SMI’s 15th Annual Exhibition, 3/26 – 4/20, 2012

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 31, 3-5pm

William Paterson University Galleries, 300 Pompton Road, Wayne, NJ  07470

HOURS: Monday-Friday 10am – 5pm or by appt.

Studio Montclair (SMI) announces its 15th annual juried exhibition, “Viewpoints 2012,” which opens on March 26 and continues through April 20, 2012, at the University Galleries in the Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts at William Paterson University in  Wayne, N.J. An opening reception will take place Saturday, March 31, 2012, from 3 to 5 p.m. at which time awards will be presented. On Thursday, April 12, from 12:30 to 2 p.m., SMI will sponsor a discussion with exhibition juror Alexandra Schwartz, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Montclair Art Museum, and William Paterson University Professor David Shapiro, who will discuss the imagery, ideas, and techniques explored in the exhibition. Both the reception and panel discussion are open to the public.

Schwartz goes on to say, “This is perhaps most evident in the remarkable amount of portraiture in the exhibition, often set within the domestic sphere.” She points out that many of the artists’ works also span art history, the contemporary landscape (both natural and manmade), and contemporary popular culture and politics. Says Schwartz, “More than anything else, these artists seem absorbed in the everyday: the images, people, objects, and issues that make up the fabric of contemporary life. At a time of great uncertainty in this country and across the globe, artists appear to be looking close to home, both literally and metaphorically, for their subject matter, finding a mix of comfort and uneasiness, reassurance and disquiet.”

Curator:
Schwartz is the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Montclair Art Museum (info mentioned earlier), where she is organizing a series of solo exhibitions of contemporary artists, beginning with Marina Zurkow:  Friends, Enemies and Others and a major traveling exhibition, New Order: Art and Politics in the 1990s (Fall 2013).  She was previously the coordinator of The Museum of Modern Art’s Modern Women’s Project and curator of Mind and Matter: Alternative Abstractions.

The artists featured in this exhibit are:
Liz Adams-Jones, Peter Aldrich, Laura Atria, Michal Barkai, Douglas Barrett, Amy Becker, Sarah Becktel, Beth Blake, Tressa Croce Breton, Ron Brown, Jeanne V. Campbell, Robert Cullinane, Tracy Deer, Matthew Feuer, Dail Fried, George Garbeck, Robin Gibson, Alison Golder, Joan Goldsmith, Victoria Goro-Rapoport, Beth Gouldin, Jeanne Heifetz, Patricia Horing, Reneé Lachman, JC Lenochan, Yvette Lucas, So Yoon Lym, Dave Magyar, Paho Mann, Betty McGeehan, Leslie Milton, Rita Noe, Christopher J. Piccinich, Gail Postal, Claudia Samper, Sylvia Schwartz, Merrill Steiger, D.B. Stovall, Michael Teters, Peter Tilgner, Andrew Verhoeckx, Jenny Wiener, and David Witten.