Goren & Nemirov Featured at Art Walk

31 Aug Goren & Nemirov Featured at Art Walk

Monet did it.

The man painted haystacks and Notre Dame, other places and things, over and over again, in different seasons, at different times of day, as light transformed his subjects.

Monet’s haystacks

Monet’s haystacks, different time of day

Later, Rothko repeatedly created what became his signature works: transcendental landscapes of awe-inspiring spirituality.

Other artists too numerous to name – think Warhol’s soup cans and his Marilyns – did variations on the theme of repetition.

A quote from iconic Pop artist Jasper Johns summed up the impulse best in plainspeak:

“Take an object, do something to it, do something else to it. What you do, alters what you want to do. In seeing one thing, we probably see many.”

Think about what happens when we say the words of a mantra or prayer over and over again. Rituals – and images – of any kind gather power through repetition.

Sweetie Bird, by Jane Goren, now gracing the walls of La Marmotte’s new restaurant in Denver, Cafe Marmotte.

Lucky for us artists Jane Goren and Meredith Nemirov, two powerful woman and artists, like to repeat themselves. For Jane the obsession is recycled objects and viewing the world through other peoples’ windows; for Meredith, the muse are trees, aspens in particular. Repetition releases the magic of their work, on display at La Marmotte (Jane) and Gallery 81435 (Meredith) during Telluride Arts’ September Art Walk, Thursday, September 3. Opening receptions 5 – 8 p.m.

Telluride Art’s First Thursday Art Walk is a festive celebration of the arts in downtown Telluride for art lovers, community and friends. Twenty-two venues host receptions from 5 p.m.-8 p.m. to introduce their new exhibits and artists. A free Art Walk map offers a self-guided tour that can be used at any time to find galleries that are open most days. Maps are available at participating venues and at the Telluride Arts offices located in the Stronghouse Studios + Gallery at 283 South Fir Street.

Image by Meredith Nemirov from Treestory

In addition to the work at Gallery 81435 and La Marmotte, you might want to visit the Ah Haa School for the Arts to see “Beyond the Landscape: The Essence of Telluride,” Ah Haa’s 3rd Annual Juried Photography Prize show. 

July 4th Blows, by Keith Hill

The Stronghouse Studios and Gallery presents Emily Ballou, a contemporary painter who works primarily in acrylics but also experiments with wood stain, gold leaf, and varnishes to create new and intriguing surfaces and styles.

Cimarron Trail, Emily Ballou

The Telluride Gallery of Fine Art presents their 30th Anniversary Retrospective Exhibition. The gallery is currently celebrating 30 years with the best work from past and present artists. They are featuring photography by Dan Budnik as well as work by Sandy Skoglund, James Rizzi, Picasso, Christo, Malcolm Liepke, Philip Pearlstein and many more.

Krista Harris’, “Dancing In Her Shadow,” 48″ x 48″ mixed media on canvas

For more about Art Walk venues and shows, go here.

About Jane Goren:

“hair & Makeup,” 2015 from a series of paintings done in LA and based on the film industry, among them “Stand-In In Green Chair” and “Wardrobe Mistress.”

The girl can’t help it. Long before any inconvenient truths, before green became the new red, white and blue, longtime, part-time Telluride local Jane Goren was busy recycling, turning the detritus of people’s lives into edgy fine art. Jane uses recycled objects as a metaphor for survival in an edgy world. She finds inspiration in things others discard, working with these resources in part to raise issues of materialism and the relative value of our stuff.

Jane came buy her obsession naturally: in the corner of Brooklyn where she grew up no one ever threw anything away.

“I grew up in Brooklyn, but every other Sunday we would visit my grandma in the Bronx. We would drive into Manhattan and then onto the Westside Highway heading uptown until we crossed Fordham Road and reached her apartment on Decatur Avenue. Heading home in the evening it would be dark by the time we reached the Westside Highway. That’s when the magic would begin. Both sides of the highway were lined with the upper floors of apartment buildings and in the darkness, lights would be turned on and off, or TV sets would serve as a light source and when traffic was sluggish or at a standstill, which it was more often than not, I could watch the stories being told behind each lit window, or I could imagine what was going on in those too dark to actually see into. It was as if I were watching a movie frame-by-frame or casually surfing through every TV station that ever existed. I was only catching bits and pieces, but it was more than enough. Years later those very windows would become a source of inspiration for the reverse glass paintings that I began to do in vintage windows.”

“Through Matisse’s Winow,” 2015 is based on the master’s “Le Cafe Arabe” which hangs in the Hermitage Museum. It is the first of a new series of windows that I am working on which will peer through  a variety of notable artists’ windows. In this case the background is Matisse while the foreground is mine.

“Years later” was 1994, just after the Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles. The original windows came from houses that were being renovated or torn down.

