Sara Nightingale Gallery

Sara Nightingale Gallery and Romany Kramoris Gallery are pleased to present, I’ll Need a Pumpkin and Some Mice, new works by KOBA, opening Saturday, April 13th from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. at both galleries in Sag Harbor. Kramoris Gallery will be open until 10:00 p.m.

Sag Harbor artists Adriana Barone and Kryn Olson have been friends for many years. They each have their own separate art practice and have often looked to one another for inspiration and critiques. Last summer they decided to make a painting together – both working on the same canvas at the same time. Immediately, they felt an inspiring synergy and were thrilled with the outcome. Thus began a series of collaborative works under the acronym KOBA, an arrangement of the artists’ initials.

Their different skills and background experiences seep into the works. Ms. Barone attended Pratt Institute and was active in the NY downtown art scene in the 80’s. She later went on to start her own healing practice. Ms. Olson brings her science background and extensive experience as a professional artist. Both are interested in the relationship between humans and plants as well as symbolism within the natural environment.

The paintings are bright and optimistic, offering hope in a challenging time. Using spray paint and graffiti, KOBA creates bold flowers that reference pop culture, subway art and botanicals.

The exhibitions will run through April 30th.

Kim Romero’s abstract paintings often invoke the sky and sea. She is inspired by coastal living generally, including boating and gardening. Many of her works depict light on the surface of water, hydrangeas, or the multiple nuanced colors of the sea on any given day.

For Romero, the horizon is not a distinct, clear line of demarcation, but rather an atmospheric space, where the difference between earth, sea and sky may be ambiguous.

Osprey’s Return is a group exhibition that aims to “cleanse the palate” as winter gives way to spring. In anticipation of upcoming dynamic exhibitions in the 2024 season, we take a pause to celebrate and meditate on the arrival of spring - marked most notably here on Long Island by the osprey’s return in mid-March. The exhibition pulls from the palette of the osprey’s natural plumage - white, cream, and brown - as well as its habitat. While none of the works were created with ospreys in mind - making the curatorial premise a bit of a stretch, as a group they form a poetic narrative that loosely references the colors, experiences and surroundings of the fish-eating birds who mate for life but migrate alone.

Allison Meyler earned a BA in Studio Art and Art History at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA in 1987. She attended the Tyler School of Art Study Abroad program in 1985. She is interested in abstracting the female form. Beginning with sketches of live models and working in a variety of techniques and media, Allison strives to create balanced images that tap into emotional issues like body image and the multiple roles that women juggle in our society.

Peter Buchman wants to tell you a story - in his words and yours. His text-based sculptural works appropriate commonly used phrases, idioms, and logos from popular culture, which he strings together to form new narratives. Some of the works are lighthearted and jokey, while others utilize charged “inappropriate” words rendered in glossy letters, inviting viewers to reflect on their own use of language, particularly as it relates to “them” or “others”.

Americana and nostalgia have always factored into Buchman’s sculptures and drawings, the passage of time being a recurring theme. Historical and vintage texts, from the US Constitution to 60’s jazz posters and pulp fiction, have inspired his work. As culture evolves (or devolves) over time, Buchman questions how speech and language play a part in that. Whose voices are respected and heard? Who is silenced? And who is allowed to tell the stories of others?

Members of groups designated by gender, race, religion, and ideology are not spared from Buchman’s wit and scrutiny. One work, for example, consists exclusively of slang words used to denigrate ethnic groups. Being a descendent of immigrants from Kyiv, Ukraine, Buchman is inclined to empathize with displaced or disenfranchised people. Beautifully rendered charcoal drawings of what he calls “Travelers” comprise one of his several unique series.

Peter Buchman received a BFA from The Rhode Island School of Design and participated in a six-week Sculpture Residency at The School of Visual Arts, NY, 2010. He attended the Cortex Frontal art residency in Arrialos, Portugal in August 2023. His work has been exhibited & collected extensively throughout the U.S. with solo shows at Sara Nightingale Gallery, Sag Harbor, Kidder Smith Gallery, Boston, Ma; and The Vered Gallery, Easthampton, NY. Group exhibitions have included The Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE, Hong Kong Biennale, Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY., Montclair University Gallery, Montclair, N.J.,The Ball State University Gallery, Columbus Indiana and The Other Art Fair, Bristol, England. His exhibitions have been reviewed in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Southampton Press.

SHOWDOWN refers to the face-off between the artist and the literal or metaphorical blank canvas - the site where ideas and feelings are wrestled into shape, as well as the “rivalry” between abstract artists and those who embrace narrative in their works, including crossover artists who inhabit both camps.

Deborah Buck, Jennifer Cross, Denise Gale, Janet Goleas, Sue Heatly, Christa Maiwald, Claire Watson. April 14 - May 14, 2023

In Linda Gottesfeld’s recent abstract paintings, the physical acts of rolling and marking are integral to her imagery. Layers of color form emerging and recessing planes, while her linear botanical motifs conjure nature. It is the juxtaposition of these elegant lines and the intense colors surrounding them that “reflects the complexity of beauty and chaos during the last several years.”
Linda Gottesfeld received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the University of California Berkeley. She is a Professor of Art at Pace University in New York City.

Re-Wilding: JoAnne Carson & Suzanne Unrein, Oct. 22nd - Nov. 21st.

JoAnne Carson and Suzanne Unrein envision dynamic, hybridized natural worlds, where animals and plants – both real and imagined – flourish against all odds.

JoAnne Carson’s work has been shown extensively, including solo exhibitions at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Zillman Art Museum in Bangor, Maine. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Academy in Rome Prix de Rome, an Award in the Visual Arts, and a purchase prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work has been included in a Whitney Biennial.

Suzanne Unrein's work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the U.S, including numerous solo shows at Rare Gallery (New York, NY), Mitte Projects (Miami, FL & New York, NY), Galleri Urbane (Dallas, TX), Sara Nightingale Gallery (Sag Harbor, NY) and Boltax Gallery (Shelter Island, NY.) Her work was recently spotlighted in The Oxford Handbook of Perceptual Organization (Oxford University Press) and the focus of the short film, Hands & Eyes, that premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival.

Essay by Dan Cameron

Gus & George: Out Side, Tuesday, Oct. 4th - Oct. 18th.

Recent works by Gus Yero and George Singer address the natural (and unnatural) outside world. In abstract and narrative paintings by both artists, color does much of the story telling.

Gus Yero was born in New York, NY and studied painting at the Art Students League with Larry Poons, William Scharf and Joanna Pousett-Dart. He currently lives and works in East Hampton and NYC, and has had numerous exhibitions at Sara Nightingale Gallery. He is included in the book, Hampton Artists/ The Current Wave, by Jamie Lopez and Coco Myers.

