Fat Canary Journal at Ceres Gallery

Barbara A. Friedman

Dasha Ziborova

Donna Bassin

Jude Harzer

Kate Missett

Maggie Rose

Marissa Bridge

Regina Guienze Tinti

Rochelle Shicoff

Susan Saunders

Virginia Mallon

of Shortt

BARBARA A. FRIEDMAN

www.BarbaraFriedman.net

Better Bring Boots, oil on wood panel

Barbara A. Friedman is a visual artist whose career has encompassed painting, collage, visual communications, and teaching on the university level. She received her BFA from Parsons School of Design, her MFA from William Paterson University with Honors. Currently she is a Part Time Associate Teaching Professor at Parsons where she was honored with the Henry Wolf Award for Teaching Excellence. Additionally, she has also taught at Pratt Manhattan, William Paterson University, and Raritan Valley Community College.

Ducks, oil on wood panel

Driving around, particularly during the pandemic allowed me to connect with the landscape and built environment. This kind of contemplative observation reveals the hidden beauty and emotional resonance in seemingly ordinary scenes. Farms, marshes, fields, all disappearing; often into disrepair or buildings that have little to do with the geography they are placed in. The transformative power of time and nature on the landscape continues to intrigue me.

My journey of slow observation has allowed me to see and appreciate the overlooked and the ordinary; it has also inspired me to develop an emotional connection and engage with a sense of urgency that these scenes evoke. These peripheral visions celebrate the beauty of the landscape, the everyday, the things that fill our lives, every day.

Near the Coast, oil on panel

Shelter, oil on canvas

DASHA ZIBOROVA

www.DashaZiborova.com

The Date, New Botanicals Series water base pigment paint on canvas board with stucco, wax

Dasha Ziborova is a visual artist, graphic novelist and muralist. She was born in St.Petersburg, Russia and came to New York in 1991. Dasha’s work has been shown at Art on Paper, Outsider Art Fair, The Center for Book Arts, Governors Island, DVAA, and Space776 among the few.

Dasha Ziborova is also a founder and curator of Broken English & Other Languages series what experiment with visual narrative and introduce authors and artists for whom English is the second language.

Possession, New Botanical Series water base pigment paint on canvas with stucco, wax board

I Put a Root on You, New Botanical Series water base pigment paint on canvas board

My New Botanicals series explores the post-apocalyptic landscape with a playful twist. In a world where everything has failed, we are left to wonder what the future holds for humanity. Is it time to embrace nature in its most literal form? Through my work, I invite viewers to consider these questions while enjoying the whimsical and humorous depiction of the world that could emerge in such a scenario.

Good Crop, New Botanical Series water base pigment paint on canvas board with stucco, wax

Biodiversity, New Botanical Series water base pigment paint on canvas board with stucco, wax

DONNA BASSIN

www.DonnaBassin.com

Environmental Melancholia: Postcards of Vanishing Environments.22 photography, mixed media

Donna Bassin is a photo-based artist, filmmaker, clinical psychologist, educator, and published author born in Brooklyn, New York, and now living in New Jersey. Her longterm projects respond to the harmful aspects of contemporary life: post-traumatic stress, racism, social injustice, and, recently, the destruction of our environment.

These pursuits have yielded two award-winning feature-length documentaries about coming home from war, Leave No Soldier and The Mourning After, solo and group exhibitions, public installations, book covers, a billboard in New York City, and publications in art and culture periodicals such as Tricycle, Analog Forever Magazine, LensMagazine, Fotonostrum, Grazia, Dodho M agazine, FLOAT Magazine, The Hand Magazine, Vostok Magazine, and LandEscape Art Review.

She received a 2021 New Jersey Council on the Arts Fellowship for photography. She was selected as a Showcase Artist for Jersey City’s Art Fair 14C, Top 50 Photographers for Critical Mass 2022, and was a finalist for Critical Mass 2023. Her photo-based installations have appeared at the Montclair Art Museum, Newark

Museum of Art, Jamestown Arts Center, Smack Mellon, SaveArtSpace, and Mills Reservation. The Afterlife of Dolls, a solo exhibition at Montclair Art Museum, was featured on PBS’ State of the Arts.

Her portrait series, My Own Witness: Rupture and Repair, was featured as a solo exhibit at Espaço D’Artes Gallery in Lisbon, Portugal, Soho Photo Gallery in New York City, and the Passaic County Arts Center in New Jersey. It will travel to Mira Forum, Porto, Portugal, in April 2024.

