Providence Art Windows Wins People's Choice Award for Public Art Exposure

Providence Art Windows wins "People's Choice" for best Public Exposure for Artists during the 2008 Boston Art Awards. This first annual celebration was organized by The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research to honor the best art made in New England (excepting Connecticut) in 2008. Put together by artist and critic Greg Cook, PAW was honored to accept, and brought PAW founder Liz Keithline along for the kudos. PAW was in good company with other Rhode Island winners, including 5 Traverse Gallery, Neal Walsh, Scott Lapham, Xander Marro and many more.
A great night, and we will work hard to be brought back again next year.

If you would like to learn more about the night's winners and entertainment, please go to:

http://www.bigredandshiny.com/

Welcome!

Providence Art Windows is pleased to announce that its next exhibit will be on view from December 4, 2008 – March 13, 2009. The art and art installations are by Rhode Island artists Deb Hickey, Saberah Malik, John Riedel, Ann Marie Scartabello, Ida Schmulowitz and Alison Collins (New York), Lynne Harlow (Rhode Island and New York) Sharon St. Hilaire (Massachusetts) and Caroline Woolard (New York). Please join us for the opening reception at Design Within Reach (210 Westminster Street, Providence, RI 02903) on December 6, from 4:00-6:00PM. Come and meet the artists, go on a walking tour with a map and visit beautiful Downtown Providence during the Providence Preservation Society’s Holiday Festival and Downtown Stroll.

Please download the map above to take the walking tour. Printed versions are available in Downtown Providence restaurants, stores and hotels.

1. 191 Westminster Street

Ida Schmulowitz

Park View/Trees and Forsythia
oil on canvas; 6’ x 8’

About the artist and the work
I have painted outside since about 1978. When I moved to Fox Point from the Benefit Street area in 1981, I looked around for a place to paint and was struck by the panoramic view from the pedestrian bridge over Rte 195 leading to India Point Park. Some people looked at the bridge as just a cage, but many appreciated the uniqueness of the spot. Standing over the highway looking east or west at sunrise and sunset was inspiring. The bridge became my outdoor studio for 23 years. Over the years I would change my particular vantage point on the bridge, which would lead to the beginning of a new series concentrating on a particular view. Each painting evolved over a series of time- sometimes put aside and taken out months or years later to be completed. I work with layering of color to create a certain depth in the work. I also work with color to create an overall color light in each piece. Painting from the same spot for so many years gave me a familiarity with the place so that the landscape also became a jumping off point for my experimentation with creating space and using color.

This painting is one of the last paintings of a series I completed looking at a particular group of pine trees and a bank of forsythia. The trees and forsythia were chopped down as part of the construction of the new pedestrian bridge.

2. 191 Westminster Street

John Riedel


Selected Collage-Constructions,1974-1980

In 1974, I first worked in collage, with a series of small pieces as an offshoot of the abstract painting I was doing at the time. In 1975, after a trip to Italy, I began to paint from reality, and also memory, landscapes and cityscapes of Pawtucket.

After a few years I reached an impasse and constructed a collage of the same name to express my sense of frustration with my painting at his time. This came about largely because of interesting things being thrown out by the neighbor next door on garbage night. A few of the objects included in this work were a broken road block sign, a picture of myself painting, and one of my old palettes.

However it wasn't until the winter of 1978 in Providence, that I began to work on a series of collages, to the exclusion of other art work.

The sizes of these pieces ranged from 4 ft x5 ft to 1 1/2 ft square. Toward the end, these collage constructions also grew to be three dimensional, having a depth of 3 to 5 inches. I restricted myself to working only with found objects, whether it was paper, (including old book end papers), cloth, metal, plastic, wood, etc. In the early stages of the work, it was important not to fasten anything down. This could be done later in the process, to keep the work in a state of flux.

From 1982 to the present I have continued to paint from reality; however, the arrangement or composition of the paintings has in many cases, increasingly resembled the later collage-constructions.

This is a result of an increasing feeling that separate objects are only bridges to the things around them. In painting, as in collage, separate objects can become areas of color working to mutually strengthen each other.

3. 203 Westminster Street

Caroline Woolard

Our Goods

This installation is in motion and cannot be experienced from
one vantage point. Look for a peephole, hidden images, a website, and change.

