Spotlight on Abraham Ferraro and Hudson Valley Seed Packs at ACCR

Abraham Ferraro has redefined "mail art" with his sculptural installations

For a fun and very colorful experience, check out the solo retrospective of sculptor Abraham Ferraro and the annual show of Hudson Valley Seed packs at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy through Sunday, April 24.

Ferraro began making mailable sculptures out of corrugated cardboard in 2008, when he sent a roughly cubical piece about the size of a lunchbox to himself. This act may or may not have been unique or groundbreaking - but it was not in the well-known tradition of "mail art," wherein the art goes inside an envelope or on a postcard, and it started something big and creative for Ferraro.

Since that start, Ferraro has built up an ever-growing body of work constructed out of geometrically shaped and increasingly colorful modules, all of which were shipped intact from the post office to galleries, where they are assembled like a whacked-out erector set. The exhibition Every Which Way, which fills the Arts Center's main gallery, adds new units and re-creates years' worth of past projects that retain their original shipping labels (including that very first one).

It's a joyous romp through Ferraro's inventively restless oeuvre - carnivalesque, yet formalist. The show also includes a couple of the artist's electrical inventions and some flatter art that has also been shipped, in which bright postal labels combine with printed images to make a picture.

Also on view, in the Wallace + Foyer Galleries, is the Art of the Heirloom exhibition of original art that was commissioned for seed packs sold by the Hudson Valley Seed Library and makes an annual touring exhibition (co-sponsored by Capital Roots). The art is very diverse, yet consistently excellent and beautiful, while the seed packs are extraordinary examples of highly aesthetic graphic design. Seen together, they get you thinking about the ways images are transformed by context.

The show was such a pleasure, it inspired us to pick up a pack of striped cherry tomato seeds for our garden (from the Honest Weight Food Co-op), an unusual result of a Sunday afternoon art excursion.

Rainbow Chard, oil on canvas by Sheryl Humphrey, from Art of the Heirloom

The Black & White Show at ACG

Note: The current exhibition at Albany Center Gallery features work in black and white by eight artists and was organized by the Executive Director Tony Iadicicco and me. Below are some images from the show and an essay I wrote to accompany it. The gallery will NOT be open on Saturdays through the duration of this exhibition. It will be open M-F, 12-5.

ADD NOTE: There will be a second reception for The Black & White Show on Friday, Aug. 1, from 5-8 p.m. as part of Albany's monthly 1st Friday events. Enjoy! - David

 

Show invitation, featuring a detail from Willie Marlowe's installation of acrylic paintings

 

What do you think of first when you consider art in black and white? My thoughts range from line drawings, possibly like those elegant ones Matisse is famous for, to richly textured photographic silver prints, whether from the street, the land or the studio, to minimalist paintings on a grand scale, such as those by artists from the ‘60s.

Photographic silver print by Theresa Swidorski

When Tony Iadicicco and I began to put this show together, we had those thoughts and more – certain artists jumped to mind quickly; others were just a discovery away. We knew there should be a good range of media and styles in this show, but we wanted to let the art itself lead us to what the exhibition would ultimately comprise. In a twist of fate, Victoria Salzman, the printmaker whose dark, edgy etchings of human subjects were the catalyst for the show’s theme, no longer lives within our geographic radius, so she couldn’t be included – and, as it turns out, neither a printmaker nor a social-commentator took her place.

Instead, we have a powerful confluence of realism, abstraction, minimalism, expressionism and more, with a broad inclusion of media from fiber to flower to photograph. David McDonald, whose deeply worked, highly structured drawings grace these walls, also contributed a small selection of the scores of altered books he has created. Willie Marlowe, a painter known for the brightest of neon colors, brought us similar work in juicy black and white – but she also turned the show into a stunning example of international mail art.

A Sharpie drawing on painted door by John Hampshire

John Hampshire’s labyrinthine Sharpie drawings continue to expand on his quasi-apocalyptic visions of tornado-wracked landscapes, this time with large man-made structures included. Barbara Todd has provided bold-yet-soft minimalist quilts as well as delicate wall-mounted constructions of cut-out boards, while Evan Euripidou’s mixed-media installation also starts at the wall’s surface, only to leap full-blown into the gallery’s space as living art.

A large detail of Barbara Todd's wall installation

Like Hampshire, Scott Nelson Foster depicts starkly uninhabited built spaces, but he renders them in the subtlest of gray-scale tones with almost unbelievable watercolor technique. Theresa Swidorski’s darkroom-made silver prints take us into a deep, black forest penetrated by a transcendent sunlight, and Blacklight Lighthouse’s monochromatic videos dare to stare directly at the source of that light, while doing our blinking and shrieking for us.

In all, The Black & White Show does what Albany Center Gallery’s mission has dictated for more than 35 years – it brings out the best from a regional art scene that has very much to offer and shares it with an eager audience. Thank you, Ms. Salzman, for unknowingly giving us the inspiration. You are here in spirit.

One of the etchings by Victoria Salzman that inspired The Black & White Show