And How They Got That Way at Real Art Ways

A Collection of Vernacular and Found Photography from Michael Shortell

Michael Shortell has been integral to the Hartford art scene for decades. From his framing shop to his gallery to his personal collections, he has demonstrated his keen taste and committed support of artists. We celebrate his contributions with an exhibition curated from his personal collection of casual and found photography. The exhibit will reflect the progression from rigidly posed tintype portraits to everyday snapshots taken with simple, inexpensive cameras.

Photos will be grouped in deliberate ways – similar poses, subjects or angles – such as one series showing two sisters in repeated identical poses over time as they grow up. Other groups include couples in prom attire and people showing off newly-bought clothing with strikingly similar poses and expressions.

At the end of the exhibit, viewers will be invited to print out and add their own selfies to the wall, contributing to the ongoing history of the snapshot.

Many artists get their most creative ideas while preoccupied with another task – a long drive being one of the best. The three artists in Distracted Driving make work that is idea based; work that is not always what it first appears. Whether contemplation on language, self-representation or morality, each piece takes you on a ride of discovery.

Joe Bun Keo – (Hartford, Connecticut)
Cecil Gresham, Sr. – (Bloomfield, Connecticut)
Scott Penkava – (Brooklyn, New York)

Curator: David Borawski

About the Artists

Joe Bun Keo lives and works in Hartford, Connecticut. His sculptural, installation and conceptual works utilize semantics to bring forth issues of cultural identity and the evolution of language. He has participated in or assisted with projects in Germany, the United Kingdom and France, and has exhibited all over the United States. He was selected for SLIDE SLAM at Real Art Ways in 2010. Keo received his BFA from the Hartford Art School. He was selected as a candidate for The Mountain School of Arts (2012; Los Angeles, CA), nominated for the Wellesley College Alice C. Cole ’42 Fellowship (2013-2014; Wellesley, MA) and is currently pursuing his MFA. “The kitschy aesthetic of mass-produced novelties and the everyday utility of household items serve as vessels to deliver visual punchlines that touch base on cultural identity, and the complexities of linguistics.”

Cecil Gresham, Sr. currently lives and works in Bloomfield, Connecticut. His abstract work has been described as both “unconventional” and “bold.” His unique style combines digital print work with various techniques and materials in experimental ways. Inspired by such artists as Basquiat, Arbus, Bacon and Driskell, Gresham delves into the marginal aspects of his subject material to enter another conceptual realm. There the viewer is invited to confront all the layers of meaning that underscore the most ordinary of surface representations. “I like to think that my creativity is one big gift box, full of surprises and disappointments. I love those challenges in the creative process. In the end, I blow out the candles with the hope others will find meaning and depth of enjoyment from my work.”

Scott Penkava was born in rural Minnesota at the tail end of the Carter Administration, and headed up to urban Minnesota a few years after Kurt Cobain died. He finished undergrad in Minnesota and moved to Brooklyn before everyone had smart phones and got his Master’s from Hunter as Facebook was becoming a pretty big deal. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He is likely to be found watching “Ironman” and welding on something functionless, or building something highly functional against a backdrop of philosophy podcasts.

Solo exhibition of the fabric-text constructions of Southbury, Connecticut artist Rita Valley. Quilted and sewn “paintings” carry the phrases of a downward spiraling economy, such as “Wage Slave” and “No Future.” The irony is not lost on these declarations juxtaposed upon decorative patterned fabric.

Curator: David Borawski

About the Artist

Rita Valley lives and works in Connecticut. Her works explore issues of inequality, the waging of war and financial disparity, with recent economic trends providing further fodder for her studio investigations.

She studied at Bard College and graduated from Bennington College with a degree in Studio Art and a minor in Literature. She has shown throughout New England and in New York City.

She has received two State of Connecticut Individual Artist Grants and recently was commissioned by a collaboration between Yale University Art Gallery and Artspace (New Haven) to create an original artist’s book, Better Guns and Gardens. Her work has recently been shown at Odetta Gallery in Brooklyn.

“Abstract is not a style. I simply want to make a surface work.”
– Joan Mitchell

Surface Work brings together five contemporary women artists working in the tradition of abstraction, each of whom are moving it forward in new directions exploring line, texture and color within as well as on the surface.

Deborah Dancy – (Storrs, Connecticut)
Janet Lage – (Old Lyme, Connecticut)
Alyse Rosner – (Westport, Connecticut)
Rosa Valado – (Brooklyn, New York)
Amy Vensel – (Newtown, Connecticut)

Curator: David Borawski

Featured Image: Janet Lage – TRASHED, Stubborn Love (detail)

Vestiges from a Dream Pool

Heidi Lau creates sculptures and paper works exploring Chinese folk archetypes, unexplainable superstitions, and inherited memories.

