Candice Flewharty

The EMOJI Project

I am working on a series called “The Emoji Project.” These are realistic portraits of me “making faces” to imitate the round yellow faces used in texts to tell the receiver how you feel. Along with the “faces,” I began a group of small paintings of hands gesturing. A lovely result of this project has been the response from friends across the globe. I am lucky enough to have received photos representing the hands on the smart phone keyboard as well as all sorts of creative, smart, and certainly vulgar ideas. I intend to paint them all.
I propose installing these paintings in groups. Through September, these paintings hung nicely in one room of the Governors Island Art Fair. This super show included 100 artists. I am proud of my installation and feel that it would work well in your space, as well. So far, there are fourteen 11”x14” “selfie” portraits, sixteen 8”x 10” hand paintings, and two large 24”x 36” oil paintings. The smaller ones work well grouped in straight rows and columns. The project is not complete and might never be even though I continue to build it. I will happily provide any additional images.
Writing is difficult. I should say that my lack of eloquence is both a result of my own lack of focus and our collective first-world laziness. We are accustomed to everything working fast and requiring little of our own brainpower or physical energy. How marvelous that I can reconnect with people I haven’t seen in years, and terrible that while we text often, some family members and I have not hugged each other in years. The text may end with a bright yellow winky face or, if they think I need it, prayer hands. Emogi’s dot our relationships to substitute for real connection.
We are becoming progressively worse at being together. It’s hard. Also, we don’t want to bother anybody or be bothered. Texting is the answer. Send a virtual hi-five. Before we become self-aware robots that share feelings by selecting a smiley or frowny face, I hope to talk about it.

Candice Flewharty is from Norwich, CT in a house that’s “older than our country”. It was built in 1761. Across the street is a cemetery bearing the remains of several signers of the Declaration of Independence. Reminders of time passing and our country’s history are everywhere. Flewharty says her own history seems small in comparison. She was born in Tyler, Texas, and most of her extended family lives between Dallas and Longview. She is grateful for the worldliness and education gained by living in vastly different places.
Flewharty moved to New York City in 1999 and finished her MFA in painting in 2001 at the School of Visual Arts. After marrying into the Navy, she moved to San Diego for 4 years and then to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She states her daughter will never lack for dinner conversation as she was born in Cuba in 2005. Our next stop was Charleston, SC before settling in Norwich, CT. She has two children and paints full time.

www.candiceflewharty.com

May 6-28, 2016

The Recombination

Dominie Nash’s “The Recombination”‘ is a series that began as experiments in monoprinting on fabric. Each completed work is a combination of two or more of the original prints: layered, cut through, collaged, and stitched together. The originals are retained but transformed into something new. Some larger fabric pieces incorporate rubbings of leaves, with scraps and experiments left over from making the cloth used in some of Nash’s older work. These “found” fabrics are rescued and recycled into new pieces.

Dominie Nash is a full-time artist working in a studio in Washington DC. Her work is included in the collection of the Renwick Gallery,International Monetary Fund, Braintree District Museum (England),Kaiser Permanente and DC Art Bank. A recipient of 2001 and 2012 Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council and a 2010 Creative Projects grant from the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County (MD), she has received several awards in juried exhibits in 2007-2015. She has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibits,nationally and in Europe and Japan. Her work has been published in Art Quilt Portfolio:The Natural World, Quilting Art by Spike Gillespie, 500 Art Quilts, Surface Design, American Craft,Embroidery, Quilt Art by Kate Lenkowsky, The Art Quilt by Robert Shaw , and Fiberarts Design Books 2-7.

www.dominienash.com

May 6-28, 2016

Nordic Stars

Curator’s Statement: “Nordic Stars” presents the selected works of the best Nordic fashion illustrators and is an updated selection of a bigger project “New Nordic Fashion Illustration” Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, exhibited at the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design
(2015) and the Helsinki Design Museum (2012).

As a genre, fashion illustration brings the focus to the artist’s interpretation of sources of inspiration in contemporary fashion, embracing the full variety and richness of illustration styles, while concentrating on the poetic intersection of
present-day fashion and time codes. It is a unique momentary expression of the artist’s poetic sovereign choice: a colourful selfish worldview that, at the same time, takes account of the fashion industry trends, sometimes opposing to them, sometimes interpreting them, or
making an attempt to capture new drifts.

Fashion illustration serves as a paradox between the boundaries of pragmatism and creative freedom, being a unique fusion of the two and, as such, an integral part of the fashion media: magazines, commercials, fashion design, decorations, textiles,
videos, applied art. “Nordic Stars” brings to you the brightest illustration artists from Estonia, Finland,
Sweden and Denmark.

