April 23 – May 18, 2024
Gallery I
Marilyn Banner
CONNECTIONS / Lost and Found
April 23 – May 18, 2024
Reception: Thu, April 25, 6-8pm
Untitled 85, 2023, ink and ink wash on canvas, 7.5 x 8.75″
Ceres Gallery presents the work of Marilyn Banner. Her modestly scaled, delicately drawn images and small-scale objects evoke a range of possible and imagined connections. Diaristic drawings and objects hint at presence and connections, aloneness and relationships, things and people, experiences lost and found. Banner’s materials are modest: for the drawings, raw canvas, drawing pens and markers, inks, wax and conte crayons; for the objects, wood chips, bones, and teeth covered with encaustic. Their diminutive size requires close inspection. Mysterious and suggestive, Marilyn Banner’s work evokes closeness, a solitary stance, a distant memory, or a threat. Intimate in nature, her pieces invite the viewer into a quiet world.
As Bachelard writes: All we communicate to others is an orientation toward what is secret without ever being able to tell the secret objectively.
Gallery I
Elizabeth Myers Castonguay
Tapestry of Nature III / Endangered
April 23 – May 18, 2024
Reception: Thu, April 25, 6-8pm
Intertwined, 2023, 30 x 40″, acrylic and imported paper on canvas
Ceres Gallery presents the work of Elizabeth Myers Castonguay.
Castonguay has spent a lifetime observing, researching, and making artwork about her passions: human diversity and the preservation of Mother Nature. Something as small as a fruit fly, a human head, or a magnificent winter landscape seen from the train as she travels between her studios in Pittsburgh and NYC can inspire a large painting. She finds joy in learning that the tiny eyelashes on some birds are modified feathers, the fruit fly has many body parts like our own, the bird’s nest in her yard holds fast in winds though porch furniture is in flight, and the shape of the human nose provides climate control and has adapted over generations.
For the past fourteen years, Castonguay has created paintings that unite her passions. During this time, the number of endangered species has risen from 40,000 to over one million. The paintings often depict humanity monochromatically with the endangered species in full color because they are critically important to the fine balance of nature. The paintings are at times divided into sections because all living beings are complex, varied, and sentient as scientists continue to discover. Colors are frequently placed next to their complement to show the strength of opposites while colorful grids represent images of DNA common to all life forms. Mother Nature is also used as a metaphor for women since many find themselves in situations of endangerment globally. The artist says, “With the planet suffering from climate change, deforestation, overfishing, pollution, poaching, and war, we must remedy what we have created through global partnership and individual commitment. I hope the viewer will internalize, reflect, and see the world that we have created. Within the work there is urgency but also an element of hope because we can all engage in the stewardship of Mother Nature while also respecting others of our own species.”
Gallery II
Tania Kravath
CONNECTION and LOSS
April 23 – May 18, 2024
Receptions: Thu, April 25, 6-8pm and Sat, April 27, 3-5pm
Mother and Child, 2023, 11″ x 13″ x 10, wood fired ceramica.
Ceres Gallery is pleased to present the work of Tania Kravath.
The ceramic sculptures by Tania Kravath, slab built forms, are moving, full of heart and spirit and speak for the voices of women and children throughout history. Kravath’s work is tied to political and social narratives. The marks and patterns of her surfaces suggest the arbitrary events that affect and mark each being. The surface treatments evoke a feeling of ancient artifacts unearthed yet they resonate with life and are alive with feeling.
Upcoming:
May 21 – June 15, 2024
Fat Canary Journal Presents
Virginia Mallon, Curator
Minako Ito
New Work