George Singer is a self-taught emerging artist who paints in his East Hampton, NY studio. His work has been shown at Guild Hall, East Hampton, Folio East, Ashawagh Hall, East Hampton and Ille Arts in Amagansett, as well as The National Arts Club and Sara Nightingale Gallery. He is also included in Hampton Artists/ The Current Wave, by Jamie Lopez and Coco Myers.

Melora Griffis

g l o b a l s t a g e

Melora Griffis' paintings and mixed media works are influenced by her background in theater; she grew up in one and has worked as a professional performer, as well as a writer, designer, choreographer and director throughout her fine art career. For Griffis, theatre is present, not only on stage and screen, but also in nature, our dreams, and our everyday lives.

In g l o b a l s t a g e, Griffis considers the roles of artist, actor, spectator and audience, sometimes inviting the viewer to play the part of actor themselves, in order to fully animate a scene.

Griffis holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a graduate of The Neighborhood Playhouse. She is the recipient of six fellowships abroad and in the US, including the Edward F. Albee Foundation. This is her 17th solo exhibition on the East coast.

George Singer, Sea Creatures

Self-taught, locally based artist George Singer explores how being in the water “awakens something primal in people, allowing for a deep connection to the natural world. We become creatures – at one with all creatures.”

When a person is partially submerged in a body of water, they are “between two worlds.”

Singer’s raw, outsider style appears primitive, but is actually studied and deliberate. Born of the influences of many iconic artists including Alex Katz, Katherine Bradford, Milton Avery and Wolf Kahn, Singer’s unique voice emerges to celebrate the joy of being in the sea.

Theo Willis’ recent paintings, textiles and wall installations investigate non-traditional art materials, specifically the uncontrollable forces of nature, such as temperature, humidity, sunlight, and wind. Allowing these natural forces to play a vital role in the creation of the works marks a change in Willis' process away from the pursuit of control. The works are a true collaboration between the artist and the elements around him.

In the “Friends” series, Willis takes these elements of unpredictability and chance a step further, inviting fellow artists, friends, family members, and colleagues to collaborate on the works as well. The result is a body of work with dozens of different inputs. The range of collaborators ensures an assortment of color palettes and approaches to paint application, while the scale of each piece and its support, as well as the initial natural process, maintain consistency throughout the work. Each piece is titled after the collaborator, crediting their imperative involvement in the project.

Theo Willis earned a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has exhibited in galleries throughout the US.

Nedret Andre, Earth Laughs in Flowers

Earth Laughs in Flowers resonated with Andre when she encountered the quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson. She had been working with marine biologists on seagrass meadows restoration projects and realized there was “a great appreciation for this aquatic plant - its ability to house so much life, store carbon, give us oxygen.”
Nedret Andre is a contemporary abstract painter based in Boston’s SOWA district. Her work is inspired by ocean life within seagrass habitats. She regularly volunteers assisting scientists in the field with seagrass restoration efforts in Massachusetts. Andre earned a BFA in painting at Massachusetts College of Art and an MFA from Maine College of Art.

Mark Webber first met Richard Keen at Mark’s opening at Anita Rogers Gallery in New York City, where Mark was exhibiting his sculptures. The two men quickly bonded, and though they hardly knew one another, decided to embark on a collaborative drawing project that emphasized a back and forth dialogue between the two artists. Mark traveled from Sag Harbor to Richard’s studio in Brunswick, Maine, where the two men worked simultaneously on their drawings. Each drawing is created by only one of the artists, but there is a recognizable visual conversation between them. Richard, who is primarily a painter, and Mark, who is primarily a sculptor, wanted to return to their roots in drawing, using shapes and forms as a way to connect.

Material and process are the means by which Maggie Simonelli explores themes of nature, feminine beauty and love. Her signature encaustic “burn-in” technique begins with a mixture of beeswax and pigments “slow-cooked” in a double boiler. For this series, materials include pearl dust, crushed oyster shells, coral and a range of blue pigments – many from women’s cosmetics - as well as 22 kt gold, copper and silver metal leaf. As Simonelli ads layer upon layer of satin translucent wax-based “paint”, she carves arabesque shapes and lines into the gold and metal leaf. A quote from Rumi inspired the series title:

“Love isn’t the work of the tender and the gentle;
Love is the work of wrestlers.
The one who becomes a servant of lovers
is really a fortunate sovereign.
Don’t ask anyone about Love; ask Love about Love.
Love is a cloud that scatters pearls.”

Maggie Simonelli received a BA from Connecticut College and dual Masters degrees - an MFA in Painting and an MS in Art History, Museum Studies, Materials and Techniques from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. She has had solo exhibitions at Sara Nightingale Gallery, Sag Harbor, NY and Gary Marotta Fine Art, Provincetown, MA. Other gallery exhibits include Van Brunt Gallery, NY, Kristen Frederickson Contemporary Art, NY, Margaret Porter Troupe Gallery, San Diego, CA and the University of South Carolina, Beaufort. Simonelli’s artwork has been commissioned for private homes and corporate lobbies including Kirkland & Ellis, LLP, David Rockwell in NYC and the Inter-Continental Hotel in Boston. Simonelli has lectured on her art for the NY Society of Cosmetic Chemists, COLOR 2020 and #BeyondTheBrief 2019 at Peclers, Paris.”

Circus of the Rising Sun is a series of new oil paintings that celebrates the existential search for joy using the visual metaphor of a sunrise. The motif is repeated over and over, like a mantra or chant, illustrating the reassuring constancy of successive daybreaks. Yet, just as no two dawns are ever exactly the same, the paintings are comprised of a variety of colors, shapes and sizes.

For Burns, the power of painting lies not as much in the reproduction of nature as in the dynamism of visual forces. “In my paintings I do not want to reproduce the visible; I want to create an experience of perception.”

Perry Burns was born in New York in 1965 and received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1988. His solo shows include: Cheryl Hazan Gallery, New York; ARC Fine Arts, Larchmont, NY; Islip Art Museum; Sara Nightingale Gallery, Sag Harbor, NY, and Lizan Tops Gallery, East Hampton, NY. Group shows include: Ille Arts and Neoteric Fine Art, Amagansett, NY; Silas Marder Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY; Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY.; Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY, folioeast and Spanierman Gallery, East Hampton,NY; Spainerman Modern in New York.

Melora Griffis, moon buoy

In moon buoy, Griffis's narrative landscapes address the late hours. Whether in complete darkness, with only the moon's glow, or during the theatrical show of a sunset, the paintings shy away from diurnal events and focus instead on the sometimes lonely, sometimes intimate experiences that occur in diffused or subdued light. While neon and glitter play a part here, and Griffis’s moonlight emanates brightness, it’s crepuscular light and what it suggests - the workday being over, the time for social gatherings or quiet solitude - that takes center stage in this body of work.

Melora Griffis received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has received fellowships from Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Le Moulin a Nef, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, Schloss Pluschow, The Edward Albee Foundation and the Virgina Center for Creative Arts. She is a graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse in NYC and has written, directed, designed, choreographed and performed in over a dozen performance art works in New York City and abroad. She has exhibited her fine art in New York galleries such as Ethan Cohen, Edward Thorp, White Columns, and 571 Projects, as well as other galleries on Long Island, Upstate New York and Los Angeles.

In recent times, most of what is “seen” can be viewed repeatedly, because it has likely been photographed or filmed. Sometimes horrific and sometimes beautiful, human memories play on continuous loops for all to share. But personal memories, those which were not filmed but rather experienced, are malleable. Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist who is an expert on memory, has written, “Our representation of the past takes on a living, shifting reality. It is not fixed and immutable, not a place way back there that is preserved in stone, but a living thing that changes shape, expands, shrinks, and expands again, an amoeba-like creature.”

Brody-Lederman continues to chronicle “the poetry inherent in ordinary life.” She aims to memorialize “small” moments, when we are most present. Using simple imagery, such as a small patch of grass in a park, trees, birds, and domestic paraphernalia, Brody-Lederman reveals both psychological and graphic content. Snippets of text are incorporated into most of her paintings, driving the narrative. Words are distilled, and double entendres, both aural and visual, abound. The texts are non-linear, with roots in Beckett, Pinter, and Albee, as well as filmmakers such as Truffaut and Fellini. Erasure and re-writes are common.

Brody-Lederman’s surfaces are meant to evoke peeling walls of ancient cities and depict the passage of time. The mark of the hand, that “very beautiful awkwardness of our common humanity”, is the vehicle for lifting what Loftus refers to as, “the flimsy curtain that separates our imagination and our memory.

Natural Respite is a site-specific installation comprised of works created by Erica-Lynn Huberty over the pandemic year. Rather than mourning the many losses brought about by the global health crisis, Huberty seeks to evoke joy in the viewer, drawing inspiration from the Earth’s rebound during our human respite.

Greenhouse gases decreased by 17%, and the skies in India and California appeared azure-blue for the first time in decades. The sound of birdsong in normally noisy cities became palpable, while foxes lounged alongside domestic pets on patio furniture in London back-yards.

The Earth’s ability for recovering and rewilding astound and inspire Huberty, who, at the outset of the pandemic, quickly latched onto the words of environmental journalist Isabella Tree: “We assume we know what is good for a species, but we forget that our landscape is so changed, so desperately impoverished, that we may be recording a species not in its preferred habitat at all, but at the very limit of its range.” In Natural Respite, Huberty takes this statement and chronicles, as well as re-imagines, the simple backyard garden in its context.

Erica-Lynn Huberty’s work incorporates embroidery, salvaged and up-cycled textiles, weaving, knitting and other needle-arts, as well as watercolor, polymer paint and drawing techniques. She received an MFA in painting from Bennington College in 1995, where she studied with Amy Sillman and Rochelle Feinstein. Most recently, her work has been exhibited at Southampton Arts Center, Bennington College Carriage Barn, and the South Fork “Drive-By Art” exhibition. She also recently presented and discussed her work as part of The Watermill Center’s Viewpoints series. She lives and works in Bridgehampton, NY and is a life-long East End resident.

George Singer, UFO Paintings, on view through March 19th

Historically, in times of global unrest, UFO sightings have tended to rise, as people looked to the skies for answers and enlightenment. In fact, since the beginning of the pandemic, UFO sightings have soared, according to data from the non-profit National UFO Reporting Center.

While scientists and government officials now prefer the term Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, which can include flashes of light and other unexplained events, the term UFO nostalgically conjures images of saucer-like objects that were widespread during the Cold War.

The recent plethora of reported sightings has led to concern about the secrecy surrounding them. Buried in the 5,600-page Covid-19 relief bill is a provision calling for UFO-related documents’ disclosure. Within 180 days of the bill’s ratification, officials from the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies must “submit a report … to the congressional intelligence and armed services committees on unidentified aerial phenomena.”

George Singer’s UFO paintings stem from a childhood spent staring up at the sky, both at night and during the day. In the 1970s, his father had a collection of paperback UFO books that lined a shelf in the den of the family home. “Now that my father has passed, these paintings make me feel as if we are, once again, in a kind of communion,” Singer explains.

“In a time of such profound uncertainty, these images take on a meaningful resonance for me. The mystery of something from another galaxy coming out of the sky - with superior knowledge and better technology - feels both glorious and somehow comforting.”

For Singer, the paintings embody both the seriousness of a religious icon and the pop whimsy of a comic book. Through the use of color and texture, he aims to illustrate the UFO’s mysterious forces, while still celebrating a child’s sense of wonder at seeing lights in the sky.

María Schön combines motifs of rolling land masses, swollen oceans and luminous skies to create large scale vistas with subtle references to human figuration. Inspired by her deeply felt relationship with the tropical landscapes of Venezuela, Schön’s work explores the nature of painting, as well as nostalgia for a landscape where she once enjoyed a sense of place.

Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan of Venezuelan parents, Schön grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, where she began her formal art training at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Although her education and career developed entirely in the United States, the images in her landscapes derive from her South American roots and her memories of visiting Venezuela as a child.

“For me, this imagery has a sound - a kind of atmospheric low hum or rhythmic vibration - that sensually undulates from within the picture like the continuous forward motion of waves. It is a narrative about entering, fitting in and becoming part of a past landscape that now lives in my imagination.”

Schön’s paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States and abroad. She holds a BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA in Film Production from New York University. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including being named “Academy Fellow” to the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences during her film studies at NYU. Her works are found in the corporate collections of the Mayo Clinic, Citibank and Johnson & Johnson, as well as in private collections in Indonesia, Venezuela and the United States.

Matthew Langley is a New York City painter and photographer whose work focuses on space, compression, volume and sentience. His paintings are created using strict formal codes which explore ideas of reductive minimalism.

Langley has exhibited extensively throughout the US, and his work is held in many private and public collections including the US State Department, Art in Embassies program, Montefiore Hospital, NYU Langone Health, Capital One, and the University of Baltimore.

Throughout her career spanning over 45 years, Judith Simonian has periodically returned to paintings about fish and water. Inspired by the seduction of the subject matter and the ability it affords to “mash up” images, Simonian says, “The pleasure of painting water and fish provides gestural opportunities to dance on the two dimensional surface of a painting.”