For her exhibition at Real Art Ways, Lau presents a selected body of highly textured and glazed ceramic sculptures, some monumental and some miniature. All are embedded with elements from nature and folklore, carrying the memories of many forces.

The “Dream Pool” pays homage to Shen Kuo, who wrote Dream Pool Essays in 1088 AD which explained supernatural events, and the inability of empirical science to explain everything in the world.

– Vestiges from a Dream Pool has been covered by the Huffington Post at this link:

About the Artist

Heidi Lau grew up in Macao, currently lives in New York and works in Brooklyn. Her ceramics and works on paper have been exhibited nationally and internationally in venues such as the Macao Museum of Art, Wave Hill, Boston Center for the Arts, Tiger Strike Asteroid New York, Kniznick Gallery at Brandeis University and Aljira Center for Contemporary Art.

Her practice has been generously supported by numerous residencies and awards: Bronx Museum Artist In the Market Place Program, Emerging Artist Fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park, Center for Book Arts Workspace Residency, Martin Wong Foundation Scholarship, among others. She is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant in 2015.

Desperate Cargo

Artist and architect Mohamad Hafez creates sculptures representing Middle Eastern streetscapes and buildings besieged by civil war, deliberately contrasted with verses from the Holy Quran.

His work reflects the political turmoil in the Middle East through the compilation of found objects, paint, and scrap metal in miniaturized installations that are architectural in their appearance, yet politically charged in their content.

About the Artist

A Syrian artist and architect, Mohamad Hafez was born in Damascus, raised in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, educated in the Midwestern United States, and now lives in New Haven. Expressing the juxtaposition of East and West within him, Hafez’s art reflects the political turmoil in the Middle East through the compilation of found objects, paint and scrap metal.

Using his architectural skills, Hafez creates surrealistic Middle Eastern streetscapes that are architectural in their appearance yet politically charged in their content. Hafez’s recent work depicts cities besieged by civil war to capture the magnitude of the devastation and to expose the fragility of human life. Hafez’s work reflects his deep interest in the cross-disciplinary exploration of street art and the realistic, yet ironic sculptural work.

Closing Event with Artist talk and discussion, Sunday, April 24, 3 PM.

Keleti Station

Artist Alina Gallo spent over a week painting a life-sized egg tempera mural directly onto the walls of the entire Real Room. The work re-creates Keleti Station, a train station in Budapest, Hungary where thousands of refugees (many from Syria and Afghanistan) were stranded on their way to Germany, Sweden, and other European destinations during the summer and fall of 2015.

Using imagery sourced from traditional and social media, anti- and pro-migrant graffiti, and disparate first-hand accounts, Gallo has created a composite graphic rendering of Keleti Station.

The Hartford Courant published a video about the work at this link:
http://www.courant.com/entertainment/museums-galleries/hc-keleti-station-mural-20160311-premiumvideo.html

Gallo creates large-scale murals using tempera, an ancient technique for creating fast-drying, long-lasting paintings from pigment mixed with a binding medium (usually egg yolks). Examples of tempera painting still in existence date back to the 1st century AD, and it was the primary method of painting until the invention of oil paints in the early 1500s.

Click below to view an exhibit booklet with more background on the mural and detailed descriptions of each section’s imagery.
http://issuu.com/alinagallo/docs/keleti_station_booklet_for_web?e=2470384/34362871

About the Artist

Alina Gallo, originally from Long Island, New York, is based in Rome, Italy. Her large site-specific installations and contemporary miniature paintings have chronicled the representation of events in the Middle East and North Africa since the onset of the Arab Spring.

Alina’s work samples and combines imagery and information from a multitude of raw footage, photographs, and documentary snippets, as well as network media sources, reflecting both a fragmented understanding of these accounts and the conscious and unconscious attempts to recompose a potential reality.

Image courtesy of Mike Angelis

Multiple Impressions

Curated by John O’Donnell

Multiple Impressions is an exhibition of 23 artists who make prints using a variety of printmaking processes, ranging from traditional (intaglio, relief, lithography, and screen printing) to experimental (textile, sculpture, and installation). Their works address a variety of topics concerning design, representation, and abstraction. Some artists in this exhibition are painters who make prints, while others are designers who use printmaking to execute ideas.

The following artists are participating: