We are celebrating summer 2024 with our staff picks! Working at Studio Gallery, our team spends a lot of time getting to know the artwork in our gallery. We have asked our staff to share some of their favorite pieces of the summer!
Becca Amdur-Kass’ Pick
Flat Iron V - UD-27
Gordon Binder
Ink with wash and pastel on paper
12.25” x 9”
The simplicity of this piece grabs my attention. The feeling of a hot day in the city is created through flat brush strokes and black contour lines. The juxtaposition of the dark city against the light blue sky explores the idea of man vs nature. This is the kind of city seen in a dream.
Sierra Cameron’s Pick
Untitled #9: View in the Garden
Kimberley Bursic
Screen print, collagraph, chine collé, acrylic
22” x 30”
When I encountered Untitled #9: View in the Garden by Kimberley Bursic on the first day of my Studio Gallery internship this past June, I was immediately intrigued by the sense of conflict in this piece. I first noted the composition, which appears both fluid and geometrical. An unlikely combination, much like the colors used in this work.
In what I am interpreting as the foreground, there are abstract forms identified by their pastel pink and blue hues. These vary in shape, size, and opacity. None are completely opaque, emphasizing the element of layers in this painting, but some are colliding with much fuller shades of blood red, olive drab green, and black– all of which occupy the center third of this work.
Behind these darker shades and near the center of the painting, I found the first layer– a dark window with a texture reminiscent of birch trees. I imagine this is the garden Bursic references in the title. Since only a sliver of it remains unobstructed, viewers must sift through the rest of the colors and curves before they are granted access to the heart of the work: the garden.
This sense of contrast is typical of Bursic’s work. When describing her artistic style, she writes, “Juxtaposed shapes, colors and material processes disrupt the reading of the piece; like an interrupted thought or conversation.” Bursic’s art encourages an active eye, to say the least. There’s movement and conversation in her paintings that just can’t be absorbed in one glance. In this context, the journey to Bursic’s garden is a very different one for each who takes it, but perhaps this is exactly the point.
Avery Canavan’s Pick
Cottage in Provence
Suzanne Goldberg
Watercolor and pastel on paper
36.5” x 30”
The artwork Cottage in Provence by Suzanne Goldberg is a one of a kind, mixed media piece that beautifully portrays nature in a colorful and personal manner. The layering of the watercolor paint and pastels creates a windblown effect on the trees, generating movement and bringing the painting to life. My personal favorite part of this composition is the little cottage located in the center of the piece, hidden behind the trees and brush. Goldberg pictures the cottage in a soft and welcoming fashion, exactly how I would imagine a home located in southeast France to be. The fondness the artist feels toward this place is eminent through her work, inspiring the viewer to explore the world to find the beauty in nature.
Havahn Williams-Rollins’ Pick
Edited Landscapes
Kimberley Bursic
Etching, chine collé with watercolor on paper (unframed)
10 x 13 in.
Kimberley Bursic's artwork is a dynamic mixture of shapes, colors, and materials, creating a pause that mirrors the fragmented nature of thoughts and conversations. I saw this beautifully displayed in her piece, Edited Landscape. The dark blocking makes it feel as if disruption is intentional and designed to evoke a pause of thought or an unfinished conversation. The interplay of order and chaos, logic and defiance, creates a sense of place that is both familiar and foreign. It is within this piece that I found something relatable, something that resonated with me on a personal level.
Director Halley Sun Stubis’ Picks
White Flower Analgesic Oil
Amity Chan
2019
Screenprint on Canvas
32” x 30”
Pansy
Lynda Andrews-Barry
2024
Mixed media with acrylic, archival inks and digital painting printed on archival paper
10” x 8”
Pansy by Lynda Andrews-Barry collages together not just its physical, mixed media elements, but also the past with the future. This piece was part of her exhibit Echoes of Heroics in April-May 2024 (curated by Gaby Mizes). In a bloom of joyful orange, magenta, violet, and yellow flowers sprouts the portrait of a beautiful smiling woman— an ancestor of the artist. Her face is tilted up to the cyan sky like a religious Madonna, a futuristic halo resembling electronic circuits encircling the crown of her head. A black thumbrint-like oval sits at her forehead, a swirling vortex that is curious and futuristic: like a wormhole, it takes me to many places at once. Back to our country’s dark history and all that human beings have endured, as well as to the beautiful possibility of a world that has worked to overcome its racism, xenophobia, and hatred. Pansy, to me, is a representation of Black joy, a celebration of heritage, and a strong example of how Afrofuturism can bridge our present to a more inclusive and thoughtful future. This mixed-media artwork shines with love.
White Flower Analgesic Oil by our Jennie Lea Knight Fellow Amity Chan is a screenprint of a medicinal oil she recalls from her childhood in Hong Kong. This piece was part of the Fellows exhibit HEAL in January-February 2024 (curated by Atiya Dorsey). Chan’s artwork is her activism, with much of her work focused on the political and social issues of her home. In self-exile, her artwork offers a complex feeling of longing and nostalgia that is relatable for viewers of all backgrounds and cultures. In White Flower Analgesic Oil, a bottle of sunset-orange and red liquid is surrounded by protective rows of labels for the iconic medicine. The bottle, standing alone in the center of the piece with its little internal red-orange sea waves churning, becomes almost anthropomorphic to me. The longer I sit with this artwork, the more I feel myself relating to the bottle as a vessel for memory and healing: as a Chinese-Latvian artist raised in America, I have found myself more and more inclined towards connecting with my mixed heritage each year. I have core memories of menthol-scented Chinese medicines and child-sized Qipaos, but also vividly recall playdates with other Chinese families that made me realize I was the only one in the house who couldn’t speak the language. This memory and longing for something that is within me but also just out of reach is what makes White Flower Analgesic Oil stand out to me.
John Swords’ Pick
Haines
Robert Cwiok
© Feb 2024
Acrylic paint on canvas
39.5” x 33.5”
I like lines – ones that shoot straight, ones that swoop far out and whip back in, ones that point and ones that don’t, ones that change color or thickness or depth. As a liker of lines, Robert Cwiok’s Haines is right up my alley. Seeing this work for the first time as part of Cwiok’s exhibition pivot/echo, I was whipped into it and seemingly confined within a diamond looking outwards, its lines trapping me within while simultaneously providing a sense of comfort that the outside world couldn’t penetrate through the hard shell they formed to reach me. Standing up inside, I can walk along paths of cyan, cerulean, and cobalt, my footprints changing the shade of color as I move through the loops ahead of me on my long walk, a serene blue sky always above me. The work may have been taken down and the exhibition rolled off, but my mind remains within Haines as my feet carry it along these beltways.
From director Halley Sun Stubis and staff contributors Becca Amdur-Kass, Sierra Cameron,
Avery Canavan, Havahn Williams-Rollins, and John Swords.