But she hesitates to remain in a pleasure zone for too long. It is just as important that she provide an exit route into another dimension, in order to make connections that aren’t immediately obvious to the viewer, nor to the artist herself. Using a periscope as a travel device, she journeys through, above and around imagined landscapes and seascapes, inviting the viewer to follow until they end up somewhere else. Simonian compares the process to a "Proustian sensation of observing postcards dropped on a table, conjuring moments of meaning and time that depend upon one’s personal triggers.” Her use of disparate imagery allows for multiple narratives within each work.

Judith Simonian is a native of Los Angeles, CA. She received an MA and a BA from California State University, Northridge. She lives and works in the East Village of New York City, where she teaches at The Cooper Union. Simonian is a Guggenheim Fellow and a recent resident at BAU Cassis and Dora Maar House in Menerbe, France. She has exhibited broadly in museums and galleries across the US and in Europe, and her work is held in the permanent collections of the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA, and the Fresno Museum of Art, Fresno, CA, among other museums and corporate collections.

Barbara Friedman, Animals! Nov. 6 - Dec. 2

In a departure from her ongoing series, Unreliable Narrators, in which fictional characters from children's literature find themselves in unsettling situations, Friedman, with this new body of work, views herself as an "image seeker" rather than an "image maker". In Animals!, imagery emerges from "inchoate spreads of watercolor, as if it were an allegory of embryonic development." Rather than beginning with a fixed narrative, Friedman allows the paint to form shapes and looks for subject matter in those shapes.

Being cooped up in her apartment made her crave the natural world, and this resulted in odd creatures appearing in her paintings. Often they are draped over each other, sort-of human and sort-of non-human. Friedman believes the enforced isolation has led to her interest in “how natural bodies intertwine”.

This mutual contact also speaks to pathogens that are passing between wildlife and humans in a time of habitat destruction and the reduction of biodiversity. The fantasy of interaction with the natural world is realized as a source of infection. These are scenes of intimacy, which we desire, but also fear.

Works by Perry Burns and Kim Romero.

Romero’s abstract paintings grow out of visual personal experience; tactile and painterly, they illicit emotional triggers that bring joy, promote thought and calm the mind.

Using a large brush and a palette knife, Romero alternates between thick pigmented and thin watery textures, layering as the paintings take form. The shapes created take on the structure and “bones” of the piece. In each final composition she hopes to evoke the feelings and awareness specific to a personal memory or reflection.

Nuala Clarke is a multi-media artist based in coastal Ireland. Her practice includes painting, drawing, sculpture, video and installation.

Clarke is concerned with “the organization of space and how it is intrinsically connected to time." An abiding fascination with the sea, wave action, sea gods and mariners informs her work, as does her relationship with the coast of Ireland. Humor and loss also figure into her work.

Clarke received a BA in Fine Art Painting from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. From 1993 to 2007 she lived and worked in New York City, but returned to Ireland when she received a fellowship to the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Mayo. She began returning to Ireland to work every year, until 2013 when she moved back full time.

Clarke has exhibited at SFMoMa, San Francisco, Hamilton Gallery, Sligo, The National Museum Of Ireland, the Royal Hibernian Academy, and Linenhall Arts Centre, among other venues.

Christa Maiwald, Famous Cakes, January 11 - February 12, 2020.

Over her forty-year career, Maiwald has worked in multiple mediums, including film, video, painting, sculpture and installation, but recently she has concentrated on embroidery and photography. In Famous Cakes, Maiwald presents “mini-installations” that pair embroideries or photographs with objects.

The Famous Cakes are hand-embroidered images of cakes inspired by such figures as Yayoi Kusama, Andy Warhol, Giacometti, Wayne Thiebaud, Michelangelo, and other famous artists. "The mini-installations have evolved from my continuing interest in cakes and pastries. I combine replicas of baked goods made from soap with framed embroideries or photographs, many of which represent artists or artworks and cakes inspired by them."

In her Landscape Cakes series, Maiwald begins each work by baking a cake inspired by a particular landscape. She then photographs the actual cake within that landscape, and in some cases will exhibit the cake with the photograph. World Cakes is an ongoing series focusing on environmental concerns.

Maiwald holds a B.F.A. in painting and sculpture from the Tyler School of Art and an M.F.A. in sculpture from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2013, Maiwald had a solo exhibition at Guild Hall Museum and has shown in solo and group shows internationally, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Arts & Design, the Lulea Sommar Biennal in Lulea, Sweden, Galerie Houg in Lyon, France, the Parrish Art Museum, the Heckscher Museum of Art, the Islip Art Museum, the Paul Robeson Galleries at Rutgers University, Newark, and galleries and art fairs in the U.S. and abroad. She has received three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, CAPS, and Change, Inc., and has attended residencies at ZBS Foundation and the Synapse Video Center at Syracuse University.

For more information and pricing, contact Sara Nightingale at sara@saranightingale.com or 631-793-2256

Carl Scorza, Cocktail Hour, January 11 - February 12, 2020.

"Bars and restaurants are meeting places where people come together to relax but also to be on display themselves". Types and brands of liquor are on display as well, reflecting the tastes and identities of patrons. "I'm interested in painterly arrangements of bottles, their labels, and the translucent nature of light on glass, both natural and artificial, enabling us to see something through something else."

In Scorza's still lifes of iconic cocktails, the forms and shapes convey "the demonstrative mark, spacing that creates a sense of animation and complementary colors that counterpoint and accentuate one another".

Scorza began his career as a plein air landscape painter focused on rural Long Island, but transitioned to urban landscapes during a residency at the World Trade Center in 1997. His still lifes of groupings of liquor bottles, in which vertical forms are represented in a horizontal format, evolved from his urban landscapes.

Scorza studied at the New York Studio School, The Art Students League, and with Wayne Thiebaud at the National Academy of Art. He has been an artist in residence on Governors Island and has exhibited at numerous galleries in the New York Metropolitan area.

For more information and pricing contact Sara Nightingale at sara@saranightingale.com.

As the Crow Flies, Janet Goleas/ Priscilla Heine, Laurie Lambrecht/ Virva Hinnemo, Ross Watts/ Jeremy Grosvenor, Nov. 14 - Dec. 16

As the Crow Flies is a community project organized by Janet Goleas, Laurie Lambrecht and Ross Watts. Each was tasked with selecting one artist to exhibit alongside. Janet Goleas selected Priscilla Heine (represented by Findlay Galleries); both have work currently on view in the Parrish Art Museum’s Artists Choose Artists exhibition. Laurie Lambrecht, courtesy of The Drawing Room in East Hampton, recently completed a Parrish Road Show project at Madoo Conservancy. Lambrecht selected Virva Hinnemo, a recipient of a 2019 Pollack-Krasner Foundation grant. Ross Watts, an alumnus of Artists Choose Artists (2011), selected Jeremy Grovesnor, a filmmaker and sculptor. All of the artists live and work on Eastern Long Island.

