Mayhall, George Nick, Jo Nigoghossian, Frances Palmer, Bradley Peters, Jaclyn Podlaski, James Reed, Abel Rodriguez, Alyse Rosner, Charles Rozier, Robert Satter, Denyse Schmidt, Allison Sexton, Lisa Siegal, Larry Silver, Max Weinbach, John Paul Wrobbel, Lin Yan.

Exhibition Programming

April 3 - June 1: HOME, in the WAC Main Gallery
April 5 : “Writing Home” opening reception, 4 - 6 pm, at WAC
April 16: Art in Context talk with WAC’s Director of Visual Arts Terri C. Smith , 7:00 pm, at WAC
May 7: Curator talk with HOME curator Eric Aho, 7:00 pm, at WAC
May 19: Book discussion of “The House on Mango Street” led by Professor Kathy Knapp, 7:00 pm, at WAC

Image credit: Abel Rodriguez, Untitled 2008, mixed media.

Opening Reception: Friday, April 3, 6:30 - 8:30.

Westport Arts Center is proud to display Not Picture Perfect, a photography installation by high school students from the Stamford Youth Services Bureau and the Norwalk-based Center for Youth Leadership. The photo installation, created and conceived by both student groups, is a response to the HOME exhibition, and a reflection of the larger social issues that occur in the lives of these teens. The impetus for the installation is to create awareness and affect social change.

The project began with students from both organizations meeting to discuss WAC’s upcoming HOME exhibition and brainstorming ways in which their artwork could complement the exhibition. The major themes of the installation are child abuse, human trafficking, teen dating violence, and the rights of day laborers–all under the umbrella of social change.

During the last two decades, art museums and galleries are increasing their service to young audiences and the community. The partnership with the Stamford Youth Services Bureau and the Center for Youth Leadership creates an opportunity for the Westport Arts Center to engage teens directly through the exhibition process.

More About the Participating Organizations

Stamford Youth Services Bureau promotes safe schools and communities, with an emphasis on teen dating violence. The 86 members of the bureau’s youth activism program use public awareness activities, volunteer programs and social change campaigns to address one of the more stubborn public health issues in Connecticut. Dannel Malloy, the Mayor of Stamford, supports the work of the students and recognizes the role they play in keeping Stamford at the forefront of the youth leadership movement in Connecticut.

The Center for Youth Leadership is the largest youth activism organization in Fairfield County and one of the largest in Connecticut. Its mission is to promote activism through grant making, public awareness activities, volunteer programs and social change campaigns. The Center, which is based at Brien McMahon High School in Norwalk, addresses child abuse, the rights of day laborers, teen dating violence and human trafficking.

HOME
April 3 – June 1, 2009
In the Westport Arts Center Main Gallery

Westport Arts Center’s exhibition HOME, curated by Eric Aho, features paintings and drawings that touch on the mental, physical and emotional connections to home. According to Aho, “These artists point out that the range of our associations with ‘home’ is as wide and varied as our own unique circumstances. Through their work we are reminded that the notion of home is seldom a fixed idea. Instead, it is as conditional as our memory and vulnerable to change without notice.” 

The drawings and paintings Aho selected for the exhibition range from the 1920s to the present, highlighting artists’ perennial interest in and the shifting attitudes toward the topic of home.

The imagery and aesthetic attitudes of the works in HOME range from traditional to confrontational, comforting to disquieting.  Themes include the familiarity and alienation of the suburbs, domestic interactions of family, and the psychological (even dreamlike) symbolism of domestic interiors. Many of these artists can be found in major collections around the world, including the Tate (London), The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Art (New York), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The catalog for HOME is available to download here.

Opening reception Friday, April 3, 6:30 - 8:30 at WAC, 51 Riverside Avenue, Westport, CT.

Artists in the exhibition:

Debra Bermingham (b.1953), Charles Burchfield (1893–1967), Quentin Curry (b. 1972), Edwin Dickinson (1891–1978), Soren (b. 1975) and Rayna deNiord (b.1978), Lois Dodd (b.1927), Kim Dorland (b.1974), Duncan Hannah (b.1952), Lousia Matthíasdóttir (1917-2000), Kristine Moran (b. 1974), Shane Neufeld (b.1982), George Nick (b.1927), Devin O’Neill (b.1971), Fairfield Porter (1907–1975), Charles Ritchie (b.1954).

Exhibition Programming

April 5 : “Writing Home” opening reception, 4 - 6 pm, at WAC
April 16: Art in Context talk with WAC’s Director of Visual Arts Terri C. Smith , 7:00 pm, at WAC
April 25th - 26th: Exhibition event, at 54 Bayberry Lane
May 7: Curator talk with Eric Aho, 7:00 pm, at WAC
May 19: Book discussion of “The House on Mango Street” led by Professor Kathy Knapp, 7:00 pm, at WAC

Image credit: Kim Dorland, Hilary's House, 2008, oil and acrylic on wood.

Sponsored with funds from:

Opening Reception: Friday, January 23 from 6:30-8:30pm.

Visit the rich, imagined landscapes in Lost Paradise, an exhibition of oil on wood panel paintings and watercolors by Peruvian-born painter, Guido Garaycochea.

Guido Garaycochea's Artist Statement for Lost Paradise

My work is a meditation combining personal and cultural history on utopian dreams in two parts: landscape and metaphoric abstraction. My abstract landscapes are environments of mental habitation filled with icons that either I have adopted or developed. My work combines personal histories, ghosts, and gods that have engendered and perhaps abandoned these environments. My images range from the obvious to the eccentric, and the social to the personal, to purposely create a new, ambiguous reality.

My work goes across a spectrum of concepts and stylistic approaches. It walks from narrative to purely abstract; from stones and trees to nests and migrating birds; from drawing to dripping without concern, from individual feelings to general concepts. It may seem a bit scattered, but with scrutiny the common threads binding the work together become apparent.

My body of work titled Lost Paradise becomes an area layered in concepts of ideas, texture, and color. Paradise is the place we will always look for, but we will never find, as answers to enigmatic questions.
 

   
Above: Guido Garaycochea, Night Journey, oil on panel wood (triptych), 2008, and Dreamed City, watercolor on paper, 2008.

Preemptive Resistances: Critical Pointers in Latin American Art provides a unique and informed perspective on current issues in contemporary Latin American art, and continues the Westport Arts Center’s timely examination of art as a form of activism and as an agent of change. Curated by Denise Carvalho, Preemptive Resistances includes the work of nine contemporary Latino artists from six countries in Latin America, as well as the United States.

Carvalho considers the social conditions and cultural vectors that inform the practices of the participating artists. She proposes that a unifying attitude may be discerned in the work of these artists in the shared strategy of preemptive resistance: that is, an activist posture of resistance - of opposition to hegemony - formed over long periods of political instability, economic uncertainty and social and cultural oppression. This predisposition to resistance informs the meaning and shapes the substance of the works in the exhibition. Many of the artists in Preemptive Resistances engage the predominant language of contemporary visual culture, including new media and installation, as a tactic to both reveal and resist the colonizing effects of global culture. In so doing, they manage to simultaneously inhabit their identities as Latino artists, while challenging the legitimacy of that label in a globalized world.

The Westport Arts Center is proud to provide this opportunity to examine the nature of the Latin American experience through the particular lens of this thoughtful exhibition and the work of these remarkable artists. We would like to thank the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation for providing funds for an exhibition catalogue.

 
Artists: Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck, Francisca Benitez, Vidal Centeno, Cesar Cornejo, Andrea Juan, Carlos Motta, José Ruiz, Alex Villar, Augusto Zanela

GALLERY EVENTS:

Friday, January 23, 6:30 - 8:30 pm
Opening reception

Thursday, February 12, 7:00 pm
Curator’s talk with several of the artists

Sunday, March 1, 4:00pm
Solo Spanish and classical guitar by Jason Vieaux, in the gallery

Thursday, March 5, 7:00pm
Art in context talk with WAC's resident art historians

Vidal Centeno, “Debris Field,” (detail) 2005; Carlos Motta, “Memory of a Protest,” 2007, (video still); Alex Villar, "Crash Course (NY and Brazil)", 2007-2008 (video still); Augusto Zanela, "No Commercial Value," 2008.

 

ABOUT THE CURATOR: Denise Carvalho is an independent curator, art critic, and scholar based in New York. Her recent curatorial projects include Holy Holes: Absolute Stalls at DUMBO Arts Center (on view this summer through August 3); Infinitu et Contini and RAW, both exhibited at Smack Mellon in New York, Hybrid Dwellings at the national gallery of Bialystock, Poland; and Fairy Tale, an exhibition symposium held at the Center for Metamedia in the Czech Republic. Ms. Carvalho has written for numerous art publications Flash Art, Sculpture, Art Papers, Review, Afterimage, and Art in America.

Opening Reception: Friday, December 5 from 6:30-8:30pm.

An exhibition of dramatic, textural pigmented ink prints, “Abandoned Warehouse,” is a series of photographs by Debbie Smith. Smith photographed the “Abandoned Warehouse” series during a two-year period, capturing the previously unseen beauty of an old building.

Debbie Smith received the 2008 Juror’s Prize for “Outer Limits” at the 2008 Rowayton Arts Center, and also earned honors for her work from New Canaan Society for the Arts, Norwalk Camera Club and BetterPhoto.com. She received a B. A. degree in studio art from Connecticut College and continued her studies Silvermine School of Art in New Canaan, The Photographer’s Workplace in Norwalk, and the International Center of Photography in New York.

   
Above: Photographs by Debbie Smith. From Left to Right: Tripych, Lyrical, and Franz Klein Remembered.

C²= (CP + LP)
Creative Connections = (Creative Process + Learning Process)

Curated by WAC's Director of Education, Danielle Cavanna, this show celebrates Westport Arts Center’s teaching artists who have participated in our Connections program past and present.

Artists: Martha Bloom, Miggs Burroughs, Dylan Cotton, Sharon Kurland, Janet Luongo, Patrick McCullough, Eileen Panepinto, and Jeannie Thomma.

