Gareth Mason’s Award Winning Film: White

Gareth Mason’s ’award winning’ film from 2002, White, is an expressionistic piece six minutes in length.  It won the Grand Prix at the 2002 ‘Projections D’Argile’ film festival in Montpellier, France.

Gareth Mason also recently presented a lecture and workshop at AMOCA (American Museum of Ceramic Art) in March of 2013; AMOCA’s video of this event is forthcoming as well.

Please join us for Gareth’s opening night reception at Mindy Solomon Gallery this Saturday, May 25th from 6:00-9:00PM and Artist’s Talk at 6:30PM. The exhibit will continue through June 29th. Read more about the exhibition and Gareth Mason here >>

William Pachner: ‘Imagined Fragments’ // Opening Reception March 30 in Woodstock

The Byrdcliffe Kleinart/James Art Center is pleased to present ‘Imagined Fragments,’ a selection of black and white works on paper by William Pachner ( Mindy Solomon Gallery-represented artist), with a catalogue by Daniel Mason. The exhibition will be on view March 29-May 5, 2013, with an opening reception Saturday, March 30th, from 4-6pm. A gallery talk with William Pachner and Michael Perkins will take place May 6th from 2-3pm; Mr. Pachner will be 98 years old at the time of this talk. For more information, please contact BYRDCLIFFE at 845.679.2079, email info@woodstockguild.org,  or visit www.byrdcliffe.org. The Center is located at 36 Tinker Street in Woodstock, NY.

William Pachner // Drawing from the ‘Imagined Fragments’ Exhibition

Born in Czechoslovakia in 1915, Pachner has made his home in Woodstock since 1945. He studied art in Vienna and worked as an illustrator in Prague before coming to the United States in 1939 on the eve of World War II. During the war, his anti-fascist anti-Nazi illustrations have appeared in the foremost national magazines. When he learned in 1945 that all members of his family had been exterminated by the Germans, he quit his commercial career and resolved never again to do a commercial job, but to paint what he felt.

Known as a colorist, Pachner’s work includes satiric drawings, erotic figurative, biblical Judaic and Christian themes, photomontages, and paintings of great color intensity. Late in his career, he turned to black and white after losing sight in his one good eye. The works in this show represent loss: absence of sight, family, homeland—everything—with the almost unbearable weight of personal and artistic annihilation. While their form, movement, and gesture embrace an essential vitality, these drawings also embody a silent horror and violence. The artist’s final works embody a multiplicity of meanings and are an affirmation of humanness and the reminder of the sacredness of all life.

About his paintings, Pachner said, “I want, in each work, the world, like my countryman Mahler, the whole pie, not just one triangular wedge of it, but all of it in all of its contradictions, paradoxes, ironies, unbearable sorrows, indescribable joys, tragic comedy, farce, pathos and drama, both authentic and fraudulent. The world, I say to myself, on which all this takes place simultaneously—the world so incomprehensible, so dear, so much in need of our care, of our embrace.”

In recent years, his work has been shown at the Tampa Museum of Art, the Florida Holocaust Museum, and the St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Art.

The Mindy Solomon Gallery is proud to offer a new secondary-market painting by William Pachner, Oil #9, painted in 1974 at 44.5 x 45 inches.  Please contact the gallery for details.

William Pachner // Oil #9, 1974, 44.5 x 45,” oil on canvas

David Peters ‘Forever More Than Once’ MFA Thesis // Bozeman, Montana

Mindy Solomon Gallery artist David Peters celebrates his MFA thesis show, ‘Forever More Than Once,’ this week at the Helen E. Copeland Gallery, 213 Haynes Hall, at Montana State University in Bozeman. The exhibition is on view March 25-29th from 9am-5pm daily, with an artist’s reception March 27th from 6:30-8:30pm. Peters’ defense takes place Monday, March 25th at 11am and is open to the public.

Below, Peters shares photos of loading and unloading his last big firing before the show. “Hopefully there will be a lot of great pots,” he said. We are wishing him the best of luck, and eagerly awaiting the final results. Congratulations, David!

