The Washington Post ~ In the galleries: Rosemary Feit Covey

Written by Mark Jenkins October 4, 2019

Rosemary Feit Covey

There’s a pleasing symmetry between what Rosemary Feit Covey depicts and how she depicts it. Most of the works in “The Dark Re-Imagined,” the Alexandria artist’s show at Morton Fine Art, begin with wood engraving. The white-on-black images are usually supplemented with painted colors and sometimes built up with thread or small found objects. But the incised lines are fundamental, and apt for conveying such hidden natural systems as a fish skeleton or a network of submerged fungi.

‘Amethyst Deceivers 11’ (2019) by Rosemary Feit Covey. Wood engraving, thread, painting on canvas, 36″x 48″ 

Feit Covey has worked with doctors and scientists — including at Georgetown University Medical School’s morgue — so her art is grounded in biological knowledge. Yet the works in this show are not mere illustrations. They attempt to convey the abundance of life, the inevitability of death and the link between the two. In such intricate compositions as the swirling “Fish,” the individual blurs into the collective, much as dead things are reabsorbed into living ones. Like a clump of black earth, Feit Covey’s pictures are dark but fecund.

 

Follow this link to view Available Artwork by Rosemary Feit Covey on MFA’s website.

 

Rosemary Feit Covey’s available work is stored on site at Morton Fine Art, stop by anytime during open hours or make an appointment to view these incredible creations up close in person.  Wednesday – Saturday : 12 – 5pm,  Sunday – Tuesday : by appointment Contact:  mortonfineart@gmail.com -or- (202) 628-2787.

 

 

‘Dogtown’ A Solo Exhibition of New Artwork by LAUREL HAUSLER

Artist Laurel Hausler pictured with ‘Noir Rose’, 2018, oil and gouache on canvas, 36″x 48″

‘In my mind, there are three meanings of Dogtown.

There are the “Dogtowns” scattered throughout the US, usually desolate dusty places once frequented by rogues and unlucky outcasts.

There is a Dogtown-THE Dogtown- in Cape Ann, Massachusetts. This Dogtown is a historical abandoned settlement, once populated by outsiders, widows, witches and roaming packs of dogs. Today, it is still a wild place and one that should be preserved. Situated amidst Pleistocene boulders, the area continues to be a source of lore.

This exhibition is the third and imagined Dogtown- a mythical place that combines all of the latter aspects—and their metaphysical reflections. It’s a Blair Witch Project woods, a stony, inscrutable wilderness where women and witches live as they wish with dogs for companionship and protection—a place of ritual, noir and labyrinthian mystery, symbolizing persistence in the face of life’s craggy brutality.’ 

-LAUREL HAUSLER, 2019

ABOUT the Artist 

Laurel Hausler was born in Virginia. She works to create mysterious beauty in all media, and to remember and portray that which might be lost and forgotten. The works in this show are composed of graphite, gouache and oil paint on canvas.

Her artwork is featured in book publications including Cutting Edge; New Stories of Women in Crime by Women Writers, edited by Joyce Carol Oates and Retrograde, by Kat Hausler.

DOGTOWN marks her fifth solo exhibition at Morton Fine Art in Washington, DC. and is currently on view through July 3rd! 

Additional available artwork by LAUREL HAUSLER follow this highlighted link!

ABOUT Morton Fine Art

Founded by curator Amy Morton in 2010 in Washington, DC, Morton Fine Art (MFA) is a fine art gallery and curatorial group that collaborates with art collectors and visual artists to inspire fresh ways of acquiring contemporary art. Firmly committed to the belief that anyone can become an art collector or enthusiast, MFA’s mission is to provide accessibility to museum-quality contemporary art through a combination of substantive exhibitions and a welcoming platform for dialogue and exchange of original voice.

