Resisting the Hard Edge

RESISTING THE HARD EDGE

RESISTING THE HARD EDGE

March 5-28, 2021

Brandt-Roberts Galleries is pleased to

Although currently gaining increased

present Resisting the Hard Edge, a group

exposure on the global art stage,

exhibition of eight women artists working

female artists have historically taken a

in abstraction.

backseat to their male contemporaries, especially in the

The Columbus-based and national

genres of Abstract Expressionism and

artists in this exhibition each channel

glassblowing. For example, between

aspects of their female identity using

2008-2018, artwork by women

the collective style of non-objective

represented just 11% of museum

art. This style of art intentionally uses

acquisitions. It was not until 1987 that

no recognizable or observable subject

female artists would break into the

matter. However, this approach in no

leading art textbook, Janson’s History

way minimizes the intention these

of Art. This exhibition serves to

artists use to communicate and elicit

counterpoint those historic confines

a response to their work. Themes

and instead give merit to the lively,

ranging from self-exploration,

intellectual, and ongoing

materiality, and environmental

contributions contemporary women

awareness are presented in this

artists have, and continue to make.

collection with a variety of mediums being utilized such as paint, collage,

Resisting the Hard Edge is on view

glass, and textiles.

starting Friday, March 5th. The exhibition will be on view through

The exhibition title comes from a

March 28th during gallery hours,

conversation with exhibiting glass and

Friday through Sunday, 1-5pm. Private

textile artist Brianna Gluszak during a

appointments can be scheduled by

studio visit. The idea of resisting the

emailing

hard edge is twofold. The formal

info@brandtrobertsgalleries.com or

aspects of the artwork by each

calling 614.223.1655. The virtual

participating artist are generally soft,

exhibition will be available starting

curvaceous forms and gestural mark

Friday, March 5th at

making. This phrase also references

http://brandtrobertsgalleries.com/exhi

outdated notions of male-dominated

bitions.

media and processes.

JULIE ABIJANAC

Julie Abijanac received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and BFA from CCAD. She currently is a Professor teaching in the MFA and Honors programs at CCAD. Her professional practice outside of the educational community includes: II International Textile Art Symposium FORTRESS MAN Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre, 8th International Paper Triennial at the Musee du Charmey, Switzerland, FiberArt International 2013 (where she received the People’s Choice Award), and 68thAnnual Ohio Exhibition 2012 (where she placed 1st in Fiber/Textiles,). Julie is also a recipient of the Capelli d’Angeli Foundation 2013 Artist Grants for a woman artist whose work is a response to having and coping with cancer.

Julie’s work deals with her personal struggle with cancer. She creates digital drawings and relief paper sculptures that explore the systematic development of cancer cell metastasis. Each piece she depicts a shape quality or motif from specific field-stain specimens, which is then used in multiples. Compositional aspects are then portrayed with the use of these individual segments or shapes and then fused together to create modules. With the use of recycled paper(s) and/or fiber, the fundamental elements of visual art are put to use including space, shape, texture, movement, and pattern. Close up, the three-dimensional lines of these paper-sculpted works are so elegantly graceful, but also intricately complex, just as life itself is at once lush and beautiful in the face of an utterly unpredictable future.

Julie aspires to create works that provides a connection between the viewer and the beauty found in the organic development of cellular growth found in a potentially deadly disease.

My work expresses the laborious relationship the hand has with the chosen material in conjunction with a visceral response to content. Referenced forms, found in nature, are abstracted and deconstructed to the extent that shifts the meaning and possible interpretations become multifaceted. The application of the material and technique allows the viewer to examine its ambiguity and questions the origination of the content, which incites the viewer to make new personal connections with the beauty found in nature.

JULIE

ABIJANAC

Julie Abijanac Suspended Dangle Linen, embroidery floss, glass beads 10 x 8 in. $700

Julie Abijanac Velvet Scars Black vellum, glue, recycled gilded frame 28 x 23.75 x 4 in. $7500

ANNA BUCKNER

Raised in North Carolina, Anna Buckner received a BFA in painting from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012 and an MFA in painting from Indiana University in 2016. In 2014, she completed an apprenticeship in Buddhist Thangka painting in Sikkim, India. Anna Buckner has exhibited nationally extensively and was recently featured in the 125th edition of New American Paintings. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Appalachian State University.

Anna’s work explores softness, our relationship to the land, and patterns, both human-made and those found in nature. In her artistic process, Buckner searches for existing patterns, motivated to "push the poetic possibilities of that pattern".

She creates with found fabric, which she then stretches, adding elements of collage and paint.

Her work has been exhibited nationally, including solo and group exhibitions at Bad Water in Knoxville, TN, Markel Fine Arts in New York City, The Museum of Human Achievement in Austin, TX, Grunwald Gallery in Bloomington, IN, The Painting Center in New York City, Marian University in Indianapolis, IN, among others.

Persimmons Picnic was made in the winter of 2020. It was a cold day in December, and a close friend asked me if I had ever eaten a persimmon. She told me she had just tasted one for the first time and almost cried because it was so good. This piece is based on that exchange–a fantasy about seeing friends again, crying while eating delicious persimmons, and picnicking in the summer.

ANNA

BUCKNER

Anna Buckner Persimmons Picnic Pieced fabric on stretcher 14 x 11 in. $750

Anna Buckner Watermelons Are Mostly Water Pieced fabric on stretcher 14 x 11 in. $750

Anna Buckner Small Frogs Pieced fabric on stretcher 24 x 24 in. $1400

JANE CARNEY

Jane Carney is a Chicago-based artist and teacher who works in large-scale mixed media. She has a Master's degree in Art Education from Loyola University in Chicago and a Bachelor’s of Fine Art from St. Mary’s College in Indiana. She has exhibited extensively in juried shows throughout the United States, including Chicago, New York City, West Palm Beach, and Columbus.

An excerpt from her artist statement is below:

"I play. In the process, ideas and images emerge. I am interested in the relationship of freedom and structure. I am interested in communicating the physical experience of making my paintings and collages. This process and the physical quality of my work is an important part of the final product. Experimentation, improvisation and risk-taking are ways in which I approach the canvas. I try to retain a playfulness and spontaneity. However I initiate the surface, a dialogue begins. It is a conversation, a back and forth of visual bantering. This allows me to work with disparate ideas that evolve from personal experiences and the world around me."

In my process, I am abandoning the idea of perfection and embracing both conceptually and physically the challenge of finding harmony in the messiness and chaos of everyday life. Home, family, and daily activities have changed and morphed into new patterns and rituals. I am forcing new relationships with imagery and text. The roughness of my mark making using collage, drawing, and painting allows me to play with Resisting the Hard Edge and find beauty in the organic, unexpected language of my surfaces.

JANE

CARNEY

Jane Carney Family Time Mixed media on canvas 64 x 62 in. $5800

Jane Carney Bonjour Mixed media on canvas 64 x 62 in. $5800

Jane Carney Seize the Day Mixed media on canvas 60 x 48 in. $3800

JACCI DELANEY

Jacci Delaney received a BFA with a specialization in glass and a BA in Art History from Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2008 and an MFA from The Ohio State University in 2014. Jacci’s work, often utilizing bubble wrap as texture, explores dualities.

Playing with hard and soft, she casts bubble wrap in glass, making something soft that we want to touch, hard and untouchable.

Jacci has exhibited her work in numerous solo, two-person, and group exhibitions including at Berengo Studios (Murano, Italy), Bullseye Glass (Portland, OR), the Appalachian Centre for Crafts (Smithville, TN), and the Corning Museum of Glass (Corning, NY). She was recently an artist in residence at The Works (Newark, OH) and performed a lecture and demonstration called “Experimental Casting: Putting Plaster Silica on Anything” for the Glass Art Society Conference (Smaland, Sweden).

I'm excited to present the new hyperrectangle forms because of how they stand up and interact with the light.

The blue to yellow piece really changes as you move around it. The cubes are also color changing with the Rhubarb Shift Cube going from pink to green and the Green Cube going to blue as you look at it. The pieces together look like a group of old friends relaxing and catching up drinking the light.

JACCI

DELANEY

Jacci Delaney Rhubarb Shift Cube Cast glass 10 x 10 x 6 in. $3400

Jacci Delaney Blue to Yellow Hyperrectangle Cast glass 15 x 12 x 4 in. $3800

Jacci Delaney Frozen Hyperrectangle Cast glass 15 x 12 x 4 in. $3800

Jacci Delaney Aqua Indigo Cube Cast glass 9 x 9 x 9 in. $3600

Jacci Delaney Lavender Green Cube Cast glass 9 x 8 x 6 in. $3400

Jacci Delaney Sunrise Cast glass 14.5 x 11.5 x 4 in. $3800

TERI DRYDEN

Teri Dryden’s unorthodox path to becoming an artist began with immersion in an ancient art form in which she was the medium. A theatre major at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland, she excelled in physical expression and comedy.

At the urging of an instructor, she auditioned and won a coveted spot as one of the few female clowns in the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. For two unforgettable years, she performed in every state in the U.S. in one of the most colorful and visually stimulating environments imaginable.

She then moved to Los Angeles and became an awardwinning stage actress, but left the stage when her first child was born. After making beautiful fiber art for several years, Teri decided to take an art class, and discovered a latent talent and passion for painting and drawing.

During a

remarkably short and prolific period, she won several awards and sold dozens of paintings and drawings to rapt fans who recognized her unique sense of composition and color in dramatic florals and still-lifes. She feels she has found her true aesthetic after discovering the fascinating world of abstract painting and collage.

She is a member of the Collage Artists of America, National Collage Society and Women Painters West. Her work is included in many private and public collections and has been exhibited in numerous solo, group and juried exhibitions across the country.

