360 interactive virtual tour of KESHA BRUCE’s solo “We Can Birth Worlds”

Deeply inspired by her spiritual practice and surroundings in the Arizona desert, Kesha Bruce creates reflective and rich artworks intended to be visual landscapes to dream into in her solo exhibition We Can Birth Worlds.

 

 

About We Can Birth Worlds
Kesha Bruce’s work explores the complex connections between history, personal mythology, and magical-spiritual belief in the African diaspora. Her latest work is concerned primarily with exploring the ways vibrant color and abstract symbols can not only trigger powerful emotion but begin to conjure narratives.

Inspired by the belief that hand-made objects can be imbued with the spiritual energy and the intention of the maker, Kesha Bruce employs a labor-intensive creative process of dying, ripping, knotting and the cutting away of fabric to create each painting. The resulting pieced, patched, and assembled surfaces use repetition and pattern to hint at dream languages or perhaps hidden sacred texts.

A direct outgrowth of her daily spiritual practice, these new works are an effort to translate the expansiveness of the artist’s inner joy and reclamation of freedom into a visual language.
With We Can Birth Worlds, Kesha Bruce aims to create visual landscapes to dream into. Landscapes for present and future Black joy, possibility, and liberation.

 

 

 

About KESHA BRUCE

Born and raised in Iowa, she completed a BFA from the University of Iowa before earning an MFA in painting from Hunter College in New York City.
Kesha Bruce has been awarded fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), The Vermont Studio Center, The CAMAC Foundation, and the Puffin Foundation.
Her work is included in the collections of The Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture (14 pieces), The Amistad Center for Art and Culture, The University of Iowa Women’s Center, The En Foco Photography Collection, and MOMA’s Franklin Furnace Artist Book Collection.

Represented since 2011, We Can Birth Worlds is her seventh solo exhibition at Morton Fine Art.

Available Artwork by KESHA BRUCE

 

About Morton Fine Art

Founded in 2010 in Washington, DC by curator Amy Morton, 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 art collecting can be cultivated through an educational stance, 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 specializes in a stellar roster of nationally and internationally renowned artists as well as has an additional focus on artwork of the African Diaspora.

Morton Fine Art
52 O St NW #302
Washington, DC 20001

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

**Hours are currently suspended to prevent further community spread of COVID-19. Virtual tours and detail images and video available upon request. We are still conducting business in a different and safe way.**

 

 

Morton Fine Art celebrates 10 years of artist partnerships and placing artwork!

THANK YOU to all of our wonderful partner artists, colleagues and collectors who have shared in MFA and *a pop-up project’s journey over the last decade. It’s wonderful to celebrate 10 years together!

 

 

From our first *a pop-up project by Morton Fine Art on E St NW in Penn Quarter in 2010 – WE APPRECIATE YOU!

 

To nearly 9 years on Florida Ave NW in Adams Morgan, 2010-2018, WE APPRECIATE YOU!

 

 

 

 

To our current home at 52 O St NW in NoMA, 2018 onward – WE APPRECIATE YOU!

Cheers to many more years together at Morton Fine Art

_________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Celebrating 10 years of placing exceptional contemporary art in global private and public collections.

Founded in 2010 in Washington, DC by curator Amy Morton, 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 art collecting can be cultivated through an educational stance, 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 specializes in a stellar roster of nationally and internationally renowned artists as well as has an additional focus on artwork of the African Diaspora.

Morton Fine Art Location: 52 O St. NW #302, Washington, DC 20001

Hours: Weds-Sat: 12pm – 5pm; Sun – Tues: by appointment

Contact: (202) 628-2787, mortonfineart@gmail.com

Creating a shared family value in collecting art

Salon style wall of contemporary art at Morton Fine Art, Washington, DC

 

As an art collector, you invest time, energy and money in a collection which fits both your aesthetic and interests. Oftentimes you develop strong relationships with galleries, auction houses and sometimes the artists themselves. How do you translate your passion for your collection into a shared family value?

A few questions to ask yourself:

What reflected in your art collection is most relevant to your family members?

Does your collection mirror family values or non literal family narratives or concepts?

What art on your walls most influences you?

What art on your walls most inspires your respective family members?

Do you have family discussions about art?

Do you visit art institutions and galleries with your family?

Have you shared the influences which have lead to you collect as you do?

