August 3 - August 30, 2023
NOWHERE, NOW HERE: Darla Bjork, Mary Reiser Heintjes, and Robert Petrick
Friends+Family,Too: Beth Barry, Lois Bender, Karin Bruckner, Amy Cheng, Susan Lisbin, Carol Massa, Judy Mauer, Pat Miller, Kate Missett, Vera Sapozhnikova, Stewart Siskind, and Marlena Vaccaro
So Blue So Happy So Cool: Stephen Cimini
Opening Reception: Thursday, August 3, 2023, 6 - 8pm
Carter Burden Gallery presents three exhibitions: NOWHERE, NOW HERE in the East gallery featuring the works of Darla Bjork, Mary Reiser Heintjes, and Robert Petrick; Friends+Family,Too featuring twelve artists working in a wide range of media in the West Gallery; and On the Wall featuring the installation So Blue So Happy So Cool by Stephen Cimini. The exhibitions run from August 3 - August 30, 2023, at 548 West 28th Street in New York City. The reception will be on Thursday, August 3 from 6 - 8p.m. The gallery hours are Tuesday - Friday, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Darla Bjork
Darla Bjork's artistic journey spans over forty years, transitioning from a former doctor to an accomplished painter. Her works have evolved from depicting primitive abstract faces and human forms with darker tones, influenced by her psychiatric background, to brighter abstract landscapes and layered encaustics that invite observers to explore shifting perspectives. During the Covid shutdown, she paid tribute to those impacted by the crisis with her poignant "Covid Windows" series, a selection of which are included in NOWHERE, NOW HERE. Adapting her style after spinal surgery, she embraced gouache on paper, producing intense colors akin to her beloved oil sticks, and rediscovered the joy of brushwork. Bjork elaborates about this most recent series, “The layers and depth still reflect insights culled from my years working in psychiatry as the paintings often exemplify the hidden layers of living a human life.”
Darla Bjork earned a degree from the University of Minnesota Medical School, finished her Residency in Psychiatry at Kings County Hospital in Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, as well as attended the Brooklyn Museum School and the New York Feminist Art Institute. Her work has been written about and reviewed in publications including The Village Voice, The Woodstock Times, Women’s Artist’s News, and more. Her works has been included in exhibitions at A.I.R. Gallery, Ceres Gallery, SOHO20 Gallery, The James Art Center, among many more, with solo exhibitions most recently at Kaaterskill Fine Art Gallery and SOHO20 Gallery. Bjork also co-authored an essay published in Entering the Picture: Judy Chicago, The Fresno Feminist Art Program, and the Collective Visions of Women Artists, ed. Jill Fields, Routledge (2011).
Mary Rieser Heintjes
In NOWHERE, NOW HERE, Mary Rieser Heintjes presents abstract, dynamic sculptures that utilize the technique of oxyacetylene welding with steel which is then kiln fused with glass. Her love of glass, color, effects of light, and drawing in space are very strong elements in the work as well incorporating observation of nature. The pieces eloquently combine two disparate elements, the luminosity, liquidity, and fragility of glass with the solidity and strength of steel. The pieces in this series are named after elements on the periodic table. Rieser Heintjes explains, “While welding, my mind wonders about the mysteries of science and basic elements of life… Life brings an ongoing search for strength, ideas, creating through fatigue and injury and wondrous moments of discovery. [I] try to never stop exploring art, science, and music through it all, especially in the medium of glasswork, welding, painting, flute and bass clarinet.”
