Erica Licea-Kane: 2018 MCC Painting Fellowship Recipient

The Kingston Gallery would like to congratulate Erica Licea-Kane for being awarded a full fellowship in painting by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. There were 578 applicants, with 8 full memberships and 5 finalist awards being selected this year. The panelists for this award were Nicole Duennebier, Roger Hankins, Masako Kamiya, and Dominic Molon.

The artist fellowship program recognizes exceptional work by Massachusetts artists across a range of disciplines. These highly competitive awards provide artists necessary recognition and help advance artistic development for each artist as well as the entire artistic community. The Massachusetts Cultural Council is the largest arts funding organization in the state and Massachusetts is one of the few states that still provide unrestricted grants for artists.

Licea-Kane’s work is currently on exhibit in the project space at the Kingston Gallery, along with work by Ilona Anderson in the main and center galleries.

Orange Distortions, 2017, 16″ x 48″ x 3″, extruded acrylic pigment/medium

Ilona Anderson: The Awake Fluid of Inside Dreams is on view in the Kingston Main and Center Galleries, and Erica Licea-Kane: Small Works is on view in the Kingston Project Space through July 1, 2018.

Explorations in Color, Place and Motion

The current exhibition in the main gallery at Kingston Gallery, The Awake Fluid of Inside Dreams by artist Ilona Anderson, envelopes visitors in an imaginative space, evocative of narratives.  Anderson, who grew up in South Africa, explores place and boundaries in four stop motion animations and a number of archival prints captured from the animation process. The animations, are created from layers of Anderson’s drawings, paintings and photography collaged together then set in motion.

Upon entering the gallery, one is immediately drawn into the intensity of color and slow transitioning of the projected animations. The exhibition title is perfectly descriptive of the magical fluidity of the works presented, as evidenced in the animation cell included below. The process Anderson uses to create the flowing animations involves the accumulation of many images, with small changes occurring across time creating the material for the images to be cobbled together digitally. The image of Japanese Screen: An Awake Dream depicts the artist’s work getting ready to be printed.

The Awake Fluid of Awake Dreams, animation cell, sizes variable, 2017-18.

For Anderson, home, resides in each moment, experience and situation. Being a person from another country, this anchors the narrative for her. She creates in order to explore these edges and boundaries, the arch of the narrative.

“I excavate these uninspected spaces to reveal the surprising in the everyday, which allows me to embrace the changing moment.” In this statement she reveals her curiosity of the continuously changing image/ s of our lives.

Japanese Screen: An Awake Dream, animation cell, sizes variable, 2018.

In the back gallery, the Kingston Project Space, Erica Licea-Kane’s exhibition Small Works presents shaped paintings created from balsa wood and extruded acrylic paint. These smaller works are richly textured and patterned. The skin-like effect of the extruded areas act like portals to the understructures when left untextured.

Licea Kane describes her process; “I set out to create a series of pieces that would expose the underbelly of each work. In the piece, Letting it Be, I left an entire area untouched of the burned/patterned surface that started as the base of all of these works. I found that I really enjoyed burning the balsa wood, patching out the shapes and then applying a transparent layer of acrylic pigment. For me this opens the door to exploring more transparent and painted surfaces in future works.”

Letting it Be, 2018, 18”x15”x .5”, extruded pigmented medium

Letting it Be, 2018, 18”x15”x .5”, extruded pigmented medium  (detail)

Ilona Anderson: The Awake Fluid of Inside Dreams is on view in the Kingston Main and Center Galleries, and Erica Licea-Kane: Small Works is on view in the Kingston Project Space through July 1, 2018.

Emerging Art Program 2018

Emerging Artist Program

Deadline to apply: July 30, 2018
Date for joining the gallery: September 1, 2018

The Kingston Gallery is currently accepting applications for its one year emerging artist program. This program provides mentorship from experienced artists and is a great way to immerse yourself in the rigors of becoming a professional artist.

The artist selected for the year long opportunity will participate in the gallery in every way, but all fees will be waived. The year of participation will culminate in a solo exhibition in the center gallery.

More information about the program and the application process can be found at:

http://www.kingstongallery.com/about/emerging-artist-program.php

Greg Lookerse, Praying for the Rain to Stop, Various books, 2014.

From the series, “What Choice Do I Have?” Now, Digital Print, 42.5 x 31”, 2011–2013.

 

The Environment and Landscape: Two Views

 

The current exhibition at the Kingston Gallery, Now That We Have Only This by artist Susan G. Emmerson, evokes feelings of loss and devastation through beautifully intricate assemblages created from Tyvek, paper and other non-traditional materials. These works highlight the rising number of natural and human created disasters, while still focusing on the personal impact of such events.

In one such piece titled Back Stoop, Emmerson is able to capture the essence of small town community through the inclusion of implied architectural elements and bits of domestic ephemera. The assemblage works are balanced by sophisticated paintings and drawings also evoking the loss of home, community and one’s general sense of safety.

