Charcoal!
November 1 – December 15, 2013
Opening events: Friday, November 1, 2013
Reception: 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Artists' Talk with Kate Ten Eyck and Scott Hunt: 6:30-7:30 p.m.

David Nash, Dozier Bell, Dragna Crnjak, Maggie Evans, April Gornik, Ken Greenleaf, Scott Hunt, Susan Hauptman, Anthony Mitri, Emily Nelligan, Kate Ten Eyck, and John Walker.

A material widely used in all college-level drawing classes, charcoal is both revered for its malleability and reviled for its messiness. In past centuries, it was primarily used as a preparatory medium in advance of painting; now charcoal is often an end in itself, and is capable of producing finished works characterized by varied textures and a rich range of values.

Curated by Schick Gallery Director Paul Sattler in conjunction with the faculty gallery committee, the exhibit includes 33 drawings, three sculptures, and one installation created on site. The works represent a wide range of styles and subject matter, from moody interiors and atmospheric skyscapes to linear abstractions and figurative pieces that suggest mysterious but compelling narratives.

Artist Information

Dozier Bell is a seventh-generation resident of Maine, and writes that much of her imagery is drawn from ‘having grown up in sparsely inhabited spaces that seemed vast to a small child.’ She is represented by Danese Gallery in New York City, and her work has received numerous awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship in 1996 and two Pollock-Krasner Foundation grants, in 1993 and in 2004.

Dragana Crnjak created a site-specific drawing on the walls of the Schick Gallery. Her abstract charcoal drawings grow out of interests in the process of perception; she writes that for her, drawing ‘exists between discovery and contemplation.’ Crnjak has shown extensively across the northeast, including a 2007 one-person exhibit at the Kathryn Markel Gallery in New York City. She currently teaches at Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio.

Maggie Evans’ images of vacant interiors offer her a setting in which to explore an inner emotional life; the resulting drawings often suggest experiences both personal and universal. Evans received her MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2008, and is represented by JCostello Gallery in South Carolina and by Mason Murer Fine Art in Atlanta, Georgia.

Maggie Evans’ images of vacant interiors offer her a setting in which to explore an inner emotional life; the resulting drawings often suggest experiences both personal and universal. Evans received her MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2008, and is represented by JCostello Gallery in South Carolina and by Mason Murer Fine Art in Atlanta, Georgia.

April Gornik has had a long and successful career, exhibiting in solo shows since 1981. Primarily known as a landscape painter, her work has been shown at numerous national and international venues, including the Venice Biennale in 1984, and is held in many collections at noted museums, among them the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art. She received a mid-career retrospective at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, NY, in 2004; her most recent one-person exhibit was held at the Dayton Art Institute in spring 2013.

Ken Greenleaf has shown his work at numerous venues, including Tibor de Nagy Gallery and Danese Gallery in New York City, and it is held in collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Farnsworth Museum in Maine, among others. He writes that as his artistic interests have evolved, he ‘finds it possible to do more with less.’ At the same time, his drawings are ‘messy, thick, and reworked again and again, looking for an evocative resonance.’

Susan Hauptman received her Masters in Fine Art from Wayne State University in 1970. Throughout her career, she has worked only on paper and only in charcoal and pastel, achieving a level of realism that approaches trompe l’oeil, but carries an edge of disquiet. Her work has been shown at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. and the Yale University Art Museum, among other venues. Hauptman has received two National Endowment for the Arts grants, along with numerous other awards, and her work is held in many collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her most recent solo show was held at Forum Gallery in New York in 2010.

Scott Hunt edits, combines, and recombines elements from photographs found at flea markets, creating a new image based on his own subconscious dream life. His work merges influences of American Realist artists like Edward Hopper with undercurrents of Surrealism and Symbolism. Hunt has had five solo exhibitions, most recently in 2012 at Schroeder Romero and Shredder in New York City, and has shown work in numerous group exhibitions. He also works as an illustrator; his illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly, among others.

Anthony Mitri creates meticulous charcoal drawings of specific urban and rural locations; for him, each drawing is a representation of a personal, emotional experience bound to that location. Mitri writes, ‘The experience of having been there is crucial to these pictures; the process of rendering a drawing becomes an extended moment of memory….’
Mitri’s most recent solo exhibition was held at Forum Gallery in New York City in 2013; his work has been included in numerous group exhibits across the country and in France, and he is the recipient of a 2013 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.

Born in 1945, British artist David Nash has shown his work in solo exhibitions since the early ‘70’s, his most recent at the Royal Botanic Gardens in London in 2013. Nash often works outdoors in wild areas of North Wales, using whole trees that have died along with his three main tools - the chainsaw, the axe, and fire (to char wood.) Besides sculpture, Nash also makes drawings and prints, and has maintained a long fascination with the forms of the sphere, cube, and pyramid. His work is held in collections around the world, including the Guggenheim Museum, the Tate in London, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

Emily Nelligan was born in 1924 and attended Cooper Union School of Art in New York City. Throughout her life she has worked only with charcoal on 7 by 10 inch paper, and always with the same subject matter - the land and seascape of her environs on Great Cranberry Island off the coast of Maine. Within these constraints, she has produced a body of work that is remarkable in its depth, breadth, and subtlety. Her work has been shown in many solo and group exhibitions in Maine, New York City, and across the country.

Kate TenEyck writes that ‘drawing is immediate gratification.’ Her drawings begin with the physical act of mark-making, without specific imagery in mind. Once the charcoal surface is built up, forms begin to materialize; TenEyck then develops these further through extensive layering and erasing. The final drawings often reflect her interests in architectural or plant and animal forms. Ten Eyck received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA in printmaking from the University of Hartford. Her most recent solo exhibit was ‘Voids, Portals, and Passageways’ at the Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University.

John Walker was born in 1939 in England, and attended Birmingham School of Art in England and the Academie de la Grand Chaumiere in France. He is known as an artist who goes where his instincts take him, rather than following current trends, and whose paintings and drawings move ‘across the risky line between abstraction and representation in original and unexpected ways.’* His works have been collected by numerous museums, including the British Museum, the Tate Gallery, and the Museum of Modern Art. Recent exhibits include a solo show at Knoedler and Company in New York City in 2009 and The Independent Eye: Contemporary British Art from the Collection of Samuel and Gabrielle Lurie, at the Yale Center for British Art in September 2010.

*Jack Flam, from exhibition catalog for ‘John Walker: Time and Tides.’ (Knoedler & Company, New York, 2001)