Mary Rieser Heintjes, b. 1953, Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, arrived in Brooklyn, NY in 1975 to attend Pratt Institute to study the Fine Arts where she earned a BFA in 1979 and an MFA 1985. Rieser Heintjes is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans from music, painting, drawing, digital photography, and sculpture, where she works with welding steel structures fused with glass. Rieser Heintjes’ work has been shown in the Brooklyn Museum, Urban Glass Gallery, Brooklyn Public Library Central Gallery, Pratt Institute, AMAG Gallery, and Belskie Museum of Art & Science in Closter, New Jersey. Her work is included in many private collections across the United States and internationally. The Pratt Institute Center for Career Development featured her work in the Decoding Digital exhibition and included her as a panelist for an event. On an annual basis, her art tours in the Sketchbook Project via Art House Library Gallery traveling in exhibitions throughout the United States. Her work has been featured in the Art Section of Observer Magazine, Art News Magazine, BRIC Arts Media, New York Art Review, the Brooklyn Eagle, and Prattfolio. She has received the Robert Rauschenberg Change Inc Grant, Rotary Club Travel Grant, among many other accolades.
Robert Petrick
Robert Petrick presents recent abstract paintings from his series Chromatic Collisions in NOWHERE, NOW HERE. This new series of nonobjective painting shifts the viewers focus to line, which becomes the subject of contemplation. Thick lines come together, merge, separate, overlap, and explode off the surface with vibrant color and satisfying compositions. A subdued negative space interacts with the lively linework to create a depth of space within the canvas.
Robert W. Petrick is an American artist born in 1945 and is mostly self-taught. In 1983, he moved to New York and has focused primarily on developing a painting vernacular strongly rooted in the New York School of Conceptual Abstraction and avant-garde music. Solo show highlights include exhibitions at Red Bar and Tompkins Square Park Library. Group show highlights include exhibitions at Nolo Contendere, the Emerging Collector, the One Stop Gallery, the Nico Smith Gallery, with the artist collective Colab’s, the 2006 DUMBO Annual Exhibit in Brooklyn, “Eye Tricks” an exhibit of optical illusions at the Walsh Gallery at Seton Hall University in 2007, in New Jersey, and Gallery 307. Other accomplishments include teaching lettering graphic design at Parsons School of Design.
Friends+Family,Too
Friends+Family,Too features the self-curated work of twelve artists including Beth Barry, Lois Bender, Karin Bruckner, Amy Cheng, Susan Lisbin, Carol Massa, Judy Mauer, Pat Miller, Kate Missett, Vera Sapozhnikova, Stewart Siskind, & Marlena Vaccaro. These artists have come together to create this exhibition in support of the Carter Burden Gallery’s mission. Represented is an array of mediums including painting, sculpture, collage, photography, mixed media, and works on paper.
Amy Cheng presents drawings that utilize gouache and oil marker on paper that share an interest in spatial illusion, intricacy, geometry, crosshatching and implied movement. Cheng states, “These drawings are playful and imaginative visual speculations on the mysteries of the multiverse”.
In his first exhibition with Carter Burden Gallery, Stewart Siskind presents works from a new series “Photo Collages”. Inspired by the stillness of the once bustling streets of his New York neighborhood during the pandemic, Siskind’s work depicts selectively cropped and collaged photographs of tattered and neglected advertisements.
Stephen Cimini
Stephen Cimini presents the installation On the Wall: So Blue So Happy So Cool, a four paneled eighty-eight-inch-wide painting in vibrant blue hues, which runs from April 27 to August 30, 2023. Building on architectural influences, which have been the basis for his inspiration since the mid-90s, Cimini’s work has evolved by creating a balanced combination of geometric shapes. With no discernible pattern, the work allows for a pleasing, meditative composition to emerge. He elaborates, “I refer to this process as random symmetry as I often don’t know where I am going until I get there. My impulsive color choices are fueled by intuition and experience. In this case, after a long battle the blues won.”
Originally from the small town of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, Cimini first studied fine art at the San Francisco Art Institute and eventually moved back east to study at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He wrestled with various art forms from wood constructed sculpture to conceptual environments before landing on abstract painting, something he loved from an early age. In 1994, he began developing the vocabulary for his current work, which originates from the linear landscape of Manhattan. It has since mutated to geometric spaces and their relationships to each other while still adhering to its architectural origins. His fascination with the mystery of color is also a vital aspect of his work.
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