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“Transforming
Identity” will be on view from June 5 to July 4, 2004.
Opening Reception Saturday June 5, 5-7pm.
This two-person exhibition includes outdoor sculptures by
Sarah Haviland and an indoor installation by Carla Rae Johnson.
This show also inaugurates MAXWELL FINE ARTS' new four-tier Sculpture
Garden. |
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Haviland has an extensive record of public and outdoor sculpture including a recent
site-specific installation entitled "Cooper Beach: People's Trust,"
which was commissioned by the Westchester Arts Council through a National
Endowment for the Arts grant. She has received excellent recognition
for her sculpture which deals with identity and the feminine mystique. Her
pieces have been commissioned and are installed at Grounds for Sculpture
in Hamilton, New Jersey; "Pier Glass" in DeSanti Plaza in Hartsdale,
New York; "Dreaming the Universe" at the Puffin Foundation in
Teaneck, New Jersey; "Aspire" at Armonk's Crittenden Middle School;
and "Queens Arch" originally in Flushing Meadows and now installed
at the College of Staten Island, New York. She has exhibited at The
Studio in Armonk, The Puffin Room in New York City, Artemsia Gallery in
Chicago, Harvard University, the Bronx Museum, Queens Museum and the Pepsico
Gallery in Purchase, New York amongst others. She is the recipient of several
awards and fellowships to include a Yaddo Residency and the Yale-Norfolk
Scholarship. Haviland is also a teacher of sculpture at John Jay College
and has taught at Westchester Art Workshop and Marymount College.
She holds a Masters of Fine Arts degree from Hunter College and a Bachelors
of Arts degree from Yale University. Michael Brenson of the New York Times
has identified Haviland as "an impressive young sculptor who builds
seamless, organic figurative sculptures that also suggest architecture and
furniture." William Zimmer, also of the New York Times, reviewed
her sculpture "Kneeling Isis" as "Dominating the gallery
. . ." (at the Rye Art Center's "Fantasy in Form" exhibition)
and as a "laconic but purposeful piece." |
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Johnson will exhibit her installation "Hildegard of Bingen Meets Herman Melville"
which consists of a large skeletal form of a small boat (54" X 36"
X 71") in which Hildegard and Herman play two separate word games,
and seven drawings that are emblematic of a conversation that connects Melville's
Moby Dick to Hildegard's visions. This is the first time this 2001
magnificent and complex installation has been installed at a gallery since
its appearance at Sister Ellen Stephen's play "Hildegard: Sybil of
the Rhine" which was first performed in the United Church of Christ
in Blooming Grove, New Jersey. Johnson is an award-winning artist
whose work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Journal News, the
Village Voice and the New York Post. She is the recipient of the renowned
Pollack-Krasner Foundation grant and the Director's Choice Award at the
2002 Westchester Biennial in the Castle Gallery of The College of New Rochelle.
She exhibits regularly at New York City's Ceres Gallery and has had solo
shows at SOHO 20 Gallery, New York City and the Meridian Museum of Art in
Meridan, Mississippi. She has also exhibited in White Plains, Peekskill,
Dobbs Ferry, Tarrytown, and Irvington (of Westchester County), the Mead
Museum of Art in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the Heckscher Museum in Huntington,
New York. She has a Masters of Fine Arts degree from The University
of Iowa and a Bachelors of Science degree from Ball State University.
Phyllis Braff of the New York Times said that "Johnson strives to create
intense interaction with spectators . . . blurring any distinction between
art and life." "Hildegard of Bengin Meets Herman Melville"
is part of a larger grouping of "conversation" works called The
Seanace Series that includes Emily Dickinson and Marcel Duchamp playing
a game of chess. Johnson says of her own work "It is my fantasy
to create a meeting of their minds, a conversation between equals, an overlay
of their unique visions." |
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