James Kennedy ‘A Fine Line’ // Greenwich Library Benefit

Greenwich Library‘s Flinn Gallery, located at 101 West Putnam Avenue, Greenwich, Connecticut, showcases the work of Mindy Solomon Gallery artist James Kennedy and Nancy Koenigsberg through May 1st. The exhibition, ‘A Fine Line,’ focuses on the exploration of line, shape, and form through these two artists’ very different techniques: acrylic and mixed media, and wire sculpture. An artist walk and talk will be held on Sunday, April 14th at 2pm; the exhibit is a benefit for the Friends of Greenwich Library.

See more of  James Kennedy’s available works  at Mindy Solomon Gallery //

And, contact the Gallery at 727-502-0852 to inquire about Kennedy’s works featured in this post //

Gareth Mason Talk and Demo at AMOCA

Gareth Mason //

MSG artist Gareth Mason is currently exhibiting at AMOCA (American Museum of Ceramic Art) in Pomona, California. Mason will be giving a talk and a demo at the show, Friendship Forged in Fire: British Ceramics in America. He will be talking with Richard Jacobs, a ceramics collector, discussing ideas exchanged through letters between the two during 2011-2012. The letters center on correspondences and divergences in the experience of art between the collector and the artist. The talk is this Saturday, March 9 at 7:00PM.

More information //

UPCOMING
Mason will be featured in his solo exhibition, Surface Inspiration, at Mindy Solomon Gallery May 18-June 29, 2013.

View more Gareth Mason works at MSG // 

The de la Torre Brothers: Home for the Holidays

“We despise all reverences and all the objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.”

-’Following the Equator’ by Mark Twain

Greed Talisman // 2005 // 48 x 48 x 7 inches // Blown and cast glass, mixed media

Artists and brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre bring their inventive, irreverent, inspired glass and mixed media works—rife with tongue-in-cheek religious iconography and and pop-cultural references—to Mindy Solomon Gallery in ‘Home for the Holidays.’ The exhibition is on view from December 22, 2012-February 2, 2013, with an Opening Night Reception Saturday, December 22 from 6-8:30PM, and Artists’ Talk at 6:30PM.

Animaluchadora // 2008 // 40 x 15 inches // Blown and cast glass, mixed media

The blown and cast glass sculptural works featured in this program are largely taken from the de la Torres’ 2012 exhibition at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia. In addition to the museum works, the brothers’ recent explorations in digital art and mixed media round out ‘Home for the Holidays’ at Mindy Solomon Gallery. The works on display showcase the multiplicity of their religious and political story, always with an eye toward humor. One example of note is the sculpture ‘Animaluchador’ (2008). In Spanish, ‘anima’ translates to souls burning, and ‘luchador’ means wrestler. The figure appears to be standing in a religious pose of prayer, but is wearing the costume of a wrestler. His body is engulfed in flames, while he stands astride a pop-cultural doll. The relationship between religious icon and heroic figure (masquerading as an object of significance) personifies the de la Torres’ irreverence for cultural iconography as nothing more than cartoon. This objectification of symbolic masculine and spiritual strength enables viewers to tackle their own senses of religious alienation with candor and humor.

Rally du Mort // 2010 // 26 x 12 x 21 inches // Blown glass, terra-cotta, mixed media

The baroque quality of many of the de la Torres’ forms is the perfect foil for the contemporary nature of the dialogue conveyed by their narrative: a conversation rich in history, religion, and politics. Active in the glass art world since the 1980s, Einar and Jamex de la Torre are well-known for their assemblage style of making. They utilize hot glass as if it were a magic wand flowing with liquid amber―brilliant colors fused together with a nod to the grotesque. Their unique approach has been recognized internationally, and the brothers have exhibited their work in France, Japan, Canada, Germany, Venezuela, and Brazil as well as in the US and Mexico. They are included in the permanent collections of some of the finest glass art institutions in the world.

Read more about the exhibit and view more works by the de la Torre Brothers >>

Exhibition Information:
Mindy Solomon Gallery presents ‘Home for the Holidays: The Inventive, Irreverent, Inspired Works of the de la Torre Brothers‘ December 22, 2012-February 2, 2013. An Opening Night Reception takes place Saturday, December 22, from 6-8:30pm, with Artists’ Talk at 6:30pm.

