Kesler Woodward, the widely recognized Alaska artist from Fairbanks, will be featured in a solo exhibition at the blue.hollomon gallery. Woodward is best known for his paintings of birch trees and the northern landscape.
This new body of work provides his birch tree “portraits” and his personal view of the Alaska landscape in a range of seasons.  In his exhibit catalog last October in Montreal he says, “I made completely abstract, non-representational paintings for years before my images evolved into landscapes.”  Woodward also says, “I want my paintings to be very realistic – all about the beauty, wonder, and magic of the thing I’ve painted. But, up close, I want them to be entirely about, color, texture, surface, gesture – all about the paint.”

Woodward has had numerous solo exhibitions spanning his more than 35 years of work in Alaska.  He has shown his paintings and has been included in the permanent collections of the Anchorage Museum, the Alaska State Museum in Juneau, the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks, and the Morris Museum in Augusta, Georgia among others.  His paintings are also included in numerous public, corporate and private collections throughout the United States.

In addition to his active career as an artist, Kesler Woodward has worked in Alaska, first as the Curator of Visual Arts at the Alaska State Museum in Juneau, next as the Artistic Director of the Visual Arts Center of Alaska in Anchorage and finally as Professor of Art at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks from 1981 until his retirement in 2000, when he returned to painting on a full-time basis.  He is currently a Professor Emeritus of Art at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Woodward has been recognized for his outstanding contributions to the arts by the Alaska State Council on the Arts, the Rasmuson Foundation and the Western States Arts Federation.  He is also recognized for his accomplishments as an art historian and curator.  He organized three major exhibitions for the Anchorage Museum and wrote four major books on Alaska art for the museum, including Painting in the North, a catalog of the Museum’s permanent collection, and major publications on Alaska artists Sydney Laurence, Eustace Zeigler and Fred Machetanz.

Georgia Blue, co-owner of blue.hollomon gallery with Gina Hollomon, has worked with Woodward since the late 70’s.  She says, “Kes is simply the total package.  He brings a richness, vitality, intelligence to painting that celebrates the Northern landscape plus his support of other artists is unwavering.  He is a treasure!”

“Harbinger”	“Deep Enough for Ivorybills”
“Promise”	“Water From the Rock”

“Kes Woodward: New Work”
July 3 – July 26, 2014
Blue.Hollomon Gallery
Anchorage, Alaska

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

METRO FLOATING FRAME

Deep Floating Profile: 121
Type: floating frame for 1-1/2″ deep canvas paintings
Wood & Finish: ash wood frame with pickled white finish and black interior
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame
Framing Advice: fitting floating frames

“Just wanted to say thanks again for the great job on those last two large frames. Top notch product and team that you guys have. They both were installed today and the clients were very pleased!”
Steve Gamler
StudioMule
www.studiomule.com

We would like to return the compliment to Steve and say, “Bravo!”  The amount of expertise involved in joining, finishing, and installing the painting is impressive.

Paul Harryn
THE ODYSSEY, 2014
Ink and acrylic paint on stretched canvas (5)
5 ft. H x 20 ft. W
152.54 cm H x 609.6 cm W

Metropolitan works with some of the best exhibition crews in the country and this required a lot of expertise not only on our part but our customers. Our lumber suppliers supply us 10′ boards. It is much more difficult to get boards over 12′ and not possible over 20′. And, of course, the boards  need to be very straight. Therefore, this frame needed to be done in sections. We first custom milled the frame to have a wider face and base and deeper depth than our standard floater frame. We made this in 3 sections and the customer joined the sections with wood biscuits that we supplied. Crossbars were made to add stability to the frame. The frame was then routed out with our wedge system. Working with professionals is always fun. We took some pictures so you could get an idea how projects like this are done.
The work was installed 6/21/14 at Kutztown University’s Schaeffer auditorium. Click to see a video of the painting and the actual installation.

Metropolitan routed out the wood and supplied the biscuits for the three part frame.

Metropolitan routed out the ends of the frames and supplied the wedges so the customer could join the frame.

Metropolitan drilled holes and provided screws for crossbars.

Metropolitan did a dry fit of all of the pieces before sending to customer for assembly.

Focusing on rarely seen Steichen photographs drawn from the Art Institute’s collection, this exhibition includes a unique album of over 80 World War I aerial photographs assembled and annotated by Steichen himself as well as a group of iconic glamour portraits and fashion photographs done for Condé Nast, featuring such early Hollywood royalty as Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo, Fred Astaire, Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson, as well as key historical figures like Winston Churchill.