   

ABOUT THE CURATOR: Curator Danielle Cavanna received her M.A. in Art History from Boston University and an Ed.M in Arts in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has taught arts programs at art museums and heritage sites including the British National Trust at Tytesfield, the Newport Restoration Foundation, and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard. Danielle is currently WAC’s Director of Education.

STUDIO PARTY: Thursday, October 30 from 6:30-8:30pm.
Celebrate the opening of Lucy Sander Sceery's whimsical, charming take on rubber ducks in the studio gallery, along with a night of music and good times with Singer/Songwriter Taber Onthank performing in our main gallery.

Artist Statement:
I've used a lighter approach in this series of paintings, prints, Polaroid transfers, and 3-D works, yet I'm asking the viewer to think about a deeper question. Aren't the subjects, rubber ducks looking and acting differently, a metaphor for mankind? When I began to collect the ducks, I was amazed how different they all were. Sometimes it was a very subtle difference, but a difference none the less. It reminded me of that prejudicial remark, "Oh those rubber ducks, they all look alike to me." I decided to use them in my art and share this enlightenment with others. I started to photograph the ducks, first as allegorical pictures in the post modernism tradition. My interest grew as members of my family began suggesting word play ideas. Humorous word play is a good vehicle to draw the viewer in and then they must consider the more profound. After all, "not all rubber ducks look alike."

Pressed Duck #2, 2008, by Lucy Sander Sceery.

On exhibit at the Westport Arts Center outdoor gallery through 2008, The Ancients is a dyamic sculpture created from discarded fiberglass rudders that artist Eric Camiel found in boatyards.

Danbury resident Eric Camiel calls himself a “nearly-fulltime sculptor.” After a successful career in documentary film-making, Eric started creating sculptures five years ago out of his Danbury home. His architecture and design work has been on the cover of House Beautiful and several of his works in other media are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art , The Library of Congress, and the Library at Lincoln Center. His film work has won multiple Emmys and an Academy Award nomination. His work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Glamour, and Time. Skyscraper, a metal sculpture by Camiel, won 1st place in WAC's 2008 Group Member Show Part I.

Opening Reception: Friday, September 26 from 6:30-8:30pm

With the upcoming national election inspiring unprecedented levels of participation in the democratic process, especially among the disenfranchised and the young, OPTIMISM examines the idea of art as a form of activism, and explores ways in which art can be used as an agent of change—as a vehicle of both criticism and transcendence.

OPTIMISM features work in a wide range of media that focuses on the ideals of optimism and hope; at this transitional moment in our nation’s government, when perhaps the only certainty is that we will elect a new president, OPTIMISM dares to propose that better worlds are indeed possible. 

The art works suggest that hope resides in the simple gesture, in the modest act of personal activism.  Many works in the exhibition function as embodiments of the democratic process and of our First Amendment (especially the freedoms of speech, assembly, and petition).

Several of the artists in the exhibition explore direct political actions by individuals, ranging from the heroic to the mundane.  Paul Shambroom’s Meetings photographs document the inner workings of small-town councils.  Ghana Thinktank, a collaborative, interactive artwork organized by Christopher Robbins, John Ewing and Matey Odonkor, involves a cross-continental problem-solving exercise with artists from around the world, all addressing problems identified by Westporters.  In another exploration of our private hopes for a better world, Walid Ra’ad’s video work, Miraculous Beginnings, is a record of wishful thinking; the film itself serves as a hopeful personal response to the brutal reality of war-torn Lebanon.

OPTIMISM suggests that the very act of making art is a hopeful act, and available to everyone.  The works in the exhibition present the idea of optimism in differing lights: powerful but seductive; a truth and a panacea.  Taken as a whole, they suggest that hoping and working for a better world may be a sucker’s game, but it’s still one that’s well worth playing.
 

ABOUT THE CURATOR: Massachusetts native Michael Connor is an independent writer and curator based in New York  with a focus on screen-based visual culture.  His touring exhibition The New Normal, exploring the theme of privacy through thirteen recent artworks, premiered at Artists Space in New York in April 2008.  A program consultant for Creative Capital Foundation, he was formerly head of Exhibitions at the British Film Institute, London, and curator of FACT in Liverpool.

In the Studio Gallery, this exhibition will feature original sketches by Westport artist Howard Munce.

Howard has been a bright light on the Westport arts scene for more than 50 years, and is known for drawings full of humor, whimsy and poignancy.

Opening reception: Friday, July 25 from 6:30-8:30 pm

Image: Howard Munce, "Untitled," 2003.

The Westport Arts Center is dedicated to creating arts experiences that contribute to individual growth and enrich the community.  During the summer we celebrate our communities’ artistic diversity and abundance through its “Members Show.”  The shows are divided into 2 parts. Part I and Part II will feature member artists with last names beginning with A-K and L-Z, respectively.

Exhibition Dates:

Richard Byrnes Piano- in A Minor Key	Betty Ball Pound Ridge Summer Field I

Morgaine Pauker, Lunar Eclipse

Kathleen Bossert Big Jim	Alfonsia Betancourt La Tortiuera

Thomas Savard Yellow Chairs and White Tables	Donald Axleroad Greek Fates over the Alzheimers Ward 11