Priscilla Heine’s over-sized flower sculptures greet viewers as they enter the gallery. A painting and corresponding video by Ross Watts examine the mathematical concept of exponents; Watt’s square grid of four 18” x 18” panels can be displayed in 256 unique configurations. His use of organic materials, such as plaster, burlap and tar, juxtaposes the perfection of math with irregularities in the natural world.

Laurie Lambrecht’s interactive "knitted stones" occupy a shelf beneath a photo of those same stones. Her photographs of tree bark, rocks or grasses printed on raw linen and colored paper integrate textiles, knitting and weaving. In Summer Garden, Madoo, Lambrecht printed photographs of flowers taken at Madoo Conservancy onto cotton fabric. She then tore those prints into strips and wove the strips into an abstract tapestry that retains the colors of the summer garden.

Janet Goleas investigates “broken geometries” in her Crop Circle paintings, which draw inspiration from a recent solar eclipse. She overlays dozens of full circles and then seeks an “internal logic”. She thinks of them “a bit like music - they float around the picture plane until, for me, they make a sound.” Goleas also cites the Magic 8 Ball as an influence - “…the way the words float to the surface from that inky background.”

Virva Hinnemo’s small scale oil paintings are suggestive of “places", unlike her previous abstract works. Inspired by a book from her childhood that tells the story of a tiny creature who embarks on an adventure and discovers friendship, these paintings recall images of boulders, woods, an empty shore, and an unfriendly mountain pass.

Jeremy Grosvenor presents two abstract wall sculptures painted cobalt blue. His concern with time “as it passes into blurry oblivion" informs his work.

For more information and images contact the gallery.

Monica Banks, Ordained, Sept 16 - October 18, 2019.

Words often call to mind their opposites. When something has been Ordained it has been recognized as holy. Ordained also means something has been predetermined. Banks’ work hinges on the assumption that every moment deserves to be sanctified. The history behind those moments and the possibility of future change are inherent in her narratives.

Anointed evokes the gentility of a monarch's crown while simultaneously suggesting the viciousness of a shark's mouth. Hallowed depicts a celebratory family meal; broken furniture and cake on the floor suggest a history of violence. Mold and other unruly growths are evident in Cultivated , a pair of curiously oversized slices of furry frosted cake. Settled calls to mind the long story leading up to an occasion and questions the hope of escaping the past. Reified manifests the visual associations we have with disparate objects. A celebratory flowered cake is clawed and decorated with a vile chicken hand in Ordained. The contradictions in Cinnamon Crunch, where anthropomorphic cupcakes enact a myriad of human characteristics, both good and bad, are abundant.

The works in this series explore the ways that every tribute deserves a clear-eyed acknowledgment of the complexity of the moment. 

Sara Nightingale Gallery is pleased to present, Unreliable Narrators, Barbara Friedman, Melora Griffis & Judith Simonian, opening Saturday, June 8, 6 - 8 p.m. Through July 5th. The exhibition's title derives from an ongoing body of work by Barbara Friedman, in which familiar protagonists from children’s literature and popular culture appear in precarious situations. 

In fiction, “a work that has an unreliable narrator compels the reader to second-guess the information they are given, to view as suspect any “truth” or claim of veracity on the part of the main storyteller, a work of fiction becoming doubly so.” - Enrico Gomez

Each of the artists in the exhibition employs narrative generally as a framework for expression; specific anecdotes may reside within one work or spread across a series. All of the works blur the lines between abstraction and representation, fantasy and reality, fact and fiction. The identity of the “unreliable narrators” is questioned; are they the artists, the subjects of the works, the paintings themselves, or the viewers?

Barbara Friedman’s treatment of characters such as Gulliver, Pinocchio and Gumby engages them in unexpected activities and settings. We often find them in supine positions, as if they have given up or been conquered. Yet the brightly hued paintings - pink and orange are favorites in Friedman’s underpainting - are too funny and oddball to evoke pessimism. Rather, the viewer empathizes with these malleable figures, while subtle cues from Friedman reveal her worldly concerns. 

Melora Griffis relays the “story” of Painterella, the persecuted heroine, who finds remarkable fortune after loosing her shoe. A classic folk tail is re-imagined using repetition of form. She layers her marks with an array of mediums on varying surfaces - often found and repurposed - including paint, embroidery, fabric and stitching. Symbolism plays a part in both the allegorical and the real in Griffis’ work, as she explores themes of boundary, ownership, privilege, deprivation, denial, truth and ultimately relationships, romantic and otherwise. 

Judith Simonian paints a “radiant, but unstable world that often becomes unhinged, transforming before the viewer's eyes like a theatrical stage set. Her interest lies in the unevenness of the subjective eye and the “unreliability" of interior spaces and landscapes, but color and efficient mark making are her priorities. These often take precedence over the depiction of recognizable imagery or concrete narrative. 

Suzanne Unrein, Slip, May 11th through June 3rd.

Suzanne Unrein grew up among swamps, alligators, mossy oaks and hundreds of varieties of birds in the coastal towns of Florida. Her travels and encounters with animals in Mexico, South Africa, Borneo and Bali have contributed to her vibrant worlds where the animality of humans plays within a world of beasts. The drawings for Slip began at Unrein’s art residency in Can Serrat, El Bruc, Barcelona, Spain, in August of 2018 and have continued with her return to New York City. In the drawings, Unrein moves away from the exuberant brushstrokes and vibrant color of the paintings. She calms down the motion and simplifies the palette to concentrate on the more psychological aspects of the work. Two large paintings inspired by the drawings will also be exhibited.

In Unrein’s words, “I frequently have dreams where I’m communing with wild animals. I’ve been in the mouth of an alligator, hovered over by a koala bear, and held down by a lion. The situations are usually on the edge of violence; yet in the dreams they are peaceful and familiar. I’ve traveled to Borneo looking for orangutans and visited a lion whisperer in South Africa who cavorts with lions and hyenas. One time in Bali a pair of macaque monkeys were using me as a jungle gym, periodically looking soulfully into my eyes as if to remind me that we are connected. These encounters, real and imagined, feel the same as when I’m painting. I’m hyper-alert, ecstatic, curious and wanting. Wanting to dive into the painting, connect with the animal, connect to my animal self. The experiences contribute to the paintings as if in a ritualistic dance. The intensified action heightens the color. The rhythm of the natural world moves the brush with aggressive, fleeting, methodical and fluid strokes.”