About the Work
Caroline Woolard relocated the research desk of her experimental
barter network, OurGoods, to 203 Westminister Street. She will be
working at the desk, feet feeling sand, at surprise moments throughout the installation. Keep stopping by to see her work in progress. Hanging on her ladder chair is the launch project for OurGoods, a Utility Dress for barter only. Between an apron and a tool belt, this wrap dress was designed by Caroline Woolard over the past year and sewn by a talented male seamstress in NY. If you would like a Utility Dress, go to www.OurGoods.org and make me an offer!*

* Please barter your unique creations and skills. I am interested in
many things: your suffrage movement research, your glass shattering
voice, your serious drawings, your functional ceramics, your weird
glass objects, your (kevlar!?) textiles, your handmade furniture, your
web help, photo/video documentation help, conversational Spanish
tutoring, accounting help, yoga instruction, liability law services, help
growing hydroponic vegetables, vintage patterns, secret recipes, your
apartment in Manhattan to let my (good) guests stay in, or anything
else you value and/or make and think we should exchange. If you
absolutely cannot barter, you can donate $200 and take a dress.
www.OurGoods.org


About the Artist
Born Providence and based in NY, Caroline Woolard received her
BFA from Cooper Union in 2006. As a Research Scholar at NYU and a Research Assistant at Mildred's Lane, Woolard investigates the construction of subjectivity in architecture, art, and design. Woolard's interventions are presented publicly in the urban
environment and have been affiliated with psychogeographic events like Conflux in NY, Cryptic Providence in RI, and Unoccupied Spaces in Montreal. Caroline Woolard is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, the Leon Levy Foundation Grant, and the Elliot Lash Award for Excellence in Sculpture. She has shown her work at the Newport Art Museum in RI, Jackson Gallery in GA, Oxbow Gallery in MI, and The Bruce High Quality Foundation in NY. Next, Woolard will show her newest collaboration with dancer Linda Austin after a residency at Robert Wilson's Watermill Center on March 28 at 2pm.

4. Two Brothers Beauty Supply, at Eddy and Westminster Street

Saberah Malik

Beauty Supply
gilding, oil on wood, and shibori silk

About the Work
As the Narragansett tribal genealogist Ella Sekatau narrated, “stones are the bones of the earth.”

I also see stones as evolutionary witnesses of our changing earth; as historical markers of territorial boundaries, whether in the form of stone walls or natural outcroppings; as silent witnesses of all that has gone on before us, or as it is happening in our lifetime – rocks re-arranged during natural upheavals like the Pakistan earthquake of 2005, China’s more recent Sichuan earthquake, or man-made destruction like what the administration referred to as “re-arranging the rocks” in aerial bombardment in Afghanistan.

Stones, rocks, boulders, and pebbles are my everyday companions as I walk or drive through my Cowesett hills neighborhood or any other part of Rhode Island and New England. Stones are an integral and oft-repeating motif of our landscape, and I witness their changing shapes and colors, which transform in shifting weather and the progression of seasons. I see wet stones glisten as silver and gold, softly contoured under overcast skies, sharply delineated in directional light, or seemingly flat in scorching heat.

The evolutionary and ecological, geographic and socio-economic, historical and personal relevance of flowing water resonates in how a shoreline shifts the apex of its curve, broken boulders morph into amorphous shapes, component minerals sparkle with happy hues. Stones, as they define the New England landscape, equally define those of Pakistan, China, or Afghanistan. Stones, indeed are the bones of the earth: global, common, useful, useless, precious, semi-precious, and water is earth’s rhythmic pulse, patiently serving, patiently shaping with resonating relevance.

About the Artist
Saberah Malik grew up in Pakistan and present day Bangladesh.

She studied art and design at the prestigious Panjab University in the ancient and cultural city of Lahore, graduating with a BFA and MFA in Graphic Design. As the best graduate and Gold Medalist, she was awarded the National Merit scholarship for higher education.She chose to study in New York and graduated from Pratt Institute with a Masters degree in Industrial Design.

Saberah settled in Connecticut after her marriage. In order to dedicate time to raising a family she started painting as a creative alternative to professional design. With her two sons away at college, she has been able to devote full time to painting over the past few years. Saberah has participated in invitational as well as many juried shows in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Pakistan, and her work is in several private collections.

She lives and works in Warwick, Rhode Island, which has been her home now for almost three decades.

