Council for the Arts

One Spirit, Many Voices

January 25 to March 1, 2024

A group exhibition celebrating our divinity as experienced through the artistic, creative process.

Curated by Michelle Kerr

Featuring: Pamella Allen, Kennis Baptiste, Jocelyn Benford, Bala Mulloth, Eva Nikolova, Lawrence Terry, Jorge Valdes and Ken Wright

Image credit: “Queen Mosaic,” Kiln-formed Fused Glass, 17” X 22”, Ken Wright, 2019

Opening reception:
Thursday, Jan. 25, 5:30-8 p.m.

Artist Talks:
Saturday, Feb. 3, 1-3 p.m.
Wednesday, Feb. 7, 12:40-1:40 p.m.

Sculptors Who Paint and Print

Oct. 26 to Dec. 7

A three-person exhibition of prints, paintings and drawings (with some sculptural reliefs).
Curated by Laura Horne, founder of Tussle Magazine/Projects

Image credits (from left to right):

• “Anancy’s Cosmic Web at the Black Hole”, Abbyssinian Carto, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 27.25" x 27.25"
• “This Corrosion XX”, Bonnie Ralston, 2021, Medium: Salt, hydrogen peroxide, vinegar, and rust on 100% cotton paper, 30" x 22"
• “Red, Purple and Black”, Harold Wortsman, 2022, hand tooled aluminum intaglio, 22" x 19"

Opening reception:
Thursday, Oct. 26, 5:30–8 p.m.

Artist Talks:
Saturday, Nov. 4, 1–3 p.m.
Wednesday, Nov. 8, 12:40 p.m.

Chamber Music in the Parlors:

Jon De Lucia, jazz saxophonist with Michael Kanan, Greg Ruggiero and Daniel Duke

Sunday, Oct. 22 • 3 p.m.
Tuesday, Oct. 24 • 12:40 p.m.

String Orchestra of Brooklyn Chamber Players

Sunday, Nov. 12 • 3 p.m.
Tuesday, Nov. 14 • 12:40 p.m.

"Cuerpo y Alma"
(body and soul)

Sept. 7 to Oct. 20

Works by Maria Dominguez

An exhibition of jazz themed works based on “Body and Soul” a popular song and jazz standard written in 1930.

Image credit: “Mas Esperanza” Maria Dominguez, 2017, Collage (works on paper), 16" x 20" framed

Opening reception:
Thursday, Sept 7, 5:30–8 p.m.

Artist Talks:
Saturday, Sept. 16, 1–3 p.m.
Wednesday, Sept. 20, 12:40 p.m.

Ancestral Articulations

January 26 to March 10, 2023

A group show
Curated by Ramona Candy

Featuring works by Natalie Alleyne, Marie-Jeanne Fethiere, Jimmy James Greene, Dr. Myrah Brown Green, Parris Jaru, William Jones, Damali Miller, Mansa Mussa, Papa Gora Tall

Nine artists who work in painting, photography, mixed media, collage and quilt making, come together in this exhibition which pays homage to the ancestors. Through their works, the artists echo traditions, celebrate strength and creativity born from struggle; they acknowledge and show gratitude to those who’ve come before. Taking place during Black History Month, the exhibition features works of art that articulate various nuances of promise, perseverance, joy and the survival of generations of Black people. Each artist — as griot — unravels, interprets and retells stories the ancestors ask us to remember.

* Art by Natalie Alleyne (detail).

Opening reception:
Thursday, Jan 26, 5:30–8 p.m.

Artist Talks:
Wednesday, Feb 8, 12:40 p.m.
Saturday, Feb 18, 1–3 p.m.

The Mind Roams: Abstraction for a New Age

March 23 to April 28

Note: There will be no gallery hours on Thursday, April 6 and Saturday, April 8 in observance of the Easter holiday.

Curated by Mik Larson

Featuring the works of Annalisa Barron, Bonam Kim, A.T. Gregor, Sato Sugamoto, Pedro Cruz Castro, Shuyi Cao, Ai Makita and Antonia Kuo

* Artwork: “5:1 Solje System” • Annalisa Barron; Norwegian bunad solje filigree, cement, galvanized fence hardware, spoons, forged steel and foam. 64 x 84 x 6" • 2023

Opening reception:
Thursday, March 23, 5:30-8 p.m.

