Textures and Elements — A Group Show at City Gallery

[Jen Payne]

Featuring Joy Bush, Jennifer Davies, Esthea Kim, Tom Peterson

 

In July, City Gallery hosts the group exhibit TEXTURES AND ELEMENTS featuring work by Joy Bush, Jennifer Davies, Esthea Kim, and Tom Peterson. The multi-disciplinary show runs July 7 - July 30, with an opening reception on Saturday, July 8, 2:00 - 5:00 p.m.

 

Combining work in photography, fiber art, sculpture, and painting, the artists together create an observant meditation on the details in our surroundings — the abstractions, the patterns, the colors, the illusions.

 

Bush’s photographs of “Shadows and Runes” are the accidental and spontaneous abstractions which perplex and fascinate her. “Inevitably, something that might easily have gone unnoticed shows itself, becomes important, and rearranges the familiar,” she says. “These small wonders become an ideogrammatic language unto themselves.”

 

For fiber artist Davies, the physical world of rich textures and patterns is the source of her artmaking: the rhythm of tree bark, the flower shapes of lichen, or the lacy edges of a wave seeping into sand. “In recent years,” she says, “my awareness of these beauties has been sharpened by the environmental peril that surrounds us. I feel a more urgent need to highlight them.”

 

For Kim, the textures in her paintings “are, objectively, the particles, the fibers, the strands and the organic forms: also a twinkle of the movement, the air, and the wind,” and “the elements then take my gaze away toward the infinite reveries and the unseen.” The result is a stunning presentation of illusions, lively compositions, interpretations, and abstracts.

 

Peterson’s photographs for this exhibit were taken while walking in industrial neighborhoods that had been in a state of urban decay. As he explains “I've imaged myself discovering small pieces of abstract art, while focusing on vibrant color with an emphasis on texture.”

 

TEXTURES AND ELEMENTS is free and open to the public, and will be on view July 7 - July 30. Artists will also be in the gallery July 16 (Bush), 22 (Davies), 28 (Kim), and 30 (Peterson). City Gallery is located at 994 State Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Gallery hours are Friday - Sunday, 12pm - 4 pm, or by appointment. For further information please contact City Gallery, [e-mail], www.city-gallery.org.

 

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

 

Joy Bush is a fine art photographer based in Hamden, CT. Her work was recently featured in Unbeatable Women at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, CT (2022), and HOME VIEWS at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts. (2021). Her photographs have appeared in Fraction Magazine (2023), The Village Voice, The New York Times, Connecticut Review, and many other publications. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibits nationally and internationally galleries including the International Center for Photography (NYC), Mattatuck Museum, Lyman Allyn Art Museum, Copley Society (Boston, MA), Drawing Rooms (NJ), Garrison Art Center (NY), Umbrella Arts (NYC), the Westport Arts Center, and Artspace (New Haven, CT). Bush is represented in the permanent collections of the Cincinnati Art Museum, Monetfiore Hospital (Bronx, NY), the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Yale Medical Group Art Place, and private collections.

 

Jennifer Davies graduated from RISD and the Rome Honors Program. Trained as a painter, she has pivoted to fiber, making paper by hand. Group shows include the Fuller Craft Museum, Flinn Gallery, and Fiberart International. Solo shows were at City Gallery, and Museum of Papermaking. She is a member of North American Hand Papermakers and Surface Design Association. In 2012 she was awarded a Connecticut Artist Fellowship Grant. Her work appears in several Fiber Arts books, such as L’art du fil by Marie Madeleine Masse, and Wall Art, a Schiffer publication. In recent years, she has completed commissions for hotels, cruise ships, and residences.

 

Esthea Kim is an interdisciplinary artist integrating sculpture, installation and painting. Her works represent a captured notion from memories and express the sensed and theorized through fading and poetic imagery in a visually succinct way. Transposed from her perception, her painting transfers atmospheric vastness into repeated gestural brushstrokes and built up textures. While fleetingly capturing light in-between layers, these brushstrokes combine with hard-edged elements, condensing infinite views and the unseen into a single flattened composition. Esthea’s sculptural objects and installations are industrial yet organic. Focusing on the inherent qualities of materials, she expands the use of prefabricated and utilitarian items into more organic forms.

 

Tom Peterson is a documentary and fine arts photographer from Hamden, Connecticut. He has committed himself to developing photographic portfolios of various urban themes.