Edward Hopper House Art Center Posts May, June Events

From the Edward Hopper House Art Center:

The exhibition, Side by Side: Robert Natkin & Judith Dolnick, presents the work of Robert Natkin (1930-2010) and Judith Dolnick, born in 1934, second-generation abstract expressionists. Their lyrical canvases share similar color palettes, while details and expression remain individual. Natkin’s paintings feature textured planes of seemingly shifting veils of color, while luminous, floating coral-like forms inhabit Dolnick’s paintings.

Both born and raised in Chicago, Natkin and Dolnick painted side by side for nearly 60 years in a shared studio. Together, they opened the Wells Street Gallery in Chicago in 1957, where they exhibited their own work and also gave exposure to artists who later gained notoriety, including Aaron Siskin and John Chamberlain. They closed the gallery in 1959 and relocated to New York City, where they immersed themselves in the vibrant arts culture and where, as Dolnick says, “Everyone knew everyone.” By the late 1960s, the artists had grown disenchanted with the New York art scene and moved to rural Connecticut, where they raised their children and painted together until his death in 2010. Dolnick now lives in New York City, where she continues her creative explorations in painting. The exhibition is curated by Carole Perry and is made possible with support from the Riley Family Foundation. The media sponsor is The New Criterion.

An annual spring benefit will be held Sunday, May 1 from 2:30-5 p.m. at Shadowcliff, Fellowship of Reconciliation, located at 521 North Broadway, in honor of Betty and Win Perry and the Soap and Paper Factory. There will be light fare, entertainment and a silent auction to benefit the Edward Hopper House. Tickets are $75 with a $2 online handling fee and are available through the Edward Hopper House website or by check.

A film screening and artist talk takes place Friday, May 6 at 7 p.m. with "Memory" by Viviane Silvera, with a 17-minute running time. In 2014, artist Viviane Silvera exhibited paintings from her series Film Project: Therapy, which paid homage to Edward Hopper’s work through the literal and unspoken relationships between light, the psychological, the solitary, and the cinematic--dominant themes in Hopper’s work. Silvera returns to the Edward Hopper House on May 6 to present the resultant film, See "Memory," a stop-motion film made out of 15,000 painting stills. The film explores how our memories define who we are, how we remember, and the inextricable link between memory and imagination.

Sculpture in the Garden 2016, with James Tyler and Santi Hitorangi, will be available Friday, June 3 through Sunday, Oct. 23 with a reception on Friday, June 3 from 6-8 p.m. Tyler will be exhibiting his Brickhead Assemblage sculptures. The Brickhead installations are unique colossal heads that invite us to identify with the world’s ceramic heritages. They bring today’s faces together with pre-Columbian, South American, Native American, Asian, African and western influences. For ancient peoples, colossal stone and clay heads, often symbolized their connections with the spirits they worshipped, and these, in turn, often represented the elements, such as rain and sun or other larger-than-life phenomena, such as death and love. For the Brickhead Assemblages, elements of Tyler’s larger Colossus and Brickhead series are combined with the found object assembly techniques more often associated with the works of folk or ‘outsider’ artists.

Hitorangi will be showing some of his carved stone sculptures. As a member of the Hitorangi Atan clan from his native Rapa Nui (Easter Island), he learned the traditional art of sculpting. His clan was known to be the carvers of thousands of Moai (colossal rock statues) that were made from volcanic rock, which can still be found on the island. In 1998, Hitorangi appeared in the NOVA series, “The Lost Empires,” for which he sculpted a full-scale replica of a Moai. In Rapa Nui’s struggle to gain self-determination, he represents their community in various international forums, including the United Nations and Rio+20.

A screening of "Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict" will be held Wednesday, June 8 at 8 p.m. at Nyack Center, located at 58 Depew Ave. Directed by lisa Immordino Vreeland, the film tells the story of how heiress Peggy Guggenheim’s life was intertwined with art. During her travels, Guggenheim fell in with the Dadaists in Paris in the 1920s and is credited with introducing Britain to Modern Art. Back in New York, she gave first shows in her gallery to every major abstract expressionist. A shrewd collector, she moved to Venice where she bought a palazzo and created a museum of her works. The film is a sleek portrait of the ultimate arts patron.

Artists of the month will be on display in the gift shop. The featured May artist is Lynn Stein, with a reception on Thursday, May 6 from 6-7 p.m., and Louis Ebarb for June, with a reception on Friday, June 3 from 6-7 p.m.

Edward Hopper's early work and memorabilia is an ongoing exhibition in the Sanborn Gallery. Early drawings, paintings and etchings, together with memorabilia, including model boats made by Hopper, paint boxes, a palette and easel, are presented on an ongoing basis.