October 10 – November 6, 2024

Navigating the Surface: Gary DiPasquale, Francie Lyshak, and Candy Le Sueur 

Torn Posters: Scott Geyer

Blue Journey: Ellen Wallenstein

Opening Reception: Thursday, October 10, 6 - 8pm 

Navigating the Surface

Gary DiPasquale  

For many years Gary DiPasquale has been steadily involved with the vase and vessel form. Inspiration comes from a vast history of world ceramics, Greek, Roman, Chinese vessels, Art Deco and African artifacts have all contributed inspiration to his pottery and designs. Nature’s textures such as tree bark, plants, rocks, minerals and the colors of earth also inform and influence his work.  

In Navigating the Surface the vessels are hand-built using various slab-constructed techniques or thrown on the potters wheel. Colored clay slips are incorporated for first firing and then glazes are brushed, poured or glaze trailed on in several layers over the form. Pieces are fired once or multiple times in the kiln to achieve varied and different glazed effects.  

The results can be rugged looking with crackled dry glazes or a bronze and black metallic. Using the minerals copper, manganese and iron oxide achieve color with depth, a textured surface and sometimes a sparkle and shine to the work. 

Living in New York City since 1980 and having a studio has played a very big part in the artist’s development and career as a clay artist.  

Candy Le Sueur 

The work of Candy Le Sueur draws on the idea of light and how it affects our perception of reality. Light is a mystery and though nothing travels faster, the effect of light here, is felt as slow and meditative. What we experience in Le Sueur’s paintings is that light speaks to us in a language which conjures emotion and creates atmosphere. Like an unconscious rising, Le Sueur’s paintings evoke faded memories of time and space - an attempt at capturing a fleeting moment.    

 In Navigating the Surface, Le Sueur deliberately builds each piece layer by layer, allowing her intuition to guide her through choices in color, form, and composition. By emphasizing space and depth, and delineating the picture plane, the artist presents these luminous renditions as” light landscapes”. The layering of both her paintings and prints helps activate the surface and achieve a push and pull between foreground and background creating movement and perspective. The artist oscillates between playing with atmospheric perspective where sections of soft tonal color, for quietude, are interspersed with expressionistic and gestural brushstrokes in luscious swathes of thick paint. There is an ebb and flow within her body of work where one of these two elements take an alternate dominant role over the other.  

Candy Le Sueur is a painter and a printmaker who lives and works in Jersey City, NJ. She received her Fine Arts Degree from the University of Johannesburg in South Africa and continued her studies at the National Academy School and various printmaking studios in New York City. Le Sueur has exhibited her work in South Africa, Switzerland, Germany, and the United States. The Jersey City Museum, the Affordable Art Fair in New York, Art Hamptons and prestigious galleries, among other venues, have exhibited her paintings and monotypes. Her paintings and monotypes are featured in several private collections both home and abroad.  

Francie Lyshak

Francie Lyshak’s  observation that physical materiality makes a painting different from a flat screen image is a starting point for her Low Relief Paintings in Navigating the Surface . During this challenging digital era, Lyshak explores the physical body of her medium.  Each of these works is limited to one or two colors thickly applied. She does this with rough, sharp tools that give them a sculptural presence. Because of their low relief character, they interact with ambient light and visibly change relative to the movement of the passerby. The colors, in combination with the surface agitation, evoke a range of feelings.  The monochromes evoke moods encountered deep within oneself during times of solitude.  The duo chromes evoke moods encountered in an intimate partnership.  The paintings are a tribute to the power and scope of the mark in combination with color and ambient light. 

New York painter Francie Lyshak was introduced to art history at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.  She then traveled to Paris to study painting. Returning to the United States, she earned her BFA at the Center for Creative Studies and Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Later, Lyshak  got her Masters Degree in Creative Arts Therapy from Pratt Institute, New York. 

Making use of her graduate training, Lyshak designed and led community art service programs in New York and New Orleans and launched an art therapy program at Bronx Children’s Psychiatric Hospital. This professional immersion in art as a therapeutic tool influenced the focus of her subsequent visual practice on psychological experience. 

Torn Posters

Scott Geyer 

Torn Posters, an exhibition of paintings by Scott Geyer features work that edge between abstraction and reality. Scott loves walking the streets of New York City looking and listening to understand what makes New York – New York.  This series is inspired by the layers of torn posters that have been posted over “Post No Bills” that protect construction sites.  

 In his process, Geyer photographs, then simplifies the image to a basic design. From that design he works with contrasting lights and darks, the contrasting colors and the contrasting diagonal lines of horizontal and vertical that are represented.  

 He keeps and enhances the textures of the ragged edges that layer the torn posters.  His wish is that the viewer examines his paintings with their imagination and their experiences and then walks away with a new way of looking at the objects/images in the city.  

 The paintings do not present the objects in deep space; the objects appear to be in front of the surface of the canvas. They intrude into your space. 

Blue Journey: Ellen Wallenstein

"Illness consumes; art transcends. Art heals."

In late 2021, artist and photography professor Ellen Wallenstein received a life-altering diagnosis: stage three endometrial cancer. Despite the daunting prognosis, Wallenstein found solace and strength in her art, continuing to create cyanotypes—ethereal blue shadow-grams on cloth—each sunny day. These daily practices became a profound medium for Wallenstein to channel her emotions, fears, and unwavering determination to thrive.

Blue Journey is a testament to Wallenstein's resilience and creativity during her arduous medical journey. The installation features nine sets of prayer flags, titled "In Treatment," meticulously crafted during the early stages of her diagnosis in 2021 and 2022. Each flag, imbued with Wallenstein's spirit, reflects the raw and unfiltered experiences of undergoing treatment.

Complementing the prayer flags are five quilts, collectively known as "The Healing Process." These quilts, created between 2020 and 2024, narrate the phases of prognosis, treatment, healing, and eventual remission. They are the result of a collaborative effort between Wallenstein and Kathe Williams, a master quilter and Wallenstein's longtime friend from Texas. Together, they transformed Wallenstein's journey into tactile expressions of hope and recovery, blending artistic visions with intimate personal experiences.

Blue Journey invites viewers to witness the transformative power of art in the face of adversity, celebrating the profound connection between creativity and healing.

Blue Journey is on view from August 1 – November 6, 2024.