March 22, 2008

Invitations to Marcy Dunn Ramsey’s exhibit – Convergence – go in the mail today. Join us on Friday, April 4 from 5-8pm. We will be celebrating April’s First Friday with the fruits of Marcy’s labor over the last year. The exhibit will run through May 4, 2008. The Chester River has long been her muse and continues to give forth its riches. The new work is vibrating with color and she captures and makes visible the energy created when wind, water, and grass converge. Although her stunning oil canvases are based on natural phenomena, I have always related to her as an abstract artist. Something beyond the landscape is going on and it has more to do with the laying down of color and the negative spaces she creates. There is a reverberation in the mind/soul that transcends the imagery. Ramsey’s own words may prove a better guide in navigating this new body of work:

The current series of paintings is a meditation on the enduring theme of impermanence. When disparate elements encounter each other a convergence occurs that can produce a momentary state of recognition; seemingly inconsequential phenomena can become mirrors of a state of mind.* MDR

Grace Mitchell returns to the Gallery courtesy of the Allen Sheppard Gallery in New York. A wrong turn, when prowling galleries in Chelsea, brought me face to face with my first Mitchell. It was literally glowing on the wall. Mitchell’s multi-layered oil on panel paintings are burnished to an almost buttery sheen but a gouged desiccated quality remains visible just under the surface. They are at once ethereal and gritty. She, too, uses landscape as a point of departure. And then she rips your heart out. Mitchell’s paintings haunt. Because of the labor-intensive methods she employs, there will be a limited number of her works in the exhibit.

Sculptor and ikebana scholar, Seiko Behr will reprise aspects of her one-woman show at the Academy Art Museum last November. The “disparate elements” Ramsey refers to in her artist statement (see above) seem to sum up in toto the magic Seiko conjures with “inconsequential phenomena.” A slender reed balanced on the edge of her clay vessel has the capacity through her talent to drive home the “enduring theme of impermanence” while still softening the blow of our mortality. The balance she achieves is elemental.

Rounding out the exhibit, we will pair sculptor Shelley Robzen’s white marble sculptures and black patinated bronzes with Mitchell’s paintings. In an odd way, Robzen’s sculptures ground the show. Not in the ordinary sense of rooting us to the earth, but instead, by allowing us to remain in the mind. Ramsey, Mitchell, and Behr rub up against our sensibilities. It is not enough for them to have us merely engage with their work on one level, they insistently demand more. Robzen’s elegant, cerebral work gives us a respite. She invites us dwell in another realm - … where life resounds, a clear pure note in the silence.*


News & Notes

• Karen Hubacher – Group Exhibition & lecture Series – DC Public Library. Celebrating Washington DC Women Artists during Women’s History Month, March 1-28, 2008. Call 202-727-0321 for information.

• Leigh Wen – The Beacon Institute Gallery, Beacon, New York. March 8-July 8, 2008. www.thebeaconinstitute.org. Ms. Wen, whose work is currently on display at the American Embassy in Botswana (in Southern Africa), will be traveling to Botswana in April to conduct workshops for local artists and children, at the request of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Upon her return, she will give a public talk at The Beacon Institute on Saturday, April 26 at 2:00 p.m. about her experiences in Botswana. On Saturday, June 7, also at 2:00 p.m., she will give another public talk about her artistic process. Both events are free and open to the public, thanks to an educational grant from Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union.

• Heidi Fowler was selected as a 2007 Grantee by the Franz and Virginia Bader Fund of Washington, DC.

• Gallery artist Celia Pearson will participate in a lecture/slide presentation at the Ladew Topiary Gardens in Monkton, Maryland. "The most outstanding topiary garden in America." The Garden Club of America. For more information: http://www.ladewgardens.com/index2.html

Wednesday, April 2 • 10:30 a.m. in the Ladew Studio

Style Magazine senior editor Laura Wexler, garden writer Kathy Hudson and photographer Celia Pearson share the process of finding and showcasing area gardens in the pages of Style. Gardens are included from past Ladew tours as well as many outstanding Baltimore urban, artists’ and roof-top gardens. Laura Wexler is the author of the nonfiction book, Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America. She lives in Baltimore , where she is on the faculty of the Goucher College MFA in Creative Nonfiction and founder of The Stoop Storytelling Series. Kathy Hudson has written for Style Magazine for ten years and has become their primary garden writer. She is a regular columnist for Smart Woman magazine and The BaltimoreMessenger. Celia Pearson’s work has been featured in Coastal Living, Cottage Living,Metropolitan Home, Southern Accents, Chesapeake Life, and of course, Style Magazine. Book credits include Pure SEA GLASS and Wayne L. Good, Architect: Elegance, Tradition, Repose. $25 for members, $30 for non-members. Call (410) 557-9570 to make reservations.

*Dag Hammarskjold
Markings
Thus It Was

I am being driven forward
Into an unknown land.
The pass grows steeper,
The air colder and sharper.
A wind from my unknown goal
Stirs the strings
Of expectation.

Still the question:
Shall I ever get there?
There where life resounds,
A clear pure note
In the silence.