Centerpiece

Multiple Leaf Print

Leaf Relief

Pile of Maples

Ginkgo Leaf Circle

Artist Statement
In 2007, while walking home from my studio on a rainy Fall day and looking down at sidewalks covered with leaves, it occurred to me that the damp, resilient surface of a recently fallen leaf might be able to hold the image of a small, circular copper plate I had recently finished etching. Soon afterwards, I began to experiment with printing on fallen leaves collected from the streets and parks around Brooklyn. As a result, I created an initial series of single and multiple leaf print arrangements using circular copper plate etchings and Plexiglas plates in various combinations to print etchings, monotypes and monoprints directly on the leaves. Several of the arrangements contained leaves with no prints on them at all and some I attached to small branches and suspended with fishing wire to create three-dimensional leaf mobiles.

In 2008, I continued collecting leaves, and began to print monotypes on paper, monotypes directly on leaves, and soft ground etchings of leaves on leaves, while continuing to create new leaf arrangements and mobiles. By the Spring of 2009, I started collecting hundreds of Samara seeds produced by budding Maple Trees and used them to create new monotypes.

I am interested in how the use of the leaves and Samara seeds to make prints on paper removes the plants from their usual context and imbues them with a permanence that does not exist in the natural world. I use multiple plates and colors, along with carefully executed arrangements, endeavoring to make intricate, multi-layered images and patterns that transcend the singular identity of the individual leaf or seed. Yet, somehow I am preserving the memory of each plant’s passage through the world, even while interrupting nature’s intent.

I am also interested in the process of how the leaves are transformed into art objects. I use the botanist’s method of drying and flattening the leaves to preserve them, but they are not chemically treated. Interestingly, a similar technique is used by printmakers to dry and flatten dampened paper after printing. Dried plants can last for hundreds of years, but they have a limited life span. Eventually, the leaves I’ve used will decompose, but the decomposition is designed to be an ongoing and evolving feature of the artwork and functions as a metaphor for life as well as for art.

By using a leaf that has fallen from a tree in November or a seed that has fallen from a Maple Tree in May, I endeavor to capture a moment in the growth and life cycle of a tree and to convey its transient beauty. It is perhaps this ongoing transformation through the inexorable passage of time, this mirroring of life, that has the greatest effect on me.

Biography
Jessica Baker lives and works in Brooklyn, where she collects her materials from the streets and parks of Brooklyn, and creates all of her own prints on a table-top etching press in her studio near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Her artwork has been presented in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally.

Jessica will create her first installation, Seasonal Fall, opening December 4, 2009 in the window of the Soapbox Gallery in Brookyn. From June – August of 2009, Jessica’s work was featured in the exhibit The Nature of Being curated by the Flanders Art Gallery in Raleigh, NC for the Greenhill Center for the Arts in Greensboro, NC. From January – March of 2009, Jessica’s prints and leaf prints were featured in the exhibition Ancient Echoes in Contemporary Printmaking at the Hofstra University Museum in Long Island, NY. In 2008, Jessica’s mixed media leaf work and circular prints were featured in two solo exhibitions, Leaf Circle Line at the Lifebridge Foundation in Rosendale, NY and Leaf & Circle, at the Prospect Park Audubon Center at the Boathouse in Brooklyn, NY. In 2007 and 2008, her work was exhibited at the Galería Nacional and the Dar(t)do Gallery in San José, Costa Rica, the Flanders Art Gallery in Raleigh, NC, the College of Notre Dame of Maryland’s Gormley Gallery in Baltimore, MD, the George Washington Carver Gallery at the Magnolia Tree Earth Center in Brooklyn, NY, the Monroe Center for the Arts in Hoboken, NJ, the JMS Gallery in Philadelphia, PA and the Arlington Art Gallery in Poughkeepsie, NY. In 2006, Jessica’s work was featured in a traveling exhibition, Four Points of View: Figuration in Printmaking, presented at the Galería Naciona in San José, Costa Rica and the Dutchess Community College’s Washington Art Gallery in Poughkeepsie, NY.