Participating artists:
Britt Samoson (Estonia)
Marju Tammik (Estonia)
Mads Berg (Denmark)
Naja-Conrad Hansen (Denmark)
Cecilia Carlstedt (Sweden)
Daniel Egneus (Sweden)
Laura Laine (Finland)
Jarno Kettunen (Finland)

Curator of the exhibition – Toomas Volkmann
Project manager – Helen Saluveer
Graphic designer – Tuuli Aule

May 6-28, 2016

In A State of Impermanence

As a bridge between an initial idea and a final result, the model plays a central role in the work of the architect. It serves as an important tool in this process of realization as it allows ideas to become tangible, testifiable, modifiable. In my work as a painter, I also work with architectural models, but unlike the architect mine do not only function as tools to enhance my understanding of basic spacial problems like perspective, depth, proportion etc. Rather they are themselves the subjects of my attention.

Architecture is often thought of and also depicted as the stable foundation for modern transient life. The rocks for city dwellers. However, architecture is man made, a result of imagination and craftsmanship. What interests me about architectural models is that they so explicitly point to that feature and thus remind us about the fragility and impermanence of our physical surroundings. They invoke the same type of insights we get in moments of catastrophe, as when we see buildings or even cities torn apart after earthquakes, hurricanes or times of war. But in contrast to the ruin architectural models offer us such perspective in their virtue of being something not yet existing rather than something not anymore existing. They express hope, potential and dreams. And they remind us about the mobility and lightness of the structures we take as the most cemented framework for our lives, however terrifying or optimistic that might be. These structures might be concrete walls or they might be the dogmas we set up as points of navigation through life. In other words, architecture models contain a much richer meaning as they refer to a complexity that goes far beyond their apparent status as tools in a process. This richness is what I intended to bring about as a topic of reflection with the series of paintings that I call “In a State of Impermanence.”

Rikke Kühn Riegels is a Danish artist living in Washington DC. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and art spaces in Denmark, Sweden and Washington DC. After finishing her master’s degree in philosophy at The New School in New York she moved to Washington DC in 2015 where she became part of Brewmaster’s Studios at The Heurich House Museum. Rikke Kühn Riegels has been a visiting artist at The Corcoran School of the Art and Design and a guest lecturer at CUA’s school of architecture.

www.rikke-kuhn-riegels.dk

April 1-30, 2016

50/50 Interactive Drawing Installation Project

Contemporary art has extended the boundaries of concept and material. I see art in my everyday life … in lines created in snowy ground as pedestrians take short cuts through a field … in an electric cable on a street lamp that forms a delicate tangle at the top and gently slopes down and connects to the next post. Art has become more than a painting or a sculpture and this installation project emphasizes that growth. For me art is an expandable form of expression where imagination and possibilities are endless. The “50/50 Interactive Drawing Installation Project” makes use of ordinary materials like electrical wire, vinyl, nuts, bolts and clipboards to create a drawing that is viewer interactive. This interactive drawing gives a second life to the conventional functions of the objects.

Everyone has the innate ability to draw and to be creative, yet over the years I’ve been told countless times how lucky I am to have the artistic ability to create. Many ‘non-artistic’ people will claim, and I quote, “I cannot draw to save my life,” and this art piece intends to prove them wrong. This project installation celebrates just this creative ability that everyone possesses but only few realize they have, the ability to draw. The concept is simple, I facilitate 50% of the creative process and the rest is left to the viewer by changing the drawing. In this drawing installation viewers become an important part in the visual growth of the drawing, proving in a fun and playful way that you do not need to be an artist to be creative.

Heloisa Escudero grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, but relocated to the United States in 1987 where her interest in Fine Arts developed. She obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art and a Master of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. She holds American, Italian and Brazilian citizenships. She is interested in conceptually based art that is both tactile and interactive. Her most recent art projects focus on art that emphasizes the participation of the viewer. In 2007 she moved to Sweden where she worked as a full-time artist, creating four successful projects and exhibiting in Sweden as well as in Spain. During this time she built the first three BackPack Gallery Sculpture Units, starting the BackPack Gallery Project. In 2010, she relocated to New York City, where she collaborated with DJ Spooky (Paul D. Miller) in the project Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica. This collaboration was exhibited at the New York Photo Festival 2012. One of her exhibitions was held at the popular urban park, The Highline. In the beginning of 2013 Heloisa set up her studio in Arlington, Virginia, where she is working on collaborating with DC area artists on several projects. When Heloisa Escudero is not in her studio making art she is working at the Hirshhorn Museum as an Exhibit Specialist. Escudero has been showing in the DC area on a regular basis and her recent solo exhibition was at the Arlington Art Center where she was selected for the the Falls Solo 2014. The City of Alexandria Commission for the Arts has Awarded Escudero a Special Opportunity Art Grant for 2015-16 for the performance of the “Everyone Is A VIP” Project. In January 2017 she will have a solo exhibition at the New Gallery for Contemporary Art at Northern Virginia Community College.

www.heloisaescudero.com