Caitlin Karolczak

Caitlin Karolczak explores a number of themes in her work that are connected to the fragility of the human body and mind. Her source imagery often comes from my collection of vintage medical and memorial photography. These photographs blur the line between artistic portraiture and medical illustration. In many cases the photographers deliberately and artfully arrange their subjects, at the same time documenting debilitating medical conditions and death. Her paintings also wrestle with the intersection of beauty and distress. Caitlin incorporates painting techniques from many eras, both classical and modern; intertwining meticulously detailed renderings of the found images with abstract backgrounds, collages, and other unfinished representational details while often using vintage and recycled material, collecting everything from antique textiles and paper, to vials of powdered pigments and oils. The past lives of these materials offer additional texture to the artistic process.

Much of her work offers a modern interpretation of Vanitas. The term characterizes the appreciation of life’s pleasures shadowed with the awareness of their inevitable loss. It also refers to a specific category of painting intended to illustrate the same theme. "Memento Mori" is a genre of artistic creation meant to fulfill the same purpose: to remind people of their mortality. Traditionally, both genres carry a moralistic, often religious overtone. Though religion and spirituality is evident in her work, she investigates these themes with a modern relativism and ambivalence. While the original vanitas artists sought to motivate viewers to turn away from earthly pleasures and focus instead on spiritual wealth, her modern interpretations does not offer such clear conclusions. Rather, the viewer is left to consider his or her individual existence.

Martin Cary Horowitz

Santa Fe artist Martin Horowitz uses gold, the Earth’s most precious metal, as his medium and also the palette for his stunning relief sculpture and gold “paintings”. Traditionally trained in the Renaissance water gilding process, Horowitz has translated this age old artistic medium into the contemporary minimalist language of form, creating beautiful golden wall pieces vibrant with their own internal energy, that subtly reflect external movement and color.

As one of America’s most renowned gilders, Horowitz’s credentials and experience as master gilder and artist are as impeccable as they are diverse. In addition to creating his artwork for over thirty years, Horowitz has lectured and taught in his field, worked as a master frame maker for some of the world’s most well-respected institutions, participated in the creation and installation of monumental outdoor gilded sculpture and applied his vast knowledge of gilding to enhancing ornamental architectural structures. He has introduced numerous technical innovations in gilding, incorporating new methods and materials into this ancient artistic tradition.

Horowitz, who attended New York’s School of the Visual Arts in the early seventies, was profoundly influenced by the Minimalist movement then prominent, and his art pays homage to Mark Rothko and Donald Judd with its visual simplicity and serene power. Ultimately, the perception of Horowitz’s work evolves into a visual dance of light highlighted by the rich gold field and the artist’s intention and attention to presentation.

Artist Statement

"The development of my art over the last 33 years has required that I find solutions to creative challenges. Through the early years I used only traditional gilding techniques (gesso, clay and wood substructures), but adhering to the status quo threatened to stifle my creative vision. Instead, I challenged tradition by developing new techniques, resulting in what some have referred to as "The School of Marty."

I conceived and produced my first gilded artwork in 1970. From that point forward, I was committed to both the material and to the simple elegance of the minimalist form. In 1989 I rediscovered the ancient technique of water gilding ultra-smooth surfaces with sturgeon glue. This technique allowed me to change my substrate (base material), enabling me to break through the barriers to artistic expansion in this vein of work. In the 1990s I moved my art into three dimensions, literally coming off the wall with spheres, saucers and found objects."

Jonathan Alpeyrie

Jonathan Alpeyrie is a photojournalist with a specialty on covering military conflicts and social movements that are taking place throughout the world. Originally from France, he moved to the United States as a teenager, received a history degree from the University of Chicago, and upon graduation began working as a photographer for local newspapers. It was in 2000, during his trip to Panama, when he witnessed civil unrest and discovered his call for international photojournalism. From there on his career has included numerous international assignments and independent projects - he has covered stories in locations as diverse as Panama, Georgia, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Bosnia and Croatia, Nepal, Congo, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, China and beyond.

Alpeyrie also has been working on a project photographing and interviewing WWII Veterans from all over the world. Highlighted in this exhibit are four men from Paris, Edinburgh, Russia, and Poland.

Alpeyrie’s work has been featured in Time, Newsweek and National Geographic Magazines.

Cécile Cowdery

Cécile Cowdery was an artist for most of her life. She began as a child sketching her brothers and sisters and the abundant nature on the Round Prairie, Minnesota farm where she was raised.

