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JAN HULING
Walking Under
Ladders
Opening Reception:
Thursday, November 11 - 6-9pm
Exhibition Dates:
November 11 - December 10, 2010
Gallery
Located: 175 Seventh Ave on the NE corner of 20th and 7th
Ave.
Nearest
Subway: C,E exit at 23rd St @ 8th Ave, 1 exit 23rd @ 7th Ave.
Contact: Michael
Lyons Wier - Tel: 212.242.6220
E-mail:
gallery@lyonswiergallery.com
Lyons Wier Gallery is pleased to present
Walking Under Ladders, a solo exhibition of new sculptural work by
Jan
Huling.
Neither sketched nor planned, Huling's three-dimensional works
draw inspiration from her travels to India and Mexico, as well as imagined,
playful scenes reminiscent of childhood fairy tales and fantasies. Huling's work
is approachable yet evocative, incorporating spiritual iconography along side
humorous artifacts of contemporary popular culture. The armatures for Huling's
sculptures are an unpredictable mix of forms ranging from Kewpie and Munny dolls
to birds and tiny life-sized insects. This exploration of shape and scale adds
to the whimsical charm of her work.
In addition to seed beads, Huling's colorful sculptures
incorporate a variety of found objects, such as buttons, coins, tokens and
costume jewelry. Huling's slow and meticulous beading process, the intricacy of
her swirling, hypnotic patterns, and the spontaneous manner with which Huling
approaches each new project results in sculpture that is both delicate and
alluring to touch - simply put, she transforms the ordinary into the
extraordinary.
Jan Huling received a BFA from
the Kansas City Art Institute and Drake University. Her work has been shown at
the Noyes Museum, Oceanville, NJ, Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco, the
American Craft Council Show, Baltimore, SOFA New York and Santa Fe, the Bead
Museum, Washington, DC, the Montclair Art Museum, NJ, and Rupert Ravens Gallery,
Newark, NJ, among others.
Huling's work has been featured in the New
York Times, The New York Post, Beadwork Magazine, 500 Tables (2009),500 Handmade
Dolls (2007), Lark Books, HGTV and NJN (PBS). The artist is the author of Ol'
Bloo's Boogie-Woogie Band & Blues Ensemble (2010) [Peachtree Publishers], and
Puss in Cowboy Boots (2002) [Simon & Schuster].
Boom & Bust: Ceramic
Commentary
Featuring: Sin-Ying Ho, Jeff Irwin, Jeffrey Mongrain and Robert
Silverman
Opening Reception:
Thursday, November 11 - 6-9pm
Exhibition Dates:
November 11 - December 10, 2010
"When bankers get together for dinner,
they discuss art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss money."
Oscar Wilde
Sin-Ying Ho, Jeff Irwin, Jeffrey Mongrain and
Robert Silverman are four ceramists commenting on the world's recent economic
struggles brought about by America's dubious subprime lending and mortgage
practices and questionable banking policies. Each artist makes overt
references in their work about how they were personally affected by the world's
financial market crash.
Sin-Ying
Ho displays a six-foot porcelain vessel that combines traditional blue and white
Chinese motifs with the iconography of Adam & Eve and their expulsion from the
Garden of Eden. Commenting on the trials and tribulations of blind
"monetary" pursuits, Ho's work incorporates illustrations of plunging financial
indexes within the large silhouetted figures.
Jeff Irwin's iconographical life-size earthenware "Bear" and
"Bull" busts represent upward and downward market trends. Each piece also
combines knots and branches cast from living trees, drawing attention to issues
of conflict between Man and Nature.
For this
exhibition, Jeffrey Mongrain transforms a two-dimensional sound wave translation
of a quote by President Herbert Hoover into a three-dimensional sculpture in
clay. On October 29th, 1929, the New York Stock Exchange collapsed beginning the
decade long Great Depression. On December 3rd, 1929, thirty-six days after
the Market's crash, President Hoover gave his State of the Union Address stating
the economy was "...returning to normal...". The water-drop like ripples
coming from the center of Mongrain's circular disc are a sculptural sound
translation of Hoover's words "Returning to Normal".
Robert Silverman's large format ceramic panels incorporate his
continued fascination with the visual representation of information and
language. Using Morse code and graphs that are ultimately abstracted through his
artistic process, Silverman creates compositions where the direct semantic
exchange in the piece is impossible to decipher but the beauty of a symbolic
language emerges. One such piece in the show, "Wealth" illustrates
America's dichotomy of wealth between 1920-2000.
Sin-Ying Ho holds an MFA from Louisiana State
University and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Art Department of
Queens College, City University of New York. Jeff Irwin holds an MFA from
San Diego State University, and is a Ceramics Instructor at Grossmont College,
San Diego. Jeffrey Mongrain holds an MFA from Southern Illinois
University, and is a Professor of Art at Hunter College in New York City.
Robert Silverman holds an MFA from Alfred University and is the Director of the
Ceramic Center at the 92St Y in New York City.
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