Gallery of Photography Ireland Opens Carlotta Hester Exhibition

Carlotta Hester

THE PURE DROP

Drawings of Traditional Irish

Musicians, Singers and Dancers

 Joe Ward, Co. Tyrone, Fiddle, Bodhran & Singer,

Cross Border Session, Peace III Office, 16/8/2010

© Carlotta Hester / Govinda Gallery

January 26 – February 21 2016

in Gallery II

Opening Reception: Tues Jan 26, 6.30pm

GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Ireland's National Center 

for Contemporary Photography

Meeting House Square

Dublin 2, Ireland

During the summers of 2010, 2011, and 2012, American artist Carlotta Hester made over 150 drawings in County Cavan. Each is an exquisite rendering of traditional Irish musicians, singers and dancers captured at the height of their creative flow. For this exhibition, the artist has selected 24 drawings which present a visual distillation of Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, the largest of all traditional Irish music festivals. Hester’s drawings are created direct from life, while listening to the music in every festival setting – street sessions, theatres, dance classes, pub sessions, masterclasses, outdoor concerts, cross-border gatherings, and more.

Musical artists from all over Ireland (North and South), as well as Scotland, England, and the United States are depicted in these drawings. Well-known names including fiddlers Tommy Peoples and Oisin MacDiarmada, harpist Catriona McKay and filter Seamus Fay rub shoulders with newer talents and rising stars of the next generation. Presented during Tradfest as a companion exhibition to Ted Russell’s photographs of Bob Dylan, Hester’s work captures the spirit of traditional music that was such a major inspiration for Dylan back in the sixties. More than this, The Pure Drop is a forward looking celebration of the artistry of deep-rooted Irish traditions which continue to thrive today.

Acknowledgments: The Gallery of Photography would like to thank TradFest 2016 - Temple Bar’s festival of traditional music and Govinda Gallery, Washington DC. Special thanks to Jim Staunton of Staunton’s on the Green for his generous support for the exhibition.

EVENTS

Official launch of The Pure Drop and Bob Dylan – NYC 1961-64 exhibitions will take place Tuesday January 26 at 6.30 – 8.00pm. HE Kevin O’Malley, US Ambassador to Ireland, will be present. The evening will include a short performance by the award winning Irish singer/songwriter, Adrian Crowley.

About Carlotta Hester, the artist:

Carlotta Hester gained a BFA from Washington University, St Louis, MO and has exhibited in Washington DC, in Ireland and in Cuba. She combines her art practice with art teaching, and has been the art teacher at the prestigious Maret School since 1994. She received the Fishman Fellow Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2012. She is represented by Govinda Gallery, Washington DC.

About the Gallery of Photography Ireland:

Established in 1978 the Gallery of Photography is Ireland’s centre for contemporary photography. The Gallery provides an important platform for established and emerging artists from Ireland and abroad. In addition to exhibitions, the gallery also provides photography courses, a specialist photography bookshop, membership programme, fully serviced studio/darkroom facilities, and digital printing and scanning facilities available for hire at subsidised rates. The Gallery, which is nonprofit making, is funded by the Arts Council and Dublin City Council. It also welcomes donations, sponsorship and support from those interested in promoting photographic arts. www.galleryofphotography.ie/

Exhibition Opening Hours:

The exhibition is open Tues-Sat 11am-6pm, Sundays and Mondays 1–6pm. Guided group tours are available, tel 01 6714654 or email info@galleryofphotography.ie to book a time.

Admission is free. Guided group tours are free. Donations are welcome.

Gallery of Photography, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, Ireland.

Tel. 353-1-671 4654 www.galleryofphotography.ie info@galleryofphotography.ie/

MAGGIE SINER

Maggie Siner: The Art of Perception
Washington, D.C. by Anne Marchand, July 1, 2015

This summer while on tour at the Venice Biennale, I had the great pleasure of visiting painter Maggie Siner’s studio in her piano nobile apartment.  Maggie graduated from American University in 1976 and has lived, painted and taught for extended periods in France and China. She currently has a studio in a centuries old building on one of Venice’s romantic canals where she has been painting since 2008.

I met Maggie at the fruit seller near Campo Santa Maria Formosa and we walked the short distance to her studio apartment. Her place is centrally located on a quiet calle and is filled with white light from floor to ceiling windows. The color of light is an important element in her work.

Maggie was careful to select a studio location that reflects pure white north light onto her subject matter. She offered me tea and cookies while we savored the ambiance of her second floor studio filled with her paintings. Her balcony overlooks the canal below where gondolas glide. I can imagine her watching the watery pace of life in Venice. 

Maggie showed me the works hanging on her studio walls that had recently been shown at the Galleria d’arte ARKE this year. Her gallery created a beautiful catalog to accompany her solo exhibition.

Maggie’s studio subject and set-up was arranged in order that she see her still life table from a distance. This current view gives her work the perspective that she seeks. The series focuses on overflowing and undulating material on a lavishly set tabletop with a mysterious dress. Folds and movement become color shapes of a dress on a chair, a Pekinese, plates, glasses and spoons, remnants that hint of an enchanting evening the night before. Maggie works exclusively from life. In her artist statement she says, "Let the forms of an object be what it may - the light, shade and perspective will make it beautiful."

Classically trained, Maggie’s work looks contemporary. She has an ease of composition with shapes, colors and oil paint choreographed to produce poetic passages that allude to time, place, memory and recognition. Her evolving themes with soft drapery from beds, and dining tables recently took on the addition of a figure that occupies the formerly discarded dress. Maggie invites a friend to be the sitter in her works. One beautiful, alluring woman occupies a red dress in her paintings. The color red thrusts forth from velvety atmospheric colors and was the first fiery passage to catch my attention.

Maggie’s brushwork is almost abstract expressionism and the whole melody of light, pattern, color and shapes come together in a reminiscent experience and richness of the senses. She captures moments in time that are a feast for the eyes.

In her earlier bed series, fabrics held the shapes of time and action in the theatre of the night. Our most intimate and vulnerable selves lie in the dark and are revealed by the light of day in the folds and shape of the vacated beds.  Maggie’s newest table theme came about through the movement of her daily life. A new piece of furniture appeared, a movement of objects in the room, a table received new fabric and a new still life was born. Light was etched on new forms and a story began to unfold. A place setting was added and a new process of discovery began in this ancient setting mixed with sparkling light and calligraphic marks. The figure, seemingly at rest in Maggie’s energetic brushwork, comes to life amidst the shapes and folds of the composition.

I asked Maggie what she loved about living and painting in Venice. She mentioned the water, light and sky that speak to her and informs her art in ways that inspire. She loves the walkability, lack of cars and the water, which is truly the lifeblood of Venice. She also loves all the great art in Venice.  Ancient surfaces and architecture are enduring qualities that capture her eye. In a bin on the left side of her studio, Maggie showed me a series of small oils on linen that she paints on location in the tradition of plein-air painting. Donning a 15 lb. backpack, she goes into the streets on a visual discovery to compose the shapes and light of the city and water in masterful compositions that delight the viewer.  

Siner is a devoted teacher who has influenced a generation of painters. She has been on the faculty of L'institut Américain and the Lacoste School of Art in France, a visiting professor at Xiamen University in China, artist in residence at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Dean of Faculty at the Washington Studio School and teaches many workshops around the country. She is a frequent guest artist and public speaker appreciated for her revealing lectures on the internal workings of painting. She studied medicine at the Faculté de Médecine in Marseilles and taught anatomy at Georgetown Medical School. She is well known for her expertise in artistic anatomy and human movement. Since 2008 she has spent much time painting and exhibiting in Venice, Italy, enamored of that city's ever-changing surfaces. She returns annually to the Washington DC area where she gives workshops at the Washington Studio School.

To learn more about this highly acclaimed artist, go to www.maggiesiner.com. 

If you would like to feature this article in your publication, contact the author.

© 2015 Anne Marchand for Painterly Visions Blog

ANNE MARCHAND: VISION OF MYTH

ANNE MARCHAND: VISION OF MYTH 

extended January 2015.

ANNE MARCHAND

VISION OF MYTH

Anne Marchand explores a new vocabulary of color and texture in the swirling vortexes of nebulae and the surfaces of moons and planets, bringing these into her ongoing search for ways to approach mystic poetry through visual expression. The exhibition brings together works inspired by images from the Hubble spacecraft that relate to the artists theme of interconnections. 

Anne Marchand is based in Washingon, DC. She was awarded an Artist Fellowship in 2014 from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Marchand has traveled widely including a Cap/MexEx Residency Grant in 2003 at La Escuela de Arts Jose Limon, in Culiacán, Mexico. She has designed and won mural competitions through DC Creates Public Art Program. Her Westminster Playground Mural in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, DC was included in a Visions Award from the Committee of 100 to the Westminster Neighborhood Association. Her public art can be seen in Washington, DC and Arlington, VA. She currently exhibits work in galleries in New York City, Washington, DC, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and California. 

Founded in Monterey, California in 2013, the focus of Green Chalk Contemporary is to create a community around the celebration of the creative act and bring a select group of uniquely accomplished artists to an appreciative audience. Green Chalk Contemporary advances an uncommon opportunity for artists, curators and the public to discover, to learn, and to acquire contemporary artwork.


Green Chalk Contemporary 616 Lighthouse Ave Monterey, California, 93940 phone: 831.718.7232 email: greenchalkcontemporary [at] gmail [dot] com


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