Some Recent Exhibitions by our ProWax Members

ProWax members live throughout the United States and around the world. Time and distance keep us from seeing everyone's exhibitions, so a few of our members have shared installation images of their recent solo (or two-artist or featured-artist) shows. We take you to Arizona, California, Massachusetts, and across the pond to Ireland.

                                                         Catherine Nash

An Inner Astronomy at the Adobe Barn Gallery at Triangle L Ranch, Oracle, Arizona, February 8-March 20

Installation view of Catherine's mixed-media installation

Above and below: Two closer views of the desk

Below: Wide-angle view of the space

Writes Catherine: "I can spend hours staring into the sky, mesmerized by the expansiveness of the sky, pondering our place in the universe . . . the sky is a window to the infinite. Through time, humankind has sought to explain and fathom the mystery of our being: in these bodies, on this planet, in this galaxy through mathematics and science and religion. My studies in archeo-astronomy—the exploration of how varied cultures have explained the mysteries of the stars and sky through mapping, symbols and myth—as well as my own dreaming and explorations have informed An Inner Astronomy." 

. . . . .

Howard Hersh

Within/Without took place at Duval Contemporary in San Francisco, January-February

The exhibition followed a month-long artist-in-residency at Local Language in Oakland, December through January. Says Howard, "Local Language is a design, print, and fabrication shop. I was able to produce and exhibit wall drawings printed on adhesive-backed vinyl that were cut on a CNC machine, then painted, floating a few inches off the wall."

Dimensional paintings created in the artist-in-residency program at Local Language in Oakland, California

Closer view below

Local Language continues the story: "Hersh experimented with two new ideas: printed wall drawings and constructed wood paintings. These pieces create a deeper and wider field of vision, inviting viewers to likewise expend their understanding of context and  their place within/without structure."

Tech notes: The CNC machine is a large, computerized flatbed router, says Howard. The operator feeds the machine an Adobe Illustrator file. The painting structures were cut from one slab of wood. Howard used acrylic paint for this series.

Installation view from Duval Contemporary website

Howard's work, above and below, from the Duval Contemporary show

Howard continues: "Christine Duval, a longtime curator and gallery director, saw my work online,. visited my studio, and mounted the show several months later. She chose  important pieces [from the residency] and presented them beautifully on warm gray walls."

. . . . . 

Steven J. Cabral

The Depth of Stillness at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, January 3-28

You can read about Steven in a studio visit here. From the article: "He starts each new work as an investigation both personal and formal–a spiritual journey in his studio. There is a spacious quality of Steven’s work that feels intimate, that invites. Then the distinct lines map out a direction for us to contemplate."

Partial installation view 

Above: Ukiyo 8

Below: Ukiyo 6

Both 2017, encaustic and oil on panel, 20 x 24 inches

. . . . .

Lisa Pressman

The Heart of It at Jen Tough Gallery, Benicia, California, February 9-22

In this exhibition Pressman turns inward, focusing on where the work comes from, “turning the outside noise down and tuning in to the inside.” Writer John Seed comments, “Pressman is attracted to the personal and the familiar, which she recasts into explorations of mood and color. Working in series, she creates families of imagery that share thematic points of departure while generating individual works that are discrete and distinctive.”

Above and below: installation grids

Installation view

. . . . .

Beverly Rippel 

Guns and Gun Violence in America: Too Many, Too Close at Cambridge College, Charlestown, Massachusetts, February 28-March 18

Thirteen paintings from Beverly's Water Pistols and Cap Guns Series, 1992-2018, were featured in this group show, sponsored by Violence Transformed of Boston.

Pink Cap Gun I, 2010, oil on linen with encaustic, 50 x 52 inches

Installation view

Just Once, 1996, oil on linen, 25 x 45 inches

Beverly writes: "I am often asked what got me started painting guns. I realize now that ideas began to germinate back in my college days while I was studying Art and Cultural Anthropology on the conservative campus of the University of Maine in Orono in the late 1960s.The Viet Nam War was on. Young boys–not yet of drinking age–were getting their draft numbers, and I was one of 100 or so students who protested the war by marching on campus with classmate and leader, now writer, Stephen King. In studying 'cultural artifacts' of various indigenous peoples, I began to look closely at and contemplate the American Gun Culture. (I would add that I came from a family of gun owners and hunters, including my paternal grandmother who was from rural Maine.)"

Here, Orange Cap Gun I, 2014, oil on linen with encaustic, 52 x 50 inches

. . . . .

Joanna Kidney

Metamurmuration at Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre, Cork, Ireland, March 3 - April 10 

Metamurmuration is a monumental spatial drawing. Composed of thousands of particles of suspended felt, it trails and swarms through space. Pattern unfolds through the repetition of the deconstructed particle, opening out into an infinity of simultaneous micro and macrocosms. Over 200 people have participated in making this piece of work since 2015, the mundane, repetitive labor recalling assembly lines and mass production, craft and tradition.  

 Installation views above and below

"Two apparently opposed but actually linked ideas seem to underlie Kidney's work: the one and the many. That is how, on the one hand, we experience the world from the point of view of a distinct, individual consciousness, while on the other, each individual is actually a complex amalgam of myriad processes and systems—and a minute constituent of an immense, dynamic universe. Duality and opposites turn up throughout her work: movement and stillness, chance and design, particle and duration and stasis, repetition and change."

—Aidan Dunne, The Irish Times, March 7, 2018

. . . . .

Jasper Johns

We close not with a ProWax member, but with a certain towering figure in the world of encaustic, whose 60-year retrospective, Jasper Johns: Something Resembling Truth, is at The Broad in Los Angeles through May 13.  A related New York Times article by Deborah Solomon offers an interview with the artist.

Installation view
Photo: Pablo Enriquez, from California Home Design website

The Flags, 1958, is in the exhibition. In the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, it was photographed when the museum's new building opened in 2015
JM photos above and below left

"In explaining the source for his flag paintings, Mr. Johns has always said the same thing. The idea came to him in a dream. He does not care to elaborate, or to indulge in dream analysis . . .

"Mr. Johns’s early flags and targets, as everyone now knows, rewrote postwar American art by repudiating most everything about Ab Ex — the splashy emotionalism, the metaphysical longings, the well-rehearsed enactments of agony and ecstasy played out against the quaint bohemian backdrop of Tenth Street and the Cedar Tavern.

"Mr. Johns’s early flags were radical because they did just the opposite. Instead of turning private feelings into bland public statements, he claimed public symbols for the realm of inwardness and private experience." 

--Deborah Solomon from the NYT article