 

Stein collection (detail), Paris

 

Here is a wonderful example of family legacy created by a shared passion for art collecting:

Did you know that the legendary American writer and art collector Gertrude Stein actively and profusely collected art with her brothers Leo and Michael and her sister-in-law Sarah?  In fact, the family was integral in the rise of modern art in western Europe and America including early acquisitions of Cezanne, Gauguin, Renoir, Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso – much of the art which now fill the world’s museums. In the early 1900’s Henry McBride (the critic for the New York Sun) commented that Stein “collected geniuses rather than masterpieces. She recognized them a long way off”.

Collectors, that’s some inspiration for today!

 

Morton Fine Art

52 O St NW #302

Washington, DC 20001

(202) 628-2787

www.mortonfineart.com

mortonfineart@gmail.com

 

 

ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY in the Alexandria Times

 

• Arts & Culture
• Visual Arts

City creatives: Rosemary Covey

December 19, 2019

Rosemary Covey first came to the Torpedo Factory at the age of 22 and has remained an artist at the art center for over 40 years. (Courtesy photo)

By Cody Mello-Klein | cmelloklein@alextimes.com

Art has never come easy to Rosemary Covey.

The long-time wood engraver and painter has spent the last 40 years at the Torpedo Factory with collections of her work on display around the world, yet the process of making her work hasn’t gotten easier. The challenge – the fear, “the edge,” in Covey’s words – is intrinsic to her work.

“You kind of have to skate this edge between being very uncomfortable and yet still being able to have the skills and be conscious yet almost unconscious at the same time,” Covey said. “As soon as you relax, the thing starts to not work. It can work, but it won’t have life to it.”

Given Covey’s preoccupation with death, fragility and the darker side of the natural world, the sentiment might seem at odds with her work, but her wood engravings and paintings come to life precisely because of that tension.

“My work has that duality to some extent,” Covey said. “It used to be what people always considered very dark with themes connecting to medicine and death and fragility. But out of that came a series of work that surprisingly had great, larger appeal.”

Covey was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1954, a time of intense social and political upheaval. She left the country at age 10 with her family because her father had been invited to pursue a Ph.D. in the U.S.

“Sins of the Fathers” (Courtesy image)

Covey’s formative memories of South Africa are still tinged with nostalgia – the memories of a child unaware of the time in which she was growing up, happy in the self-contained world of her family.

It’s also a nostalgia for the early days of her artistic curiosity. At five years old, Covey was expressing an interest in creative expression both in class and at home, where she worked on crafts with her grandmother.

“She had big boxes of scraps and we made things together all the time, so leaving South Africa was hard for me because she and I spent all our time together,” Covey said. “She was the biggest influence on my life ever.”

Covey and her family ended up moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her father finished his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. The family then moved to Ashfield, Massachusetts, where Covey’s father had secured a position at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

In Ashfield, Covey’s passion for the arts continued to blossom. An art teacher at Williston Northampton School introduced her to print engraving at the age of 14; Covey returned years later, after college, to learn wood engraving from the same teacher.

Covey was set on the path. She knew she wanted to make art, but, like many artists, she found barriers at every turn. Her parents warned her about the scary, impractical path of an artist. Collectors and artists openly questioned her ability at portfolio showings.

The cynics only strengthened Covey’s determination. Covey’s early career was defined by finding a way around the blockades that were thrown up around her, she said.

Covey’s parents refused to pay for her college education, so she left Cornell University after two years. At 18 years old, she married a man who helped support her artistic ambitions, but after divorcing at 21, Covey found herself in need of a way to support herself financially.

“Then I’m on my own at 22 and I have to make a living,” Covey said. “My parents were like, ‘Now you’re on your own.’ So, coming [to Alexandria] I started doing commissions and slowly it became my career and way of making a living.”

Covey immediately fell in love with Alexandria. The history and character of the city were captivating, and the detail of the streets was like catnip for a wood engraver, Covey said.

“Red Handed” (Courtesy image)

Wood engraving, at its most fundamental, involves carving an image into a block of wood, applying ink to the face of the block and pressing the ink onto a surface to leave an impression.

It’s a process that is easy to learn but difficult to master, partially because of the intense concentration it requires, Covey said.

“You can’t make a mistake and if you do, you have to incorporate it, which really creates that panic, nervous energy that I think propels work,” Covey said.

Prints created through wood engraving also need to be designed in reverse, since the print will be ultimately be a reverse image of the original design. The reverse engineering makes executing facial expressions difficult for many engravers, but Covey said her dyslexia helps.

“I have extreme dyslexia. I have problems with all kinds of simple tasks, but the reversing of things comes more naturally [to me] than it might [to others],” Covey said. “It’s very difficult to do facial expression and … to get a likeness of any sort when you reverse it, but it helps to have dyslexia.”

