Press Releases

March 16, 1999
Handmade Paper Exhibition Comes to Southampton College's Avram Gallery

Contact:
Jane Finalborgo
Joe Dionisio
(516) 287 8313
Fax: (516) 283 4081

Southampton, NY -- Artists Chuck Close, Joyce McDaniel, Alan Shields and Michelle Stuart will exhibit their handmade paper works in the Avram Gallery at Southampton College of Long Island University from April 1-30.

A reception will take place in the Avram Family Galleries on Wednesday, April 7, from 4-6 p.m. Shields will host a talk and demonstration at 5 p.m.

The four artists are internationally renowned for their talent in handmade paper designs, a unique medium that dates back hundreds of centuries.

Chuck Close, a New York-based artist saluted by the Smithsonian Institution in 1996 for his "unique contributions to American Art," is esteemed internationally for his expressionistic style.

His well-known imagery is derived from diverse processes. He has manufactured pure rag pulp from cotton fabric, used alternative finishing methods, explored different shades of background colors, and conceived the idea of using fluorescent light grills as grids/templates. Critic Richard Solomon says his experimentations with technique have 'so many possibilities for error that it is a very tedious, anxious process. (His) editions are a testament to (his) skill and patience.?

Close's work has been exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Pace Gallery, the St. Louis Art Museum, Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, and in Kyoto, Japan. He has earned awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters, Art Institute of Boston, and Guild Hall in East Hampton. He won a 1964 Fulbright Scholarship to Austria, a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a 1997 NYS Governor's Arts Award, and was named 1996 Artist of the Year by NYCATA Artworks.

A former resident artist at The American Academy in Rome, Close has been the subject of retrospective in Munich, Germany. He earned a B.F.A. and M.F.A. at Yale University, and has taught at NYU, Yale and the School of the Visual Arts.

Joyce McDaniel's exhibit, "Holding Patterns," often incorporates dressmaker pattern paper, stones, wax and welded steel, the latter of which is an uncommon material for women sculptors. In 1991, she discovered that the directions on dressmaker pattern paper, designed ostensibly to aid creativity, actually controlled and disempowered women.

"My use of pattern paper... addresses conformity to ideals of appearance, loss of individuality and culturally imposed female roles," said McDaniel, a resident of Boston. "By choosing to make sculpture with (these) patterns, I (create) objects which query... assumptions about gender role and behavior."

McDaniel earned praise for a recent solo show at New York's Dieu Donne Papermill, which awarded her an Artist's Grant in 1993. Her honors include fellowships from the NEA and the New England Foundation for the Arts, and awards from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Washington Square East Galleries in New York. She earned an M.F.A from Tufts University, an M.A. from Wellesley College and a B.A. at Boston College.

Michelle Stuart, of Amagansett and New York, has been featured in hundreds of exhibits here and abroad for over 25 years. Her display, titled "Natural Histories," uses organic elements such as frosted paper, leaves, seeds and beeswax. The word "extinct" is faintly printed on much of her work-- such transparency reflects the word's very definition.

"Her recent work stains available surfaces with seed which has no welcoming field in which to bloom," writes critic Richard Foreman. 'That space or canvas... of pure and melancholy potential... becomes the true subject of her art."

Stuart has received fellowships from the Finnish Art Association, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ford Foundation and has won an impressive four grants from the NEA. Her creations have been widely exhibited in Sweden, Australia, Finland, Switzerland, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, England, France, Iran, Italy, Korea, Canada, Austria, the Philippines, Belgium, and in almost all 50 states. She studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and The New School for Social Research in New York.

Alan Shields, who works out of a Shelter Island farmhouse, is described by the New York Times as a "daring" and "frequently spectacular" artist. Since gaining notoriety in the 1960s, his experimentation and challenges to accepted papermaking techniques have produced inventive, often complex creations. These are spectacularly layered, laminated, sewn, collaged and/or perforated.

"He turns the viewer's mind away from the concept of white sheets of paper in a rectangular format," says Shunichi Kamiyama, curator of the Center for Contemporary Graphic Art in Japan, where Shields recently was the focus of a major retrospective.

Shields, a Guggenheim Fellowship winner in 1973, has displayed his work in hundreds of exhibits worldwide. His 30-year career has included retrospectives in Cleveland, Memphis, Miami and Kansas City, and participation in the Documenta in Kassel, Germany, and the Venice Biennale. He was educated at Kansas State University.

The Avram Family Gallery is open to the public Monday to Friday from 12-5 p.m., and by appointment. For information call gallery director Beth Giles at (516) 287-8234.

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