5. Two Brothers Beauty Supply, at Eddy and Westminster

Alison Collins

in statu nascendi
steel, dimensions variable

About the Work
The installation in statu nascendi, is comprised of 100 woven steel nests created in response to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The title in Latin translates to “the magic moment of creation” or “in status of birth.” The nests explore conflicting themes of the natural and the decorative while evoking ideas of dwelling, shelter, origins, nurturing, and abandonment.

About the Artist
Alison Collins is a sculptor who lives and works in New York City. Her work explores the cultural constructs of masculinity and femininity through relationships to decorative forms and architecture. Collins creates delicate, yet menacing installations primarily with steel. She earned a BFA in Painting from Tulane University, an MFA in Sculpture from Louisiana State University, and an MA in Art History from Louisiana State University. Collins is a professor of art at City University of New York .

6. Fulton Street, next to Providence City Hall

Lynne Harlow

Tropic
fabric, Plexiglas, tape Site-specific installation

About the Work
How little is enough? How much can be taken away before a piece crumbles? My sculptural installations are lean, elegant arrangements of color, light and space; they are presentations of physical facts. I want to isolate and exaggerate particular aspects of the ways we encounter and negotiate our physical world, and bring some awareness and joy to the process. And I feel that the most effective way for me to achieve this is by presenting installations, these restrained arrangements of facts. With restricted use of very particular materials, sheer and lightweight, the installations suggest the presence of light and the absence of weight.

About the Artist
Lynne Harlow is a reductive artist based in Providence, RI and New York, NY. She makes large-scale site-specific work and small drawings and prints in a language of sensual minimalism. Lynne holds an M.F.A. from Hunter College in New York, and exhibits her work in the U.S. and internationally, including recent shows at P.S. 1 and EFA Project Space, both in New York. In 2002 she was a visiting artist at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX.

7. RI Housing, 44 Washington Street

Deb Hickey

CONNECTING TO PROVIDENCE

Photo sculptures 4'x6', inkjet and photo-transfer prints on foam core, metal rings, wood

About the Work and the Artist
These images are a mix of photographs and paintings made from photographs, taken in Providence from 2006-2008.

Reading much literature on Providence's 'Renaissance' I decided to move from Boston to Providence in 2003. I was as interested in affordable housing, as I was in pursuing a career as an artist. Convinced that there was going to be a renaissance I knew I wanted to be a part of it. I bought a home on the West Side in 2005 and began to create a new style of painting from architectural photographs. It is through the camera that I began to connect with my new city by exploring Providence's landscape and architecture. The geometry of architecture in Providence attracts my eye and the city has plenty to choose from. Many of the images are from the West Side of the city, where I regularly go for walks in search of new images.

More about the Artist

Deb Hickey graduated in 1996 from The Art Institute of Boston with a BFA in Photography. She has shown her work in galleries in Medford, Arlington and Chelsea, MA. She also belongs to the 297 Gallery in Bristol RI and the Congress Street Gallery in Portsmouth NH. Deb's work can also be found in many collections throughout New England. In March 2009, her work will be at AS220 in a show entitled, Ready or Not, Here I Come which focuses on her coming to the Providence 'Renaissance' and on what she found when she got here.

8. URI Library, 80 Washington Street

Sharon St. Hilaire


About the artist and the work
I paint with yarn, creating minimalist works with bold color and texture. Each painting is composed of thousands of crochet stitches. Crocheting allows me to create texture and - my tactile designs are compelling statements of simplicity and complexity at the same time. Each strand is then precisely fixed onto a substrate. I call my technique, “Repeté” with the creation of each single stitch becoming a mantra for the mind and hand. The color field is broken by textured patterns created by the manipulation of that one stitch. So, like the single blade of grass in nature, the single crocheted stitch is insignificant, but in mass makes a powerful statement.

My art represents my quest for control, for quiet and for solemnity. What would seen like minimalism at first glance, is upon close scrutiny actually complexity created by near compulsiveness. The meditation on the single stitch is randomly broken by multiples of the stitch. It is just as when the random thought interrupts the mantra. It is an imperfect process so that some pieces are more the failure of quiet. My goal is to express what lies beneath, to transcend. I try that and fail in most of my life but with my art I am able to appear to be in control.

My original inspiration came from seeing a yarn painting by a Huichol Indian from Mexico. My first works copied their technique of embedding yarn into hot wax to create abstract works. Eventually I moved from wax to glue and from single strands of yarn to crocheted strips. All of the works start as a drawing translated into a crocheting pattern.

9. Trinity Rep, 201 Washington Street

Ann Marie Scartabello


Collage and Mixed-Media Paintings

About the Work
Ann Marie Scartabello’s collage and mixed-media paintings use several layers of acrylic textures along with some floral stampings in a simple design. The textures and images lead the viewer through a unique pictorial world.

About the Artist Ann Marie Scartabello is originally from Providence and moved to South Kingstown 25 years ago. In 2006, she began to pursue art in the form of collage and mixed media. She has received several awards at the Wickford Art Association where she is currently an artist member, as well as on the board of directors. Her work has also been exhibited at Kent County Hospital, North Kingstown Library, South County Hospital, South County Art Association, True Brew Cafe, Edgewood Gallery, Java Madness and she is currently a resident artist at Hope Gallery in Bristol, RI. Ann Marie is also a member of South County Art Association as well as Newport Art Association.

Coming Up-Next Exhibit Opens December 6, 2008

Providence Art Windows is pleased to announce that its next exhibit will be on view from December 4, 2008 – March 13, 2009. The art and art installations are by Rhode Island artists Deb Hickey, Saberah Malik, John Riedel, Ann Marie Scartabello, Ida Schmulowitz and Alison Collins (New York), Lynne Harlow (New York) Sharon St. Hilare (Massachusetts) and Caroline Woolard (New York). Please join us for the opening reception at Design Within Reach (210 Westminster Street, Providence, RI 02903) on December 6, from 4:00-6:00PM. Come and meet the artists, go on a walking tour with a map and visit beautiful Downtown Providence during the Providence Preservation Society’s Holiday Festival and Downtown Stroll.

A downloadable map will be available on this site December 1, and printed version in Downtown Providence restaurants, stores and hotels.

Welcome!

Providence Art Windows is pleased to announce that its latest exhibit will be on view from September 18- November 21, 2008. The art and art installations are by Rhode Island artists Paul Almeida, Emmet Estrada, Alice BenvieGebhart and Brenda Wilkinson, as well as Lisa Marie Barber (Wisconsin), Gary Duehr (Massachusetts), Lisa Kellner (New York), Donna Dodson ( Massachusetts), Adele Mattern (Ohio), Randall Nelson (Connecticut) and Mel Smothers (New York). The art installed in ten windows in Downtown Providence creates a six-block loop that viewers can walk day or night.

Please join us for the opening reception at Design Within Reach(210 Westminster Street, Providence, RI 02903) on September 18, from 5:30-7:30PM. Come and meet the artists, go on a walking tour and visit beautiful Downtown Providence during Gallery Night. A performance of poetry by Charlanne Kalley, in collaboration with Donna Dodson's sculptures, will take place from 6:30-7 PM outside her window.

Click on the image above for a printable map of this exhibition.

1. 191 Westminster Street

EARLY BIRD FARMS; FUTURE IN DOUBT, by Randall R. Nelson

sculpture- mixed media (milk cartons, plastic delivery
cases, Homosote and wood display walls, paper ephemera), 12'x8'x2', 2008.

In the 1970's and early 80's there were several "Missing Children" programs involving milk carton advertising and later, shopping bags. The longest running program was sponsored by Advo Systems of Hartford, CT, which featured information and a picture of the missing child and the heading "Have You Seen Me?" Six years ago Randall started doing Graduate Research on two subjects, Bird Species Depletion and Missing and Exploited Children. He found many disturbing parallels in the stories he was reading while doing the research on these disparate subjects. This piece is an attempt to resolve these issues.

About the Artist
Randall Nelson is originally from Jackson, Mississippi. He attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY from 1970-74 and graduated with a BFA in Sculpture, then served a five year apprenticeship with Toshio Odate, noted sculptor and woodworker from 1974-1978. He has a masters of fine art from Vermont College, Montpeliar, VT and presently lives in Willington, CT. He teaches woodworking and carving at Manchester Community College, Manchester, CT. He has a major retrospective exhibition, "Connecticut Wilderness," coming in March of 2009 at the Homer Babbidge Library at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT.

2. 191 Westminster Street

Three of Hearts, Lisa Barber

Three of Hearts reflects Lisa Marie Barber's creation of small cities or worlds that project positive interpretations of the human condition. Her main artistic influences are Mexican folk art and altars rooted in her Mexican-American heritage, Bay Area Figurative Abstraction, and urban landscape. The work is intended to be both celebratory and sober, using accumulation as a way to imply richness, value, and process.

