(EMAILWIRE.COM, March 25, 2009 ) KENT, CONNECTICUT – New works by ten prominent artists will be on display at a major group exhibition in The Morrison Gallery in Kent beginning April 18th with an opening reception at the 7,000 square foot showcase gallery in the Kent Village Barns section of Kent.
The works of Warner Friedman, Peter Woytuk, Copper, John Pindyck Miller, Hugh O'Donnell, David Michael Kennedy, Cleve Gray, Karen Petersen, Paul Chaleff and Geoffrey Moss will be on display. New works by the artists will be added over the course of the exhibit, which ends May 9th. Works will be be displayed by:
Copper, a philosophy major at Georgia State University in her native state, pursued a life-long passion for sculpture when, nine years ago, she partnered with Peter Woytuk in a foundry co-venture located in Thailand. It was there that she honed her skills as a bronze patinator, eventually developing a body of work about burros. "A burro is just a humble horse with a highly-developed sense of self-preservation. In other words, stubborn. They're curious, intelligent and inherently comedic and, like bats (another subject that interests me), very much stereotyped."
Warner Friedman lives and works in Sheffield, Massachusetts. Teasing the eye, FriedmanÂ’s serene landscapes masterfully combine illusion with reality as they seductively lure the viewer into meditative reverie. He has been widely exhibited throughout the United States, most notably at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, Corcoran Gallery in Washington and the Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton Art Museums in Florida.
Cleve Gray, who died in 2004, was admired for his large-scale, vividly colorful and lyrically gestural abstract compositions. The New York Times said he, “achieved his greatest critical recognition in the late 1960's and 70's after working for many years in a comparatively conservative late-Cubist style. Inspired in the 60's by artists like Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler, Mr. Gray began to produce large paintings using a variety of application methods - pouring, staining, sponging and other nontraditional techniques - to create compositions combining expanses of pure color and spontaneous calligraphic gestures.”
David Michael KennedyÂ’s photographs have won him numerous honors, including Clio Awards, NY Art Director's Club Annual Exhibition Awards, Communication Arts Awards of Excellence and Art Direction Magazine Awards of Distinction. He has also won Platinum Records for album covers of Georgia Satellites, Julian Lennon, and Charlie Daniels (among others); the One Show Awards for Excellence in Advertising, Advertising Club of NY Andy Awards, Ceba Awards, and the America Institute of Graphic Arts Certificate of Excellence Awards.
John Pindyck Miller The New York Times, in reviewing an exhibit of Miller’s works at Sound Shore Gallery in Stamford, said he “can be counted a Constructivist sculptor and a Suprematist painter,” who “maintains humorous if oblique relations with figuration.”
Geoffrey Moss is an American painter who is passionately involved with drawing. The energy and directness of his line forms the foundation of all his work. His work as an art restorer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art gave him an intimate knowledge of the Masters and inspired him to abstract the academic. His work as a syndicated “political conceptualist” has earned him two Pulitzer Prize nominations. His work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian Institution, Yale Art Gallery and The Pompidou.
Hugh O'Donnell is an internationally recognized artist exhibiting regularly since 1975 with one-person and group shows. His work is held in many private and public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art and Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York; the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C, Yokohama Museum of Art Japan; and in the London Contemporary Arts Society; Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Karen Petersen’s sculptures seem to transcend time. According to curators at the Public Arts Park Grounds for Sculpture, her work is characterized by “an influence of ancient art combined with a sleek modernist approach to form results in work that conveys a stylized yet natural beauty. She shows a unique “ability to create sculptures which seem to unite with the soul of nature. About her work it has been written, ‘a Petersen sculpture strives to be powerful, sensuous, larger than life, a conformation of depths.’”
Peter Woytuk has been proclaimed "the greatest animal sculptor of the Western World in the closing years of the 20th century" by critics writing in The International Herald Tribune. He currently works out of both Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Thailand. Woytuk was formally introduced to the art of sculpting when he apprenticed with Connecticut sculptor Philip Grausman in the early 1980s. Ultimately he found himself fascinated with sculpting the various forms of animals, birds in particular and has since developed a highly original range of styles that explore a unique sense of volume and suspended motion.
Paul Chaleff was born in the Bronx, NY in 1947. Known for colossal clay sculpture and pottery, his work can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian, as well as numerous other public and private collections both in the United States and abroad.