Environmental Melancholia, a series illuminating and aiding the community in grappling with the complexities of the climate crisis, was recently on exhibition at Carter Burden Gallery, New York, and featured in Photolucida’s Imminent Existence in Seattle. Selections from this series will be shown at the Ceres Gallery in New York in May 2024.

Environmental Melancholia.Precarious Places 33, photography, mixed media

In this time of climate crisis when intervention is urgent and still possible, I have created a series of ‘memorial’ landscapes to injured and dying environments using visual metaphors to celebrate our natural world, call attention to the precariousness of our global ecosystem, and provide an opportunity to contemplate unthinkable experiences of environmental devastation. These imaginary landscapes are freed from narratives of place, becoming borderless and transcending specific locations to suggest our interconnectedness and joint stewardship over the land.

Inspired by and reacting to the idealized, seductive beauty of Hudson River School landscape painters, the photomontages are, at first glance, pictorial and idyllic. I hope viewers will be drawn in by the splendor of the landscape and the ease of relating to a familiar subject. A closer look challenges the sublime. I intend to puncture complacency around the “ongoingness” of our environment. I want observers to look beyond their expectations and ask, “Wait, what is happening here?” Our planet is in a precarious place, disintegrating as we lose glaciers, animals, trees, and fertile land. I attempt to stop things from vanishing, fix the harm, restore the losses, and put the land back together. I tear natural resources from one photograph and connect them to another image of a depleted environment with Japanese washi tape, photo corners, or embroidery thread, creating a visceral experience of damage and repair.

JUDE HARZER

www.JudeHarzerFineArt.com

Jude Harzer’s figurative paintings are inspired by memories, childhood and the power of thought to define lives and overcome circumstances. Using oil paint as her preferred medium, she creates psychologically provocative visual narratives featuring adolescents as observers and guardians of familial beliefs and histories.Children have always been a source of fascination and inspiration for Jude’s work. A dark and noisy childhood as the third of six siblings to a single, visually and emotionally impaired mother, had a profound and lasting impact. The innocence, vulnerability and resilience of youth are qualities that captivate and move her. Jude aims to convey a sense of stillness in her work that contrasts with the vitality and boundless potential typically associated with childhood.

The artist is the proud mother of two grown children, Christina, 33 and Robert, 31 who continue to inspire her work. Jude Harzer maintains a painting practice in her home state of New Jersey where she also works as a Visual Arts Educator in the Brick Township Public Schools for 23 years.

Dreamers, oil on canvas

I am intrigued by the way in which children process and preserve shared familial beliefs and the “noise” of human existence. I created this collection of oil paintings, with the intention of representing children as vulnerable yet resilient inheritors and protectors of generational narratives and values. Adolescents are portrayed as silent witnesses and at times, submissive participants in experiences that inevitably shape their lives and sense of well-being. It is in the stillness that they discover strength and the ability to modulate their thoughts and emotional responses.

Favor the Innocent, oil on canvas

The Earth Breathes Beneath Her, oil on canvas

Pour Your Grace Upon Me, oil on canvas

KATE MISSETT

www.KateMissett.com

Museum Visit, hand built stoneware with laser transfer photos

Kate Missett is a ceramic artist working in Brooklyn, NY. She creates her pieces by combining wheel throwing and hand building in an assortment of clay bodies. Kate uses various decorative techniques that include underglazes, silkscreen, laser and paper transfer, china paint and luster. Maintaining a sense of whimsy, her works focus on the fragility and beauty of nature, as well as political and environmental issues, while referencing ceramic history.

They are fired in a variety of ways from reduction to oxidation, wood fire and raku. Her work is often inspired by photographs she takes around the city and while traveling. Her latest series of work focuses on the merging of people and wildlife in urban environments.

Bird Headed Lady, stoneware with silkscreen transfers

My ceramic sculpture focuses on the fragility and beauty of nature in a whimsical way, while referencing ceramic traditions including British porcelain and majolica. Growing up in Florida gave me a first hand view of the disappearance of species of animals, plants, and sea life that left a lasting impression. This latest work also celebrates the simple joy of being a witness to and part of this colorful world we share.