About the Artist

Lisa was born in Tucson in 1970, received a BS in Sociology (minor in Art) from Northern Arizona University in 1992, and earned her MFA at the University of Texas at Austin in 1998.After living and teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area for five years, Lisa moved to Kenosha, WI in 2003 to begin a professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. She was awarded a 2006-2007 McKnight Artist Residency Award, an internationally competitive award in ceramic art, and her work was featured in American Craft Magazine. Solo exhibitions include Gallery 221 in New York City, the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City, Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, and the University of Arizona in Tucson. Lisa received an Emerging Artist Award from NCECA (The National Council for Education in the Ceramic Arts) and another through The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco. A review of her 2007-2008 show at Gallery 221 will be included in an upcoming issue of American Ceramics Magazine. Please go to Lisa's web site for more information about the artist

3. 203 Westminster Street

Inner Urban Sanctum, by Lisa Kellner
Inner Urban Sanctum is an installation made of silk organza, pigment, mannequin body parts, wood, monofilament and latex paint. This piece examines the experiential qualities of private and public space. Lisa is interested in the emotional sensibilities that occur when flesh and bodily structure are juxtaposed with aspects of a personal sanctuary within the confines of an urban configuration. Inner Urban Sanctum intends to involve the viewer in peeling back the layers of a constructed persona to reveal what lies underneath.

About the Artist
Lisa Kellner resides in New York City and rural Virginia. Her studio is located in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA from The Art Institute of Boston in 2008. Kellner completed her undergraduate studies at Boston University and The School of Visual Arts. Recently, her work was included in several exhibitions including: “Here and Now” at Transformer Gallery (DC), “I Dream of Genomes”, at the Islip Art Museum (NY) and the “Boston Young Contemporaries” exhibition at 808 Gallery (MA). Currently, Kellner is exhibiting a body of work, Untitled; The Emperor Has No Clothes, at the New Art Center’s “Material Meditation” exhibition in Newton, MA until October 26. She will be participating in the A.G.A.S.T. open studios October 18 and 19 in Brooklyn, NY at 94 9th st, #44.

5. Two Brothers Beauty Supply, at Eddy and Westminster

Venice/Providence:YOU ARE HERE, by Gary Duehr

Gary Duehr’s “Venice/Providence:YOU ARE HERE” utilizes satellite imagery of Venice and Providence and merges them to create a a hybrid space. “Where exactly are you?” this image asks of the viewer.


About the Artist
In 2007 Gary Duehr was chosen as a Best Emerging Artist in New England by the International Association of Art Critics. In 2003 Duehr received an Artist Grant in photography from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and his work has been featured in museums and galleries including Gallery Kayafas and Judi Rotenberg Gallery, Boston, MA; Exit Art, Umbrella Arts, and New York Arts, New York, NY; Gallery Tsubaki, Tokyo, Japan; SKC Gallery, Belgrade, Yugoslavia; and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba. Past awards include grants from the LEF Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

His public artworks include a photo installation funded by the Visible Republic program of New England Foundation for the Arts, and a commission from the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority) for a permanent photo installation at North Station.

Duehr is codirector of the Invisible Cities Group, which creates "large-scale urban detours" combining performance, poetry, and installations of visual art. He has written about the arts for journals including ArtScope, Art New England, Art on Paper, Communication Arts, Frieze, and Public Culture. Currently he manages Bromfield Art Gallery in Boston's South End.

4. Two Brothers Beauty Supply, at Eddy and Westminster Street

The People, Emmet Estrada

paint on cardboard on wood

About the Artist

Every day at Top Drawer Art Center, Emmet Estrada paints people who he says are from China, Japan, Mexico, France, or Egypt, all in the remarkably speedy hand-style of a graffiti writer, and with all the "Spirit Resonance" of traditional Chinese painting. In order to supply Emmet with enough material to work at his natural rate of speed, the sizes of each paint surface with which Top Drawer would supply him naturally became smaller and smaller, and the subject matter of each more and more singular. Today, Emmet paints on average 70 3" x 4" paintings per day, 200 per week. His most recent installation is at his exhibition "My Show" at Top Drawer Art Center, 2731 Pawtucket Ave., East Providence, and will show through October 3rd.

6. Fulton Street, across from Providence City Hall

Bereaving Points South, by Adele Mattern

…and soon the birds and ancients

will be starting to arrive, bereaving points

south.

