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| Hillwood Art Museum on the C.W. Post Campus Presents About the Artists: Joan Hall’s work uses nautical themes and imagery to interpret experiences with the body and the environment. She writes, “Memory of and documentation on and around the ocean of being damaged, trapped, and insignificant are used symbolically to represent thoughts and feelings about individual and collective experiences in relationship to the body and the environment.” Titles such as Tangled Up and Blue and Would You Swim the Ocean for to Ease My Pain allude to the sea and its power. Hall is also interested in the correlation between digital imagery and memory because, “Digital imaging functions much like memory in that the fragmented images can change indefinitely. Documented images from the past are being used to symbolize current experiences.” The ebb and flow of the ocean combined with the layering of memory and images inform Hall’s large mixed media paintings. Dan Welden, who developed the solarplate printing process for artists and was instrumental in the organization of this exhibition, contributes his latest embossments on lead to this exhibition. Welden, whose studio and workshop are in Sag Harbor on Long Island, regularly works with artists across the globe in the solarplate method. Welden, who identifies himself as an environmentalist as much as an artist, is interested in documenting the places he visits. He writes, “Wherever I am in the world, I watch the raking late afternoon light revealing marks and trails made over time on the trampled grasses and the earth beneath. In these pathways, I recognize a similarity to the lines and textures with which I draw and paint.” His works are created by drawing and painting directly on the solarplates with black opaque ink or paint, and exposed by the sun. After they are processed with ordinary tap water, he embosses them with an etching press on sheets of lead, rather than paper. The content of his abstractions are based on specific environments, but are constantly influenced by other places including “the seas around Long Island.” Eric Fischl is most well known for his realistic paintings that explore the uncomfortable elements of suburban lifestyle. These solarplate prints approach different themes of his late career. Finding the topics of his narrative paintings to be specific and personal, Fischl writes that he “wanted to take the work back into life, because I had felt that art had become too self-reflective and intellectualized. Through this work I am trying to find a way of re-engaging the public.” Instead of using digital sources or abstract lines that represent specific sites, Fischl’s works are gestural figure paintings. “I use the painterly approach by working on acetate with black paint, thus creating spontaneous human figures.” The use of reticulating wash tones with brush and mark making tools demonstrate his mastery of painting. Deborah Riley modifies photographs by painting and layering in the solarplate exposure process. Instead of the infinite multiples commonly associated with printing processes, Riley views each of her works as unique. “As I create my images with both camera and drawing, my mark making becomes unified and absorbed in the printmaking process. I contemplate and work in a quiet place, dwelling on the images and the marks. The works become a mesh of photography and drawing, utilizing the Solarplate as the vehicle for "one of a kind" impressions or ‘monoprints.’ ” Riley uses rich black ink to synthesize “the mystery of other worldly imagery with aspects of being human.” |
| Long Island University | C.W. Post Campus |