October 17 - November 13, 2019
Memories and Miracles: Margie Schaffer Steinmann & Leslie Shaw Zadoian
Head, Heart, Hand: Grace Baskt Wapner
On the Wall: Vicki Khuzami
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 17th from 6 – 8 PM
Carter Burden Gallery presents three new exhibitions: Memories and Miracles in the East Gallery featuring Margie Schaffer Steinmann and Leslie Shaw Zadoian; Head, Heart, Hand in the West gallery featuring Grace Baskt Wapner; and On the Wall featuring Vicki Khuzami. The reception will be held October 17, 2019 from 6 - 8 p.m. The exhibition runs from October 17 thru November 13, 2019 at 548 West 28thStreet in New York City. The gallery hours are Tuesday - Friday, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Vicki Khuzami
Vicki Khuzamiexplores the theme of obsessive collecting in her installation I am the Octopus in Carter Burden Gallery’s On the Wallpublic space. The two 8-foot long paintings span opposite walls, each an expanse of sea green depicting giant tentacles wrapping around a dollhouse it has discovered at the bottom of the ocean. A life long collector the artist identifies with the Cephalopoda since it too amasses treasured objects to bring back to its den. Khuzami describes, “With its eight arms and huge eyes, the octopus glides through the waters touching and feeling everything it comes upon while it searches and hunts... The octopus is highly curious and endlessly wonders about the properties of the objects it comes across, how it can be used and enhance its life.Therefore, the Octopus and I are one.”
Vicki Khuzami, born in Brooklyn, is a painter, illustrator, and muralist. She earned a BFA (magna cum laude) from SUNY New Paltz and has also studied at Parsons School of Design and the School of Visual Arts. After school Khuzami was able to spend an extensive period traveling overseas, including India, Nepal and Japan. There she trekked the Himalayan Mountains, produced a series of paintings featured in a solo show at Gallery Beni in Kyoto, studied Sumie painting in Japan and acquired a lifelong affinity for Japanese kitsch. Khuzami’s opened her own studio in 1995 and her work as a muralist is extensive and spans worldwide. She created murals for the Capitol Building, the New York Botanical Garden, Bloomingdale’s, Disneyland Tokyo, and the National Park Service, among many others. She has also illustrated book covers for Dell Publishing, Simon & Schuster, Scholastic Magazine, and New York Press. She began restoring 19th century paintings and later began working at Evergreene Architectural Arts. Vicki Khuzami has exhibited in group shows throughout New York and New Jersey, including Carter Burden Gallery and Jonathan LeVine Projects.
Margie Schaffer Steinmann
In Memories and Miracles, Margie Schaffer Steinmann presents mixed media paintings that address the artist’s process. Her compositions often evoke imaginary ruins of her native city that are reborn through refined assembly of color, line, and form. Steinmann states, "I approach each piece in conflict between intuition and intention but my passion and commitment give me the courage, insight and trust to create a sublime discord of classical abstraction. A painting that begs questions, not answers. A painting that is life affirming. An invitation to you the viewer to open a different door and find something that was there all along.” One hundred years ago, on October 17, 1919, Steinmann’s father was born; she dedicates this show to him, her biggest fan.
Born and raised in Manhattan, Margie Schaffer Steinmann had an early introduction to fine art through her uncle, the renowned outsider artist, Harry Lieberman. Growing up in the city afforded her the opportunity to spend most of her spare time in museums. She furthered her studies at The University of Wisconsin. Steinmann's solo exhibitions include Citibank at 65th& Madison, 3 to 1 Gallery, Washington Square Gallery, and The Red Door. She has participated in numerous juried group exhibitions including Lincoln Center, Weill Cornell Medical Library, Lesley Heller Workspace, aljira Center for Contemporary Art, First Street Gallery, The New York International Arbitration Center, and The Conference Board. Steinmann’s work has been reviewed in L Magazine, The Jewish Post, and numerous issues of Gallery & Studio Arts Journal. Her work is held in the collections of Screenvision Media, FIT, Fortitude Investment Group, Weill Cornell Medical Library, The Horwitch Collection and The Hispanic Society of the Americas.
Grace Baskt Wapner
In Head, Heart, Hand, Grace Bakst Wapner presents recent paintings with rich palettes that appear subdued and calm on her distinctive surfaces of unstretched jute, canvas, and buckram. This use of a variety of materials, combined painting, hand stitching and machine sewing asserts and celebrates the inextricable harmony of the head, heart, and hand. The work concerns disparity and connection, color and texture, diversity and unity, form and the distillation of form. Wapner explains, “All my life while working I have believed “decoration is the art sin”. All my life I have loved the decorative. This work is the struggle to reconcile the two by honoring the one without compromising the other.”
Grace Bakst Wapner was born in 1934 in Brooklyn, New York. Wapner received her B.A. from Bennington College, and attended the summer M.F.A. program at Bard College. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture Award for 1978-1979, a National Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize Award in 2013, and an Outstanding Achievement in the Arts Award from the Byrdcliffe Guild in 2015. After being a member of 55 Mercer St. Gallery from 1973 until 1978, she joined the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in New York City where she had six one-person shows. Wapner has had 27 one-person shows and participated in over 100 group exhibitions. She has been featured in many notable publications including the New York Times,the New Yorker,the Village Voice, Art Business News among many others. Her work is in public and private collections across the country.
Leslie Shaw Zadoian
In Memories and Miracles, Leslie Shaw Zadoian presents abstract works entitled Refugees and Crossing Borders. The two works featured are from a series entitled Upheaval, which represents the tragedies brought on by conflict. Zadoian begins her practice with formal aesthetic elements: shapes, lines, color, texture, and space. She finds beauty and formal elegance in unlikely combinations. Equally important to the artist are textures, energy and space, which are sensed rather than seen. Zadoian states, “Inspired by nature, art, the world of manufactured and discarded objects, and the inner journey, my artworks transform disparate elements and integrate them into a new universe.”
Leslie Shaw Zadoian, b. 1941, received her BA and MA from Queens College, City University of New York, and studied at The Art Students League of New York with Bruce Dorfman. After college, she worked as a writer, editor, and graphic designer in publishing at The Viking Press, Penguin Books, and CBS International Publishing, as well as in higher education. During this time her fine art practice restricted to occasional paintings and a residency in Rome and Pompeiphotographing the restoration of a frescoed garden wall in the House of the Menander. Zadoian eventually left the world of “real jobs” to make fine art full time in 2005. Her work is in private collections in the U.S. and Europe and has been exhibited throughout New York and elsewhere in the United States. Today, Zadoian lives and works in New York City and Liberty, New York.
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