My newest series continues to explore the process of WABI SABI through the medium of collage by juxtaposing small areas of detail with large spaces. I create highly textured surfaces by responding to the changes in the picture as I explore and interact with my materials by layering paper and paint, sanding and marking, creating open spaces, altering and adjusting. It is this tandem process that is the core of my work.

TERI

DRYDEN

Teri Dryden Pantone Color of the Year Mixed media on panel 48 x 36 in. $2800

Teri Dryden He & She Mixed media on panel 20 x 20 in. each $1050 each

Teri Dryden Ensconced Mixed media on panel 36 x 36 in. $2600

BRIANNA GLUSZAK

Brianna Gluszak is a sculptor working primarily in the medium of glass. Her work utilizes the act of observation, relationships, and formal investigations.

Gluszak focuses on the creation of objects, to escape from the mundanity of everyday life.

Miss Gluszak received a Bachelors in Fine Art with distinction in glass from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2016. She has studied and worked at Pilchuck Glass School in the state of Washington, The Corning Museum of Glass, in Corning, NY and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma Washington. She has travelled internationally to participate in residencies at the Royal Danish Academy of Architecture, Design and Conservation in Nexø, Denmark, as well as at Northland’s Creative Glass in Lybster, Scotland. Gluszak is currently enrolled in the Masters in Fine Art’s program at The Ohio State University in Columbus OH.

My works evoke a seductive relationship that crosscontaminates the gendered fields of glass making and textiles. In my sculptures, the long stretched out forms of glass reference dominance, power, erection, passivity, and placidity through various bends intentionally executed in the hot glass studio. Textiles evoke softness, warmth, comfort, figurative curves through the use of intentional colour fields and distinctly soft-edged shapes.

BRIANNA

GLUSZAK

Brianna Gluszak Resisting the urge Machine tufted rug 70 x 35 in. $2400

Brianna Gluszak Wet n wild Blown glass 7 x 4.25 x 5 $900

Brianna Gluszak Are we all in this together?

Machine tufted rug 16 x 21 in. $650

Brianna Gluszak Dreamt Intimacy Blown and cold-worked glass 11 x 4.5 x 10 in. $1200

Brianna Gluszak If played in reverse...

Machine tufted rug 31.5 x 19.5 in. $1100

Brianna Gluszak Not the running man you expected Blown glass 13 x 4.25 x 8 in. $900

Brianna Gluszak An unspoken understanding between us Machine tufted rug 15 x 20.5 in. $650

Brianna Gluszak You've Changed Blown and cold-worked glass 16 x 5.5 x 15 in. $1400

KRISTY HUGHES

Kristy Hughes received an MFA in Printmaking from Indiana University and a MA and BA from Eastern Illinois University. She has attended residencies at the Hambidge Center, The Studios at MASS MoCA, Stutz Artists Association in Indianapolis, a full fellowship at Vermont Studio Center, and in 2017 was awarded a Liquitex Research Residency with Residency Unlimited in Brooklyn, NY. She was recently inaugural Artist in Resident at the Turner Center for the Arts in Valdosta, GA and has an upcoming residency at Vermont Studio Center scheduled for summer 2021.

Hughes has shown across the US and has been published in Friend of the Artist, Burnaway, Cut Me Up Magazine, Create Magazine, Execute Magazine, and the forthcoming South Issue #148 in New American Paintings. She is Visiting Assistant Professor at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN.

All I Want was made by the repetitive process of adding and taking away paint and multiple layers of collage, a reference to the intricate and precarious network of communication I’ve been weaving during this past year in quarantine. While making this piece, I contemplated the words we use to convey a sense of loss and belonging. This painting represents the slow building of personal connections, through the awkward and imperfect process of socially-distant communication.

KRISTY

HUGHES

Kristy Hughes All I Want Acrylic, spray paint, collage, décollage on panel 36 x 48 in. $2950

Kristy Hughes With Both Acrylic, collage, colored pencil, fumage on paper mounted to panel 20.25 x 22.5 in. $1250

NIKKI TERRY

Nikki Terry is an expressionist artist whose minimalist paintings build on her personal history and emotional DNA. Working primarily on large canvases, she uses her lines to interrupt space and preserve emotion. Her lines, like her memories, are indelible. They are sharp and intrusive, and appear and recede abruptly. She describes her newest studies of graphite dust on paper as a selfexploration of her Blackness - "As I smear and press the dust into paper, it feels like I'm grounding down a little more on my identity as a Black woman and artist."

This painting is untitled because it can’t be reduced to words. It is that emotional place that we lock ourselves in from time to time. It is a space where we must stumble through the dark in order to find our ground. This is the space where we fear obstacles but move through them in order to find ‘rest’ in who we are. This painting is the space where we find many ways to self-love.

NIKKI

TERRY

Nikki Terry Mom Watercolor on arches paper 31.5 x 25.5 in. framed $1850

Nikki Terry My America Watercolor on arches paper 31.5 x 25.5 in. framed $2100

Nikki Terry Untitled (yellow) Watercolor on arches paper 14.75 x 17.75 in. framed $850

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info@brandrobertsgalleries.com 614.223.1655