August 2017 At The Atrium Gallery

RI State  Council on the Arts Announces the Artists Loop Show at the Atrium Gallery

The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) presents an exhibition at the Atrium Gallery at One Capital Hill featuring new work from the organization The Artists Loop, with art from a variety of area artists. Also on display will be work from the Memory Quilt-Collage Project, a multi-media work using textile fragments and handmade paper. The show will be on exhibit from July 24th through August 19th, 2017 at the State-run gallery located at One Capitol Hill, the State’s main administration building on Smith Street in Providence, RI.

A Gallery Night Providence reception will be held on Thursday evening, August 17, from 6:00-8:30pm.

 preceded by an Artist Panel discussion from 5:00-6pm involving the Memory Quilt-Collage project.

The Artists Loop is a program founded and developed by Pnina Pressburger to curate displays and events, to connect artists with the public for the purpose of offering face-to-face space for conversation, to exchange feedback, and to challenge each other. Participants gather to share work and to talk about art. Invited artists make presentations and share their experience as artists. Since 2011, the Artists Loop program has offered a variety of art-related events, including exhibits, presentations by artists about their work, and workshops in art and music at venues across the state including the Rochambeau Library, East Providence Public Library (Weaver Library), Pawtucket Library, RISD Museum, Gallery Z, Dryden Gallery, Governor Henry Lippitt House Museum and Providence City Hall.

Exhibitors for the Artists Loop Memory Quilt- Collage Project were selected by juror Michele Leavitt. To curate the exhibit at the Atrium Gallery, Pnina Pressburger additionally invited artists whose work complemented the juried part of the exhibit.

Artists involved in the August 17, 2017 panel discussion will include Laura Petrovich-Cheney, Keith Fox and Michele Chisholm Leavitt.

Laura Petrovich-Cheney collects discarded materials to explore ideas that are rooted in the repetition of life—birth, growth, death, and regeneration. This New Jersey artist uses salvaged wood to create traditional and contemporary quilt patterns. Her work has been featured in The Weather Channel television show, Uppercase magazine and Quilting Arts Magazine, among other media outlets and scholarly publications.

Keith Fox’s specialties are teaching, painting, narrative art, abstract art, public speaking, and art appreciation. As an educator, he enjoys incorporating electronic learning tools, such as course blogs, into his classes at the Community College of Rhode Island. Keith’s paintings have been reviewed in the Chicago Art Journal, the Portuguese newspaper the Setubalense, and by art historian Fernando Antonio Baptista Pereira.

Michele Chisholm Leavitt is a RI artist who was born in Louisville, KY and later grew up on Long Island, NY. She has been an adjunct art professor since 1976 including when she moved to RI in 1991, teaching at CCRI and RISD Pre College. Her textiles, collages, drawings and paintings can be found in the collections of the Newport Art Museum, The University of Virginia Art Museum and more.

Pnina Pressburger, curator of the show, began the Memory Quilt-Collage Project in September 2015 as a way to collaborate with textile and collage artists in the production of experimental, mixed-media art. The artists involved in this collaboration met with Martha Jackson, who is the primary designer at Restored by Design, where she shared her methods for transforming and repurposing found antique fragments of fabric. Additionally, the artists met with Lauren Pearlman, who directs Paper Connection International, where they explored different ways of working with handmade papers. Furthermore, the artists met with curator Emily Peters at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, for a private viewing of an experimental collage titled Ritual, c. 1965, by Romare Bearden (1911-1988). Before meeting with Peters, the artists attended a screening of the documentary film titled The Art of Romare Bearden (National Gallery of Art, 2003) at the Weaver Library, East Providence, RI, where they also participated in a discussion about this documentary, led by artist/educator Keith Fox. This collaboration and participation by the textile and collage artists resulted in the fascinating Memory Quilt- Collage Exhibit.

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