Artist Talks:
Wednesday, March 29, 12:40 p.m.
Saturday, April 15, 1-3 p.m.

Curator's Statement

Like the speaker contemplating the moth in Wallace Stevens’s “Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores”, a good exhibition can carry us to another place, one that is barely tangential to the curator, artists or institution’s great experiential plans.  When you view a show during a quiet time in its run – some drizzly, late February afternoon, after the school groups have passed, or on a summer morning, when folks are out of town or lounging in the park – you can form a relationship, through a journey with the work, that becomes so revealing that your larger surroundings drop away.  You may encounter a keenness so profound that the riddles of life become answerable or inconsequential. It is my hope, that with this particular show, one of abstraction, but full of life, you find something that has been locked inside you, or, even better, you travel somewhere you haven’t been before.  All of the artists in this show create windows into very real places, but your starting point is what you, like the moth, or the café, or the sleeping shore, carry with you on any particular day.

Poem by Wallace Stevens

HIBISCUS ON THE SLEEPING SHORES – Wallace Stevens

I say now, Fernando, that on that day
The mind roamed as a moth roams,
Among the blooms beyond the open sand;

And that whatever noise the motion of the waves
Made on the sea-weeds and the covered stones
Disturbed not even the most idle ear.

Then it was that the monstered moth
Which had lain folded against the blue
And the colored purple of the lazy sea,

And which had drowsed along the bony shores,
Shut to the blather that the water made,
Rose up besprent and sought the flaming red

Dabbled with yellow pollen—red as red
As the flag above the old café—
And roamed there all the stupid afternoon.

(1921)

Spring Music Series

Chamber Music in the Parlors • Lucidus Ensemble

Featuring Maureen Keenan, Yi-Chuan Chen and Adam Von Housen

Sunday, March 26 at 3 p.m.
Tuesday, March 28 at 12:40 pm
In the Parlors

Jazz in the Afternoon • Lowe/Gardner/Levy

Featuring Janice A. Lowe, Drew Gardner and Andrew Levy
Sunday, April 16 at 3 p.m.
Tuesday, April 18 at 12:40 p.m.
In the Parlors

St. Joseph’s President Donald R. Boomgaarden Ph.D. performs Waltzes and Songs from the City of Dreams: Franz Schubert's Vienna

Guest Soloist: Veronica Kaninska, Assistant Teaching Professor, Recreation and Leisure Studies Brooklyn
Tuesday, April 25 at 12:40 p.m.
Tuohy Hall Auditorium

All Spring Music Series events are free and open to the public and take place in Tuohy Hall — 245 Clinton Avenue, Brooklyn, NY

Chamber Music in the Parlors: Fall 2022

Steven Tompkins, tenor,
with Elizabeth Rodgers on piano
Sunday, Nov. 13 • 3 p.m.
Tuesday, Nov. 15 • 12:40 p.m.

String Orchestra of Brooklyn
Chamber Players
Sunday, Dec. 4 • 3 p.m.
Tuesday, Dec. 6 • 12:40 p.m.

The Parlors
245 Clinton Ave., Brooklyn, N.Y

Red, Blue & Gold

Mixed Media Paintings & Works on Paper

Sept. 6 to Oct. 20, 2022

By Pamella Allen

Artist Exhibition Statement:

Red Blue & Gold are the elemental and foundational colors that move through this series of mixed media portraits and mandalas that speak in the language of symbolism to our relationship with the natural world around us. The hummingbird, dragonfly, lotus, and found natural elements like sand and quartz recur in my practice and with them I create my own archetype; influenced to my African/Jamaican Indigenous ancestry and travels around the world by land and sea. 

My portraits and mandalas are layered with prose poetry that is often “dropped down” to me as I paint or come to me as teachings, implorations and observations that I feel compelled to write into a piece.

The portraits featured in this exhibition are largely self studies that I began to create as a way of seeing/finding myself in a whirlwind of loss and grief, but they are representative of all women and speak to our connection to nature, spirit, to our power, our resilient beauty, as well as to our vulnerability and invisibility.

