BROOKLYN WATERFRONT ARTISTS COALITION: "LINEAGE" LIFE LINES IN ART

If you don’t know BWAC , get to know it now!  This weekend – and the full remaining month of weekends in October – the new group exhibition “Lineage”, makes a beautiful impact with over 300 artists showing 1200 works in all media.  As always, the great spaces of the gallery’s two vast floors are one feast after another for the eyes.  This year’s theme rightly pays tribute to and is inspired by the idea of lines – those of family, those of geometry, and those of time.  The theme is wonderfully visioned here in works that startle, engage, and always provide a sense of visual punch.  I’ve been attending the BWAC openings for over five years now, and it never ceases to amaze me how much this extraordinary art collective retains its open, democratic, intelligent, and just plain beautiful focus.  It’s a community of artists and art-lovers that never fail to make you glad to look at art.  And the art offered – much of it for sale – will put a heart in any room it finds a wall.  

Paula Jeanine Bennett, co-chair along with Anna Hagen and Zane Treimanis, says “‘Lineage’ is a narrative show.  It is an opportunity for artists to explore the source and metamorphosis of their creative journey and/or discipline; to honor the personal artistic inheritance and its change and its continuity.”  And indeed, the artists’ words, stories, and narratives are a compelling aspect when coupled with this wonderful collection of artworks that must be seen in person. Their impact will last a long time.

The featured artist in this season’s show is Anujan Ezhikode, (at right, “Accumulating Thoughts”). His powerful works of collage, painting, drawing and sculpture are the perfect entry to the exhibition’s theme. Ezhikode’s graphic and spiritual use of personal iconography span a wide range of ideas and their execution.  As he describes his work:  “My infusion from an early age into the everyday religious, folk and theater rituals of India has left a colorful residue in me. It has become an ongoing reminder of my own vernacular space. Even the most utilitarian aspects of these ephemera, the simple object, fragmented color, musicality, and play of light, have surfaced to be part of my aesthetic. …As I paint, there is a continual process of images being removed, regrouped, or overlaid to correct the balance between the image and the negative space. Often I leave the under layers exposed, as a visual map of my course. Some works have bare backgrounds to invoke an orderly tension. I continue to explore ways of creating, spatial expression and controlled motion using identifiable, organic, and simple forms in a personal setting.  My works on paper are quite different than works on canvas because the material dictates the result and it is more direct and true to the moment. The pieces are smaller and this constrained space forces out a precise expression. In installation the selection of the materials is as important as the subject matter. I like to use fragile objects to create a transient and ephemeral environment. Theater, ritual, and art combine to form a contemporary setting. Past and present join in unison.”

The idea of past and present is another beautiful incarnation with many of the show’s artists. Family. Memory – lineage of all kinds – are rich subjects that find evocative and resonant interpretation here.  The idea of family is perhaps even more important than ever, as we now become more of a global nation, let alone what New York has always been – a global city. Questions of identity and place are fused into these works with a deep attention to the fact that we are all together, and we all need to find that place of co-habitation in peace.  

Russell Mehlman (“Street Entertainers”, above, top) has been painting wonderfully comic, thought-provoking groups of people in settings that range from the private to the public. His mesmerizing ability to make each of his painted faces or figures a complete individual always makes you reconsider yourself, and look around you. His joy in life and the people he shares it with is shown once again in portraits that directly connect us to each other, and the pleasure in doing so. Mehlman is a family man in the truest sense of that term. 

Cristina Ferrigno  also explores the themes of family in her delicate but potent mixed media and collage works (“The Garden”, at left).  Her wall in the show is a veritable family gallery and photo album. Using old photographs of people in her life, and the places they’ve lived, she evokes both a sense of time past, and a time present through memory. But these small works counter melancholy with spirit. They are about life lived, and lived with happiness.

Meghan Hickey also examines identity and family; her photograph “The Bridal Wall” (below) is a simple yet layered image of a young woman (perhaps a bride to be?) capturing a wall of family brides, all framed in the reflection of a mirror.  The image is a perfect representation of what it means to try to find a place among things; it asks questions not only “Who am I?”, but “Where am I in this line of people?” It is a personal and iconic image of a celebration we all are a part of, yet remains private to the individual womon experiencing it. A bride does not only marry a man, she marries a history.

Francesca Schiano’s proud pastels of family members also are a tribute to personal history and the lines of family. Her portraits are each an individual story in themselves, as they look out at us, smiling, direct, and ready to tell us all the know. 


Many artists also used the graphic sense of “lineage” to present their works. The singular power of lines in composition made for some fascinating visual results.

Bill Storoniak’s soaring  “Spirit of Ireland” connotes not only an upward reaching of a nation’s spirit, but is also a strong image of flowing line and composition. Its green is an abstraction of earth, and its sky the element that feeds it. We are reminded of where we are grounded, as well as where we came from. Its force is all the more present when you realize the proportions of the subject. 

Where we come from, or where we might be going is comically and brilliantly expressed in the photo creations of Eric Fennell.  His “invading” flying saucers may be friend or foe – but they are here to stay in his inventively staged images. Using toy cars and other objects in real spaces, his images hark back to the B-movies of the 50s, and their constant fear of “aliens”. But these images captured me immediately for their wry take on what is alien and what is not. His image “Visiting Brooklyn”, is all about another means of transportation! 

New York is a story in itself, and it’s a subject that enjoys a lot of visual expression in this exhibit. Elspeth Meyer’s collection of “Subway Series” mixed media portraits (“Man in Tie”, below) are a paean to the personalities of the city, which make it a cornucopia of global identities. These are the faces you see every day, but created from a personal amalgam of both stoic pride and private thoughts. As you peruse these faces, you understand that to really “see” someone, you have to look up. Take out the ipods and say hello to each other, they seem to say. These wonderful faces engage us completely and reinforce what engagement is all about: looking at each other straight on. Her gallery of New Yorkers are a highlight of the show. 


Scott Schultheis also depicts the personhood of the city, in a series of canvass that are elegant ghostly limned figures; called “Husks”, these young men, in various poses towards us or away from us, become in Schultheis’s words: “…like whispers; I wanted to press each figure into the background and at the same time heighten their presence.  It is as if some of the figures have given up in their struggle to be whole; each seems handicapped to me. 

This one I've included here barely has a mouth. They are incomplete (intentionally). We watch them inhabiting private spaces that we aren't a part of- there is no engagement between them and us, and yet there is some basic familiarity about their gestures, which to me summon feelings of waiting, reacting, laboring, and a general idea of 'limbo'. These "Husks" are in- between-- in whichever sense you may ascribe to the term..”

Tony Monaco pays tribute to the great lines of the city in its architecture. His stunning “FlatIron Moon”, showing the massive famous building flanked by a congenial and bright-hearted moon, cars speeding down Broadway towards them both, is a depiction of the city’s romance as well as the city’s identity. Who hasn’t stopped in mid-stride on certain evenings to take in such a scene? This image cries out for Gershwin’s great symphony, or Armstrong’s jazz.  It’s a knockout.

Other strong representations in the show are   Dan Marino’s colorful and graphic displays of the city in photographs that are always a pleasure to delve into; Bob Penrose’s rich and wonderfully painted abstractions are pure play with color and composition;  Rusty Brockmann’s huge collage “Par Avion” s literally stopped me in my tracks – an amazing array of lines, images, logos, photographs, and papers – combined to create an imaginative and delightful collusion of line, space, and color. There seem to be small secrets in the image, and once you begin looking, you won’t stop. Mauricio Morillas’ new works are squares of extraordinary painted colors – mauve, sea foam, coral, eggshell – each inhabited with a small inset of metal objects that are compositional fillips in the frame. Like tiny cities, they too evoke time and history through their rusted or shining surfaces. They are pure line and pure color combined with an eye for surface as well as what is beneath it. He also includes new sculpture in the show. Elie Winberg continues to explore abstraction with her inordinately strong eye for the tactile texture. Her handmade paper and patinaed metal works almost jump from the walls. Again, these are works that let us ruminate on them, to enjoy what they are made of, and to think about their makers.  Tom Hagen’s new paintings are wonderful settings of homesteads, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, and the mascots of BWAC – the old buses that reside outside the Fairway Market. These old bus “lines” are kept intact by his brush, and thankfully will stay that way in our memory, long after they may be gone.  Stephanie Schmidt’s  graphic black and white photographs are pure design, using linear composition in strong and sure images that are beautifully printed. Matt Taylor once again in a single image captures a moment in New York in which the separate becomes entwined; where a collision of personalities and private spaces are suddenly captured in an instant that will soon be gone. His photography is remarkable for its insight into these moments when all of us are seemingly disconnected, yet shown to inhabit the same space of heart and mind.  Kari Smith’s “Pink Girls” is a photograph that made me smile instantly, as I looked at these two young women, potently colored, posing for Smith’s camera. 

Terry Urban’s landscapes (left) and flora from her series on Ireland -- her homeland and lineage are starkly beautiful as she details in her monoprints from the Ireland series: “Ballnahinche, Eire”; “Connemara Twilight”; “Eire Is Not All Green”. "A visit to the West of Ireland demands some expression of the interior journey one’s heart takes when contemplating the meager resources of the area, especially if your great-grandparents escaped to America from that wild and lovely but brutal hardscape." Created in soft and delicate monotypes on rich surfaced papers, these images speak to place and home.

It is fitting to close with Paula Jeanine Bennett’s “Vessels” series ("Rough Angel" at right). These small works contain worlds of emotion, history, and narrative lifelines in the truest sense. They are containers not only of family stories, but also of the artist’s attention to the force of such subjects.  Her wall text speaks to all of this:  


“Observation, alchemy, transformation.  Lineage.   A shadow moves across the front of a building.  Reflection in a window. A story becomes my story and then the world in the box starts to shift the details of the story.  Joseph Cornell.  Eugene Atget.  Antoni Tapies.  Spiritual fathers.  My real father building models, making his own world a Cleveland basement.  The only child:  happy with scissors, shiny paper, stamps and a lamp.  Make a world.  Make it my lineage.  Take the image and cook.  An empty can becomes a portal, a vessel, a world, an inheritance.  Handle the materials until they become something else, something beyond image and tin.  Make one piece.  Make another one.  Work it until you have burnished the thing inside yourself that makes the best of you surface and then disappear as the work tells the story.  Let the thing burn clean. Give it the freedom to be a little different every time. Build a new lineage and let the thrill of it run through you.”  And thrilled you will be, in so many ways, when you experience BWAC and “Lineage”. Go on, visit soon and thrill yourself. Support Living Artists! And support an organization that brings the best of art and what it means to us, right here in the city that is home to all of it. 

ABOUT BWAC

The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition was organized in 1978 by 16 artists looking for a place to exhibit. BWAC has grown to become Brooklyn’s largest artist-run organization with over 400 members. Our artist/members are the management, leadership, board and staff. We have two synergistic missions: to assist emerging artists in advancing their artistic careers; to present the art-of-today in an easily accessible format. For 30 years, BWAC has been exhibiting the artwork of local Brooklyn artists. Our three annual mega-exhibits and outdoor sculpture show present a wide variety of contemporary visual arts from the traditional to the experimental cutting edge. BWAC’s 25,000 square foot gallery is in a Civil War-era warehouse on the Red Hook waterfront. The vista of New York Harbor, spanning the Statue of Liberty to the Verrazano Bridge is one of the best in the city. Our 18,000 annual visitors also enjoy the nearby restaurants, bars, IKEA and Fairway Market. With every medium and style of artwork represented, as well as the “UnPlugged in Red Hook” free weekly music performances and Saturday afternoon Screening Room programs, our shows are as spectacular as the setting.

All artwork copyright 2010, and reproduced with kind courtesy of the artists.