Summer Day, handbuilt porcelain with lustres and silkscreen transfers

Iguana and Mangroves, wheel thrown porcelain with laser transfer photos

MAGGIE ROSE

www.MaggieRoseArtist.com

Maggie Roses is a multi-media artist working in sculpture, paint, mixed media, and film. Her work comments on the many facets of society today. The symbolism of the freedom and transcendence of birds seems right in these troubled times. The foundational imagery for Maggie Rose’s artwork is entrapment, sometimes dark and sometimes silly. As we refuel our fight for equal rights and saving our planet, our individual obstacles may be physical or psychological. Maggie’s recent emotional birds seek grace, soul, and spirit to keep on, however defeated they may feel.

Mad Birds, mixed media, detail

I have been drawing and painting emotional birds since the 1980s. I worked with scrap materials from junk yards and the Johnson Atelier sculpture foundry dumpster where I worked. With found materials such as used lumber and metal, plus free plaster and burlap, my temporary studio spilled out to the edge of the foundry parking lot. Birds were my theme, “mad-birds”: Oil pastel with gold leaf on paper; as well as condor-sized abstracted winged forms of plaster and burlap cloth draped over wooden armatures. Passersby noticed and enjoyed. The large outdoor pieces disintegrated in the rain and were left behind, but never forgotten. I’ve now returned to the theme of the human condition in the form of bird-like creatures.

Mad Birds, mixed media, detail

Mad Birds, mixed media, detail

Mad Birds, mixed media, detail

MARISSA BRIDGE

www.MarissaBridge.com

Marissa Bridge is a visual artist. She graduated from Parsons School of Design with a BFA and studied lithography for two years at SVA. Although she identified as a painter for many years, in 2016 she began creating three dimensional works made of paper, wire, wood and other readily available materials. In 2021 she produced and hosted the hit podcast The Apology Line, where she tells the story of the 15 years she lived with its creator, artist Allan Bridge.

Marissa has exhibited her work in the US and internationally.

Flower Bloom, mixed media on panel

Aeterna, mixed media on panel

The origin of these pieces is my appreciation of Mother Nature’s wondrous variety of reproductive systems that have evolved over eons. The works call to mind gardens and fertility as they contain a blend of female and flower imagery. These artworks are made from paper, modeling paste, nails, q-tips, seeds, wood, beads, pearls, stones, wire, and bits of mirror. Although the work presents many challenges, there is a sense of peace that comes over me when making them. I hope they provide the viewer with a space of respite during these troubled times.

Flower Bed Number One

Garden Boogie Woogie mixed media on panel mixed media on panel

Momentum, mixed media on panel

REGINA GUIENZE TINTI

Regina Guienze Tinti tells stories about people.

Born in the Pacific Northwest, her upbringing was graced by the presence of artists, trailblazers, and high achievers. Their contributions placed her in an idyllic world, where she was often shielded from the painful and starkly contrasting realities of Black life in America. When this coddled and privileged kid set out on her own, she stepped into a world of alarming realizations. Regina’s creative expressions are written, spoken, and visual. She is writing a screenplay about her adventures with a multicultural band of outliers and misfits in pre-gentrification Jersey City, where she ultimately settled. While at the Ceres Gallery, she honors some of the artist ancestors who made her youth more beautiful.

To Grandma and Grandpa From Billy, photography, mixed media

To Grandma and Grandpa From Billy, detail

“To Grandma and Grandpa From Billy” is a conversation with my big brother that began in 2007, following his untimely death to prostate cancer. Throughout his illness we shared overdue discussions about our life together, but after his passing I realized that I had a million questions that still weren’t answered. A friend of his told me that when we were kids in Tacoma, they had to walk home together in groups after school in order to avoid being beaten by white boys in the area. Ironically, for many years, I would have told you that we lived a color-free existence in Washington State. I didn’t learn what Billy had endured until after his death. As I applied color to my brother’s first grade class, I examined each student carefully, trying to determine who’d been kind and who’d been mean to him. The look in his eyes, his bowed head, and his subservient stance forced me to consider that he may not have had any friends in that class, aside (possibly) from the little Black girl and native boy. My big brother would grow up to be an accomplished musician, who was loved by many. He has always been my guardian angel.

