A Pot Nudged Into Oblivion
Curated by Jenn Cacciola
Artist Reception
Saturday October 7, 6-8pm
Join us for a collaborative sound performanceNovember 4th, from 7-9 pm
featuring Stephan Goodwin, Chris Kaczmarek, and Joshua Marquez.
More info on this event here
Artist Zoom Panel Monday November 6, 7pmWatch the recording here.
On view by appt thru November 11, 2023.
email for an appt to visit the gallery
A Pot Nudged Into Oblivion features work by Annika Earley, Shabnam Jannesari, Elena Kalkova, Zahra Pars, Meriel Pitarka, Cynthia Reynolds, Hannah Eve Rothbard, and Jen Schoonmaker, curated by Jenn Cacciola.
This exhibition is a continuation of the curatorial & community project formerly known as Ice Cream Social.
Visit the Exhibition Shop to purchase works from this exhibition.
you know, like me
kneeling to collect the pottery shards
of a house plant my elbow has nudged
into oblivion. What if I sigh,
and the black earth beneath me scatters
like insects running from my breath?
Am I a god then? Am I insane
because I worry about the disassembling of earth
regularly? I walk more softly now..."
- Jamaal May, Respiration
About Curator Jenn Cacciola
Jenn Cacciola is a NY and CT-based artist, curator, and educator originally hailing from Port Chester, NY. She received a Bachelor of Science in Visual Arts from SUNY Purchase School of Art + Design in 2015. She is an on-going member of NYC Crit Club and engages in curation and community building among artists as the Co-Founder/Program Director of Ice Cream Social, and co-curator of Openings Artist Collective, and P2P Curatorial. She has been awarded Artist-in-Residence positions at the Sheen Center For Thought & Culture, Manassas National Battlefield Park, and in virtual residencies with Socially Distant Art, Crisis Residency, World of Co, and Cel del Nord. Her works can be found in the National Parks Foundation’s public collection and in private collections within the United States and Europe. She has exhibited at BRIC Arts, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Equity Gallery, Atlantic Gallery, National Association of Women Artists Gallery, Howard County Arts Council, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, among other spaces. She has previously taught PreK-12th grade Art in NYC schools, and worked as an Art Educator with the New-York Historical Society, the NARS Foundation, and Wingspan Arts. She has also assisted in art forensic and conservation projects for collections at the Hispanic Society of America Museum, PepsiCo Sculpture Garden, and TONDO Art Forensics Lab in Budapest, Hungary.
Artists:
Annika Earley
Annika Earley makes intimate graphite and gouache drawings about transformation, in-between states, and the experience of being a woman. Her work considers the gendered gaze, the demands and joys of motherhood, sensuality, and the measures women take to protect themselves in a patriarchal world. European folk tales act as recognizable reference points within all of Earley's projects. She examines how women are represented in these tales and how their narratives reflect contemporary feminist issues of bodily integrity.
Hannah Eve Rothbard is a multimedia artist, curator, and arts administrator based in New York. She works primarily in mixed media painting, exploring the capacity and limits of built space as a container— for beauty, growth, culture, and comfort. She holds a BFA from New York University. Rothbard has exhibited at venues including 80 Washington Square East Gallery (NY), Local Project (NY), Soft Times Gallery (San Francisco, CA) and the New York City Poetry Festival (NY), and has held residency at the Materia Prima Foundation (Tuscany, Italy).
Meriel Pitarka
Meriel Pitarka (b.1999) is a multi-media sculptor from Long Island, NY currently pursuing a BFA at SUNY Purchase School of Art and Design. Their practice is largely informed by experiences with undiagnosed neurodivergence and transmasculinity. Pitarka’s work is an exploration of the strained expression of identity in the context of systems that innately deny self-agency. Their upbringing in Albanian culture and the intergenerational aspects it entails exposed them to the complex interplay between identity, hierarchies, and the outward appearances that mask oppressive social systems. Neurodivergence, the masculine condition in trans bodies, and the neglected emotional terrain of both are vehicles used in their practice to critically question familiar forms that conceal struggles of the individual. They opt for industrial materials while altering sterilized forms in conjunction with the body to allude to the vague institutional structure that represses these conditions.
Shabnam Jannesari
Shabnam Jannesari an accomplished Iranian artist, holds an MFA with distinction from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Her artworks have been exhibited internationally and, in the US, including notable solo shows like "The Each String is a thread, Each Color is Chord" and "The Carpet Grew like a Garden" Engaging in various group exhibitions, such as "Social Memory: Sites of Remembrance" and "Crossing Cultures," her talent has been recognized by prestigious institutions and collectors like Fidelity and the University of Massachusetts School of Law. Jannesari, an assistant professor at Hastings College, portrays the struggles and strength of Iranian women through her art, challenging societal norms and highlighting the suppressed female identity.
Elena Kalkova
Elena Kalkova (b. 1991 Tver, Russia, lives and works in New York) is a conceptual artist and researcher of Post-Soviet Art History. In her practice, she explores memory and memorilessness, state propaganda, systems of oppression and violence, and complex relationships with home, especially, when the home is a dictatorship.
Kalkova’s research lies primarily in the field of Post-Soviet feminist and queer art and the art of resistance and translation. She holds an MA in Global Arts and Cultures from RISD and is currently working on her MFA at the School of Visual Arts (SVA).
Zahra Pars
Zahra Pars is an Iranian American artist, who lives and works in New York City. Her paintings, explore contrasts: restraint versus excess, femininity versus masculinity, and handmade versus machine made. The horizontal lines in her paintings serve as a metaphor for language, and allude to how meaning can be both conveyed and concealed. Her work has been exhibited at the Staten Island Museum, Smack Mellon, Treat Gallery, 440 Gallery, Richard Meir’s 1 GAP Gallery, and the Tandon Digital Media Center at New York University. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Art Practice and Art History from the University of California, Berkeley.
Jen Schoonmaker
Jen Schoonmaker received her BFA from SUNY New Paltz and her MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. She is interested in the construction of nature and time standing as a symbol, bridging the chasm between person and environment. These objects and landscapes often teeter on the edge of individuality, seamlessly blending with their owners or, at times, melting into the tapestry of our perception, intentionally hidden from view. In our relentless pursuit of control, we coax the elements of nature to perform like magicians, commanding them to disappear and reappear at our will. Within this power lies a certain cruelty—a capacity to erase the natural world on our command.
Cynthia Reynolds
Cynthia Reynolds is a Kentucky-born, New York-based sculptor and installation artist. She explores spatial anxieties of body and mind, using discarded packaging she collects from the streets of the city. The scavenged packing materials carry a history as protectors of objects someone wanted. By creating or filling voids, they provided cushion, but also exerted pressure. Reynolds translates these sensations to the metaphorical packaging of the built environment and the fragile bodies it contains. She holds an MFA (Ceramics) from the University of Washington in Seattle, a BFA (Ceramics) from Kansas City Art Institute, and a BA (English/Art) from Centre College in Kentucky.