Domestic Dramas Features a Wide Scope of Artists from the Mohawk/Hudson Region
Albany Center Gallery presents Domestic Dramas, featuring the work of David Austin, Erin Colligan, Ashley Cooper, Colleen Cox, Benjamin Entner, Gary Glinski, Scott Hotaling, Kim Hugo, Gina Occhiogrosso, Catherine Quinones-Austin, G.G. Roberts, Denise Saint-Onge, & RFW.
The exhibit will be held August 3, 2010 through September 11, 2010. The opening & closing receptions will take place on Friday, August 6 and September 3, 2010 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in congruence with 1st Friday. The Brown Bag Lunch Discussion Series with the artists will be held on Thursday August 19 from Noon – 1 p.m. Albany Center Gallery is located at 39 Columbia Street between N. Pearl and Broadway in Downtown Albany, NY.
David Austin’s work focuses on the inherent in domestic life, ranging from the tensions between individuals and their living space to tensions between family members. He seeks to reveal the moments when the motives of individuals are forcibly altered, or when they are offered the pivotal moment to profit or fail.
Erin Colligan states, "Domestic Dramas may as well be the title of an entire chapter of my life. Photography has always been one of the only outlets that I have to express the emotions that I am afraid to voice. My camera captures that which I want to forget and the things that I wish would remain forever.”
Ashley Cooper has chosen houses, neighborhoods, and the families that live in them as her primary subject of her paintings. She finds a great deal of inspiration from the stories she discovers in her small village, where seemingly mundane details naturally unravel to show tales of mystery and meaning. Her work show an amusing and uncanny world where families live “protected from the elements in houses built on the bones of the past.”
Working in photography with a personal narrative, Colleen Cox seeks to explore the shifts in familial connections and dependency and the relationship patterns that pass through generations. .
Benjamin Entner is a multidisciplinary artists who frequently mixes the diverse mediums, such as; paintings, sewing, illustration, performance, and sculpture, to engage and test his work. Entner frequently focuses his themes on personal interests as diverse as his artistic methods, resulting in a wild range of topics from children’s books to underwear and fishing. Entner works to make his audience aware of their relationship to his art, appealing to a child like playfulness and humor in his work.
Gary Glinski’s work focuses on the delicate nature of family relationships, and deals with the veiled threats that can exist within the home. Gary Glinski uses the themes of children’s stories, rhymes, and song with common household objects in his images, drawing on his experience in motion pictures to tell his stories.
Scott Hotaling’s work is a homage to the unprocessed, honest and nostalgic spirit of the Polaroid. Hotaling uses his proficiency with mixed media, paint, and pencil to capture a strange and aged feeling of reflection in his subjects, trying to capture weight of years and the honest sentiments of the moments he depicts.
Kim Hugo’s work spans the mediums of drawing, painting, and digital imagery. Her work portrays familial settings that try to take the commonplace possessions in these settings and show the personal meaning they briefly posses. Hugo focuses on the interactions between her subjects and the viewer. Using multiple photographs of the same subject, Hugo crafts a familiar but altogether new circumstance, all the while suggesting a feeling of isolation and voyeurism.
Gina Occhiogrosso mines her childhood as a precious source for inspiration for her work. She seeks to stir the viewer to reflect on his or her own adolescence. Occhiogrosso uses painting, drawing, or whatever medium is necessary to articulate topics such as growing older, gender, and the delicate bonds of kinship, often using absurdity and verse as strategies to frame them.
Catherine Quinones-Austin’s work shows her fascination with pictures of people as a subject matter. She explores images that hold an silent presence and studies the interplay between how subjects wish to be seen to how they seem to see themselves. In her most recent work, Quinones-Austin uses images from TV & motion pictures, exploring the emotions and moods contained within the memories invoked by these images of a familiar time period.
G.G. Roberts sees her painting experience as award she provides to herself. She uses childhood objects and settings she discovers in advertising publications to create imaginary worlds and “youthful experiences,” using her painting to create an intimate visual storyline.
Denise Saint-Onge is a pioneering printer and creator of “the mezzotint technique.” The technique allows for a study of her subject’s structure and form using the principles of luminosity and shadow. This technique lends itself well to her study of the common objects and the physical presence they create in her surroundings. Her artwork draws from an almost nostalgic inspiration of memories and imagination.
RFW describes himself humbly as “a hobbyist living in America.”
Literary works largely inspire RFW’s work, and he renders them with
delicate red and white ink work. They have been seen as simple meditations
reflecting literary works, and have been described as abstract graphic illustration.
RFW thinks of his artistic work as if it was created by another person.
