Galen Cheney: Encoded

By Friends | Published: September 2, 2011

The Picture Gallery at Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, will highlight works by painter, Galen Cheney this fall. A graduate of Mt. Holyoke College, Cheney earned an MFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Born in Los Angeles, she lives and works Middlesex, Vermont.  Cheney says of her work, “My goal is to make paintings that feel inevitable: paintings that seem to have emerged over time with the help of many hands.  I am drawn to city walls that show the ephemera of decades:  marks, tags, torn posters, and expressions of all kinds, by artists, youths, outsiders, strivers—often anonymous people connected only by geography. The paintings I am making now include invented letters of imagined tongues as abstract forms.  By using forms evocative of both Western and Arabic languages, I hope to invent a cross-cultural collaboration between often polarized worlds.”

The public is invited to an opening reception in the Picture Gallery, Saturday, September 3, 2011, from 4:30-6:00 p.m., with a talk by the artist at 5:00 p.m. The reception, with tastings of local food from the Taftsville Country Store in Taftsville, Vermont and the artist’s talk are free and open to the public. The exhibition will be on view daily 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. from September 3 through October 24, 2011.

This is the third of three exhibits in the Picture Gallery sponsored annually by the Trustees of the Saint-Gaudens Memorial in cooperation with Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. The Saint-Gaudens Memorial is a non-profit partner of the National Park Service, helping to support the mission of Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site.

Cross Town by Galen Cheney

Cross Town by Galen Cheney

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Mary Temple: Outside (Light), In

By Friends | Published: July 27, 2011

In the site-specific series Light Installations, (2002-Present), New York Artist, Mary Temple creates light and shadow from nearby windows that seem to be raking the walls of the gallery. The illusion, however, is a hand-painted trompe l’oeil shard, often situated in rooms with little or no natural light.  The artist says of her work, “In this work I rely on the viewers knowledge and memory of light intersecting space to raise questions of belief and doubt.  These pieces are meant to give the viewer time to enjoy not knowing, and to privilege questions over answers.  By puzzling the physical senses, that is, setting up the viewer to fail at identifying something as elemental as light, these paintings celebrate the pleasure of trying to understand those things just outside the grasp of physical intelligence.”

Mary Temple, born in Arizona, now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Recent solo project venues include the Museum of Arts and Design, New York City the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York; and The Aldrich Contempo­rary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT. Group show venues include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Western Bridge, Seattle, Washington; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams; the Sculpture Center, Long Island City, New York; The Mattress Factory Art Museum, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; The Jewish Museum, New York City; and the Portland Museum of Art, Maine, among many others.

Temple is the recipient of the 2010 Saint-Gaudens Memorial Fellowship, the 2010 Basil Alkazzi Award for Excellence in Painting, and a 2010 Fellow in Painting from New York Foundation for the Arts. She is currently exhibiting in a solo exhibition at the Rice University Art Gallery in Houston, Texas, and group exhibitions at the Drawing Center, New York City; the Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington; and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts. She has just completed a large public commission for a New York City school and a New York City subway station. In 2012, she will complete a public commission for the lobby of the Mickey Leland Federal Building, in Houston, Texas.

The show will be at the Picture Gallery from July 9 through August 28, 2011 and is open daily from 9 AM to 5 PM during the regular hours of the park.

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Deb Todd Wheeler at the Picture Gallery

By Friends | Published: May 17, 2011

Deb Todd Wheeler produces installations, sculptural objects, and various other media on themes of man’s interaction with the environment. The Picture Gallery at Saint-Gaudens National Historical Site will have an exhibition of her photography, video and found objects titled “Blew,” on display from June 4, 2011 through July 4, 2011.

Wheeler says of her work, “In 1988, the discovery of a patch of accumulated plastic debris in the North Pacific larger than the size of Texas captured the imagination of many, providing tangible evidence that indeed nothing we make ever really leaves us.”

From power generating interactive installations to cataloging prints of plastic as a possible new species of marine life, Wheeler’s work explores the aesthetic impact of human productivity in the natural world with, as Ann Wilson Lloyd wrote in Art in America, “a surface cheeriness, but a subtext of futility.”

Wheeler shows at the Miller Block Gallery in Boston and lectures frequently around New England. Recently, she was awarded “Best Solo Exhibition for 2011 and Best New Media Exhibition” by the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research. The artist will give a talk about her work at 5:00 PM after which an opening reception will take place at the Picture Gallery on Saturday, June 4 from 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM, showcasing local foods and beverages.

So She Floats

So She Floats

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2010 SAINT-GAUDENS FELLOWSHIP AWARDED

By Friends | Published: December 10, 2009

MTEM.0041_e“Extended Afternoon, Phase 3″ at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT, 2006, latex paint on existing architecture, hardwood planks, wood stain, varnish, 17 x 24 x 23.5 in.

The Saint-Gaudens Memorial is pleased to announce the awarding of its 2010 Fellowship to Mary Temple. Temple is best known for her large, site-specific trompe l’oeil installations painted on the outside of buildings or inside, on the walls and floors, often in unexpected locations.

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Temple received her MFA from Arizona State University in Tempe. She has exhibited in numerous museums and galleries in the United States, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Mass MoCA, and the Brooklyn Museum and has had her work shown abroad in France, Italy, Luxembourg, and Slovakia. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

The Fellowship of the Saint-Gaudens Memorial was established in 1977 to assist artists of promise. A Fellow is selected annually by the Saint-Gaudens Memorial from a pool of candidates put forward by the Fellowship Committee and advisors, and is awarded to artists who have completed a body of work that demonstrates exceptional talent, and who may benefit from the recognition and financial grant that accompany the Fellowship. The year following the Fellowship, the artist submits works for installation, as part of the Saint-Gaudens Memorial exhibition series at the Picture Gallery.

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