By the time Cécile had become a woman and mother her artistic nature and talent was drained off in the making of shirts, dresses and even caps, jackets and trousers for herself and her family. The Depression and the difficult times that came with it to America’s rural Midwest required resourcefulness from everyone in the family.

The December of 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor changed Cécile’s world and her hometown forever. Virtually all American men under 30 were to be drafted. At age 29, Raymond Cowdery was drafted, and Cecile was left alone with her children. Once drafted, Cécile wrote her husband daily. She adorned each envelope with a creative illustration of subjects that could range from the extremely romantic to that of joyful joking.

This collection of envelopes, were created only to show her husband that she loved and missed him. Very little in life is as private as personal correspondence and at the time they were illustrated, were expected to remain private. Each was a beautifully executed, intricate work of art that left no doubt both the sender and the recipient were very special to each other.

Cécile’s thoughts about the beautiful envelopes are a mixture of Midwestern modesty and justifiable pride: "I made these envelopes for my pleasure and that of my husband. If others take pleasure in them then I am rewarded three times."

Robin Berg, author of “World War II Envelope Art of Cécile Cowdery”, 1992

Collection is on loan from Cécile’s son, Brian Cowdery who is also an artist.

Brian Cowdery

"TWO BIT CIRCUS"

Brian Cowdery has been a full time artist since 1974. He has designed and made furniture, produced retro signs, and even tried painting for a while. For the past 26 years he has concentrated on designing and making metal toys in a style similar to the way toys were built in the 1920s. Cowdery considers that era to be the golden age of American automotive toys because even though they were made from heavy automobile steel and sported realistic features like working steering, they had flowing lines and a certain stylistic elegance.

Everything he creates is an original design. Sizes range from about twelve inches long to the occasional considerably larger piece. Quantities vary from one-of-a-kind to as many as 24 or more of a single design. Each piece is signed and numbered or identified as one-off. Every one is handmade and painted by the artist. The workmanship is exacting.

The circus consists of 17 vehicles, a multitude of accessories, and a Big Top tent six feet long. "Luckily, I was able to persuade my wife to fabricate the Big Top. I have tried, but working with a sewing machine is something I simply cannot do well. As I was thinking about a name for the circus it dawned on me that back in the 1920s or '30s, admission to a circus might have been a quarter. I decided to call it the Two Bit Circus just because I like the way it sounds. For years I had a big old rubber toy elephant laying on a window sill in my studio, and every time I'd look at it I would think how neat it might look in the back of a toy truck. Finally I decided to build a van-bodied truck with open sides. I was so pleased with the result it set my mind wandering, and soon I was working on a Human Cannonball truck and a clown car. Before I'd finish one piece I was beginning something else. Finally I had to rein it in, but there is still a circus piece or two lurking in the back of my mind."

Boban

"I want my sculptures fused with the sparks of life, poised at the last moment of balance." Energetic figures, posed at the brink of balance, animate the mythological world of sculptor Boban. Athletes and angels, heroes and artists, musicians with violins or exotic horns are captured in metal at the most dynamic moment of their creative act. "I want to sculpt the highest moment – the moment when my figures reach to the sky like the spires of a cathedral. I want to express that electric impulse. I want my sculptures to be fused with the sparks of life, poised at the last moment of balance. My figures are leaders, winners in the human experience." Boban, a native of Yugoslavia, was trained in art at the prestigious Belgrade Academy of Art before arriving in the United States in 1991, in search of artistic liberty and opportunity. Rigorous academic training in Belgrade, reinforced by the nurturing of master of art Nandor Glid, imbued Boban with the knowledge, truth, honesty and moral sustenance required to live the life of an artist.

For Boban, the spoon has taken on a spiritual dimension, representing the nourishment of the human soul in its dynamic path towards personal fulfillment, power, creativity and success. Boban creates powerful maquettes by fusing, bending and shaping spoon elements in the welding process. With his fiery welding torch, the artist maneuvers the flow of molten energy into mythological metal human shapes, infusing warmth and dimension into cold metal. Boban’s sculptures grace major collections throughout the world. Hyatt Hotel owner, Jay Pritzker, film and musical star Tony Bennett, and notable figures in the world of sports are collectors and have often become Boban’s personal friends. Monumental versions of Boban’s works include the "Shaka Zulu" in Chicago and the sculpture of "Pegasus" in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Commissions for McDonalds are displayed at their corporate headquarters and a Boban sculpture commissioned by Exxon–Mobil is part of their private collection in Texas. Internationally and nationally lauded, Boban received the Award of Excellence at the Port Clinton Art Festival and has made appearances on "Good Morning America," "Wild Chicago" and "Starting Over," garnering the artist major public acclaim and accolade.