Morton Fine Art

52 O St NW #302

Washington, DC 20001

Wed – Sat 12pm-5pm and Sun-Tues by appointment

For further information and images, please contact Amy Morton: mortonfineart@gmail.com

Washington Post In the Galleries: JULIA MAE BANCROFT ‘Through Glass Lace’

‘Violet’s Window’, 2018, ink, gouache, pencil and oil pastel on paper, 20″x 20″

Julia Mae Bancroft

There are fewer photo transfers in Julia Mae Bancroft’s “Through Glass Lace” than in her previous Morton Fine Art show, but the weight of old photographs remains heavy. The D.C. artist’s mixed-media pictures are almost all in black and shades of gray, with just occasional touches of pale pink or green. Bancroft conjures the past as drained of color but crowded with memories.

Texture is as crucial as image to Bancroft’s style. The pictures incorporate pulp, fiber, papier-mache and hand-stitched embroidery, and they are on sheets of paper mounted to stand slightly away from their backdrops. The layers represent what the artist’s statement terms “a glass lace screen” while “piecing together a fragmented narrative.”

That narrative doesn’t seem to be autobiographical. Some of the photo imagery is older than Bancroft, evoking the 1960s and much earlier times. The same is true of the artist’s technique, notably the needlework. The reminders of traditional women’s crafts ground Bancroft’s ghostly reveries in real-world labor.

~ Mark Jenkins, 2019

Julia Mae Bancroft: Through Glass Lace Through May 22 at Morton Fine Art, 52 O St. NW, No. 302.

‘Thinking of Falling’, 2019, ink, gouache and collage on paper, 22″x 11.5″

Remaining available artworks by JULIA MAE BANCROFT can be viewed here on our website and are also accessible for viewing in person at Morton Fine Art.

Morton Fine Art

52 O Street NW #302, Washington DC 20001

Hours: Wednesday – Saturday : Noon – 5pm

Sunday – Tuesday : by appointment

OSI AUDU : DIALOGUES WITH AFRICAN ART, Woodstock NY

OSI AUDU, Self-Portrait with Egungun Hairstyle, 2018. Graphite and pastel on paper mounted on canvas, 22 x 31 inches

 

OSI AUDU: DIALOGUES WITH AFRICAN ART at the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts, Woodstock NY

Solo exhibition opens Friday October 19th and is open through Sunday, December 2.  The gallery is open Thursday-Sunday: 12:00 – 6:00 pm or by appointment.

Mr. Audu, who lives in Hurley, New York, will give an artist’s talk on Saturday, October 20, at 3:00pm and the public opening reception for the show follows at 4:00 on Saturday.
OSI AUDU: DIALOGUES WITH AFRICAN ART examines issues of identity rooted in the artist’s cultural experiences growing up in Nigeria, as well as broader metaphysical and social concepts of the self. Audu’s paintings, some of them very large in scale, are influenced by the abstract geometric possibilities in traditional African sculpture; thus the exhibition also includes examples of original nineteenth- and twentieth-century African sculpture that the artist uses as inspiration for his work. Describing the works in the show, Audu writes: “I am interested in the dualism of form and void, and the metaphysical relation between the tangible and intangible, something and nothing, light and dark, body and mind, the dual nature of being—the self in portraits.” The title “self-portrait” that Audu uses in his work is about the portrait of the intangible self, rather than a literal portrait of the artist.

Osi Audu is a Nigerian-American artist whose work has been shown in numerous international exhibitions including the Kwangju Biennale, Venice Biennale, the Africa–Africa exhibition at the Tobu Museum, Japan, and the Museum of the Mind at the British Museum. His work has also been exhibited at and collected by public institutions including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art in Washington DC, The Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey, the British Museum, Horniman Museum, and Wellcome Trust Gallery, all in London, the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and the Mott-Warsh Collection in Flint, Michigan. His work has also been acquired for corporate collections including by Sony Classical New York, the Fidelity Investment Corporation in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Schmidt Bank in Germany.

OSI AUDU, Self-Portrait, after Agbogo Mmwo Mask, 2017. Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 58 inches

Audu curated an international exhibition of contemporary African art which opened at the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art in Detroit in September 2017, then traveled to the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University of New York, New Paltz, and the August Wilson Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 2018.

He is a current recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant.

The exhibition is curated by Sylvia Leonard Wolf, who is the chair of the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild’s Exhibition Committee. A full color catalogue accompanies the exhibition. Below is an excerpt from an essay in the catalogue:

Audu is, in effect, reclaiming abstraction…Through the language of abstraction, Audu seeks to create a container or a frame for the intangible that is the self. In choosing to dialogue with works of African art that are themselves symbolic representations of concepts, he situates his geometric abstraction firmly within African ontologies. And in doing so, he also makes tangible the intangible, or perhaps hidden, presence of African sculpture within the legacy of Western modernism.

— Christa Clarke, Ph.D. (Senior Curator, Arts of Global Africa, Newark Museum; Board President, Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) and AAMC Foundation)

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For additional information about artist OSI AUDU please contact Morton Fine Art at mortonfineart@gmail.com -or- (202) 628-2787.  Follow the highlighted link to view all available artwork by OSI AUDU on our website www.mortonfineart.com.

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All 2018 Byrdcliffe arts programming is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

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The Washington Post features MAYA FREELON and AMBER ROBLES-GORDON

In the galleries: ‘Interact + Integrate’ requires audience participation

By: Mark Jenkins

Fabric scraps and damaged tissue paper are the essential ingredients of new work now at Morton Fine Art. Those materials might sound negligible, but Amber Robles-Gordon and Maya Freelon employ them with ambition and impact.

MAYA FREELON, Bubble 2, tissue ink monoprint, 44″x 74″

Freelon’s technique began with what her statement calls a “beautiful accident”: finding colored tissue paper stained by water from a leaking pipe. From this discovery, the North Carolina artist developed a method of bleeding pigment from moistened colored tissue onto sheets of white paper, which are so thick they hang as if they’re fabric.

The larger works in “Rebirth/Rebound” were made with a pottery wheel, so the transferred hues spin with verve and grace. The dominant color is often magma-dark red, framed by black and green and white bubbles that evoke the images’ aquatic origins. The most direct print, “Suspension,” is mostly orange and yellow, which flow with the exuberance of a classic abstract-expressionist canvas. Freelon’s accident yields pictures that are assured and bold.

AMBER ROBLES-GORDON, Kepler 19-b Super Earth, mixed media on paper, 36″x 36″ 

Robles-Gordon, a D.C. native, is known for hanging strands of textiles and other found objects in intricate arrangements. The pieces in her “Third Eye Open” are wall-mounted rather than suspended, and feature circular drawing-collages orbited by smaller rounded objects, some partly covered in bits of garments. The forms suggest zygotes and planets, as well as eyes, but at the heart of each of the larger circles is a leafy motif. Whether seen as cosmic or botanical, the artist’s circling compositions exalt natural cycles.

Maya Freelon: Rebirth/Rebound and Amber Robles-Gordon: Third Eye Open Through May 15 at Morton Fine Art, 1781 Florida Ave. NW. 202-628-2787. mortonfineart.com.

You can view all available artwork by these talented artists here on our website! 

NATE LEWIS in ‘6 Artists Pushing the Limits of Paper’ by Ariela Gittlen

NATE LEWIS, 2018, Palpable Memories II, hand-sculpted photo paper print

At first glance, Nate Lewis’s work looks like it’s been adorned with embroidery, rather than paper and ink. His tender portraits and images of protesters gathering in the streets are sliced, scored, and punctured in such dense and precise patterns that their surfaces resemble beadwork.

“Latent Tensions,” a recent series based on photographs taken during the the 2017 presidential inauguration, shows protesters filling the streets. In one image, Lewis has almost entirely obscured the faces of three young men wearing “Fuck Trump” baseball caps, giving the protesters total anonymity and lending the scene an added layer of psychological weight. Like a tattoo, these marks read as both wound and decoration, reminders of the body’s beauty as well as its vulnerability.

