Category Archives: AHA Artist

A Recipe for the Perfect Art Fair

AHA Artist, Art Fairs

All the things the Art on Paper Fair does right

Big Names and New Discoveries

Art on Paper had plenty of recognizable names on offer: author and artist Dave Eggers’ humorous sketches of animals at Electric Works, as well as Barnaby Whitfield and William Powhida at Gallery Poulsen. But I’ve always relished discovering new artists at the fair, and this year I wasn’t disappointed. Josephine Taylor’s pastel-colored paintings of nudes at Catharine Clark Gallery were entrancing, and Rachel Grobstein’s miniature paintings mounted on pins played tricks on the eye at AHA Fine Art.

Rachel Grobstein_at_AHA_Fine_Art

Rachel Grobstein at AHA Fine Art.
Alanna Martinez

close_up_Rachel_Grobstein

A close of Rachel Grobstein’s Ajax, 2015-16.
Alanna Martinez

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Margaret Withers on making art a priority and how to find inspiration

AHA Artist, Interview, Paintings, Press, ,

2016_Jan19_Margaret_Withers
Artist Margaret Withers is recognized for her works on paper which are a mix of narrative, abstract and modern surrealism. Her paintings explore conflicting ideas of joy and melancholy, as well as community and aloneness.

She’s exhibited her work in group and solo shows in the United States, and internationally in Brussels, Australia, Berlin, China, Vienna, and Russia. She lives and paints in Manhattan, New York.
“If you slow down how you see things to where you’re almost in a meditative state, then you can find inspiration in anything. You can look at things differently as if you’re seeing them for the first time. There’s inspiration in that slowed-down space.”

Joyce Brown: In 2011 you changed your life so that art would be your primary focus; what were you doing before and what change did you make?

Margaret Withers: When I lived in Denver, I worked for the defense contractor, Boeing. I was doing computer programming related to configuration management. I eventually moved to New York to work for SAIC doing the same type of work. Part of my decision to move to New York was because of my art. I wanted to try to get to another level, and I figured New York was the best place for that to happen. At the same time, I had this idea, this dream, that I would just get discovered. I used to imagine that someone would just wander into my studio and fall in love with my art, and that’s all I needed to do. Of course, that didn’t happen. I call it the Peggy Guggenheim syndrome. Continue reading Margaret Withers on making art a priority and how to find inspiration →

“UNCONTROLLED”

AHA Artist, AHA Show, Events, ,

AHA Solo Show by Margaret Roleke

Opening Reception: Saturday January 9th, 2016 from 6-8pm

On View: January 9th – Feb 7th, 2016

Arcilesi | Homberg Fine Art is pleased to present Margaret Roleke’s solo show UNCONTROLLED, opening January 9th, 6-8pm at 139 Eldridge Street, New York, NY, 10002. This show explores sensationalism, consumerism and the contradictions and relationships that develop when popular culture mixes with war and religion. The show consists of a hanging sculpture, wall reliefs, lenticular collage pieces on wood and sticker collage abstractions.

Numerous small toys are utilized in the conversation, which allows these serious issues of consumption, consumerism, war, violence and religious extremism to be presented in a playful manner. Actual bullet casings and brass transform into jewel like abstractions as in Abstraction/Princesses. Multitudes of toys are painted in a monochromatic palette, which allow them to be read as minimalist painting. The lenticulars are a new series in which “found object imagery” is rearranged in dramatic relationships.

UNCONTROLLED_AHA_Fine_Art

This is Margaret Roleke’s first solo show at AHA Fine Art. Five percent of all sales will go to The Coalition to End Gun Violence. Roleke has been working in this manner for many years. Her work has been widely exhibited in the North East including a recent solo show entitled Happy War at Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT.

New Paintings and Drawings by Vincent Arcilesi

AHA Artist, AHA Show, Paintings

Vincent Arciloesi, Vesuvius 2014Central Park | Athens | Santorini | Naples:

Reception: Saturday, November 14, 2015
Show Dates: Nov. 14 – Dec. 13, 2015

Arcilesi | Homberg Fine Art is pleased to present new work by Vincent Arcilesi. The show continues the artist’s in-depth, on-site study of the arts and culture of Greece and its environs with 12 paintings that explore the relationship between the past and the present. Rounding out the show are 5 drawings fittingly named for Greek deities. All of the paintings are oil on canvas; the drawings, which are 24” x 18,” are in conte crayon and pastel on paper.

The largest painting in the show, “Aphrodite, Eros, and Attendants” (91 x 78”) depicts what appears to be a group of dancers rehearsing outdoors in a verdant valley overlooked by the Acropolis and the Parthenon, (possibly the most awesome rehearsal space ever!) Another large painting (68 x 78”) that is closer to home, is ”Dancers in Central Park” with eleven nude bi-racial figures gathered near the Bethesda Fountain.

In this show are 12 small paintings. It’s difficult to pick a favorite because each is a little gem with a special quality of its own. “The Bay of Naples” is lovely; but so is “Neapolitan Love Song.” Also Santorini I and ll, and the Acropolis and Vesuvius.

Arcilesi has exhibited extensively since 1966 in many New York exhibitions, as well as in a number of important museum shows, including the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Verona, Italy, the Brooklyn Museum, the Butler Institute of American Art (Youngstown, Ohio), the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Art, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. His work is included in a number of books and other publications and he is represented in numerous collections both public and private, including the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC. He is a professor at FIT, where he teaches life drawing and painting.

MARGARET WITHERS: IN PROGRESS

  • Artist Interview

margaret_withers_studioMargaret Withers is a warm, friendly and clearly gifted artist who I met on social media.  Her work (see more of her work) really has a fluid, organic quality that I love.  We talked about Margaret’s work, life and what she thinks it’ll take to get more people inspired by contemporary art.

MICHAEL: Hi Margaret, It looks like you’ve conquered numerous genres with your work. However, I think I see a common thread. Is it a fascination with the organic or perhaps organisms? I’m sensing a “living fluidity” in your work. I don’t know. How do you see it?

MARGARET: Hi Michael, thank you for saying that, but I feel more like an explorer than a conqueror. I’m not fascinated with organic shapes or forms by themselves. I’ve tried to paint straight up abstract, but somehow the painting just feels incomplete to me. I’m not sure if this feeling of incompleteness stems from a lack of belief that the painting can stand on its own and that it’s interesting (to me) or if it’s from my own need to create a story and puzzle out of my cast of characters.  Continue reading Artist Interview →

“Extant Fables”, Bedel Tiscareño

Show Dates: September 12th – October 11th, 2015

Henry

 

Please join us for Bedel Tiscareño’s first solo exhibition with AHA fine Art. Extant Fables, opening Saturday, September 12th, 2015 from 6-9pm at AHA Fine Art, 139 Eldridge St., NYC. Extant Fables is a compilation of sculpture groupings, solitary sculptures and paintings. “The figures in this exhibition, incorporating elements of disparate sources ranging from African minkisi figures (Central African power figures) to Spanish polychrome religious sculpture, are the imagined actors of nonexistent stories. While the absence of a clear narrative for such colorful characters as Henry (shown left) appears counterintuitive, the void created by this lack of structure allows for the viewer’s intuitive compass to create compositions made from all of the associations and assumptions that have slowly and silently accreted to the mind.”

 

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