The particular six artists chosen by Maxwell Fine Arts for this INside/OUTside exhibition represent very different ways of thinking and working when it comes to their specific creative output.  Each artist will be exhibiting their work in the two Maxwell Fine Arts exhibition spaces, outside in our four-tier sculpture garden, and inside in our carriage house gallery.  The various works will include contemporary sculpture, sculptural installation, assemblage, paintings, drawings, collages, and constructions.  Viewers will have the opportunity to compare and contrast the artworks these featured artists produce for both out-door and in-door environments.  This provides the viewer an opportunity to investigate the artist's overall intent, their underlying art philosophy, and the overarching rational for the various artworks they produce. 

Jody Carlson is new to Maxwell Fine Arts (MFA), having been selected for First Prize by Bill Maxwell at the Putnam Arts Council's 45th Annual Fine Arts Show in 2007.  Her assemblages are constructed from recycled metal that include old advertisements and street signs.  Simon Draper, a Beacon artist who's studio is in Peekskill, exhibited at MFA in its 2005 WordWack show curated by Coulter D. Young IV.  Simon is presently coordinating the "Habitat for Artists" architectural installation as part of 2008  SITELINES Art Fair in Beacon, NY.  Ruth Hardinger and C. Michael Norton were introduced to MFA by the independent curator Koan Jeff Baysa during the 2004 Peekskill Project; both had very successful recent exhibits at TAMA Art and Design Gallery in Tribeca, NYC, and Ruth is currently exhibiting her sculptures at Lesley Heller Gallery on 77th Street, New York City.  Jim Lloyd was "discovered" by Bill Maxwell in 2005 and has since exhibited not only at MFA in the 2007 "Intangible al fresco" exhibit, but with Collaborative Concepts in their 2007 Saunders Farm Show.  Jim also recently completed a major showing of his work entitled "Ferrosynthesis" at IBM's TJ Watson Research Center's Japanese Garden.  Lori Nozick was introduced to MFA through Peekskill Project 2005, where she presented her incredible sculptural installation "Genesis." Lori just completed a very successful environmental sculpture installation in Key West, Florida entitled "Lighthouses" and will be included in the "Habitat for Artists" exhibit in Beacon, NY.

There will be a special opening for INside/OUTside on June 7, 2008, 6:30-9:30 PM.    This evening reception will include music by the Swing Set Jazz Collaborative, and new video projections in Maxwell Fine Arts' parking lot by Christine Knowlton, Gene Panczenko and Rosalind Schneider.  The public is invited to attend this wine and cheese reception after a full day of touring various exhibits and artist studios in the Artist District as part of Peekskill's 2008 Open Studio weekend.

MAXWELL FINE ARTS is a commercial art gallery located in a renovated Victorian carriage house, c.1860, in the artist district of Peekskill, New York.  This exhibition space presents unique and original works of contemporary art by emerging and established artists.   All exhibitions are curated by Bill Maxwell, Dana DeVito and invited guest curators.   Most exhibits in this gallery feature artists in a complementary relationship that produces or continues a specific visual dialog.

MAXWELL FINE ARTS is open Saturdays and Sundays from 12 noon to 5 pm.  Its location is conveniently accessible by auto and public transportation at the junction of Routes 6, 35 and 202.    Get directions

“All Fired Up @ Maxwell Fine Arts” is presently in its planning stages.  The exhibition is entitled PRIMORDIAL CONSIDERATIONS:  Mud, Earth, Clay and is being curated by Dana DeVito and Bill Maxwell with guest curator Jo-Ann Brody.  It will include the ceramic and earthen works of Roger Baumann, Lisa Bresnak, Jo-Ann Brody, Dina Bursztyn, Joseph Conforti, Ada Cruz, Kathy Erteman, Keiko Ikoma, Tania Kravath,  Puneeta Mittal, Tony Moore,  Luanne Morse, Ayano Ohmi, Chuck Plosky, Elina Topperman, Novie Trump, Judy Sigunick, and James Tyler (and possibly others).

The eighteen artists in this exhibition are all ceramic artists, using clay as a primary medium.  The work ranges from abstract forms within environmental settings, to mythical references, iconic confrontations, totemic presences, earthly delights, symbolic allusions, native traditions, classical archetypes and heroic confrontations.  The use of clay and clay references grounds all of these works into a Dionysian sensibility that often references global situations.  The varied contents implied produces an intimacy with the craft tradition as it transforms sensibility into contemporary Apollonian form, clay sculpture.   The diversity and multitude of references create an odyssey through various cultures, geography and environments.