In the project space are photographs by Mary Lang titled Wild Beauty: Photographs from Scotland. These magical landscapes depict an untamed and rugged beauty. Evoking mythological tales through their vastness and mystery, Lang provides a space for escape from the chaos and unease of our daily existence.

Susan G. Emmerson: Now That We Have Only This is on view in the Kingston Main and Center Galleries, and Mary Lang: Wild Beauty: Photographs from Scotland is on view in the Kingston Project Space through May 27, 2018.

 

 

A different way to experience art

This Sunday, April 22nd, from 10:30-11:30am you will have the opportunity to see art in a new way with Exercises for the Quiet Eye (EQE), a guided gallery experience for artists and visitors with Annie VF Storr, Faculty, Brandeis University. As a complement to the exhibition More Questions than Answers, mixed-media works by Conny Goelz-Schmitt, Storr will lead participants in a series of exercises emphasizing experiences of art that encourage patient reflection, appreciation, and an attempt to avoid the rush to understand, or determine a set interpretation for what we see.

“Works of art engage us, through senses, through intellect and through emotion, in rich, complex, rewarding, and inconclusive ways. In the moment, they can suspend us in time, fully open and aware. That experience in itself is precious and rare. It has been called “the transcendent moment” however long it lasts.” EQE aims to cultivate this experience of suspended consciousness, and to give viewers habits of practice to reach it in their personal encounters with art. Let this be your introduction to a new way of viewing art, and take it with you on future visits to galleries and museums.

Conny Goelz Schmitt: More Questions than Answers is on view in the Kingston Main and Center Galleries, and On-Kyeong Seong: Displacement is on view in the Kingston Project Space through April 29, 2018.

See a review of More Questions than Answers in Delicious Line:
https://deliciousline.org/review/236

When artists are Among Friends

The exhibition Among Friends at the Kingston Gallery in Boston, is a rare opportunity to see the confluence of years of dedicated and professional art-making through long-time friendships.

‘Downhill Road’ by Judith Brassard Brown

Though Judith Brassard Brown‘s and Wendy Goldberg’s approach to the landscape and their use of materials in expressing its sensibility differs, their work complements each other in a unique and unexpected way. Artfully hung, the show intersperses Brown’s textured and layered larger scaled mixed-media paintings with Goldberg’s moody, intimate pastels along with a focus on the poetry of Martha Rhodes. Rhodes graced the opening reception of this show with a beautiful reading of her multi-layered poems from her latest book, The Thin Wall.

 

‘Early Spring Clearing’ by Wendy Goldberg

Though they work with different media and with different scales, each has a tenacious connection with the internal and external landscape of this human journey. It is this preoccupation that has kept them in contact as they pursued their education and developed their work over the years. Funny, intimate, romantic, scathing, unnerving and beautiful in turn, the paintings, pastels, and poetry in Among Friends comprise a show worth viewing before it closes on November 26th.

Among Friends is on view in the Kingston Main and Center Galleries through November 26, 2017. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday 12-5pm. We will be closed on Thursday, November 23 for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Gray Area

by Veronica A Pérez

In a moment of strained societal binary, the visibility of anyone who inhabits a marginal space becomes extremely more important. There is never a moment when we can see things for what they are. Everything’s changing, constantly in flux. What happens when we can pluck a moment from the crowd and examine it? Would there be clarity or more confusion? In terms of art, these grey areas provide throughways for discussing and sharing personal stories, not to simply highlight difference, rather to embrace. Given the particularly divisive time we live it, it becomes imperative to forge dialogue through creative intervention and to signify that aside from our inherent differences, we’re all in this together.

The Kingston Gallery is calling for new work for an exhibition entitled “Gray Area”. We are looking for artists whose work is relevant to our current contemporary world in its lack of clarity or abundance of ambiguity. The subject is open to interpretation, and can address the title conceptually or formally. How does this moment of murkiness provide you with understanding? Or does it disorient? Is the endless barrage of the 24-hour news cycle breaking you down or building you up? There is so much to that is being said in these ambiguous spaces today. And it’s time that we speak.

ONLINE SUBMISSION DEADLINE:  Wednesday, November 22nd, 2017 @ 5PM

The full Call For Art is on Kingston Gallery’s website:

http://www.kingstongallery.com/exhibitions/2018/february-gray-area.php

This exhibition is juried by a committee of 6 Kingston Gallery Artists: Mira Cantor, Susan Emmerson, Julie S. Graham, Veronica A. Perez, Jamal Thorne, and Chantal Zakari.

 

SUBMISSION LINK: https://kingstongallery.submittable.com/submit

**Please prepare carefully; no revisions are possible after submission is complete.

Notification: Friday, December 15th, 2017 (by email). 
Delivery of work: Sunday, January 28th, 5-7PM & Monday, January 29th, 10AM-2PM
Exhibition: January 31-February 25, 2018 
Opening Reception: February 2, 2018 from 5-8pm
Pick up work: Sunday, February 25th, 5-7PM; Monday, Feb. 26th, 10AM-12PM

Questions? Email: submissions@kingstongallery.com