SHARON FALK, ANNA FINE FOER, JAMES MCELHINNEY
Paper

Group Exhibition
Curated by James Tyler

January 11 - February 23

Main Gallery at Building 35

Gallery Hours:
Fridays: 2-5pm
Saturdays & Sundays: 1-5pm

GARNER Arts Center proudly presents Paper, a multimedia exhibition of works on paper, opening on Saturday, January 11th. Curated by James Tyler, this group exhibition highlights the work of three artists.

In Paper, Sharon Falk, Anne Fine Foer, and James McElhinney each showcase distinctive and personal approaches to creating works on paper, including mixed media collage, rice paper paintings, and painting journals.

Made from acrylic wash on layered rice paper, Warwick, NY-based artist, Sharon Falk’s paintings will be suspended overhead from wire in the cavernous brick-laden Main Gallery in Building 35.

These larger-than-life figure forms appear anonymous, yet familiar. The language of the body is physical gesture, that can also be an emotional state of being portraying its own truth. Each is the center of its own world, with posture and pose that tell a story. I seek to find the identities, inside the mystery and the silence. Walking among them, there is no one definition of who we call us. Separated by our own journeys, we are part of an ecosystem. All with our personal endeavors, quests, talents, carrying unspoken thoughts, and confronted with our own contradictions. They hold a fleeting moment in balance that cannot be sustained. Actions are projected into the world to go where they will. By our choices, we define who each of us is, as thoughts, emotions, deeds become our gesture into the world, and to those among us.

                                                                                                                                -Artist, Sharon Falk                                         

Baltimore-based Artist, Anna Fine Foer’s carefully researched and crafted collages create anachronistic scenes in which man-made objects cohabitate with the natural world to predict a mythic future.

The collages presented reference the engineering of extinct or endangered species and how animal and mineral parts may be recombined to create chimerical beasts. My project comments upon historic and contemporary scientific inquiry into biological and mineral realms. Just as today we look back on the Renaissance collections and consider them naive understandings of the natural world, our present-day assembly of genetic code to understand living cells may seem primitive when viewed 100 years from now.

                                                                                                                           -Artist, Anna Fine Foer

Author and topographical artist, James McElhinney (based in Manhattan) creates work informed by his personal travels, natural landscapes, history, and environmentalism. Inspired by explorers, artists, and naturalists of the Renaissance, colonial, and 19th-century periods, James McElhinney reignites and reclaims the historical tradition of topographical sketchbook painting.

 Exploring the Hudson, and other American rivers, my theoretical approach was formed in part by the writings of J.B. Jackson, John Burroughs, and a belief that deeper engagement with nature can lead a distracted society toward a more sustainable future, based on environmental responsibility.

                                                                                                                     -Artist, James McElhinney

 Works from James McElhinney’s Hudson Valley Sketchbook (2014-2017) series will be on display in various formats, including the physical sketchbooks themselves, prints, and digital presentations of his painting journal pages.

Pictured:
Top: Among Us (View 1), Sharon Falk
Middle: De-Extinction, Anna Fine Foer
Bottom: South Gate, James McElhinney

JOAN HARMON
Chaos/Light

Solo Exhibition
Curated by James Tyler

January 11 - February 23

Ned Harris Gallery at Building 35

Gallery Hours:
Fridays: 2-5pm
Saturdays & Sundays: 1-5pm

 Artist Joan Harmon’s otherworldly objects encourage us to explore the connection between history, our bodies, and the Earth. GARNER Arts Center will present a selection of new work by Harmon in a captivating solo exhibition in the Ned Harris Gallery at Building 35.

Interconnection and underlying patterns are qualities of chaotic systems which then find ways to self-organize. This reflects my process as an artist. I will often begin new work with quick, free drawings with floating forms, and from that chaos, I search for an organization of form and material that can create new meaning.

Fluidity is an important theme in my work. The circulatory system, nervous system, rivers, and streams are a recurring vocabulary. My intention is to create visceral, sensory experiences that are at once universal and intimate. They rely upon the intangible qualities of our human experience like memory, dream, and connection.

                                                                                                                         – Joan Harmon, Artist

Joan Harmon works in ceramics, installation, sculpture, and drawing. She is a resident of the Dutchtown neighborhood of Haverstraw, NY. Formerly a tenant studio artist in Garnerville’s GARNER Historic District, Harmon is a longtime supporter, colleague, volunteer, and exhibiting member of GARNER Arts Center.

Joan Harmon has been awarded an Artist Residency near Naples, Italy from Kultursciok Arts Collective and a Fellowship from the Creative Glass Center of America and has received numerous other International and National awards. Harmon earned her BFA from the California College of Art and an MFA in Drawing and Sculpture from Rutgers University.

Her work has recently been shown at the BAU Gallery, the Epperson Gallery of Ceramic Arts, the Loveland Museum Gallery, Richmond Art Center, the Lewis Art Gallery, Millsaps College, and the Governors Island Art Fair, NYC.

She currently teaches at the City University of New York and is an instructor in mask making at NYU, Florence, Italy.