This odyssey includes:

Roger Baumann

Lisa Bresnak sculptures are miniatures that play with the power of scale to refute the idea and prejudice of size.  They explore the contemplation and immediacy of Asian calligraphy, building upon iconic vocabulary and nonobjective reality.  The developed forms come from a minimalist mindset.  This series of ceramic and gold leaf works anthropomorphized ideas of man's activity and built environment, of flora and fauna, of destruction and re-growth, telling their tales and myths.

Jo-Ann Brody also evokes gesture and stance as she presents her cluster of cement women who are moving, signaling and conversing, as they would in real life.  But in their sculptural silence, the conversation is open and reciprocal, inviting the spectator into the dialogue.  What are they talking about?

Dina Bursztyn, borne and raised in Argentina, creates mostly female figures that  ". . . are fiercely hybrid concoctions, marrying influences from various cultures, times and modes of thinking." (BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO, Published: May 9, 2004, NY Times)  There is a sense of playfulness within her references to mythological meditations and traditions.

Ada Cruz, within her Puerto Rican heritage, creates figures that are earthy in color and basic in texture emitting a spiritual sensibility that touches on cross-cultural myths and images.  They cry out to us, for us, and about us.

Kathy Erteman's sculptural vessels simultaneously and metaphorically explore the idea of containment while celebrating pure form.  Employing painting and printing techniques, her approaches change the vessels in unexpected ways, diminishing or exaggerating the attributes of volume and containment, between the inside of the form and the outside, demanding a perceptible and felt tension or balance.

Keiko Ikoma, living and working in Nishijin/Kyoto, Japan, was trained in the classical Japanese traditions of ceramics and is presently working on objects that are rich in surface, referencing volcanic and archeological remains that posit a life-death dialectic.  She is fascinated with minerals and stones, using nature as inspiration and content.   Decay, rot, decomposition and gradual decline speak of spontaneous disintegration of material and form.  They embody her vessels as repositories.

Tania Kravath, a NYC and Woodstock artist, create warrior women that are activist and symbolic in nature.  These ceramic women are based in explorations of texture and forms and are built life-size.  As a member of a wood-firing collaborative, her works speak of fire and ash. 

Punetta Mittal, born and educated in India, she moved to the United States in 1994 and lives presently in Long Island, New York creates ceramic sculptures in simplified forms and layered glazes that build or adds to landscape and terrain.  She possesses a strong belief that everything that is born, grows and withers away to be yet born again--incessant change from one to another proceed in an evolutional cycle.  She draws her inspiration from the natural world and a combination of Eastern and Western techniques and aesthetics.

Tony Moore, a British-American artist uses a Hybrid Anagama-Norborigama (Japanese) Wood-fired Kiln to explore clay's accidental impacts from ash and other by-products.  These unique clay processes are intertwined in the meanings of the work.  The transformation of clay through the alchemy of heat is metaphorically linked to Moore's interest in all aspects of human existence.

Luanne Morse 

Ayano Ohmi makes stand-alone sculptures of totemic figures that explore the emblematic construction of signs and symbols rooted in indigenous cultures such as the Brazilian Indians and the Japanese Ainu.  She has personally traveled to many specific regions to become familiar with native peoples and their traditions.  These ceramic pieces are sited in the given specific locale where they could then offer themselves as meditation on the nature of the things from whence we come.

Chuck Plosky, a Professor of Art at New Jersey City University, works in clay vessels, furniture and large sculptures that push the limits of ceramic structure.  He investigates pottery forms within monumental architectural matrixes.  He is also interested in the figure as it denotes mythological narratives.  The images are from melding ides, material, process, skill and perception, all to form a "conversation."  .

Elina Toperman is interested in the integration of precise architectural geometry and the freshness of the ceramic material as manipulated through design.  The works create texture and structure that work in collaboration with architectural elements that develop out of a visual and physical fusion of spontaneity and precision.  Content and process fuse within the wet ceramic materials while the forming takes shape.

Novie Trump was trained in classical archaeology, and uses the influence of ancient relics and stories as inspiration for her ceramic works.  She is drawn to massive stone makers--Mycenean beehive burial mounds, Mesopotamian steles, Egyptian columns and Celtic monoliths.  These time-worn stone monuments inform the shape and heft of her sculptures, while their weathered patinas inspire layered surfacing.

Judy Sigunick, a ceramic sculptor from Cragsmoor, New York creates objects that speak to traditions of clay and it's role in archaeology and tracing history.  Using clay's mutability, its transitional qualities from wet to hard, quenches her thirst for endless metaphors and paradoxes.  Judy is also an artist/activist working within a new community of artists in Ellenville, New York.

James Tyler, who was educated in African, Native American, and Latin American studies, references pre-Columbian terra cottas by cutting and breaking his ceramic figures into “bricks.” Through pose and gesture, rather than detailed realism, he captures and conveys the multitudes and complexities of the human experience.   These figures are sharing or advising when confronted with the viewer.