Covey came to the Torpedo Factory in 1976, two years after it opened as an arts center. Although she can trace thematic patterns in her work all the way back to those early days, her work has evolved creatively and procedurally.

Death and fragility are still at the core of her work, but Covey has started to find new ways to explore themes that have captivated artists forcenturies.

In collaboration with botanists, evolutionary biologists and entomologists, Covey now finds new inspiration in the natural world, the duality of decaying lifeforms and life under the microscope.

“Insects” (Courtesy image)

Her series called “Insects” came out of a residency at Blue Mountain Center in the Adirondacks. Combining printing and painting, Covey depicted the bodies of butterflies and dragonflies as beaten and bruised yet beautiful.

“[One entomologist] said, as a scientist, you see them under the microscope and they’re battered and beaten and their wings and their short life are scratched,” Covey said. “They’re not pristine. And what I had been noticing was that, as they lie dead, they strike these human poses.”

Another series of prints and paintings focused on fungi and lichens and the above ground beauty that masks monumental, monstrous rooted webs just below the surface, Covey said.

“I don’t do it, when I work with a scientist, to be an illustrator or scientific illustrator,” Covey said. “[I’m] not interested in that at all. I’m interested in what they can tell me that sparks my visual imagination.”

Covey’s science-inspired and research-driven work hasn’t been limited to just insects and mushrooms.

“David with Astrocytes (Brain Tumor 8)” was part of an intimate series of portraits that captured the eponymous David, a man Covey had met at her Torpedo Factory studio, in various stages of treatment for a brain tumor.

“He looked really haunted. … He’d had all this surgery and you could sort of see what happened behind his eyes, that something monumental had happened,” Covey said. “He hired me [and] I ended up working for him for three years to do a piece on his brain tumor experience.”

“David with Astrocytes (Brain Tumor 8)” (Courtesy image)

Collaboration has become an integral part of Covey’s process, whether it’s incorporating a partner’s scientific knowledge or pieces from fellow artists.

“The best thing in the world is to find other people that are crazy about what they’re doing and that fits with what you’re doing,” Covey said.

Her process has changed even as she uses the same tools. Covey said she’s still driven by the same unknowable passion to create that drove her when she was alone at 22.

“It’s the same exact thing and I still don’t know quite what it is,” Covey said. “You get the idea in your head and then you have to push it. And you’re hoping that you’re gonna push it and it’s going to be better than anything you ever did before. … Once I’ve done it, I’m not even concerned anymore. It’s getting it there.”

For Covey, the elusive “there” is a place she can’t stop working toward.

“That’s the goal,” Covey said. “You hopefully never stop.”

(Read the first entry in the City Creatives series: Alexis Gomez)

Click HERE to view available mixed media works and rare wood engravings by ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY.

or contact:

Morton Fine Art, 52 O St NW #302, Washington, DC 20001

mortonfineart@gmail.com

(202) 628-2787

http://www.mortonfineart.com

Morton Fine Art exhibits MICHAEL BOOKER & AMBER ROBLES-GORDON at Prizm Art Fair 2019

 

Morton Fine Art at Prizm Art Fair this December during Miami Art Week
December 2 – 8, 2019

Prizm Art Fair
Morton Fine Art – Booth 3
Alfred I. DuPont Building
169 East Flagler St.
Miami, Florida

Morton Fine Art will be introducing fine liner ink drawings of MICHAEL BOOKER alongside mixed media artworks by AMBER ROBLES-GORDON.

 

MICHAEL BOOKER, Show Me the Wisdom In Your Movements, 2019, 30″x22″, fineliner pen, watercolor and collage on paper and Yupo

Available Artwork by MICHAEL BOOKER

 

 

 

AMBER ROBLES-GORDON, Their Eyes of God, 2018, 36″x36″, ink drawing and collage on paper

Available Artwork by AMBER ROBLES-GORDON

 

Morton Fine Art invites you to Open Studios, Saturday 11/16/19 from 12pm-6pm

 

 

Our November 16th Open Studios, in collaboration with STABLE, invites the public to tour Morton Fine Art and the creative work spaces of the artists and designers at 52 O Street & STABLE from 12-6pm. Conveniently located a short walk from the NOMA Metro Station on the Red Line and Mt. Vernon Square/Convention Center on the Yellow and Green Lines, 52 O Street is located in the Truxton Circle neighborhood in Washington DC. Street parking available.

Morton Fine Art 52 O St. #302 Washington, DC 20001 mortonfineart@gmail.com (202) 628-2787 www.mortonfineart.com

Don’t miss it!
Open Studios @52ostreetstudios next Saturday, November 16th from 12pm – 6pm in collaboration with @stablearts