artSTRAND ia pleased to announce the opening of its first four-person show of the 2007 season on Friday, June 22nd from 6-9pm. The works of artSTRAND artists Maryalice Johnston and Paul Bowen will be shown along with guest artists Charles Spurrier and Mark Milloff. On June 23rd, artSTRAND will host the opening of Jay Critchley's Beige Motel in North Truro. Please see below for more information.
Paul Bowen creates representational watercolors for this show, in a departure from his well-known sculpture work. These works blend abstraction of the natural world with form and are quite sculptural in their attention to this aspect of the work.
Bowen is represented in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, New York and the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, among others and currently resides in Vermont. He has most recently shown at The Cape Museum of Fine Arts in Dennis, MA.
Maryalice Johnston, working in wax multiples and plastic rods, will be showing her installation "Wail & Rubble" which makes use of found and recycled objects and materials. "Wail", a wall installation, is a fountainhead of plastic rods incorporating drawing, painted papers, and other found materials. "Rubble," an expansion of scattered wax bricks and found objects, sprawls across the floor.
Johnston currently serves as the Visual Arts Program Coordinator at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and has been a resident for the past ten years. She has most recently mounted the exhibition Flashing Vanitites and Other Follies at artSTRAND.
Charles Spurrier's drawings and paintings deal with the reality behind the illusion. By utilizing cellophane tape, chewed bubblegum, Mylar, colored lights, plastic beads, tin cans, tinsel and cardboard air fresheners, Spurrier creates a highly-charged symbolic context in which the viewer experiences a mixed sense of joy and melancholy.
Spurrier lives and works in New York, NY and has most recently shown at Cleveland's Museum of Contemporary Art in the show Drawn to Cleveland, curated by Kenneth Dingwall and John L. Moore.
Mark Milloff works in pure abstraction in a variety of media including large-scale pastel on paper, thick, impasto oil paintings and acrylics.
Millloff is represented in galleries and museums all over the world, including a permanent exhibit of one of his pastels at the Berkshire Musuem in Pittsfield, MA and the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA. He will also be a performer in the June 23rd opening of Beige Motel with his blues trio Sit Down Baby. Milloff resides in Providence, RI.
JUNE 23, opening 5 to 8pm
Unsuspecting motorists traveling on Cape Cod's Route 6 towards Provincetown will be greeted by Jay Critchley's Beige Motel, "The World's Largest Sand-encrusted Motel", amidst the sandy beaches and sand dunes of North Truro, Massachusetts ? its sand-covered surfaces reflecting the unique light of the Cape tip. The peculiar vernacular architecture of the Pilgrim Spring Motel, both kitschy and surreal, will become a monumental "embalmed" sculpture that reflects on time, loss and decay, the environment and our perception of the universe.
Beige Motel will include the work Bert Yarborough, Bob Bailey, Frank Vasello, Jim Peters and Vicky Tomayko, performance and installation by Maryalice Johnston and Eric Peters, and performance Mark Milloff's blues trio "Sit Down Baby," all housed within Jay Critchley's sand-encrusted structure.
High resolution images are available upon request.
The artSTRAND galleries are open everday after June 21 from 11am–8pm.
Beige Motel will be open Fridays and Saturdays through the end of the summer from 12-2pm or by appointment..
For more information on upcoming exhibits, events and assorted goings-on, please contact us at the gallery, 508.487.1153, or on the web at www.artstrand.com