In 2007, Jessica was awarded membership in the National Association of Women Artists (NAWA). In the past five years, Jessica has been awarded three artistic residencies at Weir Farm in CT, Skagway National Historic Site in Alaska, and The David and Julia White Artists’ Colony in Costa Rica. In May 2005, she was awarded an etching fellowship at the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY.  Her work has been collected privately and is also in a number of public collections.

Website

http://www.jessicabaker.net

Upcoming Exhibit
Seasonal Fall, will be presented by the Soapbox Gallery at 636 Dean St. between Carlton & Vanderbilt Avenues in Brooklyn.  It can be viewed daily from 12 – 10 p.m., December 4 – 17.  During the opening reception on Dec. 6 from 4 – 7 p.m., attendees are invited into the gallery for refreshments and an exhibit of additional artwork by Baker, as well as the related sculptural work of Soapbox Gallery founder, Jim Greenfield.

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Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Beijing, China, color photography, 2008-09

Artist Statement

Of human life time is a point, and the substance is in flux…and what belongs to the soul is dream and vapor….
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations

The work I create first originates as a response to overlooked space that is in a continual state of change. I believe that in everyone there is a sense of flux and a familiarity with this type of space physically and emotionally.

These images are not manipulated on the computer but are multiple exposures onto one negative at a specific location. In this way each image captures a state of flux within a moment and location which has actually transpired.

Transitory spaces have a messy human energy which is always in the present yet constantly changing. I find them endlessly interesting, alive places where there is a great deal of beauty and fragility. They are temporary monuments to the ephemeral nature of human existence in a constant state of change.

Artist Bio

Oates has a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and M.F.A from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Oates currently resides and works in Brooklyn, NY. Oates has had solo shows at venues including Real Art Ways, A4L Gallery, A Taste of Art Gallery, Sara Nightingale Gallery and the Sol Mednick Gallery at the Philadelphia University of the Arts.

In 2009, work by Oates will be featured in the Aqua Art Fair in Miami and in a group show at Randall Scott Gallery in Brooklyn. Her work will be featured in the Tampa Review and Diffusion Magazine in late 2009. In addition, Oates was part of group shows at Michael Mazzeo Gallery, Collective Gallery 173-171, The Pool Art Fair and The Bridge Art Fair in NYC and C. Emerson Fine Arts in Florida.  In 2009-2010, Oates has solo shows at Tomasulo Gallery in New Jersey, the Center for Book Arts in New York City and a two person show at Mad Art Space in Missouri.  In February 2009, Oates’s work was included in “Trouble in Paradise”  curated by Julie Sasse at Tucson Museum of Art in Arizona which includes work by Mitch Epstein, Kim Keever, Richard Misrach, Edward Burtynsky and Thomas Ruff. In 2008-09, her work was reviewed in NY Arts Magazine, The Riverdale Press, St. Petersburg Times and Art Squeeze.

Oates has been in numerous group exhibitions at venues including Flux Factory, Wave Hill, International Print Center, Storefront for Art, Proteus Gowanus, Nurture Art Gallery, Elizabeth Heskin Contemporary, Gallery Aferro, Metaphor Contemporary Art and The Center for Book Arts and internationally at the Royal Scottish Academy & Open Eye Gallery in Scotland, Open Studio Gallery and Spin Gallery in Toronto, Galerie Joella and Turku City Art Museum in Finland, Swinton Art Centre and University of Northampton Art Gallery in England  at as part of NEME and National Centres of Contemporary Art in Russia and Cyprus.

Work by Oates was recently featured in American publications the Daily Constitutional, Zingology Online Arts Magazine, Studio Views Magazine and The Drain Journal of Contemporary Arts Magazine and in Lirvraison Rhinoceros from Belgium and Front Magazine from Toronto. Oates’s work has been mentioned in The Village Voice, Umbrella Magazine, NY Arts Magazine,The Southampton Press and the Chicago Reader.