Trained as a registered nurse, Lewis approaches the medium with empathy. “It’s about assessing the paper, responding to it, and giving it what it needs,” he explains. “My approach is to treat paper like a complex organism with a dynamic, hidden life.”

Lewis is currently using a residency at Dieu Donné (a paper-making studio and gallery in the Brooklyn Navy Yard) to continue his exploration into paper’s staggering variety, as well as its expressive potential. “It’s just a simple material,” he says, “but at that same time, the variability within the many kinds of paper is nuanced and vast.”

Read the rest of the article by Ariela Gittlen here on ARTSY.net

All AVAILABLE ARTWORK by NATE LEWIS can be viewed here on MFA’s website

Delicious Line Reviews posts on ‘Weapons for Spiritual Warfare’ KESHA BRUCE

02 Mar 2018

Kesha Bruce: Weapons for Spiritual Warfare

Morton Fine Art

Reviewed by Stephanie Lee Jackson

The patchwork symbols arrayed in Kesha Bruce’s luminous paintings feel like scraps of ancient garments, rescued from a flood. Squares of canvas, paint-logged, layered, and worn, are assembled in combinations that evoke a half-remembered ritual.

Bruce’s iconography derives from Hoodoo, a West African spiritual practice which evolved in the Mississippi Delta as a result of the slave trade. She absorbed the tradition as a child, watching her grandmother drawing spells in the kitchen. Recurring symbols, such as a crossroads, hold specific meanings – dispersal, banishment – which shift with context, like words in a poem. The act of painting becomes the working of a rediscovered spell.

Her paint handling mirrors the Hoodoo use of body fluids in spell casting. The rich textures appear to emerge from generations of handling, with few intermediary tools. The largest paintings exude the determined authority of a heritage shattered and painstakingly reconstructed.

Follow the hyperlink to view all available artwork by KESHA BRUCE on our website!  Please contact us here at the gallery for additional information and acquisition details.  ‘Weapons for Spiritual Warfare’ is up through March 7th, don’t miss out!

NATE LEWIS in Art in Embassies Exhibition/Catalog

We are pleased to announce that two pieces by artist NATE LEWIS have been included in an Art in Embassies exhibition in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. There is a catalog with the exhibition that features images and a write up about the work, which you can see below.

If you would like a PDF of the the introduction and Nate’s work, please contact the gallery.

 

WDC City Paper Spring Arts Guide mentions MAYA FREELON & AMBER ROBLES GORDON

Maya Freelon and Amber Robles Gordon

Toward the end of 2016, Maya Freelon began dealing with issues of rebirth and rebounding: the changes of various identities that happen in midlife. Recent tissue and ink mono prints reflect those transitions, with explorations of more subdued palettes, analogous and monochromatic color schemes. Identity is an issue present in Amber Robles Gordon’s work, as well. For the past year she has been constructing collages that deal with African and Puerto Rican heritage in a patriarchal American society, and pushing against the patriarchy with matrilineal mandalas. While the themes of identity will unify these two solo exhibitions at Morton Fine Art, their kaleidoscopic use of color will likely create the visual complimentary bridge. April 27 to May 15 at Morton Fine Art. Free. —John Anderson

Please follow the highlighted links for currently AVAILABLE ARTWORK by these two fantastic artists and stay tuned for the upcoming fusion of their exciting solo exhibitions here at Morton Fine Art opening April 27th, 2018.

ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY Featured in the James Renwick Alliance Craft Quarterly, Winter 2018!

Artist ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY is featured in the upcoming print and online editions of the Winter 2018 issue of the James Renwick Alliance Craft Quarterly. You can get a sneak peek below. To see available work by Rosemary, please visit our website or stop in and see us at the gallery!