GATES OF HEAVEN AND OTHER STORIES

JOHN KOTULA

March 7th – April 4th, 2020              

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 7th, 2020, 6-8 p.m.

Artist Talk: Chad Amos Self, Saturday, April 4th, 2020, 1p.m

GATES OF HEAVEN AND OTHER STORIES by Hera artist John Kotula exhibits work that is  a visual representation of his memoir. The work is a reflection of what he has seen, experienced, thought about, had feelings about, and found important. With a wide range of media, including pencil, charcoal, conté, ink, Sharpies, crayons, china markers, pastels, and chalk, Kotula draws anything and everything. Through the experimentation and accumulation of mark making these images revealed themselves, engaging the viewer with their innate story-telling quality.

John Kotula is an artist, writer, and arts educator who lives in Peace Dale. His training in the arts included stints at a number of colleges and workshop programs, among them Queens College, Brooklyn Museum Art School, RISD, and Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. He exhibits his work in galleries, but is also interested in sharing what he does in other ways, such as social media, giving his work away, unauthorized public display of the art, and mail art. Other current artistic interests include narrative artwork such as illustrated stories and comic books, work that is created in collaboration with other artists, murals, and art making in Latin America.

John is an active curator. Recent shows through Hera Gallery have included Crossing Borders/Cruzando Fronteras, a show about immigration, Miracle Due, Gonna Come True, a show of Latin American art organized in conjunction with the Courthouse Center for the Arts, Young Artists and Their Mentors, a series of three shows exploring the role of mentoring in the development of young artists and TechnoCraft: Where High Tech Meets Hand Made, a Hera Gallery show presented at The Jamestown Arts Center. John also curates the ongoing Hera Gallery project The World’s Smallest Art Gallery, art displayed in a kiosk on the bicycle path in Peace Dale.

John’s blog is called Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man.