Karen Schifano
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A Legacy of Making: 26 Contemporary Artists Inspired by their Italian Heritage
12/30/2024
https://joannematteraartblog.blogspot.com/2024/09/a-legacy-of-making-at-connecticut.html
A Legacy of Making:
26 Contemporary Artists Inspired by Their Italian Heritage,
curated by Joanne Mattera
September 3 through October 19, 2024
Cummings Arts Center
Connecticut College
270 Mohegan Avenue, New London
The great wave of Italian immigration took place in the closing years of the 19th century and early into the 20th. Most of the arrivals were Southern Italians who set foot on Ellis Island with few belongings but with the ingenuity, creativity, and will to make a new life. Using their skills in carpentry, stonework, farming, mechanics, tailoring, needlework, and cooking, they created homes and communities that flourished and grew. Most remained in the Northeast within a day’s drive of where they landed. The tradition of creativity and handwork continues in the studios of their children and grandchildren. Painters and sculptors, printmakers and textile artists, they draw from the richness of Italian and Italian American culture, some producing work that speaks to tradition, others working more abstractly but personally informed by the language and customs that were, and are, so much a part of their lives. A few of the artists are immigrants themselves. All of them
synthesize Italian or immigrant culture with their experience as trained artists working in a contemporary art world.
The 26 participating artists are B. Amore, John Avelluto, Nancy Azara, Angelica Bergamini,
Gianluca Bianchino, Jennifer Cecere, Chris Costan, Elisa D’Arrigo, Claudia DeMonte,
Paul Fabozzi, Milisa Galazzi, Diana González Gandolfi, D. Dominick Lombardi,
Lloyd (Maccarone) Martin, Joanne Mattera, Timothy (Macellari) McDowell, Patricia Miranda,
John Monti, Laura (Policella/Roccio) Moriarty, Carolanna Parlato, Anna Patalano, Don Porcaro,
Mary Schiliro, Karen Schifano, Denise Sfraga, and Lisa Zukowski.
September 3-October 19, 2024
Cummings Art Center, Connecticut College
270 Mohegan Avenue, New London
Receptions: Saturday, September 14, 2:00-5:30, and Saturday, October 19, 4:00-5:30
The gallery is open Monday-Friday, 9:00-5:00; Saturday and Sunday, 1:00-4:00
"Fresh and Breezy", Metcalf Gallery, Taylor University, IND
12/30/2024
The Taylor University Art Department is hosting an exhibit of artists who specialize in contemporary art. Titled Fresh Teaser, the show is currently installed in Metcalf Gallery through December 8.
Fresh Teaser features the work of three artists who work, or have spent a significant time working in, New York City. Leah Tacha, Karen Schifano, and Jon Lutz provided works of art to Taylor University for the show.
“We’re excited for this opportunity in the Metcalf Gallery to bring their invigorating work to campus, to inform our practice as artists, and to grant perspective on contemporary art,” said Jeremie Riggleman, director of the Metcalf Gallery and Associate Professor of Art. “They are making thoughtful, transcendental work about the world around them as they live and move through the planet.”
A Legacy of Making: 21 Contemporary Italian American Artists
12/30/2024
Along with the series of exhibitions (of which this is the first), curated by Joanne Mattera and others at various instituions, there is a publication available on BookBaby: Italianità, Contemporary Art Inspired by the Italian Immigrant Experience, by Joanne Mattera, with essays and images by 59 artists.
https://store.bookbaby.com/book/italianit%c3%a0
The richly illustrated book is also available on Amazon.com
Resonant Space at Mono Practice, curated by Patricia Zarate
8/19/2023
MONO PRACTICE is pleased to announce Resonant Space, a group exhibition featuring the work of Jacob Cartwright, Joanne Freeman, Karen Schifano, Jim Osman, and Melissa Staiger.
The distinct two and three-dimensional work of the artists in Resonant Space is enriched by the reverberant tone they invoke in each other. The affinity of these artists—Jacob Cartwright, Joanne Freeman, Jim Osman, Karen Schifano, and Melissa Staiger—can be seen in a lexicon of marks: lines, scribbles, scratches, smudges, dots, dashes, patterns, geometric and organic forms, textures and color, even as each stands firmly and uniquely in their approaches to art making.
Reaching beyond the boundaries of form, these works call out and comment on each other's ideas about the ongoing exploration of abstraction. Joanne Freeman does this in the way saturated color shapes overlap, converge and angle for footage within the edges and surface area of the raw linen canvas, while Melissa Staiger’s organic shapes of radiant and trippy color combinations jostle between foreground and background. Jacob Cartwright's highly organized compositions of geometric forms, combined with dense patterns, solid and translucent color, allude to an architectural space, man-made or natural. Like a theater set, Karen Schifano populates the stage with simple, provocative shapes and solid expanses of color that come in and out of the picture plane. And Jim Osman's ideas, with the addition of a third dimension, flow throughout the spaces and colors of his carefully constructed multi-leveled abstract tableaux of cut-out, exposed, and painted wood.
The artists in Resonant Space are all current members of the American Abstract Artists (AAA). AAA was founded in 1936 in New York City at a time when American abstract art was met with vigorous critical and popular resistance. AAA is a democratic, artist-run organization that promotes and fosters understanding of abstract and non-objective art.
Everyone We Know is Here, curated by Heidi Hahn
8/19/2023
Installation view, photo by Daniel G. Hill
Curatorial Statement
When I was first asked to curate the summer show for the Fine Arts Work Center, I felt grateful for the opportunity to explore the scope of the program. To go back in and involve myself in a different way then how I participated in it. I was a Fellow starting in 2014 and did my second year right after the first. I was able to experience being there for two different cycles and seeing the dynamics of two very disparate groups. To see how the Work Center has been operating for all these years, bringing together groups of writers and artists consistently was humbling. While searching through the whole of the FAWC artist registry to get an idea for the show, I was struck by the infinite lives of all the artists that have participated over the years—all that potential and what came from it. What did it translate into years after? I was struck by this endless making. The frustration at the inspiration that was expected to come and the heartache when it left too soon. Of concentrated time and conversations all situated around the fact that we were there in Provincetown at the Fine Arts Work Center. I thought of the show not just as an idea to fit artists into but more of a philosophy or mood about this place and what it does.
This is a curatorial effort to bring together the essence of making in a very particular environment. An amalgamation of years formed by many different practices shaped by landscape, solitude, and community. This is about sustained rigor of practice, an eclectic mix that defines the core principles of the Fine Arts Work Center. I wanted to bring all different kinds of artists together in honor of a place so devoted to its artists. A sort of love letter if you will. The show Everyone We Know is Here will speak to this proposed dedication. I have included Fellows from past years up to the present. Choosing artists whose practice resonated with me and what I felt would represent the program in a way to honor it. Above is the list of artists I have chosen—not an easy thing with the abundance of talent that the Work Center has produced over the years.
Heidi Hahn
Visual Arts Fellow 2014-2015, 2015-2016
The 
MONO PRACTICE is pleased to announce Resonant Space, a group exhibition featuring the work of Jacob Cartwright, Joanne Freeman, Karen Schifano, Jim Osman, and Melissa Staiger. 