The word mandala, translated from Sanskrit means “the perfect circle”. I use this word as a descriptive of my works based in entomology not religion, every culture throughout time has revered the circle and created their own version of the mandala in ritual, it is the sun, the moon, the eyes, etc. the circle represents infinity. While I propound no dogma, my works speak to the universal and the spiritual through the lens of my experiences, their purpose is to “up the vibration”, to bring both peace and inspiration. To bring to me as I create and to you as you view, a place of inspired one-ness.

Color Recall

The spark that ignites an idea that produces art.

March 9 to April 23, 2022

An Invitational Group Show
Curated by Daniel McDonald

The nature of culling together a process that expresses your unique approach to your color practice. The starting point, or the final outcome?

Featuring works by:
Stephen Basso, Walter Brown, Ellen Chuse, Gail Flanery, Sandra Giunta, Risa Glickman, Michael Grimm, Judith Eloise Hooper, Diane Karol. LJ Lindhurst, Catherine Orrok, Robin Roi, Howard Skrill

Image: ROBIN ROI
Detail of “We Weave a Tangled Web” 2021, Watercolor, pen and ink on Moleskin Japanese folding album, 9” x 3 ¾”

Recent Thoughts and Relics

A solo exhibition of works by Musa Hixson

January 19 to March 2, 2022

Sculptor, Musa Hixson has always experimented with the synergy between ancient and futuristic imagery.  In this exhibition, “Recent Thoughts and Relics” Musa shows his appreciation of the opportunity to share ideas he has accumulated during these mutually challenging times.

Musa Hixson was born in Cleveland, Ohio but has lived in Brooklyn, New York most of his life. He earned an MFA in Sculpture at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY in 1998 and a BA in Comprehensive Art from Hampton University, Hampton VA, in 1995.

In 2021 Musa installed the Healing Arch sculpture at Tompkinsville Park, in Staten Island, NY in the memory of Eric Garner. In 2018 his public sculpture (Fairmount Nebula) was included in Newark’s Fairmount Art Wall project.  Hixson is a recipient of the 2017 UNIQLO Park Expressions Grant to produce the “Conversation Sculpture” for Herbert Von King Park in Brooklyn, NY.  He was selected as artist-in-residence at Wave Hill, Winter Workspace, Bronx, NY in 2015, at The 3-D foundation, Verbier Switzerland in 2011, Obama City Art Residency, Obama Japan in 2010, and the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson Vermont in 2006.  In 2010 he was selected for the Aichi Triennale in Achi, Japan. Musa is also the founder of the Not for Profit Brooklyn Art Incubator.

Musa has been a member of the Clinton Hill, Brooklyn community since childhood.

Image: Musa Hixson
ngc 6946, 2021, Stainless Steel, Fabric, Shells, Wood, Beads, 7ft x 4ft x 1ft

Ineffable

October 27 to November 24, 2021

Among the great pleasures of visiting exhibitions are the conversations stimulated by looking at art.

Yet, by definition, visual communication is wordless, ineffable. Even when a work incorporates text, or “readable” iconography, the verbal message is only part of the experience. Enjoyment of the works featured in this exhibition depends largely upon the viewers ability to simply allow the images to reach us without words. The intuitive right-brain engages in a non-linear way of thinking. There is visual and intellectual engagement without sole dependence upon sequential or logical flow. Although an artist may have a direction, a clear and intentional purpose in creating a work of art, here, the richness of the works also resonate in concert with the artists’ subconscious intellect.  That which “cannot be spoken“ can still communicate …. strongly….

Curated by Joseph and Audrey Anastasi, (Tabla Rasa Gallery)
Image: Daniel Genova, Fallen Angel (detail), 2019, oil, collage and washer on canvas, 9" x 12"

FACES

September 15 to October 20, 2021

A group exhibition featuring works by Stephen Basso, Ramona Candy, Brooks Frederick, Jimmy James Greene, Corey Lightfoot, Karl MacIntosh, Kathleen Migliore-Newton, Elise Tak, Art Java

For almost two years, faces have been masked and familiar real life expressions lost. In this exhibition, the facial recognition guessing game is interrupted as artists reveal emotions through portraits, allowing us to breathe in a fuller visual of the human experience.

Curated by Ramona Candy