To recall six foot waves, meadows, tidal surges, eight inch oysters that this was the land that the Gowanus canal replaced. Fortunately, we now have human creativity surging through this area of Brooklyn.
For my part in the Gowanus Open Studios 2019, one of my works is of a man reaching with his hand to feel the softness of a meadow plant. I will display this palladium print on Japanese gampi paper and a few other works as part of GOS2019 on the weekend of October 19th and 20th, from noon to 6 PM.
The location is King Killer Studio, 69 Second Ave. near 9th Street in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn.
The link to all the artists exhibiting is https://www.artsgowanus.org.
I am honored to exhibit two series of works, ‘Blossoms of an Oak Tree’ and ‘Ocean Totems’ in the online exhibition https://fayddigital.com/Nature-in-lockdown at fayddigital.com Magazine, working at the intersection of art, design and the environment. This exhibition has been curated by Yingbi Lee and Maryam Arshad.
During lockdown, I took daily walks in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. As a result, I developed a sensitivity to walking on earth and climbing over tree roots. This urban park is my refuge and I walked in rain as well as sunny days. After a windy rain storm, I noticed for the first time how trees blossom in the spring because I found blossoms of a large oak tree on the ground. The delicacy of these newly sprouted blossoms and yellow green leaves amazed me.
I applied my camera-less photography techniques to these blossoms to make 16X20 inch negatives. Brushing the palladium solution onto the transparent gampi paper and exposing the negatives with the sun helped me to express the vibrancy of the oak blossoms.
I made the collage, ‘Breath’, to equate the first breath of a baby with blossoming oak leaves. I printed multiple negatives in layers and painted with pearlescent watercolors. By having the baby and the Oak blossoms in the same work I seek to show our interdependence with trees. We need oxygen. Trees transform carbon dioxide through photosynthesis to produce oxygen.
Strands of seaweed, horseshoe crabs, shells, broken glass–ocean and human debris–the viscosity of salt water teeming with life–ebb and flow. When animals left the ocean for land, they took the sea with them. Our veins carry the same mixture of sodium, potassium and calcium as sea water. The ocean is our origin.
My hands forage for what the sea gives. I create prints to express its marvels.
A few of my palladium prints that I created from camera-less negatives of these sea fragments are part of an online exhibition https://fayddigital.com/Nature-in-lockdown published by this online magazine which works at the intersection of art, design and the environment.
The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, BWAC, is exhibiting “More Art of Coney Island”, a curated exhibition for the month of August, 2022. This is a juried show selected by Alicia Degener, co-president of BWAC.
Coney Island is considered to be the poor man’s Riviera. The artists in this exhibition have works depicting the multitudes of people who enjoy Coney Island. The artists represent people of all ages. One can almost hear the sounds of people laughing, talking, listening to music, shouting and even screaming when they go on the rides offered on Coney Island. The drawings, paintings, prints, textiles, and photographs show people on the boardwalk, on the beach, in the water, playing games and particularly participating in the annual Mermaid Parade. I think the Mermaid Parade honors the feminine archetype or Venus, who in mythology rose from the sea.
I am pleased to have my palladium prints of people with tattoos exhibited in this immense wooden building, once a warehouse, and now is a place for art and people to mingle.
At Arts Gowanus Open Studios, one of the collages I exhibited is about the movement and protest by Iranian women for their rights in what is called: Woman.Life.Freedom. My works used flowers to symbolize the beauty of life and its fragility. Flowers are associated also with the cycle of life from seed to flowering to fruiting to death and then back to regeneration. The woman’s hand weaving through the snakeskin also alludes to the cycles of regeneration. The inspiration for this print is the ancient sculptures of the serpent divinity, usually a woman who holds and is embraced by snakes. The serpent is a symbol of feminine wisdom.
This particular art work is a response to the outcry by women in Iran and now all over the globe. Woman.Life.Freedom resonates with the transformation all women seek for equality, no matter where they live.