Hera Gallery proudly presents a members exhibition featuring Joanne Delmonico, Michelle Henning, Viera Levitt, Robert Oliver, Wendy Wahl, and special guest Garrett Dutton aka G. Love! This exhibition explores several themes such as interconnectedness, social consciousness, solitude, constructed environments and nature.

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 7th, from 6-8pm!

Artist Talk and Closing Reception: Saturday, October 5th from 2-4pm.

Robert Oliver

His work explores the state of being alone, alone as a condition, place of refuge or comfort and perhaps isolation. That place may be a physical domain or may exist within the self. The images recall people, places and circumstances from his own experience. The very commonplace, everyday essence of this experience, as portrayed in his work, seeks to resonate with the viewer. The need to seek refuge or be alone are essential human necessities.

It was self- portraiture and long hours viewing himself in a mirror isolated in the studio, daily trips on the commuter rail and time spent tucked away reading and the desire to escape the ever present demands and pressures of the outside world which led him to consider the theme of being alone as the focus of his work His experience in portraiture is incorporated into a narrative, a narrative veiled in a degree of ambiguity which may suggest themes of intimacy, religion, and the male gaze. This is supported by a light that in addition to its formal functions contributes to the narrative of the painting whether quietly slipping through an open window or providing the inescapable glare of a subway car.

Michelle Henning

In color theory study there is an exercise that helps train the eye to assess color objectively and learn to observe more precisely called “Color Inventories”. Usually practiced in two ways, either as a Proportional Inventory or a Non-proportional Inventory. 

In a proportional inventory, the most efficient way to organize colors is in stripes. Extracting colors present in a source image, you repaint them represented in stripes of varying in thickness *proportional* to how much they appear in the image. (This image has a lot of red and a small amount of white; thick red stripe, skinny white stripe.)

For a non-proportional inventory, from a source image that is complex with an uncountable number of tones, you average out the main colors that best characterize the image. It is common to repaint them in dots instead of stripes and then design a new composition using those color inventories.

For my paintings, I have combined both of these methods, using stripes, but stripes that are uniform, and iInstead of interpreting them proportionally in size, I have repeated colors based on an average of how often they appear. I have also played with parameters by not keeping the stripes precise (using both taping methods and freehand) , using color theory combinations and imperfections to keep movement in the canvas, or arranging them in an order that reflects the original image, as in “Chair 5”.

Garrett Dutton aka G. Love

Garrett Dutton aka G.Love is a special guest in this show. He is a musician in the band G. Love & Special Sauce. This Philly-based band has its own hip-hop blues genre. Glove's work consists of graffiti and street-style paintings that create visual representations of his music and ethos.

Wendy Wahl

The pieces in this exhibition are a selection of works from a series called myceliology, a combination of mycology, the study of the fungal kingdom, and mycelium, the threads of connection underground everywhere we step. Myceliology is an aesthetic exploration of the Fungal Kingdom. To understand this weird and wonderful world of interconnectedness I turned to mycologist Paul Stamets, anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, biologist Merlin Sheldrake, and food mycophile, Eugenia Bone. The Fungal Kingdom is a powerful presence in the circle of life, is considered nature's internet or wood wide web, and is linked to all of Earth's species. When I began playing with mushroom spores I found their marks crossed terrestrial, celestial, and aquatic realms. I remember thinking they were inviting me to participate.

Viera Levitt

Viera Levitt

BEAUTY IN THE BEAST: Photography of Brutalist Architecture (URI), I – V 

2024 Digital photography and remnants of URI Fine Arts Center façade, $800 each

With her photographic exploration of Brutalism, Viera Levitt continues to reveal the hidden beauty of this architectural style often derided as gray, crude, soulless and austere. Her 'subjects', located in both New England as well as in her native Slovakia, share not only architectural similarities, but a utopian impulse and 'heroicism'. These images were taken at the University of Rhode Island during the renovations of its Fine Arts Center in July/August 2024 and are presented alongside pieces of the crumbling building façade collected on site.

Joanne Delmonico

Joanne Delmonico, The Unfolding (triptych), Charcoal and panpastel on Arches paper, $3,000

Transformations in Gender Identity

My mission as an artist is to use my art as a tool for social consciousness. I am exploring how the societal, political, and environmental issues of our times are impacting people and our planet. Since 2020, I have created multiple series of mixed media figurative drawings about climate change, immigration, women’s issues, Black Lives Matter, and gun violence. With these artworks, I have strived to increase awareness and understanding of specific social issues by presenting them with real people in challenging situations. All of this work may be viewed on my website: https://www.joannedelmonico.com 

In this exhibition, “A Social Situation,” my artwork is from a new series called “Transformations in Gender Identity.” This topic is very close to my heart because I have a dear friend, who as a nonbinary person has suffered emotionally and physically for most of their life. So, I really, really want to get this right!

My goal is to put a human face on an issue that can be controversial and has produced so much public discourse and political policy making. The news media has sensationalized some of the divisive topics, such as gender-affirming care, transgender athletes, drag shows, and even rest rooms. What isn’t covered as much are the challenges facing gender non-conforming people: the lack of legal protection against discrimination, 29% of transgender adults live in poverty, 54% have been victims of domestic violence, 22% have no healthcare, and unmeasurable amounts of bullying, harassment, and other types of exclusion and marginalization.

With these artworks, I seek to quiet the noise and chatter by shining a spotlight on three humans who could be our neighbors, families, and friends. Like all human beings, they have basic human needs, such as safety and security, and love and belonging. They have aspirations and dreams, joys and sorrows, hopes and fears. What makes them different from many of us is that they have rejected the constraints of gender identity based on the physical bodies in which they were born. Instead, they are living their lives as the people they know themselves to be, and have released the societal and cultural socialization around gender constructs (norms and roles) that were placed upon them since birth.

I would like to profoundly thank my three models for being vulnerable and allowing me to portray them in this series: Jess is a transgender man, who lived as a woman for over 30 years and describes his transition as a happy experience with acceptance from his family, friends, and colleagues. Mia is nonbinary and doesn’t see themself as male or female. And Rickey is a drag artist, an entertainer with epic talent, beauty, and the most amazingly athletic splits while wearing a dress that you’ll ever see!

This series is dedicated to Terry, who is finally free and able to be their authentic self!