SEASON PREMIERE | 2015 - 2016

S E A S O N P R E M I E R E | 2015 - 2016

S E A S O N P R E M I E R E | 2015 - 2016

Featured Artists:

PETER BUREGA G R E G CONSTANTINE E DW A R D LENTSCH CHARLIE MINER L U CY PEVETO BRET PRICE VLADIMIR PRODANOVICH L A U R A WAIT

PETER BUREGA

Peter Burega is a self-taught artist, whose learning process is at the core of his work. He started out as a piano player, then became a lawyer and, after that, a television director. He believes that all of those previous pursuits—especially music—informs his work and affects how he approaches being an artist.

Like his “past lives,” his work can sometimes appear to be a contradiction. His development emerges from conflict, that effervescent energy fighting any attempts at control and creating a certain tension between the grid that he scores onto each of his panels and the chaos that his abstractive process produces.

Burega’s work begins with photography. He travels extensively and takes thousands of photographs, and it is the spaces where man meets the natural world that captivates Burega. Photographs of natural forms, such as waves contrasted with manmade structures like bridges, continue to inspire Burega when he is back in the studio. As he sifts through his photos, he creates matrices of images to work from. The beauty of his grid system is that he can include multiple images, abstracting and superimposing them in a single piece.

Burega’s paintings blend documentation of the real world with his own physically exercised psychology, and are often described as containing dualities: organic/linear, manmade/natural, ordered/chaotic, structured/amorphous. He believes that these dualities represent his striving for calm and balance in life, and that the juxtaposition of his aggressive, abstractive energy with structured form consistently results in his most successful work.

To support his visceral energy, Burega paints on wood panels of laminate birch with solid alder sides.

These strong, stable panels record his aggressive and subtractive manner of applying and removing paint.

The physical and psychological come together in this process, resulting in paintings that can be at once percussive and soothing.

Selected Museums and Corporate Collections include: - Goldman Sachs, London, England - Grisanti,Brown, LLC, New York,New York - Bank of Georgia, Atlanta, Georgia - Reinsure, New York, New York - PepsiCo, Dallas, Texas - Pizza Hut Corp., Los Angeles, California - Bank of New York, Hong Kong, China

Burega, Playa, 30 x 60 in.

Burega, Los Arcos, 60 x 60 in.

Burega, Garza Blanca 30 x 60 in.

GREG CONSTANTINE

Greg Constantine taught painting, drawing, and art history at Andrews University for forty-three years and began exhibiting nationally in 1969. Since 1975, Constantine’s work has dealt with the theme of “Art about Art”. It is quite possible that his involvement in the teaching of art history and the intensification of artists dealing with other artists’ work have resulted in this similar theme recurring in his own art.

Numerous awards and grants have enabled Constantine to continue his work while traveling through the United States and Europe while authoring three children’s books. The series “When Big Artists Were Little Kids” explores how incidents from renowned artists’ childhoods influenced their art. While his work has ranged from the above referenced books to large-scale abstract paintings, Constantine is best known for his “Artistic License” series.

“Poetic Licenses,” “Car Quotes” and “Artist Myths” are text art presented in the format of vanity license plates. While at first glance, these may appear to be simply collected old, rusted license plates, they are actually rendered as a convincing trompe-l’oeil entities. Constantine fabricates, paints and rusticates each piece before assembling into a collage. The license plate format is that of utilitarian objects transformed into functional objects wearing the mantle of “high art”. They open another territory in the development of Text Art.

Selected Museums and Corporate Collections include: - Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn New York - Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids MI - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY - Richmond Museum of Art, Richmond VA - Loma Linda University Library, Loma Linda CA - Andrews University, Berrien springs MI - Hoechst Pharmaceuticals, Frankfurt Germany

Constantine, Bigger Boat, 24 x 24 in.

Constantine, Miro Colors, 22 x 36 in.

Constantine, Thousand Words, 12 x 24 in.

EDWARD LENTSCH

Edward Lentsch’s artistic practice explores his relationship between the self, nature and the universe.

From the Fibonacci sequence to the teachings of Aristotle, Lentsch attempts to create a bridge between the natural world and these intellectual canons, exploring the interconnection between the realms of science and mysticism, the metaphysical and the spiritual. He explores how these three facets are integrated within a global environment and moreover how we, as humans, fit within this complex matrix of thought using the ideas of some of the world’s greatest writers and scholars.

