Curious Surface
November 21 - December 19
Uli Brahmst, Iris Donnelly, Viera Levitt, Megan McNaught, Barbara Owen, & MJ Yeager
Opening Reception: Saturday, 11/21, 5-8pm
Artist Talk: Thursday, 12/10, 7pm
FUNDRAISER DURING OPENING RECEPTION!
Live Auction of Artist Made Pies at 7pm and Silent Auction closing at 7:45pm.
Hera Gallery is pleased host Curious Surface, an exhibition featuring the work of Hera Members Uli Brahmst, Iris Donnelly, Viera Levitt, Megan McNaught, Barbara Owen, & MJ Yeager. We invite the public to join us Saturday, November 21st from 5:00 to 8:00pm for the opening reception and to the artist panel discussion on Thursday December 10th, at 7pm.
German born artist Uli Brahmst has been living and working in Canada, the Czech Republic and since 1996 in the United States. Brahmst's spirited portfolio encompasses painting, sculpture, fiberart as well as site-specific installation. She moves freely between abstraction and the figure. Her imaginative work has been shown extensively in the United States and around the world. In New York City she has exhibited in such venues as Galleria Galou, Perogi, Lehman College Art Gallery, Rotunda Gallery, Cave Gallery, Cork Gallery Lincoln Center, Exit Art, Art Expo, The German Consulate, Pool Art Fair, the New Art Center and Wuersch & Gering LLP. Other exhibition venues include The Providence Art Club, RI; the Bannister Gallery, RI; the Jamestown Art Center, RI; the Islip Museum, Islip, CT; the New Jersey Center For Visual Art; Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI; Tacoma Contemporary, Tacoma, WA; Museo De Bellas Artes, Caracas; CORP GROUP Cultural Center, Caracas; Nam June Paik Museum at Tae Gu Teback Gallelry, Korea; 10th International Quilt Festival, Yokohama, Japan; ARWI Contemporary Art Fair, Puerto Rico; Galerie Radost, Prague; and Gallerie R31, Berlin. Ms. Brahmst is a member of the South County Art Association, an associate member of Hera Gallery, and an elected member of the Art League of Rhode Island.
Iris Donnelly began studying photography at the University of Rhode Island in the summer of 1985 with Stephen Brigidi. She has two diplomas from the Universite de Caen in Normandy, France and a Master of Arts in Teaching from Brown University. After teaching French and Spanish for six years, she spent most of her professional career as a Bilingual Special Education Resource Teacher with the Providence School Department. Iris has been awarded several grants by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts including an Artist Project Grant for the portfolio Photographs of the Handicapped and another for In Nicaragua With Providence's Sister City Project, a document of the city's role in the construction of a school and health clinic in Niquinohomo during the Contra War. Most recently, she is the curator and participating photographer of In Cuba With Witness for Peace that includes exhibits at Hera Gallery, VanVessem Gallery and the AS220 Project Space (May 2016). These latest shows also included a Cuban film series at Hera and two powerpoint presentations at the International House of Rhode Island and the North Kingstown Public Library. An Arts Access Grant was awarded to Witness for Peace and the International House of Rhode Island for the Cuban events. Some of her other Latin American photography has been shown at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Newport Art Museum, and Atrium Gallery. When Kara Walker was invited to curate an exhibit at the Providence Art Club, she selected a photograph by Iris Donnelly. She is currently working on several portfolios of recent work from France and one entitled Landscape of Lemon City (Little Haiti, Miami).
Viera Levitt settled in Rhode Island following her Artslink Residency at RISD's Graduate Studies and an internship in the Photography Department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She currently works as the Director/Curator of the CCRI Knight Campus Art Gallery as well as a freelance curator and photographer. Her show at CCRI about its brutalist megastructure “We Talk About Architecture, Architecture Talks Back” recently won the 2011 New England Art Award in the Concept/theme show curator category. Before moving to the United States, Viera served as the youngest public art museum director in Slovakian history. From 1996 to the present, Viera has curated or co-curated more than sixty exhibitions in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, and in the USA and has lectured about contemporary art in Bratislava, Brno, Berlin, Rotterdam, Hiroshima, New Delhi, Caracas, Nairobi, as well as in Rhode Island.
Megan McNaught has a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and MFA from UMass Amherst. Exhibiting extensively over the last 20 years she is now represented by Hera Gallery, RI and formerly by NKG Boston. Her work is driven by her fascination with the experience of human visual perception and the way the brain organizes visual information from the two dimensional surface. She works with themes of limitation, repetition and variation.
Barbara Owen is a contemporary painter and mixed media artist. Her work has been featured in numerous curated and juried exhibitions from the Newport Art Museum, RI, Minor Injury Gallery, Brooklyn , NY, The Arts Center in Troy, New York, the University Art Gallery of UMass Dartmouth, New Bedford, MA, Yellow Peril Gallery, Providence, RI, the Jamestown Art Center, Jamestown, RI. She has also had solo exhibitions at AS220 Project Space, Providence, RI, Colo Colo Gallery in New Bedford, MA and Knight Campus Art Gallery, CCRI, Warwick, RI. Owen graduated from Bennington College with a Bachelor of Arts degree as an Interdivisional Major in Sculpture and Poetry. She wrote a creative thesis under the direction of the poet Ben Belitt, studied sculpture with Brower Hatcher and Lee Tribe as well as studied painting with the painter/art critic Sidney Tillim. Upon graduation she went on to apprentice with the sculptor Brower Hatcher for four years. It was during those years, and a move to New York City, that she turned to painting. She lived and worked alongside artists and craftsman in the non for profit GMDC building during the early years of the Brooklyn artist revival taking place in Greenpoint and Williamsburg. After 12 years in New York she moved to Rhode Island in 2004 with her family. She works out of a studio in Pawtucket.
MJ Yeager worked in the design field from 1974 in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, New York City, Washington DC and Maine until 1994 shortly after the birth of her daughter when she and her family moved to Maine. It was then that she retired from the graphic design field and began teaching art to children and adults. She moved here to Rhode Island in 2003 and taught art locally at Quest Montessori School. Teaching provided her an opportunity to fine-tune her own expressive art forms including painting and blended media collage. Her 20-plus year career as a graphic designer may explain her passion for the process of collage. As a designer/art director in the 70s, 80s and early 90s prior to the onset of digital technologies, all of the design and production was prepared in cut-and-paste format and sent to print houses for reproduction. By 1992 all design projects were completed on computers but her passion on to trim and paste imagery continued.
These programs are presented with partial support from The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, Hera Educational Foundation, and The Friends of Hera. Hera Gallery is free and open to the public and is accessible to persons with disabilities. Parking is available.