A California native and a current New Yorker, Unrein has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the U.S, with solo shows at Rare Gallery in NYC, and Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, and the Hamptons. Her work was recently spotlighted in The Oxford Handbook of Perceptual Organization (Oxford University Press) and the focus of the short film, Hands & Eyes, that premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival. She is the art editor for Figure/Ground magazine and a contributing writer to Delicious Line. Her first curatorial project, Afflatus, will be exhibited in May at the 5-50 Gallery in Long Island City, with co-curator Amy Hill. Unrein currently works in her studio in the East Village, with past residencies at the Studio Program at P.S. 122 in the East Village, the Jentel Foundation in Banner, WY, and the Can Serrat residency in Le Bruc, Barcelona, Spain.

Irina Alimanestianu, Ani Antreasyan, Stephanie Brody-Lederman, Madeleine Bialkey, Tom Brydelsky, Rossa Cole, Elizabeth Dow, Cara Enteles, Sara Genn, Shirley Irons, Laurie Lambrecht, Elena Lyakir, Christa Maiwald, Anne Raymond.

A Walk in the Forest is an off-the-grid respite from digital TMI culture. Low levels of visual information inform the curatorial choices. Through tropes of American landscape painting, and in particular trees themselves, the subject matter depicted evokes interior landscapes and spaces condensed within the flatness of the picture plane. The myth of nature as a boundless virgin wilderness is dispelled, yet the exhibition’s tone defies dystopian clichés. Even climate change, for the most part, is eschewed in favor of tranquility expressed in earthy, natural palettes - a last calm, of sorts, before impending storms.

It’s noisy in the world and that noise, all the information that constantly infects us, shortens our attention span. In painting I can do something to slow it down, edit out, look for the permanence in the transitory, which is really about hope. - Shirley Irons

Opening Saturday, December 1, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.

Timeshapers brings together three friends who met five years ago in the art community of Taos, NM. One of them, Mimi Saltzman, was given an antique hourglass, which became her “shape muse”. The other two, Paul O’Connor and Johnny Wong, subvert the traditional rectangular form of painting by employing hexagons and quadrilaterals or rotating the square to a diamond shape. While Saltzman and Wong specifically address time as a subject of their work, O’Connor’s wall pieces, with their “meditation holes”, encourage the viewer to experience mindful expansion, which can temporarily alter a viewer's perception of time. The three friends, based in Taos, Sag Harbor and New York, bridge time-zones and geographies with their artistic relationship. When Johnny Wong stacks two diamond shaped paintings, one on top of the other, the resulting shape nods to the hourglass in Saltzman’s work. Similarly, O’Connor’s geometric shapes include diamonds which echo Wong’s. Another relationship is the metalic patina that both Saltzman and O’Connor employ in their work.

Paul O’Connor attended the Pasadena Art Center in the late 80’s and worked as a fine art photographer. His love of tools and construction led to an apprentice with a master woodworker, and he has since built his own home, furniture and many sculptures. His wall hanging constructions seek to articulate the nature of time and space. Incorporating combinations of metals, woods, patinas and paint, his works offer a visual refuge, a place of contemplation, and a meditation on spaciousness. He is represented by Vivian Horan, NY and his work is held in the collections of Museo Jumex and the Harwood Museum. He will be exhibiting with Vivian Horan at Art Miami, Dec. 4- 8.

Mimi Saltzman lives and works in NY and Sag Harbor. She has a BA in Psychology and Painting from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts, Boston and an MFA from New York University. When she received an antique hourglass as a gift in the 80’s, she became fascinated with the object, drawing, painting and creating mono-prints and etchings inspired by its shape. Eventually, Saltzman came to realize that the hourglass represented for her the sands of time passing through a woman’s form, a kind of biological clock. Using a wide range of materials - baby oil, eggshells, leaves, salt, nail polish and more - the recent hourglass works continue to examine the feminine form and experience, but now also consider mortality and the waning time left to create and love.

Johnny Wong was born in Hong Kong and lives and works in NYC. He was raised in California and studied motion graphics at UCLA for feature film. Wong is influenced by the pointillist technique of Seraut and Signac and the role that time plays in the creation of an art work. His work explores how the line as a design element can represent the trajectory of a life. In his work, lines intersect and don’t intersect, reflecting how we cross paths with others, share a moment, share years, and then move on.

Scott Bluedorn, Stephanie Brody-Lederman, Perry Burns, Rossa Cole, Erica-Lynn Huberty, Dalton Portella, Jennifer Presant, Yuliya Lanina, George Singer

Nov. 3 - Nov. 27

Reception: Friday, Nov. 23rd, from 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.

Bob Dylan’s line from 1963’s Talkin’ World War III Blues, “I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”, is both personal and political. Taken literally, it’s a pick-up line for someone courting the object of their desire. But it’s also a reference to shared or collective dreams - ones that differ from the reality show that is, in fact, unreal. Pinch me. Wake up call anyone? Sometimes you just need to keep hitting the snooze button.

Sweet Dreams. Pipe Dreams. Broken Dreams. The American Dream. I have a dream. Dreamers.

Perry Burns’ Flower Tapestry paintings merge elements of Islamic design and European tapestries, expressed through the language of abstraction. Design and its connection to human history and spirit are central concerns for Burns. He has long been inspired by pattern and rhythmic repetition, which he views as the representation of a spiritual realm, a “visual mantra".

Through the Flower Tapestry series, Burns continues to explore both personal and universal notions of asymmetrical pattern - formally, aesthetically & spiritually. The flowers stand in for a variety of human experiences - breath, life, love, and spirit. Some of them look like and reference stars, constellations or galaxies - even the lone flowers, which have no earth below or horizon line, but rather float in space. Like tapestries and Islamic patterns, these paintings “extend” beyond the edges of the canvas, a visual metaphor for our spiritual lives. The flowers are for Burns not just ornament, but structure, not just decoration, but essence.

Perry Burns received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and earned a Masters degree from Columbia University in 1994. Since then he has had more than twenty solo exhibitions nationally and internationally, as well as fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. His work is held in many private and public collections, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Knight Foundation, Miami and the Heckscher Museum, Huntington, among others. He has exhibited at the Parrish Art Museum, Guild Hall Museum, The Islip Art Museum and the Chautauqua Center for the Visual Arts.

Stephanie Brody-Lederman, Margaret Zox Brown, Barbara Friedman, Margaret Garrett, Shirley Irons, Paton Miller, Dalton Portella, Anne Raymond, Gus Yero

Paton Miller, Paintings June 30 - July 26, 2018.

