Complex and Compelling
"Gallery exhibits work from three well-known artists of the
Capital Region"
Albany Center Gallery ‘s upcoming 21th Annual Mohawk Hudson Regional
Invitational featuring Ginger Ertz, Naomi Lewis and Gina Occhiogrosso opens
March 11 and runs until April 19. The opening reception will be held on
April 4 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Saturday Noon
to 5 p.m. The gallery is located at 39 Columbia Street in downtown Albany.
Ginter Ertz received her M.F.A. from Johnson State College/Vermont Studio
Center. She has been an artist in resident at American Academy in Rome in
2005 and 2008, and has attended the Vermont Studio Center nine times from
1997 - 2001. Ertz has been selected to exhibit at the Albany International
Airport Gallery, University Art Museum, University at Albany, Brattleboro
Museum & Art Center, Dietel Gallery, Troy, NY, Schenectady Museum, Hooker-Dunham
Gallery in Brattleboro, VT, Julian Scott Gallery Didben Center for the Arts
at Johnson State College, VT, and the Southern Vermont Art Center to name
just a few.
Ertz’ primary source of materials are chenille pipe cleaners, and
she has used more than 10,000 chenille pipe cleaners in a single sculpture.
The material is a perfect combination of structure and texture and her biomorphic
constructions take inspiration from the late Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) who
is best known for his illustrated forms of nature such as sea and plant
life. Ertz’ organic sculptures are slightly asymmetrical, witty and
furry, each with their own personality and expression. These precious objects
take on a life of their own, and they exist together like harmonious creatures
of the sea in an underwater city of utopia.
Like Ginger Ertz, Naomi Lewis weaves intricate organic forms together. “In
my work I capture and hold a moment in time – a small moment –
where slow, quiet process pass unnoticed. I assemble a network of delicate
and sensuous elements, watching them gain strength as they interconnect.
From these veiled layers emerges a clear, resonated voice that brings light
out of darkness, order out of chaos.” Although Lewis’ work are
two-dimensional, they are illusions of the third dimension, as if to look
at a slide under a microscope, observing life on a cellular level.
Naomi Lewis received her B.S. from Skidmore College and her M.F.A. from
The University at Albany, State University of New York in printmaking. She
has been a lecturer in printmaking at a collegiate level for more than twenty
years and she is currently the Exhibition and Outreach Coordinator at the
University Art Museum, University at Albany, State University of New York.
She has had solo exhibitions at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, Hudson
Valley Community College, Troy, and The State University at Oneonta, Oneonta,
NY. Lewis has also exhibited at Pierogi Flatfiles, Albany International
Airport, Mandeville Gallery, Union College, Riverfront Studios, Schuylerville,
NY, Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, and The Rice Gallery at The
Albany Institute of History and Art, to name just a few.
Both Naomi Lewis and Gina Occhiogrosso have been resident artists at Millay
Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, New York. Occhiogrosso received her BFA
in painting from Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia,
PA. Later she received her MFA in painting from The State University of
New York at Buffalo, where she received the Morrison Memorial Scholarship
for the Arts, a Teaching Assistantship, and the Mark Diamond Research Grant.
Her national group exhibition experience includes True North at MIA Miami
International Airport Gallery, Sugar Buzz, Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx,
NY and Paper in Particular National Exhibit, Columbia College, Missouri.
She has had several one-person shows which include Amrose Sable Gallery,
Albany, NY, Lake George Project for the Arts, Yates Gallery at Siena College
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Rensselaer County Council for the
Arts(RCCA). Her work may be viewed in the Pierogi Flat Files, in Brooklyn,
NY, and through registries such as The Drawing Center and Nurture Art. Throughout
her career Gina has been given three Strategic Opportunity Stipends from
The New York Foundation for the Arts.In 1996 two of her works were featured
in Creative Collage by Jennifer Atkinson from Rockport Books (p.40).
Occhiogrosso’s works reflect ongoing themes of seduction and obsession.
The forms stem come from her past experience working as a cake decorator.
There is an underlying compulsion in her work. “By working with the
forms of decorative piped frosting, and further stretching, contorting and
developing new inventive spaces for these forms, I attempt to give them
a new reality. They become endless strands, sometimes forming words as they
bend and swirl in space”. Ginger Ertz, Naomi Lewis and Gina Occhiogrosso
were selected from last year’s Mohawk Hudson Regional which was held
at The Albany International Airport.