“It was my attempt to heal a disoriented city by painting everything in reverse in an attempt to metaphorically turn back the clock and restore some kind of order. That impulse led to an ongoing series of works using vintage windows and reverse glass painting in acrylic and oil to create brightly colored, highly expressive images. In truth I think the people in my windows take on a life of their own. The technique of reverse glass painting challenged my technical skills, but also allowed me to examine issues of surveillance and the deceitful nature of appearances.”

Goren’s window are also about the process of observation: Someone is looking out of the window at the same time someone else is looking in. The visual tension is magnetizing: the viewer is held in place. And that’s a good thing because most of the women in Jane’s voyeuristic world, parodies of Matisse’s harem, really seem to be having one helluva time.

“While some artists are struggling to find the meaning of life, I am simply trying to keep it going.”

“Waiting for Mr. Davis,” 2015 will appear on the La Marmotte postcard. It’s companion piece “Listening to Miles” 2015 is hanging in the show…same woman different cat.

Jane’s work can be enjoyed at face value as highly decorative art featuring highly decorative women. However, the artist raises some interesting questions that imbue the images with greater meaning: Are we outside looking in or inside looking out? Are we the voyeurs or is it the other way around?

Travel has always played an important part in Jane’s life and work, and has been essential to her artistic development, informing her work with a multicultural dynamic that is ultimately charged with personal meaning.

Jane lived and worked in Berlin, Germany in 1997 and in Hangzhou, China in 2000. She has also spent time painting in India, Brazil, Italy, Jamaica, and Cuba.

“Three Sister, ”Jane Goren

Jane has exhibited extensively in the United States, as well as internationally. Her work is included in such public collections as Mercedes-Benz, the National Public Library, the LAUSD Child Abuse Prevention office, and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, as well as the private collection of Fidel Castro.

Jane Goren lives and works in LA, but spends as much time as possible in her studio in Telluride, Colorado.

About Meredith Nemirov:

Meredith Nemirov finds drawing and painting the same subjects over and over again very freeing.

“Repetition allows me to explore more abstract, ambiguous ideas like the map of aspen markings and capture the changing patterns of light in the woods outside my home.”

The solo show at Gallery 81435 is entitled “Treéstory.” It is an exhibition of paintings, drawings and three installations referencing the tree and trees in the landscape.

“Spring Aspens,” Meredith Nemirov

“The ‘story’ in Treéstory is a walk in the woods. The work developed from on-site visual observation, each drawing capturing the movement of the walker viewing the trees at a specific moment in time. The history is about the eternal presence of trees, in environments urban and rural, in art, music, and literature.”

Aspens are the focus of Treéstory.

Emigrant Basque shepherds who settled in the Telluride region carved texts and figures on aspens to express their loneliness. And repeatedly reinterpreting aspens helped Meredith after the death of her father.

“During the winter that followed his passing I found spending days alone in the studio very difficult. What I could do was stand outside and paint. My paints froze; I froze; but looking and painting was what I wanted to do. Aspens are the voice in my daily life and became my figures in the landscape. I find them graceful, humorous, awkward, and very changeable, depending on weather and surroundings.”

The installations in Treéstory include “Tree Survey,” a group of 21 works on paper: 11 ink drawings and 10 antique prints. The prints reference the theme of exploration. Several of the lithographs are from the U.S.P.R.R. Surveys (United States Pacific Rail Road Expeditions and Surveys) from 1853-1855.

Tree Survey, an Installation of 21 ink drawings and antique engravings of trees

“The drawings are from my personal exploration of the trees in the Parque del Ebro in Logroño, Spain where I was living in 2012-2013.”

“Tree Lounge” is a table with piles of books Meredith read that inform her work and other books about trees and the environment from a philosophical point of view.

More aspen abstractions featured in Treestory, by Meredith Nemirov

“There are two chairs that invite people to stop and pick up a book and read. The inspiration for this installation is The Marx Lounge by Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar. This is a much abbreviated version of his table of 1,500 books. For more information there is a binder with statements from Jaar. I agree with his philosophy and hope that this translates to a more nature-based theme.”

The works on the wall are oil paintings and mixed-media that are a continuation of Meredith’s studio work and on-site perceptual observation of the natural environment in which she happily lives.

Meredith Nemirov grew up in New York and received a BFA from Parsons School of Design. She moved to Ridgway, CO in 1988 where, for 11 years, she and her husband Jorge ran the Ridgway Gallery, specializing in antique books, maps and prints of the exploration of the American West. The couple raised a son, Raoul, who is now an artist living in NYC.

Meredith continues to live and work in her studio in Ridgway. In 2012/2013, however, she and Jorge moved to Spain where she maintained a studio and completed “Twelve Views of the Lone Cone,” a series of woodblock prints funded by a grant from Telluride Arts.

Aspens, Meredith Nemirov

Meredith’s work has appeared in exhibitions from New York to the Southwest. She has also worked as artist-in-residence at the world-famous Anderson Ranch in Snowmass.