NEW BLOG

Well, I got a new gallery and now a new blog!  Please come on over to: 

http://drawingontheutopic.com/.

Pocket Utopia: "Lyrical Color" - a group show, Wed. July 25, 6-8pm

Greetings!

I hope everyone is having a fun summer, below please read about Pocket Utopia's group show, featuring the work of Sam Gilliam and running through August 24th.

Our address: 191 Henry Street between Clinton and Jefferson Streets in New York City.

Opening Reception will be Wednesday July 25, 6-8pm 
Gallery hours: Wednesday-Sunday, 11am-6pm. Open till 8pm on Wednesday evenings.

July 25 - August 24, 2012 

Pocket Utopia is pleased to present "Lyrical Color," a group exhibition featuring the work of Rico Gatson, Sam Gilliam, Brece Honeycutt, Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson, Jane Kent, Meg Lipke, Maggie Michael, Dan Steinhilber, and David Storey. Color has an echo and at this exhibition's center is Sam Gilliam, internationally recognized as one of America's foremost Color Field Painters and Lyrical Abstractionist artists. Around Gilliam, there's restraint, equanimity and balance.

There is the blackness of both Rico Gatson's and Dan Steinhilber's sculptural abstractions, works that are intensified by Jane Kent's overlapping musical scores, further blurred by Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson painting upon silk threads and made distinctive by Meg Lipke's beeswax with India-inked and fabric dyed drawings.

Sam Gilliam's painting, constructed from rectangular wooden panels and covered with layers of acrylic, applied in broad strokes and diaphanous wisps, orchestrates a tone of monastic serenity. The exhibition is further articulated by Maggie Michael's sprayed paintings and tastefully displayed on the pages of Brece Honeycutt's avocado-dyed book. David Storey's painting of invented shapes with its brightly colored oranges and subtle browns reminds us that summer is a time to reflect and cloud gaze.

For further information or visuals please call Austin Thomas at 212-375-8532 or visit www.pocketutopia.com. 

Pocket Utopia is located at 191 Henry Street between Clinton and Jefferson Streets in New York City. Hours are Wednesday-Sunday, 11am-6pm. (Wednesday night till 8pm)

Studio Visit: Meg Lipke

Studio Visit: Meg Lipke (all images courtesy the artist)

Studio view.

Meg has a very expressive painterly technique employing hot beeswax and India-ink with acrylic paints and fabric dyes.  Her surfaces are gorgeous, luminous and distinct.  

See more below.

1.  

who's that cutie pie?!

Thanks Meg!

Open Late Tonight, Wednesday Nights till 8pm!

Come join us Wednesday evenings during Ellen Letcher's show for dumplings and discussion.

and for:

 

Lego building on the floor!! We all love our floor at Pocket Utopia!

and for 

Bill Murray? (You never know who might show up!)

Yes, up!!

Come inside.

See something old (how we miss the Frenchmen!)

See Paul's tattoo.

look at my sweet ride (I wish)!

This is a good idea (a beer box).

Ellen.

Ellen.

Yum, Ellen.

And Ellen.

Ahh, where is the sun?!

Yeah, C.G. Boerner, in gold and highly polished. (We'll do fancy cappuccinos together uptown.)

See ya later, jellyfish.

Pocket Utopia Peeps

Gili Levy.

Ellen arrives, greeted by Paul D'Agostino.

Ellen, the intensely individualistic innovator (Paul in profile).

This crowd is so fashionable!

Closer inspection.

Nice.

The artist's parents.

the catalyst Jason Andrew making his selection from the exhibition list!

Sharon Butler and Karina Aguilera Skvirsky

Liz (headband) with sidewalk peeps.

Dorothy Robinson, Larry Greenberg, Meg Hitchcock, Matthew Miller, Benjamin Sutton, 

Andrew Hurst and Mrs. Andrew Hurst (that's how she signed the guestbook)

Amy Lincoln, Angie Goerner, Brenda, Adam and Kianga in the background.

Ellen Letcher: Photo Still

Opening on Saturday at Pocket Utopia, Ellen Letcher: "Photo Still:"

Combined Human, 2006  24 x 18 inches  Collaged magazine pages &acrylic paint on board w/spiral wire 

Abstract, 2002  24 x 18 inches Collaged magazine pages and acrylic paint on cardboard 

Versace, 2012  24 x 12 inches  Collaged magazine pages and acrylic paint on wood panel 

Detroit, 2011  21 x 17 inches  Collaged magazine pages and acrylic paint with acetate on paper 

Big Sculpture, 2011  21 x 17 inches  Collaged magazine pages and acrylic paint on paper 

Funeral Pyre, 2012  15 x 4 feet Collaged magazine, newspaper, color laser prints, china marker and acrylic paint on PVC coated canvas drop-cloth 

Biker Diptych, 2009  10 ½  x 8 ½ inches  Collaged color laser print and acrylic paint 

Muslims, 2012  20 x 16 inches  Collaged magazine pages and acrylic paint with on wood panel with shelf 

Hotdog, 2012  25 x 19 ½  inches  Collaged magazine pages, color laser print and acrylic paint on paper

Björk, 2009  15 ½  x 11 ½  inches  Collaged magazine page and acrylic paint on cardboard

 

Tiger, 2012  25 x 19 ½  inches  Collaged magazine pages and acrylic paint on paper

Skater, 2012  25 x 19 ½  inches  Collaged magazine pages, color laser print and acrylic paint on paper  

Tea and Toilet Paper, 2012  25 x 19 ½  inches  Collaged magazine pages, color laser print 

& acrylic paint on paper  

Bill, 2012  25 x 19 ½  inches  Collaged magazine pages, newspaper, color laser print and acrylic 

paint on paper  

 Heavenly Creature, 2012  25 x 19 ½  inches  Collaged magazine pages, China marker and 

acrylic paint on paper

Leo, Romeo & Juliet, 2002–2012, 25 x 19 ½  inches Collaged magazine pages and acrylic paint on paper     

Wrestler, 2012, 25 x 19 ½  inches Collaged magazine pages, tape and acrylic paint on paper  

Milla, 2002–2012, 25 x 19 ½  inches Collaged magazine pages, China marker and acrylic paint on paper      

Combined Human, #3, 2012 20 x 16  inches Collaged magazine pages, color laser print 

and acrylic paint on paper

Boob, 2012, 28 ½  x 24 inches Collaged magazine pages and acrylic paint on paper 

Leaf, 2009, 26 x 17 inches Collaged magazine and book pages, relief printing and tape on Japanese paper     

Wresting images from glossy magazines and pasting them down with paint, Letcher creates a highly idiosyncratic collection of pictorial data.  She replays this device of painting and pasting, maintaining a graphic energy while carefully editing, and anything might and does happen along the way (for instance, an impression of a leaf falls outside one of Letcher’s gridded, brushed blue-glue and pink strokes).  Evidence of a cup of tea is plastered by active orange paint strokes while on another one of Letcher’s pages, Muslims pray within a lattice of painted pink, orange, and blue.

Letcher doesn’t take pictures — she jags their contours with color, abutting one against another, alongside yet another within a tableau of hidden transcriptions excavated with a red, blue, pink, or orange brush.  She has many influences, including her years spent in production design and more recently co-directing the now shuttered Famous Accountants gallery, thereby illustrating how visual culture gets layered and loaned sometimes from the same sources without the fidelity of precise transcription.

http://www.pocketutopia.com/