In 2008, Oates photographed in Newfoundland, Canada and in Beijing, China. Oates has attended residencies at the Ragdale Foundation in Illinois, the Caldera Foundation in Oregon, and The Taipei Arts Village in Taiwan. She is the recipient of several awards including a Fulbright Fellowship for study in Scotland,  two Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs Grants, an honorable mention for Hey Hot Shot from Jen Bekman Gallery and an Artists  Grant from Artist Space in NYC.

Oates’s work is in the private collections of Julianne Moore, Ruben Natal, Susan Bode-Tyson, Bill Groom, Laurence Asseraf,  Natalie Domchencho  and Mark Waskow and her works on paper are in many public collections including the National Museum of Women in the Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The British Library, The Walker Art Center Libraries, The Smithsonian Libraries and the Franklin Furnace.

Website

http://www.leahoates.com

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The Fowlers Trap Tangled with the Rabbit Holes

The Shortest Distance Between Two Kindred Souls Is Love

Wormholes in a Tree

Artist Statement
Big Dreams focuses around the idea that humankind shares a sort of imagery bank; elementary ideas from the beginning of time or archetypes as described by Carl Jung. With that said, the concept of elementary ideas or archetypes does not belong solely to modern psychology or modern anything actually. Primitive cultures too recognized and drew upon imagery that commonly resonated with their society. In this project I am looking for big ideas reflected in the natural and modern landscape.

Website
http://www.ralphmaratta.com/live/

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Exhibit at Sweet Lorraine Gallery, contact artists for viewing information.

Alex Downs – Vessels
Email: downs2681@gmail.com
Web: http://www.flickr.com/photos/downs2681/
Phone: 347-387-2382

Laura Gibson – Drawings
Email: bella.gibson@gmail.com
Phone: 718-775-1557

Chad Rimer – Sculpture
Email: chadrimer@yahoo.com
Phone: 718-775-1556

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Good Morning Universe, 8×9.5″, 2009

Brave New World, 8×9″ 2008

Broken World, 8×9″, 2008

Stream, 10×10″, 2008

Artist Statement

I am drawn to everyday objects that are often overlooked or discarded. Using a wide range of disciplines, I transform the materials into small works. With a modern primitive style I balance the positive and negative space that gives a piece a sense of beauty. Taking an unorthodox approach I embellish the surface of my work with steel nails and apply tiny circles to explore nature and its relationship with the synthetic.

Website

http://www.steveriley.artlogsites.com/

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“Bear Lithia,” 2009, oil, iridescence, and gold leaf on linen, 48″x72″

“Passing,” 2009, oil on linen, 46″x74″

“Five Miles Out,” 2009, oil and gold leaf on canvas over panel, 20″x36″

Artist Statement

When I moved to Brooklyn from Virginia I started making these dark landscape paintings lit in strange ways.  When I started the paintings usually they were of something burning.  Now there is often something backlit, or overwhelmed by light.  And there is more and more texture.  The paintings make light from texture.  There is something in memory that is like this light.  Brooklyn, with its dark heart, and my memory of the south provide the shadows.

I tend to paint many different paintings on a canvas or panel before finding the final image.  Some layers are figurative; some are more abstract or obscured.  Eventually the layers add up and I start to see their sum.  Maybe there is a drawing that lives just in the texture of the surface.  Two of the images might become present at once, or are trade places as the light in the room changes.  These unexpected shifts open the painting up.  If the painting surprises me, it has the potential to surprise the viewer.  It is this potential that I use to decide when a painting is finished.

As the grandson of an Amish deacon and farmer, my personal experience as a contemporary painter living in New York has its own set of layers.  With their blinding light and yearning for the soil, the strata of these paintings are a personal metaphor for the spirituality that underlies my urban experience.  The result is necessarily a bit enigmatic.  What remains unresolved allows an open space for each viewer’s individual interpretation.

Website

http://sloweye.net/

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