“Cut Loose” Exhibition Opening Reception

Colby Bird is a photographer and sculptor who engages conceptual and art historical ideas.  He will be displaying some photostatic prints with his meticulous hand built frames and hand carved blocks that reference the kodak color reference chart.  He will also be displaying one of his Tho-net-style bistro chair sculptures that are disassembled, sanded, sawed, painted, and reassembled as abstract forms. Bird sees these as a collaboration between himself and the original builder of the chairs.  His work has been exhibited widely and is held in prominent private and public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art. Bird currently lives and works in New York.

Brian Wondelgem is a Brooklyn based artist whose unique approach involves sculptural installation, painting, and assemblage. He has exhibited in numerous public and alternative spaces, and often collaborates with non-traditional or artist-run venues to create site-specific projects. He participated in the EAF07: Emerging Artist Fellowship Show at Socrates Sculpture Park in 2007.  In 2010, he was invited to live and work in Zagreb, Croatia through Art in General’s Eastern European Residency Exchange Program with the Croatian Council of Artists (HDLU). While there he presented a show of public sculpture that was exhibited outside of the Mestrovich Pavilion. Wondergem’s work examines what makes a space meaningful and why people surround themselves with personal artifacts, symbols, and useful organizational tools.

Raymond Saa, a NJ based artist, will be showing sculptural sewn paper works that involve the deconstruction of drawings and their reformation into layered sewn pieces.

Saa has exhibited extensively and received various awards and residencies such as Public Art for Public Schools PS 357X, New York, NY; Joan Mitchell Center Artist in Residence Program in New Orleans, La.; Pollack Krasner Foundation, New York, NY;  Joan Mitchell Foundation, New York, NY.

Andrew Zimmerman’s wall reliefs straddle the line between painting and sculpture while examining pattern, repetition, and color. By fragmenting each work into modular segments he explores and exploits the contrasts between matte and glossy surfaces, organic and geometric shapes, and saturated and non-colors. Whether hand-carving undulating lines into wood panels with a saw or assembling hard-edged geometric shapes into a larger composition, the artist imbues his work with vibrancy and rhythm.

Andrew Zimmerman (b. 1968 New Brunswick, NJ) studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA 1991), and Industrial Design at the California College of the Arts (BFA 2000). In 1990 he was the recipient of a Skowhegan Fellowship Award from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.  In 2000 he was nominated for the IDSA National Merit Award.  Public collections of his works include the Fidelity Investment Corporation, Boston, MA, Weill Cornell Medical Center, New York, NY and Alliance Bernstein LLP, New York, NY.   Exhibition venues include the Drawing Center, New York, NY, The RISD Biennial, (curated by Robert Storr) Exit Art, New York, NY, and Galleria Guido Carbone, Torino, Italy.

Anabella Zubillaga is a modern day pop artist transforming iconic cultural objects that resonate emotionally into sculptures through slip casting, plaster, handcrafting and mixed-media. Zubillaga lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Jen Neal is a Brooklyn based fiber artist. Her handwoven wall hangings are inspired by the pat-terns, colors and textures found in vintage textiles and handicrafts of the 1960s. Neal’s work in-corporates vintage, hand dyed and natural fibers as well as wood collected around NY State.

Fede Reano is a graphic designer, animator, and sculptor who will be displaying his sculptures of cut foam coated in polished resin along with a psychotropic animated film.  He was born and raised in Spain and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Samar Hussaini is an Arab American fine artist and graphic designer who lives and works in West Orange,NJ.  Using specific Palestinian cultural iconography and interspersing it with mixed media, she shows a richness of identity suggesting a disruption from the preconceived ideas about Palestine and its people.

Jeffrey Burdian is a Brooklyn based artist whose drawings, paintings, and sculptures show a sense of rawness and grit that embodies the neo-expressionism movement of the 80’s. He has exhibited in various group exhibitions throughout New York.  Burdian received his BFA from New York University in 2006.

Brazilian born artist, Julia Petra Briggs is inspired by both whimsical and classical themes.  The owner of MADA, women’s shop in Maplewood, NJ, her art strives to both playful and minimal using various mediums.  A lover of all arts she studied French poetry at Fordham University, voice at Julliard, and shoe making in Buenos Aires.  Julia’s love for painting has remained throughout each chapter of her life.  With a passion for 20th century art, she traveled to the south of France to study painting in Montpellier where she discovered a love for watercolors.  Later on she played with collage and mixing mediums.  Briggs is currently working on large scale abstract painting where nature is the main theme.

The curator, Danielle Masters is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in South Orange, NJ.  Masters work investigates line, color and texture with a splash of jeu d’esprit. Masters is an emerging artist that has exhibited with The Dodge Foundation and various other locations in New Jersey.  Masters has worked for contemporary galleries in both New York and Los Angeles prior to starting her family.  This exhibition was derived by the idea of wanting to showcase the way artists interpret their materials, whether it be repurposing everyday objects to finding a new way to utilize or reinvent the artists typical tools of the trade.  Artists speak visually, and with this exhibition we are allowing ourselves to Cut Loose and be free to express ourselves.

This show will feature sculpture, paintings, photography, installations, and video.

Artists include:

• Colby Bird
• Julia Petra Briggs
• Jeffrey Burdian
• Samar Hussaini
• Danielle Masters
• Jen Neal
• Raymond Saa
• Fede Reano
• Brian Wondergem
• Andrew Zimmerman
• Anabella Zubillaga