JAN HULING Walking Under Ladders and Boom & Bust: Ceramic Commentary Featuring: Sin-Ying Ho, Jeff Irwin, Jeffrey Mongrain and Robert Silverman at Lyons Wier Gallery
Steampunk Willy, Mixed media, beads,16 x 9 x 5 inches
JAN HULING
Walking Under Ladders
Opening Reception:
Thursday, November 11 - 6-9pm
Exhibition Dates:
November 11 - December 10, 2010
Gallery Located: 175 Seventh Ave on the NE corner of 20th and 7th Ave.
Nearest Subway: C,E exit at 23rd St @ 8th Ave, 1 exit 23rd @ 7th Ave.
Contact: Michael Lyons Wier - Tel: 212.242.6220
E-mail: gallery@lyonswiergallery.com
Lyons Wier Gallery is pleased to present Walking Under Ladders, a solo exhibition of new sculptural work by Jan Huling.
Neither sketched nor planned, Huling's three-dimensional works draw inspiration from her travels to India and Mexico, as well as imagined, playful scenes reminiscent of childhood fairy tales and fantasies. Huling's work is approachable yet evocative, incorporating spiritual iconography along side humorous artifacts of contemporary popular culture. The armatures for Huling's sculptures are an unpredictable mix of forms ranging from Kewpie and Munny dolls to birds and tiny life-sized insects. This exploration of shape and scale adds to the whimsical charm of her work.
In addition to seed beads, Huling's colorful sculptures incorporate a variety of found objects, such as buttons, coins, tokens and costume jewelry. Huling's slow and meticulous beading process, the intricacy of her swirling, hypnotic patterns, and the spontaneous manner with which Huling approaches each new project results in sculpture that is both delicate and alluring to touch - simply put, she transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Jan Huling received a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and Drake University. Her work has been shown at the Noyes Museum, Oceanville, NJ, Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco, the American Craft Council Show, Baltimore, SOFA New York and Santa Fe, the Bead Museum, Washington, DC, the Montclair Art Museum, NJ, and Rupert Ravens Gallery, Newark, NJ, among others.
Huling's work has been featured in the New York Times, The New York Post, Beadwork Magazine, 500 Tables (2009),500 Handmade Dolls (2007), Lark Books, HGTV and NJN (PBS). The artist is the author of Ol' Bloo's Boogie-Woogie Band & Blues Ensemble (2010) [Peachtree Publishers], and Puss in Cowboy Boots (2002) [Simon & Schuster].
Jeff Iwin
(Bull Earthenware, glaze, 24 x 24 x 19 inches)
Boom & Bust: Ceramic Commentary
Featuring: Sin-Ying Ho, Jeff Irwin, Jeffrey Mongrain and Robert Silverman
Opening Reception:
Thursday, November 11 - 6-9pm
Exhibition Dates:
November 11 - December 10, 2010
"When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss money." Oscar Wilde
Sin-Ying Ho, Jeff Irwin, Jeffrey Mongrain and Robert Silverman are four ceramists commenting on the world's recent economic struggles brought about by America's dubious subprime lending and mortgage practices and questionable banking policies. Each artist makes overt references in their work about how they were personally affected by the world's financial market crash.
Sin-Ying Ho displays a six-foot porcelain vessel that combines traditional blue and white Chinese motifs with the iconography of Adam & Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Commenting on the trials and tribulations of blind "monetary" pursuits, Ho's work incorporates illustrations of plunging financial indexes within the large silhouetted figures.
Jeff Irwin's iconographical life-size earthenware "Bear" and "Bull" busts represent upward and downward market trends. Each piece also combines knots and branches cast from living trees, drawing attention to issues of conflict between Man and Nature.
For this exhibition, Jeffrey Mongrain transforms a two-dimensional sound wave translation of a quote by President Herbert Hoover into a three-dimensional sculpture in clay. On October 29th, 1929, the New York Stock Exchange collapsed beginning the decade long Great Depression. On December 3rd, 1929, thirty-six days after the Market's crash, President Hoover gave his State of the Union Address stating the economy was "...returning to normal...". The water-drop like ripples coming from the center of Mongrain's circular disc are a sculptural sound translation of Hoover's words "Returning to Normal".
Robert Silverman's large format ceramic panels incorporate his continued fascination with the visual representation of information and language. Using Morse code and graphs that are ultimately abstracted through his artistic process, Silverman creates compositions where the direct semantic exchange in the piece is impossible to decipher but the beauty of a symbolic language emerges. One such piece in the show, "Wealth" illustrates America's dichotomy of wealth between 1920-2000.
Sin-Ying Ho holds an MFA from Louisiana State University and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Art Department of Queens College, City University of New York. Jeff Irwin holds an MFA from San Diego State University, and is a Ceramics Instructor at Grossmont College, San Diego. Jeffrey Mongrain holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University, and is a Professor of Art at Hunter College in New York City. Robert Silverman holds an MFA from Alfred University and is the Director of the Ceramic Center at the 92St Y in New York City.