Paton Miller’s oil paintings of ordinary scenes enhanced by his unique inventiveness are inspired by world travel, as well as domesticity and family life. Miller employs an earthy, neutral pallet, reinforcing his connection to nature and outdoor adventures. Human figures, as well as animals and invented “species”, populate his canvases. These subjects bring to life Miller's allegorical narratives that reference other places in other times. Several motifs appear repeatedly in his works: waves depicted as triangular blocks of color, mules and other animals carrying objects on their backs, boats, water and exotic foreign landscapes. When Miller travels, he paints the people he meets as a way to get to know them.

After leaving his home in Hawaii to journey through Asia in 1974, Paton Miller arrived on the East End of Long Island with a collection of travel inspired artworks that won him an art scholarship from Southampton College. Graduating with honors, Miller launched a career that has included more than twenty solo and numerous group exhibitions in New York City and throughout the United States. His works are held in the permanent collections of Guild Hall Museum, The Parrish Art Museum, The Heckscher Museum of Art, and the Long Island Museum, among others.

Monica Banks, Pulchritude, June 30 - July 26, 2018

  Pulchritude, a word that sounds ugly, means beauty. Monica Banks’ latest series of porcelain confections and celebratory cakes embraces this paradox. Rendered in delectable pastel hues, the work beckons viewers with its mouth-watering imagery, only to serve up provocative emotional fare upon closer inspection.  

                  The cakes are rough, asymmetrical or spiky and are adorned with pushpins, needles and buttons - tools a mother might use to care for her family. Other works contain dead birds or bugs modeled on actual animals found in and around the home. A six fingered hand reaches, groping-ly, from a blueberry tart; other gory puns on "finger food" abound. Gender-less anonymous figures stroll aimlessly over a smoothly frosted cake, while hyena-like heads encircle the top of another cake, like gargoyles smirking at the viewer.

                  Banks' subjects include organic forms on the threshold between life and death and replicas of the deceased. Suffering and lifeless creatures, numbering from one to many, evoke mass graves of major disaster sites as well as individual loss.               

                  Banks has said, “All moments deserve a tribute, whether those moments are hopeful or tragic.”

                  The work explores themes of consumption, ephemerality and craft in addition to gender roles in the home. Its primary source, though, is Banks' empathy for her subjects. These "domestic monuments", honoring animals and humans, as well as objects, mythical creatures and events, serve as humble artifacts - archeological remnants of family, food and love. In a larger context, they illuminate and admonish socio-political "malnutrition".

                   Monica Banks lives and works in East Hampton, NY. She has been exhibiting sculpture and creating site-specific installations since 1989. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Parrish Art Museum, The Islip Art Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art at U Mass, Amherst, and The Catherine Konner Sculpture Park. She has exhibited at White Box, the Center for Architecture in NYC, The Carriage House at the Islip Art Museum, and the Heckscher Museum of Art, among other venues. She created “Faces: Times Square,” a block-long sculpture which stood in Times Square from 1996-2009, and for which she won an award from the NYC Public Design Commission. In 2016 Banks won an award of merit in the Long Island Biennial presented by the Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington.  She was also selected by Jorge Pardo for inclusion in the 2016 Artists Choose Artists exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum, and went on to serve as artist in residence there.

Sara Nightingale Gallery is pleased to present Velocity Games: New Work by Margaret Garrett and Steven Kinder, opening Saturday, May 26, 6:00 - 8:00 pm. Both artists are inspired by motion in the natural world and/ or the human body.

Margaret Garrett is an artist and dancer whose abstract paintings allude to the qualities of rhythm and movement. Trained as dancer, she left home at the age of sixteen to join the Pennsylvania Ballet and later danced with the Cleveland Ballet as a soloist. She began to paint in her early twenties, finding something spiritually akin to dance in the movement of line and color. Garrett’s approach to painting is strongly influenced by her early training in dance. “When I begin working on a new piece, I see the paper or canvas as an empty stage…” Texture, form, and the interaction of colors are, for her, manifestations of motion, rhythm, and energy.

Garrett works in ongoing series, such as her Tuning Fields series, in which line-driven layers of color create loose, yet formal, fields of motion. In her Choros series, shapes have a solid, even muscular form, conveying a sense of motion and choreography. Garrett has recently returned to dance, filming herself moving and then using stills, video clips and screenshots as inspiration for her paintings. Her dances are for her “drawings” in space; a video piece will be included in the exhibition.

Steven Kinder attended Cooper Union and has been making drawings, paintings, and large scale installations inspired by movement, energy and "natural forces" for over four decades. His recent work advances his interests in various forms of dynamic tension found in nature, specifically tidal bores, surges, and whirlpools. Even his easel is not static; he designed a rotating mount for his works.

Kinder wants his work to "call out in some way". He is inspired by the eternal color of Rothko, the angst embedded in the figures of Bacon, and geometric abstractions.

In his recent work, Kinder further explores tension and balance between the intuitive, gestural mark and the intellectual organization of form. His nine inch square drawings, a format he has been using for years, have now become templates for his larger paintings. In these templates, Kinder explores how form and color can come together and break apart while maintaining compositional integrity inside a small space. When Kinder translates the small drawings onto larger canvases, there is a palpable and necessary shift of pressure, color intensity and rhythm.

No Longer Supported, March 24 - April 27, 2018

   Peter Buchman, Perry Burns, Stephanie Brody-Lederman, Darlene Charneco, Bill Claps, Rossa Cole, James Croak, Cara Enteles, Barbara Friedman, Peter Garfield, Shirley Irons, Steven Kinder, Elena Lyakir, Ruth Ava Lyons, Christa Maiwald, Karyn Mannix, Dalton Portella, Anne Raymond, Bonnie Rychlak, Maggie Simonelli, George Singer, Ross Watts, Libby Wadsworth

   The software you use daily and rely upon has been deprecated. It is no longer safe to use, and its imminent obsolescence includes an upgrade that purports to improve your life, but is actually designed to enhance the spyware, obfuscate your metadata, and make you even more dependent. The transition will be cumbersome and time consuming. But do you really have a choice?

    Rather than assembling a group of artists who are concentrating on the demise of traditional painting supports - torn, shredded or punctured canvasses, exposed stretcher bars, paintings hung backwards, oddly shaped canvasses, painting as sculpture, etc… this exhibition will focus on works that address time as a subject, or are time-sensitive. The omitted torn canvasses, however, serve as a metaphorical backdrop. Support systems and structures we once were accustomed to are failing us. Infrastructure, government, technology and nature, rather than sturdy pillars on which we can depend, now seem like mere scaffolding. All have been unpredictable and unruly of late.

    Which brings us to a sense of urgency, of due dates and deadlines: time moving like a bomb cyclone, a freight train, a viral meme. Or glacially: a dense, slow learner. Time can be still, waiting to pounce. It loops back upon itself, a spinning hourglass, neither empty nor full. Time was. Time’s up. Time as a disruptor.

    Bonnie Rychlak’s Morphed Florida Drains use time as a component of process. Made of hand carved wax, they were exposed to long term Florida sunshine that warped and disfigured them. Darlene Charneco’s "Nail Meditations” are as visually akin to archeological sites as they are to a computer’s motherboard, leaving the viewer to wonder whether they reference the past, the future or both. Maggie Simonelli works with copper leaf, which oxidizes over time, altering the color of her paintings. Barbara Friedman’s painting of a green traffic light swaying in a foreboding, moody sky titled, Green Light, could just as easily be called, Time to Go. Christa Maiwald’s embroidery and cake installation, Coffee Cake (For Jackson Pollock), includes a slice of real cake, inherently making it a time-sensitive work.

    The exhibition opening coincides with THAW FEST, a new initiative by 19 cultural institutions on the East End, scheduled to take place the weekend of March 23 - 25.

    A percentage of proceeds from sales will be donated to the Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corp.  Mail your donation to: PO Box 2725, Sag Harbor, NY 11963.

New and Recent work by Perry Burns, Cara Enteles, Anne Raymond

Nov. 25, 2017 - Jan. 2, 2018

Perry Burns received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1988. Since then he has been making paintings that merge the traditions of Islamic pattern and abstract expressionism. Burns' focus is on color, shape, line, mark, texture and pattern. “I do not want to reproduce the visible, I want to create an experience of perception.” Burns has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Islip Art Museum as well as the Parrish Art Museum. His work is held in numerous private collections.

Cara Enteles received a BFA from Parsons School of Design and has also studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. She is best known for her nature/ landscape paintings on aluminum and plexiglas panels, which combine silkscreen printing and oil painting with other techniques. Enteles has exhibited internationally and is featured in many public and private collections. “In my mind the trees and plants of the paintings represent nature as a being. They exude power that humans continually try to manipulate.”

Anne Raymond received a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin, and attended the School of Visual Arts in New York. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, and her work is held in the permanent collections of major museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "In both my large abstract oils on canvas and my works on paper, I'm interested in the evocative power of inferred space and energy beyond the edges of the canvas."

Roisin Bateman, Anna Church, Margaret Garrett, Theresa Hackett, Elena Lyakir, Daina Mattis, Steve Miller, Maggie Simonelli

Needless to say... It goes without saying. 'Nuff said.

Open Garden is a group exhibition of flower paintings and other media with floral motifs. April 22 - May 22, 2017

Scott Bluedorn, Marissa Bridge, Anna Church, Rossa Cole, Elisabeth Condon, Peter Dayton, Cara Enteles, Emily Filler, Margaret Garrett, Theresa Hacket, Susan Lazarus-Reimen, Stephanie Brody- Lederman, Bruce Lieberman, Christa Maiwald, Judy Mannarino, Steve Miller, Robin Rice, Dan Rizzie, Wendy Small, Donald Sultan, Suzanne Unrein, Ross Watts, Michelle Weinberg, Kathy Zeiger

In these politically charged times it’s become difficult to look at art without reading into it, being offended, or wondering if someone else will be offended. The polarization that has swept our land and divided us is creeping into art. Even an art genre as cliché and benign as flower paintings is not immune.

But sometimes a flower is just a flower. Rose is a rose is a rose.

Open Garden is a tribute to Earth Day. A percentage of sales will be donated to the locally based environmental nonprofit Perfect Earth Project.

Ani Antreasyan, Bill Armstrong, Scott Bluedorn, Nuala Clarke, Rossa Cole, Rose Marie Cromwell, Elizabeth Dow, Glenn Fischer, Margaret Garrett, Melora Griffis, Sylvia Hommert, Kelly Neidig, Dalton Portella, Barry Underwood, Suzanne Unrein, Maggie Simonelli, Judith Simonian, Mark Webber

The phrase other people's boats implies that someone else will pay. We, the guests, will get a free ride without having to be accountable for the built-in costs associated with aquatic adventures. Neither will we be required to do the clean up/ follow up/ repair work when the ride is over.

#friendswithboats examines just some of the symbolism inherent in boats, without necessarily depicting them literally. Boats are sources of leisure and commerce, battle and escape, departure and arrival, adventure and boredom. They conjure transit and movement that is sometimes hopeful, sometimes terrifying. Their history is steeped in migration, exploration, hunting, competition, pirating and human trafficking, as well as ordinary transportation. Boats may be packed with people trying to find a better life or contain a lone survivor in a life raft.

#friendswithboats is partly about waiting for someone to come to the rescue. It underscores the interdependancy of humans who are connected and simultaneously separated by the oceans, bays and rivers around us.

A percentage of proceeds from sales will be donated to Breakwater Yacht Club’s Youth Sailing Scholarship Program. Breakwater Yacht Club, a non profit organization based in Sag Harbor, NY, offers accessibility to the sport of sailing for people of all ages, incomes and experience levels http://breakwateryc.org/.

Through July 11. For pricing inquiries, email sara@saranightingale.com.

Butterfly Pie, recent sculpture by Monica Banks, was born from the artist's post election philosophical vertigo. Her feelings of hope, revulsion, optimism and anger swirled about, as if a swarm of butterflies had alighted on the promise of the future, then perished in the morass it became. Banks claims to have been “disrupted” by the current political climate, and as a result spent the last seven months seeking solace in her studio, where she produced a body of work that is part comfort food, part venom.

    Banks’ tiny figures are presented on porcelain cakes and other baked goods, such as pies. The work explores themes of consumption, ephemerality and craft, as well as gender roles in the home. Domestic metaphors fly through the studio-as-kitchen window out to the world at large, where a sort of “butterfly effect” stirs human emotions on all sides of the political spectrum. The “prettiness" of Banks’ confections invite the viewer to explore provocative imagery, while offering a mouth-watering, emotional journey.

    Monica Banks lives and works in East Hampton, NY. She has been exhibiting sculpture and creating site-specific installations since 1989. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Parrish Art Museum, The Islip Art Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art at U Mass, Amherst, and The Catherine Konner Sculpture Park. She has exhibited at White Box, the Center for Architecture in NYC, The Carriage House at the Islip Art Museum, and the Heckscher Museum of Art, among other venues. She created “ Faces: Times Square,” a block-long sculpture which stood in Times Square from 1996-2009, and for which she won an award from the NYC Public Design Commission. In 2016 Banks won an award of merit in the Long Island Biennial presented by the Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington. She was also included in the 2016 Artists Choose Artists exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum, and went on to serve as artist in residence there. This is her second solo exhibition at the gallery. The exhibition runs through Aug. 12th.