“The Black Unicorn” honors my father, who raised my brother and me after our mom’s death. When I was 9 years old, I went to school wearing a beautiful poncho. It was the latest fashion, and all the teachers marveled at it. When they asked where I got it, I told them that my father made it. They were shocked. I remember thinking innocently “Doesn’t your daddy make ponchos for you? I’ll bet he’d make one if you asked him to.” My love for art, culture, characters, and sense of humor are all inherited from my artist, opera-singing, poncho-making father. This photograph was taken during his career with the Department of Justice, when he was the associate warden of a federal prison in Michigan – back when the emphasis was on reform and not mass incarceration. I love the image because he was humble, gentle, and loving at home, but he’s large and in charge here. Powerful. Growing up, I didn’t recognize how extraordinary his accomplishments were for a Black man in America in the 1970s. It was very much like the poncho. I thought that everyone’s dad was just this magnificent. The process of highlighting him in this settiing gave me an opportunity to reflect upon him in that extraordinary position; it’s something that we never discussed when he was alive. It’s like he was Barack Obama before Barack Obama became Barack Obama.

The Black Unicorn, Mixed Media, detail

ROCHELLE SHICOFF

www.ShellyShicoff.weebly.com

Eventually Be Able, mixed media

Art making is the thread that runs through Rochelle Shicoff’s life. She has been involved in looking at, thinking and talking about it since receiving an easel at 6 years of age. She works in a series format where her intuition and experience are always active. The choices in creating art are limitless and very exciting, keeping her continually interested.

She was awarded the Rome Prize Fellowship in Painting as well as many public art commissions and residencies. She has traveled extensively throughout Western Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia photographing architecture and landscapes. Among her awards are Visiting Artist residencies, community grants, a nomination for the Fulbright, and American Academy of Arts and Letters She coauthored The Mural Book: A Practical Guide for Educators published by Crystal Productions . Her murals can be seen in NYC, MA, FLA, GA, and Mexico.

Rochelle Shicoff is a member of Gallery A-3/ Amherst , Massachusetts and has exhibited her paintings both nationally and internationally.

Lost and Found: To Make Whole - Our past is never gone. It lives in memories, stories, objects.

In the mixed media series Lost and Found: To Make Whole I connected with my maternal grandparents, who were tailors, with the repetitive gesture of hand sewing fabrics, and with my late mother who was a master knitter and painter, by using her yarn for the wrapped pieces.

The painted images, which are enclosed by embroidery hoops, are reminiscent of the ancient Mimbres culture and the Ewe are carved wooden female protector figures. The small clay objects are made of earth, where artifacts such as these find daylight at an archeological dig.

I am a visual storyteller, communicating through colors, textures and mixed media. Working in a series format, adding and subtracting ideas and images, I believe that all work created on one subject, over an extended period of time, unites and intensifies the concept and imagery. Acrylic paint is my chosen material because it allows me to create flat areas of color and sharp edges which I think is a clear way of expressing a painting’s ideas. The use of a complimentary color palette and asymmetrical shapes has always interested me. In this series, a variety of patterned textiles was used to expand the work three-dimensionally.

The

Effect of the Moon, mixed media

Making art for me is solving a puzzle: how to organize all of the elements to fit together to result in a cohesive whole.

This work is meant to encourage the viewer to find their own story, connections and past.

Spoke at Length, mixed media

To Prevail, mixed media

SUSAN SAUNDERS

www.SusanSaundersPhotography.com

NYC Triptych, photography

Susan Saunders is an award winning author, photographer and storyteller. Originally a native of south Texas, Saunders' early work captures the rugged beauty of life on a ranch at the US/Mexico border. Her early work focuses on indigenous family, friends, and neighbors in that ranching community. After college she spent many years in Manhattan where her focus turned to the equally rugged terrain of the New York City street scene. Today, Saunders splits her time between a home in Westhampton, NY and Nova Scotia. Her work continues to capture the elegant beauty of the world around her in images of seascapes, wetlands, and the rugged Canadian wilderness. Her expertise as a naturalist occasionally merges with the surreal, in a series called Transplendent Landscapes which balances magical realism with cryptic and often humorous symbolism that comments on the human/nature experience.

Her work can be seen at the William Ris Gallery on the North Fork of Long Island, in Jamesport NY and at the Art Studio Hamptons Gallery in Westhampton Beach, NY.

