The Weekly Curation: WFH Escapism

Last week we talked about embracing our home nests and the objects we’ve carefully selected inside them, about finding new joys in the old and forgotten. But sometimes, that just isn’t going to work. Sometimes an old toilet brush is just an old toilet brush. And it doesn’t spark joy. Sometimes, you just need to get away. And we respect that.

From time to time, we need to leave the present behind and escape from reality. Whether it's during quarantine or a bad day at the office, we all deserve a trip inside our imagination (when a real trip isn’t available). Now, that’s especially true and especially difficult. Luckily, we have art to transport us to different worlds, magical environments, new cosmic dimensions. This week we embrace Twyla Tharp’s brilliance when she said, "Art is the only way to run away without leaving home."

This week, artist and curator Mel Reese has brought together a collection of Art in Res pieces to help us escape. Give your poor eyes a break from screens and give your brain the mental vacation it deserves. Get lost in the beautiful visual environments of these paintings. Let your mind wander, as your body cannot. Climb through the sculptural work of Fred Bendheim. Melt into Jared Nathan Crane’s soothing abstractions.

Since we are always home, it’s a good time to spruce up that environment. Envision a new piece of art in your little universe, a new daily escape. New pieces are a welcome distraction to the same old rooms, same old walls, of your house right now. Scroll through the post to see Mel’s placement of each piece, as well as how the selected works come together in a thoughtful, coalescent collection. Make sure to also catch Mel’s tips on curating your own collection now!

Now, buckle up and let’s browse!

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Your'e My Best Friend

by Vicky Healy

42 x 42" •  Acrylic on wood

The work of artist Vicky Healy is a TRIP. Need to leave your home? Why not leave our universe all together? The bright colors and large scale of this piece invite us to delve into Vicky’s own galaxy, lost in the unknown, tripping down that rabbit hole. We explore an out-of-this-world environment in Vicky’s whimsical collection. We travel along the tongue-like paths into psychedelic, colorful rays to new extra-terrestrial realms. Safe travels because you’re about to go on the journey of a lifetime, right from your home sofa.

Vicky Healy is a fine artist living in Brooklyn NY. She has a B.F.A in Sculpture from the University of Hartford Art School and a Masters in Fine Arts from the School Of Visual Arts. She is a multimedia artist whose work can be anything from interpretive dance to stop motion animation. Healy's work stems from a universe created by her conscious and subconscious mind while trying to process the world she lives in. Sci-fi landscapes have become homes for her vast web of interconnected characters that revolve throughout her work. She also has an alter ego named Meltycats who is a giant pink cat. Meltycats also has an alter ego named Buzz Lightqweer.

Croak

by Jared Nathan Crane

12 x 18" •  mixed media on panel

Like green grass in the first frost of the year, white pigment peppers Jared Nathan Crane’s beautiful piece. Leave the sci-fi world behind and find yourself in the space of soothing abstraction. The textured surfaces of Jared’s paintings inspire a sense of viewing the world, a new terrain, from above –– an aerial view, like the Earth from an airplane window. We melt into the deep phthalo greens and blues with textural whites, evoking the idea of evergreen trees and glaciers of the north. This small painting has a powerful sense of strength, along with its zen calm, that inspires awe. It serves as a window to the vastness of nature, somehow. The composition is pleasant, the even duality inspiring a balance between thought and mind. We can embrace the refreshing “ahhh” we feel when taking it in, breathing deeper as we slide into a bubble bath.

Jared Nathan Crane (b. 1987) is a visual artist based in Richmond, Virginia. He received a BFA in Painting & Printmaking with a minor in Art History from VCUarts in 2012, and an MFA from CUNY Hunter College in 2015. He has taught beginning and advanced undergraduate courses in painting and photography and has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions in New York City and Richmond, Virginia. He is currently an instructor in the Art Foundations program at VCUarts.

Balanced Bouquet

by Fred Bendheim

48 x 36" •  oil on shaped wood

Life can’t be all bubble baths and naps (though we are really trying), so it’s time to get energized! We are ready for action! Fred Bendheim’s bold, splashy color-block oil painting is the perfect visual jungle-gym for our now refreshed minds. Again, it’s a trip and boy is it fun. Like a journey to Coney Island, bright beach umbrellas, and lit-up ferris wheels, Fred evokes a frantic sort of joy. Remember playing lava monster as a kid? The floor is lava and you have to jump from object to object strewn across the house so as to not touch the floor. We play this in our minds with this piece, red and yellow almost oozing against the pop of vibrant blue. The rivers of slivered cuts lead us to the pools of blue, punctuated by peaks of yellow, and then engulfed in the fiery sea of orangey-red.

Fred Bendheim was born in Arizona, U.S.A. in 1956. His sculpture commissions include two fountain/sculptures for Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. His painting commissions have been in some of the finest buildings in the world. As well as painting, he has made: drawings, prints, collages, sculpture, and illustrations. As a teen-ager, he apprenticed with artist Philip Curtis. Fred attended the University of California, Davis, and graduated from Pomona College, with a B.A. cum laude. He has lived and worked in Brooklyn, NY since 1984, maintaining a studio in Sunset Park. He is a teaching artist at The Art Student’s League, and other schools in NYC. His past art has taken the form of large room-sized installations, outdoor billboards with children's art, sculptures, and fountains made with many materials, as well as mural-sized drawings.

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As Above, So Below

by LEE MORA

9 x 12" •  Acrylic on wood

Now that we’ve exhausted our mental athletic escapades, from far out space trips to fierce lava monsters, let’s get lost in this pair of mesmerizing paintings. In these, artist Lee Van Mora gives us a portal into another dimension. It’s a hypnotic pattern, an illusion of endless expansion. It seems to pulse before our eyes. The vibrant pattern and colors seem to almost smell of polyester and suddenly we’re time-traveling back to the 1970s. Lee describes each of his pieces as a journey, beginning often before even he knows what they mean. The key to all of Lee’s work is escapism, so buckle up, and let’s go on a ride.

Lee Van Mora is 31 years old and has been crushing it in the art world since 2003. He is a huge anime nerd and cites Legend of Zelda as a major influence in his life, but doesn't appreciate being called a weeb. He watches a LOT of television and films. He loves conspiracies, folktales and stories of all kinds. As an avid researcher of mythology and ancient astronauts, the main body of his work focuses on the Hero's journey and how stories and entertainment are essential to life. Everything is the Hero's journey. Your life, and everyone else's. The familiarity of that cycle keeps us grounded. Can't have the good without the bad. Escapism is the key theme he explores.

A lot of his paintings are made before even he knows what they mean. It's not until he's finished that he tries to understand what is in his subconscious. The portals have always been a symbol of an escape from his life circumstances. Feeling powerless to the adversity he faces with surprising regularity. In retrospect, he realizes that he is constantly conjuring a way out and trying to show you the way.

In The Spring

by Karen Fitzgerald

22 x 25" •  Oil with copper on prepared paper

And, together, we return to the natural realm of Karen Fitzgerald’s stunning celestial pieces. In this tondo composition, common in the Renaissance art period, Karen evokes the feeling of classic works of art, as well as round celestial bodies such as our Earth, moon, and sun. The painting is so bright it seems to glow from within––our own personal star shedding light on our space. The oil paint and copper bounce the light around, a shifting surface of the orb. It’s energizing without being manic, re-energizing without being tiring. We embrace the size and scale of the circular composition, because the sun and the moon are, well, BIG. They always should be. We’re hugged by the piece’s size, enveloped in it as it fills our field of vision. It reminds us that we don’t have to go far to find escape. We can always look up into the sky.

Karen is a visual artist living and working in NYC. She was raised on a dairy farm in the midWest and it is this early and close association with the natural world that threads through her work. She is focused on the energy that suffuses our world, as well as the Universe: her work explores energy in its myriad manifestations. As a commissioned artist, she has worked with a wide range of institutions and participants, on many different projects. Widely exhibited in the United States, including at The Queens Museum of Art, Islip Art Museum, Rahr-West Museum, Madison Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, the University of Arizona – Tucson and the United Nations in NY, she continues to actively exhibit her work.

On curating the collection:

As I’ve said before, I want to walk you through what I’ve considered when bringing this collection together. Whether you’re an experienced collector or totally new to the art world, it’s always fun to thoughtfully discuss what makes a great collection.

This week, focusing on our desire to get away, I purposefully selected a group of pieces connected by their bright, bold colors and whimsical subject matter that take us on thrilling visual journeys. But, of course, there are always more subtle notes connecting the pieces as well. I’m excited to share this week’s perspective and let you in on my process!

Color:

Every piece I’ve selected this week is fun. They have bright, bold palettes, easily standing out against the background of our homes. These Hansa and Cadmium Yellows are intrinsically bright and cheery, emoting lightness in the pieces. Yellow is considered a naturally light hue and is often used to lighten up visually heavy compositions, as you can see in Vicky’s pieces. In Lee’s piece, we read the yellow as the negative space due to the natural lightness of the shade, even though all the colors within the piece are the same flat tonal value. The airiness of yellow allows us space as viewers to breath before getting lost in the dense patterns of the work. Meanwhile, red and pink are naturally “hot” colors that create a bold, bright point of focus for each composition. As we see in Vicky’s piece, we are invited into the warmth and comfort of the enthralling pinks in contrast to the outer space-like cool, dark composition. Lastly, in Fred’s piece we are enveloped in the sea of red, fiery lava that dominates the palette, letting it carry us through twists and turns within the piece.

Composition:

Although each piece here is very different, they are united by a bullseye-like center of composition. Oftentimes building a cohesive collection is based on these details that are almost subconscious to us as a viewer––details that unite seemingly unrelated work. When viewing this collection together, we can imagine ourselves climbing in and out of each piece, snaking our way through visual holes, circles, pits, portals, and doorways into each new realm. We are taken on a rich journey through Karen Fitzgerald’s tondo composition, which speaks to the rounded softened edges of Fred’s sculptural painting. This converses with the white textural, amorphis abstractions of Jared’s soothing tones that we see slides along Vicky’s tongue-like path, straight through a black hole that spits us out in Lee’s vibrant portals. What an adventure we’ve had.

Materials:

All of these pieces, with the exception of Karen’s painting on paper, are painted on wood panels - and, as we know, paper is derived from the same material. This brings an intrinsic weightiness to the pieces––they are very physical objects, heavy, and rigid. It’s ironic to think that such visually uplifting, fantasy-generating, celestial images are crafted on such grounded, earthly materials.

Size and scale:

We’ve purposefully selected quite a few large scale works in this grouping. They’re big, like us, on scale with humans, allowing us to interact directly with each of them. We are enveloped by them all. Meanwhile, the smaller pieces have an almost endless feel in their format. Lee’s dueling portals suck us in, while Jared’s peaceful abstractions evoke the feeling of an aerial snapshot of the world from above, beginning and ending beyond the frame.

Subject matter:

Subject matter is key this week. Each piece, as we’ve said, takes us on a visual journey. Whether it’s literal or abstract, each piece is an escape. All the artworks create their own expansive environments––they seem to be just a window into an immense world beyond. Through looking, we travel to other realms, through the backs of broom closets to fantasy worlds––happily being taken anywhere but where we stand now.

With these new viewing tools in hand, happy collecting!