Join us as Carrie Wright presents works by Rebecca Weinman & Joan M Rooks for view and sale.

ON VIEW | Friday, September 2 through Sunday, October 30
OPENING RECEPTION | Friday, September 2 from 5pm-7pm in the expanded space at Dottie's Coffee Lounge, curated by Carrie Wright, whose goal it is to make exceptional art available to our community and its collectors.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Rebecca Weinman:
I create for my own gratification – for the tactile pleasures of production; for the opportunity to attempt to capture something of what is to be human; for the ability to ‘converse’ with other artists and movements through appropriation, and, in the end, for the enjoyment of each final work as an independent entity.

At its best, making a work for me is a visceral, non-verbal, non-linear experience that allows me to connect with something elevating or altering -- something simultaneously external and internal, universal, and hopefully illuminating.

Greatly influenced by19th Century French painters ranging from Corot and Courbet to Vuillard and Bonnard, as well as contemporary painters such as Cecily Brown, Lucian Freud, and Paula Rego, Weinman’s figurative works in oil, watercolor, and acrylic are both elusive and engaging. Since graduating cum laude with her BFA from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and studying at the Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art in the Northwest of France, Weinman has traveled extensively throughout the US and Western Europe. When not traveling, Rebecca maintains a work space in Stockbridge, MA.

Joan M Rooks: I am originally from Syracuse, N.Y. where I was fortunate to have studied drawing and ceramics with the artist Nicholas Todisco. His teachings are the foundation of my approach to creating works of art. Nick was fond of saying: “If you don’t know the rules, you don’t know what you’re breaking”.

My ceramic pieces are hand-built using slabs or coils, or thrown on a wheel. I often get my inspiration from forms in nature such as gourds or reinterpreting everyday objects such as a milk can. The diversity of the materials I use, which is whatever catches my eye, and an ever-changing format challenges the process and adds originality and often humor to my work. For functional pieces such as dinnerware and serving bowls I prefer to use porcelain clay with bright colored underglazes fired in an electric kiln. Other pieces which are purely visual sculptural statements employ stoneware clay, fired in a soda-fire kiln or a smoke-fire pit.

I like to develop pieces with media that re-imagine the more “standard” materials intended for a piece, such as using hand-made paper in the role of fabric and reinterpreting a family quilt in ceramic. I enjoy challenging the viewer with incongruence, and even irreverence. It’s all about diversity - in materials, form, and since 2011, I have enjoyed working amongst a community of artists at IS183 Art School of the Berkshires.

First Fridays Artswalk #intheBerkshires
CONTACT: Carrie Wright, wishitweresunday@gmail.com