--from The Racer’s Widow (Louise Gluck)


Bereaving Points South gives form to the act of making, and of transformation. A movement of birds, a talisman against forgetting, an acknowledgment of loss. Discarded elements of other lives are reconfigured and given new meaning through a single repeated gesture.

About the Artist

Adele Mattern recently received her M.F.A. in sculpture from The Ohio State University. Prior to returning to school, Adele was a clothing and textile designer and her work often engages textile materials and techniques. Recent shows include Lest I Be Quite Forgotten at ROY, in Columbus, Ohio and Vacant Place installed as part of the inaugural group show at Urban Arts Space, also in Columbus. Locally, her work was part of Lush at Grimshaw-Gudewiccz Gallery in New Bedford, MA. Adele has performed Soup Tureen, An Interview at The Pulitzer Foundation in St. Louis, MO. Earlier this summer Adele designed costumes for an independent feature film Kitchen Hamlet.

7. RI Housing, 44 Washington Street

City Living

Medium: Acrylic paint

City Living features the work of 2 city residents: Paul Almeida of Providence and Brenda Wilkinson of Pawtucket. Both artists work at Flying Shuttles Studio. Each piece reflects their personal responses to the theme of “neighborhood”, incorporating observations of their respective city surroundings.

A program founded in 1984 by the Arc of Blackstone Valley, Flying Shuttles is a non-profit studio in Pawtucket, Rhode Island that provides artistic and technical training for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The artists specialize in creating handwoven goods and original artwork. The work of Flying Shuttles artists has been shown at the Atrium, Paper Girls Gallery, Narraganset Art Festival, the Fine Furnishings Show, Hera Gallery, The Pawtucket Arts Collaborative, Courthouse Center for the Arts, and the Outsider Art Fair, and in our own window and gallery space at 250 Main St., Pawtucket, RI.

Painting above, by Brenda Wilkinson

About the Artists

Brenda Wilkinson
Brenda Wilkinson, a life-long resident of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, was born in 1962. She has been drawing since she was 5 years old. At Flying Shuttles Studio she draws and paints original works of art, switching gears occasionally to embroider or weave. She states, “I like to draw all kinds of special things like people, animals, neighborhoods, cities, oceans, lakes, woods, trees, and houses. I also like to write songs and poems.”

Paul Almeida
Born in Rhode Island in 1969, Paul Almeida became interested in art-making as a teenager, when some of his relatives showed him how to use various materials and techniques. Although his disability ultimately prevented him from fulfilling his ambition to be a background artist for the Disney Studios, he did not let it stop him from continuing to make art. His work reflects his deeply felt connections to his family, his workplace, his residence, and his country, employing abstract signs and symbols to depict each of these. Recurring images include hearts, peace signs, crosses, gravestones, houses, mountains and water. He says that his art is an “abstract of my life, surroundings, feelings”, and likes to play with mirror/reverse mirror symmetry, the personal meanings of colors, and keeping his work not completely explainable. Careful thought is given to each of his titles, which flesh out the personal significance of each piece. Paul is a member of Flying Shuttles Studio, a program of the Arc of Blackstone Valley. The studio supports the creative abilities of artists with disabilities.

His work has been shown in Rhode Island at Center City Artisans, Hera Gallery, The Atrium Gallery, Fine Furnishings Show, the Outsider Art Fair, NYC and Sister Kenny Rehabilitation Institute’s International Art Show in Minnesota. In 2006, the State of Rhode Island purchased one of his pieces to hang in the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, and he received a certificate from the Governor Carcieri in recognition of his “artistic contributions” to the State of Rhode Island.

8. URI Library, 80 Washington Street

Matriarchs and Goddesses of the Modern Era, by Donna Dodson

Donna Dodson’s wooden sculptures celebrate the “mystical relationship between human beings and the animal kingdom.” Lined up along the Washington Street windows of the URI library will be towering animal headed figures of the female form. The natural grain of the wood creates a fluid sense of motion within the piece.

Donna has also collaborated with Charlanne Kallay, who is producing works of poetry related to this series.
About this artistic collaboration, Dodson says, "I am exploring the dignity and complexity of feminine archetypes. Collaboration allows me to see my work through someone else's eyes. What started from an email exchange has grown into a very long conversation about all my pieces. Charlane will be perfoming her poetry outside this art window at the opening reception, Septemebr 18th, from 6:30-7 PM.