Lentsch works across a variety of media including stone powders dry pigments that he scrapes and scratches with trowels and sticks to develop a highly distressed surface. He creates an ‘energy of intention’, in which textures, compositions and colours (or their absence) are combined to become an extension of the life force around him, a transformative experience through which he can mediate a pure experiential moment.

Flowing from a nonverbal intuitive state of creative expression, Lentsch bridges a complex visual language in which colours and textures are lifted from the natural world. One can imagine soft, snowy landscapes of white and grey or the verdant green of a tranquil overgrown pond or even the harsh dark lines of barren twigs and brush against an autumn landscape. Lentsch’s technique allows for the translation of our natural landscapes into abstract environments.

Selected Museums and Corporate Collections include: - Merrill Lynch, Minneapolis, MN - Marriott Hotel Corporation, Rochester, MN; Salt Lake City, UT - St. Paul Port Authority, St. Paul, MN - Pfingsten Publishing, Cleveland, OH - Midway National Bank, St. Paul, MN - Johnson Media Group, Minneapolis, MN - Sheraton Hotel, Bloomington, MN

Lentsch, Ta Mysteria, 50 x 80 in.

Lentsch, Hill at Tor, 78 x 88 in.

Lentsch, Atthis, 50 x 80 in.

CHARLIE MINER

Charlie Miner has worked professionally with glass for over 40 years; both in blown glass and most recently using his background in bronze casting to produce large lost wax cast pieces of 24% lead crystal.

This process often gives his glass a unique texture and patina resembling stone.

Miner spent his early career working in a bronze foundry and was introduced to functional glassblowing in 1972 while attending a sculpture conference. He spent the next ten years perfecting his craft and then went on to study glass casting at Pilchuck Glass School with David Reekie and Clifford Rainey. When Charlie returned home, he started combining bronze techniques with ancient glass casting techniques.

Today, Miner’s work is represented in private and public collections throughout the United States, including the Corning Museum of Glass, New York; Fuller Craft Museum, Massachusetts; Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; the Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona; the Museum of Texas Tec University; Lubbock, TX, and the New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe. Selected Museums and Corporate Collections include: - Art Museum of South Texas - Fuller Craft Museum, Massachusetts - The Corning Museum of Glass, New York - New Orleans Museum of Art - New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts - Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona

Miner, Koi Shallows

Miner, Truchas

Miner, Cape Trout

LUCY PEVETO

Reflecting elevated self-discovery, Lucy Peveto’s compositions define uplifting moments and true transformations. She graduated from St. Mary’s Univerisity School of Law in 2002. Entering her second career as a visual artist, she decided to “let it fly.” Peveto broke through the shell and that’s what transformation is all about.

Peveto utilizes mixed mediums to celebrate the assurance that we can be born again through grace and the beauty of natural transformation. She seeks to show the infinite possibilities gained when we discover our God-given talents. The process involves construction of wood panels, high heat, and resin chemicals.

Many times these elements are juxtaposed with delicate, paper-thin butterfly wings to illustrate the fragilities of physical life. In other art, Peveto seeks to deconstruct textile-inspired ‘pattern’ to represent how we may find unexpected light and shadow in life and in art.”

Selected Museums and Corporate Collections include: - University Health System - University Hospital and GFR Development Services - Junior League of San Antonio - Phyllis Browning Company - Shelter Wade Jewelers

Peveto, Blue Flowers on High, 36 x 36 in.

Peveto, Angels on High, 30 x 30 in.

Peveto, Approaching Silver Landscape, 36 x 36 in.

BRET PRICE

Since 1979, Bret Price has been building heating chambers around large pieces of steel, applying concentrated, intense heat, then manipulating the material to create a sense of softness. When the heat is removed, these illusions of flexibility are frozen, and on one level, the sculpture becomes a documentation of those forces used in the process. It is his intent that these sculptures communicate a sense of continuance, as if each piece is a single frame taken from a film, appearing to be at rest before moving on.

This method of making art offers a number of creative options for him as a sculptor. The variables of heat intensity, size and shape of the raw material produce a wide range of results; from the quiet simplicity of a single pipe bend to the rhythmic complexity that emerges from folding a section of structural steel.

A degree of unpredictability is always present, which tends to tease ones curiosity and lend energy.