Photography has been a life-long passion. I acquired my first camera when I was 12 and used it to chronicle my days growing up in south Texas. I started photographing seriously when I was in college in Manhattan, and I created an extensive archive of NYC street photographs from the 1970s and ‘80s. Several of these were included in a recent NY Times article about city life in the ‘70s, as well as in various internet collections like Vintage Everyday. For the past year, I’ve been working with a mirrorless camera converted to capture infrared light.

Gale Warnings, photo montage

Fireworks, photo montage

Moonrise, photo montage

Virginia Mallon was born in Queens, New York, now a Long Island resident, she currently lives in Northport. Mallon studied with Indian Space artist Robert Barrell and received her Bachelor of Arts from Queens College of the City University of New York. She was also involved in several archeological excavations in both the United States and Europe. Her interests in nature and oceanography were further explored during extensive traveling in the Northeastern United States as well as in Europe, Mexico, and Australia.

Throughout all of the themes of Ms. Mallon's work, we see the artist's dreamlike vision as well as the juxtaposition of nature and man. The commonality is endurance; the variation is how each endures. In nature, the act of endurance is unselfconscious and elegant; in man, it is the result of dark psychological territory.

In "Crustaceans and Older Influences" a decades long project begun in the nineties, the artist’s portraits of sea creatures are magical and graceful. Nature is seen as mystical and aloof, while man is always grossly enmeshed. One simultaneously gathers in these portrayals strength and vulnerability, and that the intrinsic nobility of endurance prevails.

Ghost Catfish, oil on canvas

Skate, oil on canvas

Riverhead Koi, oil on canvas

In 2002 I had the great fortune to move into a small cottage on the bluffs of a town named Crab Meadow. Along with a cottage, I inherited an amazing natural landscape and an opportunity explore the nautical beauty that skirts the bluffs and wetlands of our town. I have always been attracted to projects with an environmental bend; images of horseshoe crabs and sea horses have been with me for years, as is the balance between man and his environment.

Although much of my recent work contemplates contemporary angst, I do try to balance it with less trauma laden muses. This exhibits includes paintings inspired by happier themes – the beauty of creatures from a watery landscapes, on canvas, and portraits of my favorite Artists & Poets, painted on cigar boxes. These creatures of the sea give me hope for our planet. The artists and poets give me hope for humanity.

Artists & Poets

Starfish, oil on canvas

Frida Kahlo George Grosz Georgia O’Keefe Rainer Maria Rilke

oil on cigar boxes

WORKSHOP OF SHORTT

www.WorkshopofShortt.com

Workshop of Shortt does not name their awards, grants, commissions, collectors, or residencies; believing what matters in their practice is focusing on the art as they define it – a life practice.

We are question based artists and scientists that are rooted in non-extractive practices. Our tools include water, soil, rock, cotton, and wood.

Shredding My Toxic Core: Dress & Canvas Recycled Canvas, Cotton, and Thread

Shedding My Toxic Core: Wappingers Beauty soil, cotton, wood

The Fat Canary Journal & Gallery is an artist run platform celebrating contemporary and emerging artists. Formed in 2018, the Fat Canary was created to offer an alternative space for artists to share their work. Originally a print journal, in 2020, due to the pandemic, it was changed to an online gallery.

As artists ourselves, we realize that we are responsible for creating our own opportunities. At Fat Canary, artists are invited to exhibit their work, it does not collect a fee or commission on sales and inquiries are referred directly back to the artist.

In prior years, in partnership with Arte Studio Ginestrelle, an art residency in Assisi, Italy, we have offered fellowships to emerging artists. This year we are holding our inaugural, in-person exhibit at the Ceres Gallery in New York City. We hope to hold similar events at other venues in New York in the future.

For more information on the Fat Canary, please visit us at www.FatCanaryJournal.com or email FatCanaryJournal@gmail.com

Artist Contact Information:

Barbara A. Friedman www.BarbaraFriedman.net

Dasha Ziborova www.DashaZiborova.com

Donna Bassin www.DonnaBassin.com

Jude Harzer www.JudeHarzerFineArt.com

Kate Missett www.KateMissett.com

Maggie Rose www.MaggieRoseArtist.com

Marissa Bridge www.MarissaBridge.com

Regina Guienze Tinti iamreginatinti@gmail.com

Rochelle Shicoff www.shellyshicoff.weebly.com

Susan Saunders www.SusanSaundersPhotography.com

Virginia Mallon www.VirginiaMallon.com

Workshop of Shortt www.WorkshopofShortt.com