Jonathan Ferrara Gallery is proud to announce that gallery artists Sidonie Villere and Jonathan Ferrara will exhibit together at Isidore Newman School's Reynolds Ryan Gallery. The dual exhibitions will run from August 20th thru September 28th with an
artist reception on Wednesday September 5th from 5:30-7:30 pm.
Sidonie Villere has a BFA in Ceramics from The Newcomb School of Art at Tulane University and an MFA in Ceramics from The University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. As an artist her work has been exhibited across the United States and is in the permanent collection of several museum including The New Orleans Museum of Art, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art and Saks Fifth Avenue Department Stores in New York, Boston, Phoenix, San Francisco, Beverly Hills and most recently Chicago.
Villere is a multi-faceted artist using self-preservation and its contradictions as a common theme in her work. As a sculptor, her ceramic works often use geology to shape metaphorical self-portraits. As a painter, her ethereal works use multiple mediums to achieve layering and subtle depth that produce a painterly effect but maintain a sculptural aesthetic. She has had solo exhibitions in Miami, Nashville and New Orleans and been featured in numerous group exhibitions in Atlanta, Miami, New York and New Orleans. As a curator, she has organized national ceramic exhibitions in New Orleans and Portland, OR. Her large-scale works were featured in The P.1 Projects satellite exhibition at the Prospect.1 Biennial Welcome Center in 2008. Villere's work is also included in the publication, 500 Ceramic Sculptures: Contemporary Practice, Singular Work, by Glen Brown, 2009. In 2011, her work was selected by collector/curator Beth Rudin DeWoody for the January White Sale, an international group exhibition in Chelsea and at Cynthia Volk Gallery New York during Asia Week and she also had a solo exhibition at Tinney Contemporary in Nashville, TN.
Villere lives and works in New Orleans, LA where she maintains an active studio and also teaches ceramics at the prestigious Louise S. McGehee School.
Of her new exhibition, Adjust, Villere says:
Trying to change as a strategy to survive, Adjust is a series of self-portraits revealing the contradictions of self-preservation. These emotional and physical contradictions range from the fragile to the fierce reflecting a constantly changing and very distinct balancing process. These dichotomies are what I offer my viewer.
Jonathan Ferrara is a artist, gallery owner, community activist and arts entrepreneur whose eponymous New Orleans gallery exhibits cutting edge works of art from local, national and international artists including paintings, sculpture, glass, metal works, mixed media and installation art. As an artist, Ferrara's artwork has been exhibited in New York, Miami, Massachusetts, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Chicago, Louisiana, Wisconsin and internationally in Hungary. In the fall of 2007, he was featured in Kaleidoscope Katrina, an exhibition of New Orleans artists in the windows of Lord and Taylor's flagship store on 5th Ave in Manhattan. In 2010, his work was exhibited at The Rymer Gallery in Nashville, TN and most recently his work was featured in Architect Magazine. His work is in several prominent collections including The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation (Los Angeles, CA), Richard Baker of Lord and Taylor (Greenwich, CT) John and Kristi Schiller (Houston, TX) and actress Alfre Woodard. (Los Angeles), CA.
Of his latest installation, Correlation II, at Newman, Ferrara states:
In my role as a gallery owner, I respond to process based art works. The focus being how an artist arrived at their final product ...what unique process did they employ to achieve this result?
In my studio practice, I have emphasized process for years as well. I find the processes I employ have evolved over time and taught me lessons on where to take the medium, what possibilities exist to explore and what ideas are possible to communicate.
My "paintings" are actually "pourings" that utilize a sand, gesso and fluid acrylic mixture that I manipulate while wet and then dries hard. This mixture can be augmented to create various affects, levels of viscosity, texture and cracking. In response to my work as a gallery owner/curator where I am continually surrounded by a myriad of visual stimuli, my work embodies a more minimalist approach where there is little evidence of the artist's hand.
In the new installation, Correlation II, I am exploring the relationship between finances (money) and stress in our lives. Correlation II, SM, is the stock market from the year that I was born til the present and Correlation II, EKG, is my 8-month old son's fetal heart monitor EKG before labor.
In Correlation II, EKG (pictured above) the line is very subtle and not erratic; evidence of a life before stress, not affected by the world at large and the pressures that one experiences as we mature. A pure and peaceful heartbeat...
In Correlation II, SM (pictured above) the line is very jagged and craggy, carved by the struggles of life. This represents my journey through life and all that it has entailed...A world that is affected by the stresses of everyday life especially those of a financial nature.
What is the stock market but the EKG of our economic health, the health of our country? If the market is up, all is supposedly well and financial stress should be minimal...conversely, when the market is down and in turmoil, all is not well and financial stress is more evident in all our lives...
Please join Sidonie Villere and Jonathan Ferrara at the opening of their latest exhibitions on Wednesday September 5th from 5:30 - 7:30pm. Libations including Louisiana's own Abita Beer will be served.