Selected Museums and Corporate Collections include: - Chapman University, Orange CA - Walt Disney Productions, Burbank CA - Laguna Beach Museum of Art, Laguna Beach CA - Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach CA - Orange County Museum of Art, New Port Beach CA - Pepsi Co, Purchase NY - Toyota Corporation, Chicago IL

Price, On a Roll, 14 x 8 x 6 in.

Price, Hold Tight, 21 x 10 x 5 in.

Price, Tide and Bent, 15 x 30 x 9 in.

VLADIMIR PRODANOVICH

Vladimir Prodanovich was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1952 and began his artistic career at age 7 with enrollment in a local art academy where he gained merit and the attention of his teachers. At age 13, he was invited to be an apprentice to a noted Yugoslavian artist, honed his artistic skills, while deepening his understanding of the great masters.

In 1983 at the age of 31, Prodanovich boarded a plane for “the promised land of America” with $300 in his pocket. Settling in Philadelphia with imperative financial needs, Prodanovich earned a living painting cars, homes and billboards, while learning English, but he never abandoned his personal art. Three years later, Prodanovish drove to California where he lived for 27 years and established himself as a serious artist.

His artwork, described as neo-expressionist, is highly textured and vibrant. The brilliance in Prodanovich’s work comes from the artist’s masterful ability to combine seemingly opposite colors to create works of art percolating with energy. Composition and form can vary widely from pure abstraction to figurative.

Prodanovich is perhaps best known for drawing inspiration from historical masterworks, modernizing and transforming mature themes into completely contemporary art that is at once deeply rooted in tradition yet thoroughly modern.

Prodanovich’s paintings and sculptures are in numerous private and corporate collections, including the Holocaust Museum in Cathedral City, CA and the Desert Aids Project in Palm Springs, CA. In 2011 he was awarded the prestigious “Ellis Island Medal of Honor” in NYC. With this award, he joins an elite group of people, which includes six United States Presidents, Rosa Parks, Frank Sinatra, General Colin Powell, Mohammed Ali, Quincy Jones and Jerry Lewis. The Ellis Island Medal of Honor and the Congressional Medal of Honor are the only two medals recognized by the United States Congress.

In 2000, the Medal was carried into space aboard the space shuttle Challenger.

Selected Museums and Corporate Collections include: - The Holocaust Museum, Cathedral City - The Desert Aids Project, Palm Springs - Habitat for Humanity - Larry King Cardiac Foundation - Chabad Jewish Center - Laguna Beach Presbyterian Church - Kabalah Center, Louisiana

Prodanovich, Femme au Colombe, 72 x 48 in.

Prodanovich, Meninas I Frieda, 84 x 60 in.

Prodanovich, Angel II, 24.5 x 34.5 in.

LAURA WAIT

Word forms as image are the primary focus of Laura Wait’s art. Words and symbols, used as marks, are layered on paintings to form a wall of history with meaning at each depth. Aesthetics of words and symbols are prioritized over text and indeed most of the words Wait uses are totally illegible. She believes man has an intuitive connection to marks, and there is worldwide use of similar mark forms from prehistoric times.

Symbolism has long interested the artist who incorporates world iconography and its meanings into her art. This led to the study of fertility symbols, conjoined with a study of tree symbolism. An interest in checkerboards followed, which led Wait to a study of chess. She incorporated words in this series from the writings of “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu. Wait’s paintings evolved at this time into paintings of words, often-large words, with energy, using words of conflict and from chess. Words have been her main interest ever since.

Wait includes medieval illuminated manuscripts among her influences, along with Asian writing and modern graffiti. Her marks are polyglot letterforms a melding of Asian and Western writing and imagery.

She also draws on the energy of modern graffiti, seen as a source of new abstraction much as African rhythms energized rock and roll and jazz.

Nothing is quite concrete, and Wait’s work is highly intuitive, connecting with people on a visceral level.

It’s an affirmation of the human spirit and the mark of the hand. In our modern world, which is growing smaller, the influence of computers is everywhere. Email, text messaging and Twitter have changed interpersonal communication forever. Handwriting is an antidote to our technology driven society.

Selected Museums and Corporate Collections include: - Harvard University, Cambridge, MA - Princeton University, Princeton, NJ - Bibliotheca Librorum & Artificem, Sydney, Australia - Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL - US State Dept Art Bank, Washington, DC - Library of Congress, Washington, DC

Wait, Cakewalk II, 36 x 24 in.

Wait, Poolside I, 16 x 60 in.

Wait, Neo Urban I, 30 x 40 in.

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