Mindy Solomon Gallery is located at 124 2nd Ave. NE, St. Petersburg, FL 33701. The gallery is open Wednesday-Saturday from 11am-5pm. For more information, please contact the gallery at info@mindysolomon.com or 727-502-0852.

Organic Inhabitants

The Creature Comforts of David Hicks and Patricia Sannit
Mindy Solomon Gallery | July 14 – September 8
Opening Reception with the Artists | July 14, 6-8:30 PM
Artist Talk with David Hicks and Patricia Sannit | July 14, 6:30 PM

I tried to use the questions and answers as an armature on which to build a sculpture of genuine conversation.
                   - Clifton Fadiman

Both David Hicks and Patricia Sannit work with an earthen material as a means to convey a relationship to the organic and historical world through hand-worked sculptural forms. A sense of familiarity, as well as structural integrity, unite these two diverse artists.

Above: David Hicks | L: Flora (Emerald Milk), R: Flora (Yellow)

David Hicks grew up amongst the farmlands in Valencia, California. His early interest in agriculture stimulated his desire to create forms that speak to both growth and sustainability. As an emerging artist, he explores the physical aspects of materials: hand-built slab and coiled forms with unctuous drippy glazes. Hicks’ juxtaposes terra cotta earthenware clays against a multitude of colors and layers-gold metallic shrouding burnt orange create a dynamic visual exchange. The shapes and conceptual references can be found in the fields surrounding his immediate environment in North Carolina, where he now resides. He has a fundamental understanding of place.

Above: Patricia Sannit

With an abiding love of archeology, Patricia Sannit explores the development and transmission of culture through time and across distance; she is interested in the sameness and continuity of peoples worldwide.  The rhythms of everyday activities merge into a thing of beauty and at the same time capture the fleeting moments of daily life.  Clay, with its inherent tactile qualities, leaves the evidence of its maker while imparting the beauty of life itself. Sannit’s works are a testament to how contemporary art can create a new pathway to something archaic and powerful.

Organic Inhabitants will be a show that not only occupies space, but informs and enhances in a three dimensional conversation. For more information, visit the Mindy Solomon Gallery Exhibition page.

Explicit Content Opening

A large crowd gathered at the Mindy Solomon Gallery on April 14th, 2012 for the much anticipated opening of Explicit Content. Artists on hand were: Becky Flanders, Barbara DeGenevieve, Scot Sothern and Christina West.

A brief, but lively artists talk was part of the festivities. Collectors for all media presented were present and interest was high. (Above, Scot Sothern and Barbara de Genevieve).

Explicit Content Opens April 14

Mindy Solomon Gallery proudly presents “Explicit Content” featuring an 18 and over exhibition showcasing uninhibited, sexually arousing perspectives exposing graphic nudity found behind closed doors. (Above, Georgine Ingold).

The purpose of this show is to create a sensory pictorial of the most intimate, yet unemotional aspects of human sexuality. Peep into the world of black and white photo-documenting the Los Angeles prostitutes of Scot Sothern, the sculptural couplings of Christina West, the private video diaries of Barbara DeGenevieve (Above), the erotic drawings of Bart Johnson, the provocative female nudes by Becky Flanders, the Impressionist inspired paintings of Georgine Ingold and Victorian inspired sculptures exposed by Bonnie Marie Smith and Leopold Foulem.

“Explicit Content” will plumb the depths of the most innate physical yearnings while showcasing a visiting artist reception, Saturday, April 14 from 6—8PM with artist talk at 6:30PM and panel discussion on Sunday, April 15 from 1—2:30PM entitled, “Risky Business—Artists baring it all” including artists Barbara DeGenevieve, Scot Sothern (Above), Christina West, and Becky Flanders.

Bart Johnson Interview

Bart Johnson is featured in the upcoming Explicit Content later this April and to prepare art ambassador, Mark Murphy, caught up with him and reveals more about his new etchings. Read complete interview here.