About the Artist

Donna Dodson graduated cum laude from Wellesley College in 1990 with a Bachelor of Arts. Her pre-med studies and her passion for Egyptian art led her to study wood sculpture with Joseph Wheelwright at his studio in Boston in 1995. She continued her studies in sculpture with Peter Haines at his studio in Cambridge by learning how to abstract and resolve forms. Since 2000, Dodson has been honored with solo shows in New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Kansas and Massachusetts and she has been invited to participate or juried into many group shows around the country. Dodson enjoys public speaking, and has been a guest speaker in conferences, panels and forums at the Boston Public Library, Pittsburg State University, Cambridge Art Association, Concord Art Association, Wellesley College and Stonehill College. She is a member of the International Sculpture Center, National Association of Women Artists and the Women’s Caucus for Art. In May 2007 she started the Art Salon Boston at her studio in Jamaica Plain to meet artists of all disciplines and host monthly conversations on topics of interest to artists in Boston and beyond.

9. Trinity Rep, 201 Washington Street

Rhode Island Illuminated, by Alice Benvie Gebhart

Overlook/Rhode Island Illuminated
"As an artist I specialize in fusing glass to create images of color and light. As with any artistic process one must start with an idea. My ideas and inspirations come from nature. I mentally record, take photographs and sketch the scenery around me emphasizing color and light in my compositions. Working off these sketches, I cut and layer colored glass in a kind of collage. These are fired in a glass kiln, often 4-5 times to obtain the desired effect. I often include specialty glasses such as dichroic glass and iridescent glass to give my work a luminescent quality. Iron oxide, mica, copper and 24 karat gold are added to the glass to create detail and special effects within each piece."

About the Process
Glass fusing is the process of using a kiln to join together pieces of glass. If you apply heat to glass, it will soften, become fluid and flow together. At appoximately1500º, two or more pieces of glass will stick (or "fuse") to each other. When the right kind of glass is heated and then cooled properly, the resulting fused glass piece will be solid and unbroken.

About the Artist
"It has been a lifelong ambition to merge the making of art and the teaching of art. My goal as an artist is to bring about a visual appreciation of our surroundings in my work. Finding beauty in the ordinary is my inspiration. My goal as an artist and a teacher is to foster an appreciation for the visual arts and incorporate the arts in our lives."

Born, bred and educated in Rhode Island, Alice has worked as an art educator at Cranston High School East and Rhode Island College and as a fused glass artist in her East Greenwich studio for many years. Recent travel throughout Japan, Italy and Ireland has been inspiring. Her professional memberships include Providence Art Club, Art League of RI, South County Art Association, National Association for Art Education and the American Craft Council. Recent accolades include Best of Show win at Art League of R.I and participation in Open Exhibit, 2007, and Invitational Members’ Exhibition at South County Art Association. Alice has a two person show at the Providence Art Club in April 2009 with painter Marjorie Ball.

10. Johnson & Wales, Snowden Hall, 220 Weybosset Street

Dear Andy (Montauk)Series, Mel Smothers

"Last year I read in the New York Times that Andy Warhol’s oceanside estate at Montauk, Long Island was sold, so I made a point of driving out to get a feel for the place. Andy was a very busy guy in New York City; he was famous, he was mass producing contemporary art with images he found in the NY Times. Montauk wasn’t on Andy’s calendar much. His famous friends liked it out there. I’ve taken a look around and like it too. I’ve painted Andy a few postcards.

He would have liked that."


About the Artist
"This series is about a resolution of my West Coast art education with Wayne Thiebaud’s Pop Art, that had a zen-like naturalist feel to me, and the relocation of my studio to NYCand immersion into Warholian East Coast Pop Art. Andy Warhol’s model was indigenous to materialism and mass commercial culture. As a painter, I’m interested in aspects of both; that is, the painterly formalism of California and, the conceptualism of East Coast. My current approach to a synthesis is influenced by van Gogh’s letters to Bernard and Charlie Russell’s barroom communications from Montana."

Selected recent exhibitions include Higgenbotham Museum, Virginia; Brooklyn Museum, New York City; Museum of Community University of New York (CUNY);Whipple Art Museum;
Mid-America All Indian Center and the University of California at Davis. Mel will have a solo exhibition at the Judaica Museum, New York City, 2009, with Warhol’s from museum collection, Emily O’Leary, Curator.

Coming Soon!

Welcome to the new site for Providence Art Windows. Stay tuned as this site is updated with the next round of artists by September 1, 2008.

Here is the map of the current round of artists: