Solos 2019
Four solos presented by our selected artists for Solos 2019: Martha Lewis, Ellen Hackl Fagan, Barbara Marks, and Olivia Bonilla.
Opening Reception: December 1, 1 - 3 pm
Artist Talks: December 8 at 2 pm
Winter Public Hours: Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday from 1 - 5pm & by appointment
Holiday Closing: November 27 - November 30
Ellen Hackl Fagan
Immersed in Blue
“In 2014 I became focused on the core of my creative search and began by painting a small series of works on paper titled “Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue.” This series has evolved into floor to wall installations of large scale watercolor/pigments on rag paper, as well as on the floor, that explore the nature of printmaking processes, texture and surface.”
About the Artist
Ellen Hackl Fagan is on a quest to hear the sound of cobalt blue. Working with saturated colors when painting sensitized her to color’s communicative nature. Building connections between color and sound through abstract paintings, photography and interactive digital technologies, she seeks to create a synaesthetic language that pairs color to sound. She is developing The Reverse Color Organ and the ColorSoundGrammar Game, two interactive projects that enable viewers to explore the aural potential of color.
Her process walks the balance between randomness and intention, like jazz music, revealing limitless possibilities for improvisation. Fagan exhibits her artwork throughout the greater New York metropolitan area and maintains her studio and curatorial practice in Bushwick.
Ellen Hackl Fagan is the owner of ODETTA, an artist run gallery in Chelsea at Hudson Yards, NYC.
Barbara Marks
“I make small-scale, square, colorful paintings. My imagery is rooted in observation and it departs from it. I like to call attention to the commonplace and the local. I look where others don’t. There’s the external world—and then there’s me. My paintings are the intersection of the two. In that respect, they are intimate and personal; perhaps they’re narrative.
I choose to paint ordinary situations and particular places by manipulating color, shape, and composition in such a way that the possibility of multiple interpretations engages a viewer and invites closer investigation.
The way I paint is driven by my interest in abstraction as economy of expression, and by my fascination with the dual role that color can play both as content and as structure in a painting. I use color to create space.
My ongoing project, Recollection, is composed of sets of paintings made in a variety of places; serially they’re an evolving visual record, comprising 152 paintings thus far. Considered as a whole, the aggregate of small-scale paintings assumes a large scale and, at the same time, encourages intimate interaction.”
About the Artist
Barbara Marks is a multidisciplinary artist based in Connecticut. She is known for her small-scale, square, colorful, paintings that are semi-abstract in nature, suggesting interior spaces, landscapes, and objects—as well as her drawings and paintings on upcycled consumer packaging. Her work calls attention to the commonplace and the local. She looks where others don't.
A child of the sixties, Marks grew up in Westport, Connecticut. She attended college, studying anthropology, until she fell into graphic design. In 1978, she established her own studio specializing in book design. In 2001, she left that behind to study painting at Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, earning a BFA (2005) followed by an MFA from Brooklyn College CUNY (2008). Since then, Marks has been awarded artist residencies in Italy, France, Portugal, and across the United States and has shown her work throughout the Northeast.
Olivia Bonilla
“Creating a world where color theory meets sculpture. My work explores personal nostalgia and indulgence through references to sweets, toy culture, and 80’s and 90’s retro flare. I’m interested in the idea of excess in today’s throwaway society. Using mediums such as sculpture and painting, I convey a “sugar coated” reality filled with over stimulation and re-appropriated ideas. Sprinkled pills, oversized diamonds, toys of an era, splashed with glitter and a wet gloss finish. My sculptures explore the feeling of a lustful existence and emotional desire, a combination of glutinous shinny landscapes who reveal childhood colors of cotton candy blue and bubble gum pink.”
About the Artist
Olivia Bonilla is an East coast painter and sculptor, born in Vermont in 1992. She runs a studio practice out of Old Saybrook, CT. Bonilla received her BFA in painting, with a minor in sculpture, from Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts. She has been a recipient of the Roberta B. Willis Scholarship along with the Chandler Scholarship in the years attending her BFA. Bonilla participates annually in curating a space at New Havens City Wide Open Studios. She has shown at the Affordable Art Fair NYC with current representation with Miller Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina.
Martha Lewis
‘Branes: this series of three-dimensional drawings are based on ideas from two branches of science:
On a minute scale, they reference the study of crumpled paper as a part of Topology, the mathematical branch concerns the properties that are preserved through deformations, twistings, and stretchings of objects.
Telescoping over to the vast: the term ‘Branes refers to membranes in String Theory, an idea in physics which posits that our universe is one in a multiverse: part of a ‘bulk’ of ‘Branes. M-Theory attempts to explain how the 4 forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak forces) in the universe might be unified. It also suggests what we used to call the Big Bang is the result of two flat ‘Branes colliding, crumpling and producing all matter and constants we see around us. There is implied movement and force along with the aspect of the discarded, the frustrated, the left behind, the abandoned idea…. A crumple is the visual residue of a climactic event.
About the Artist
Martha Lewis is a visual artist, curator, educator and radio presenter who has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her practice focuses on drawing, books, knowledge, and the history of science.
Martha’s work has been exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, The Tricycle Gallery and The Oxford University Botanical Gardens in the UK., and in the USA at The DeCordova Museum, Central Booking Gallery, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Planthouse Gallery, RealArtWays and The Tides Institute and Museum, to name a few.
She is included in the collections of Nuffield College, Oxford, The Boston Public Library, Boston, Ma., and Chapman University, Orange, Ca. where her work is on permanent display in the library, as well as in private collections in the U.S.A and Europe. A selection of her works on paper is available at The Flatfile at Pierogi, and at Planthouse Gallery in New York.
In addition to her studio practice, she currently hosts a radio show–Live Culture-now in its third year, on WPKN FM, which features discussions about contemporary art. These are listenable as podcasts here.
Martha is presently resident curator at The Institute Library in New Haven, where she organizes contemporary art exhibitions relating to words, books, archives or collections. She has organized 10 group shows to date.
