By Kate Hill
Staff Writer
The “Big Color, Earth & Sky” exhibition, featuring mixed-media works by three New York artists, will be on display at Cazenovia College through Oct. 28.
The exhibition opened with an artist lecture and reception on Sept. 5 at the Art Gallery in Reisman Hall at 6 Sullivan St.
The show features the work of Wendy Harris, Alison Weld and Jeremy Randall — visual artists who use vibrant color to express natural phenomena and human-made structures.
“Focusing in on cloudscapes, shadows and sunlight that dance on the earth’s surface below a tree, or vernacular architecture from the last century, the artists in this exhibition bring together intense chromatic compositions that beg for our perceptual alertness via concept and form,” said Professor of Art and Art Gallery Director Jen Pepper in a press release.
Wendy Harris
Harris’ selected works feature her favorite subject — clouds.
“I live for clouds; I am enthralled by clouds; they are sustenance to me,” Harris said.
Her artwork shows clouds from multiple points of view, including from down below and from outer space.
Harris believes that painting is as much about surface and materials as it is about subject matter.
The Syracuse-based artist works primarily in soft pastels, but she also experiments in oil, acrylics, and interference acrylics — whose colors change when perceived in different lighting and at different angles.
Lately, the artist has been particularly captivated by interference acrylics, which she believes pose an exciting set of unique challenges.
“If you paint interference paints on a black surface, they are the colors they say on the tube,” she said. “If you paint on a white surface, [you get] its complement, because there is no pigment in the tube. It’s all about reflection and refraction”
Although the current exhibition only includes one painting done in interference acrylics, Harris plans to create many more.
According to the artist, her goal in painting is to awaken viewers to the common beauty that surrounds us everyday.
“I’ve worshiped at the church of the great outdoors since I was five,” Harris said.
The artist prefers to paint “en plein air” (on-site in the outdoors). However, due to the ephemeral nature of clouds, Harris created almost all of the pieces in the exhibition in her studio.
Her work has been shown in 57 group exhibitions and 18 solo exhibitions across the U.S.
Harris plans to show more of work at the Stone Quarry Hill Art Park in October.
Alison Weld
Weld has been painting abstractly for 46 years and working in oils for 34 years.
She now lives in the Adirondacks and works out of a studio in a hay field.
Through her paintings, Weld believes she is able to capture both the light of the hay field and the light of the mind.
“A painting’s surface is a film of consciousness,” she said. “Yes, my abstraction is visual philosophy. Yes, my abstractions are my thoughts made physical. Yes, I find color to be profound. I find color to be big. I find the earth and the sky to be [inspirational]. I find both figurative and abstract works to be abstract . . . I see the natural world in my abstractions.”
Weld views all of her paintings as self-portraits.
According to the artist, her column paintings — which are made up of three stacked 18 x 12 inch canvases — are a metaphor for a person standing and reacting to the world around them.
Weld builds each column, or “person,” only after she has completed the painting process.
“I’ll work on say 50 [canvases] and then I’ll assemble them when I’ve used up all my canvases,” she said. “Assembling them is a different [artistic] process.”
Weld received her master of fine arts in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Her work has been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions throughout the US.
Weld’s paintings are also found in 16 public collections around the country, including the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University and the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse.
Jeremy Randall
Randall — who was out of the country at the time of the opening — has been working in clay and creating hand-built earthenware pottery for over 20 years.
He received a bachelor of fine arts from Syracuse University and a master of fine arts degree in ceramics from the University of Florida.
He currently lives in Tully, New York, where he owns and operates his studio/teaching business, Rusty Wheel Pottery.
Randall’s work can be found in over 20 galleries across the U.S.
His artwork is included in a number of public and private collections nationally and has been published in national and international periodicals, texts and publications.
Randall has taught at studios, colleges and institutions across the US. In 2017, he began an apprenticeship program in his own studio.
According to Randall’s artist statement, the works featured in the exhibition evoke familiarity, memory and nostalgia.
“My reference to rural American architecture and antique rural implements places the viewer in a familiar setting which is layered with time, function and history while color creates celebration in these iconic objects,” he wrote.
The Art Gallery in Reisman Hall is open to the public Monday through Thursday from 1 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m.; Friday from 1 to 4 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 6 p.m.
All exhibitions and receptions at the Cazenovia College Art Gallery are free, open to the public, and handicapped accessible.
For more information on the artists, the exhibition and the gallery, visit cazenovia.edu.