Prior to WWI, Edward Steichen was a pioneering champion of art photography—he had a leading reputation in the Photo Secession movement in New York, and, along with his mentor Alfred Stieglitz, had cofounded its trail-blazing fine-art journal Camera Work. Together, they opened the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, later 291, which first presented Picasso, Bråncusi, and a range of progressive photographers to the American public. In 1906, seeking a change, Steichen moved to Voulangis, France, with his family, where he immersed himself in European modern art. They remained there until the outbreak of the war in 1914, when, under the threat of advancing German troops, they fled home to the United States.!

In July 1917, Steichen entered active duty with the goal of becoming “a photographic reporter, as Mathew Brady had been in the Civil War,” but he quickly abandoned this romantic notion to help implement the newest weapon of war—aerial photography.

While on military duty, Steichen helped adapt aerial photography for intelligence purposes, implementing surveillance programs that had a lasting impact on modern warfare. He later reflected: “The wartime problem of making sharp, clear pictures from a vibrating, speeding airplane ten to twenty thousand feet in the air had brought me a new kind of technical interest in photography… Now I wanted to know all that could be expected from photography.” Steichen began to value photography’s capacity to transmit and encode information, and he soon proved his savvy as a collaborator and producer rather than a solitary auteur—new skills that enabled his subsequent groundbreaking career in magazines.

Following his military discharge in 1919, Steichen returned to Voulangis, where for a period of three years he created work that embraced clear focus, close cropping, and other techniques of modernist photography. Upon his return to New York in 1923, Steichen joined Condé Nast Publications, creating iconic fashion photographs and celebrity portraits for Vogue and Vanity Fair. In undertaking this challenging endeavor, the organizational and technical skills Steichen gained during his time in the military and in Voulangis proved invaluable.

Steichen championed the cultural and economic potential of celebrity, fashion, and advertising photography, creating images that became the foundation for contemporary magazine photography. Over a period of nearly 15 years he created images that redefined the field through their clever use of modernist aesthetics and advertising tactics, becoming an influential impresario who promoted photography as a mass-media tool.

Gelatin silver print, from loose-leaf album of aerial photographs from the Photographic Section, Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces, World War I . The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of William Kistler. © 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Edward Steichen. Winston Churchill, 1932. The Art Institute of Chicago, Bequest of Edward Steichen by direction of Joanna T. Steichen and George Eastman House. © 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Edward Steichen. Noel Coward, 1932. The Art Institute of Chicago, bequest of Edward Steichen by direction of Joanna T. Steichen and George Eastman House. © 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Edward Steichen. Fred Astaire in Funny Face, 1927. The Art Institute of Chicago, Bequest of Edward Steichen by direction of Joanna T. Steichen and George Eastman House. © 2014 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

“Sharp, Clear Pictures: Edward Steichen’s World War I and Condé Nast Years “
June 28 – September 28, 2014
The Art Institute of Chicago Chicago, IL

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Thin Profile: 114
Type: Thin Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple wood frame with black opaque finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame with matching splines
Custom Wood Strainer: 1/2″ wood frame strainer
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

Painter Janet Gorzegno’s new works in gouache on paper that invent for contemplation glimpses of the human—her recurring motif is the human head, which appears as a symbol of human consciousness.

Gorzegno’s intimately sized paintings discover their form from within; they concentrate the eye on serene faces that appear wrapped in stillness as if attending a shift in consciousness that has not yet happened, but is about to occur. Each of these intense yet compassionate countenances invokes its own in-between or liminal state of being. The heads seem paused, as if between actions or thoughts, as if waiting for something to happen. Their liminality seems related to their stillness—neither here nor there, timeless and eternal.

While Gorzegno’s heads, mostly profiles, are created entirely from imagination, they seem to possess distinct personalities and missions that invite reflection on themes of awareness, death, and transformation.

These paintings—some reminiscent of the sacred art of icon painting, others evocative of early portraits, some appearing as emissaries from imagination’s keep—are based on no particular canon of creation, but many of them explore limits of the icon. They test the visual tension between abstraction—with its vivid geometries and colors—and naturalistic portrayal. But if they test the boundaries of form, they also distill and concentrate aspects of human existence.

Janet Gorzegno studied painting at the New York Studio School and received her MFA in painting from Yale University. Her abiding interest in sacred art forms has led her to engage in hands-on study of icon writing and Thangka painting with Master practitioners. Her work has been exhibited widely in numerous juried and invitational shows. She currently lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where she teaches drawing and painting as a Professor of Art for The University of Southern Mississippi.

Janet Gorzegno
“OLD SOULS”
May 20 – June 14, 2014
Bowery Gallery
New York, NY

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Thin Profile: 114
Type: Thin Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple wood frame with pickled white finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame
Custom Frame Spacer: 1/2″ wood frame spacer
Custom Frame Acrylic: regular acrylic cut to size
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames