Dispatches from Eternity

Opening Reception & Reading by Linda Shere: Saturday, April 11, 4:30pm

Beacon, NY – Theo Ganz Studio is pleased to present Dispatches from Eternity, a multi-media exhibition of fifty-one works by thirty artists including Josh Brooks, Geoff Feder, Elana Goren, Barbara Smith Gioia, Laura Gurton, Beth Haber, Erica Hauser, Carla Rae Johnson, Eileen MacAvery Kane, Insun Kim, Carole P. Kunstadt, Bruno Krauchthaler, Michael Bogdanffy-Kriegh, Soo Im Lee,* Gerda van Leeuwen, Martee Levi, Christopher E. Manning, Bibiana Huang Matheis, Sally Novak, Sheilah Rechtschaffer, Herman Roggeman, Linda Shere, Jackie Skrzynski, Eleni Smolen, Susan Cutter Snyder, Jane Soodalter, S. Gayle Stevens, Kat Stoutenborough, Kate Vikstrom and Jayoung Yoon.The exhibition will run from April 11 – May 3, 2015. Linda Shere, just back from a residency fellowship in poetry at The Vermont Studio Center, will read a selection from her work at 4 pm on April 11th and the opening reception will follow the reading.

A call for art last January invited artists to interpret the title of the exhibition. Many of the dispatches which came in related to the past and memory, meditations on the afterlife, eulogies for our natural world and the environment, homage to and inspiration from people long gone including not only other artists but scientists, writers, musicians, and spiritual guides. Juxtaposing the sacred and the profane, serenity and chaos, the eternal with the ephemeral, benevolence with atrocity and humor with despair, the exhibition includes sculptures, paintings, video, drawings, prints, collage, photography with works ranging in size from Linda Shere’s The Messenger (Victor Series) at 68 x 42 inches down to Soo Im Lee’s* gouaches at 12 x 12. Geoff Feder’s motorized sculpture – custom fabricated for the show -Needle Frenzy, will be in the east window while Carla Rae’s Johnson’s Georgia O’Keefe meets Galileo Galilei will sit opposite. Where artists have worked a theme in a series, several of their pieces will be on view (Haber, Manning, Matheis, Brooks). An online catalog which highlights work from each of the thirty artists accompanied by their brief statements has been compiled and includes a checklist of works in the show.

Each artist has their own unique take on the evocative theme but in the end their work and practice comes from the same place, that is, a strong connection to and engagement with the here and now. Of all the quotes regarding eternity, the one which resonated the most was Joseph Campbell’s from his Power of Myth: