Unique Fair has his exhibition "Veils" now at Joy Gallery
489 West Main Street, Rochester, New York
Out for the night, and it is First Fridays in Rochester, New York. This is our kind of connection with a community for the arts. In each of our three stops, we took in the show and had conversations with others to catch up on what we have missed.. This winter has been more like shoveling snow and trying to stay warm! Now, with temperatures rising, we HAD to get out!
First stop, West Main Street, we enter Joy Gallery, with the featured artist Unique Fair, and he is there to greet everyone. His paintings are figurative, with many portraits, and he is fluent in the medium, as he seeks out the personalities of his sitters. There are smaller paintings in this show he calls "Veils", with some bright color backgrounds in oil and he makes really careful efforts at finding a likeness.
Portrait of a Woman in oil by Unique Fair
Up a few stairs and you will find a real still life that Unique has arranged, and he has a wonderful story to tell about the fancy plates and glassware, set out on a big table. You notice that some of the wine glasses are filled and other glasses have their drinks on a peculiar angle! What is happening here? It's all in the details!
A Unique trio of oil paintings at Joy Gallery
So, how does he do all these oil paintings? How does he select the sitters, and is this all work done from photographs? I would think that the artist really has to know the people he paints, to get so much out of the experience! He says that he wants to paint people who have otherwise been overlooked, so the artist in him wants to deal with social issues that could have a lasting effect, so I say more power to him! The title of this show is "Veils", and does that relate to the head scarfs some women in the Middle East have to wear? Or is this about a veil that the artist lifts to show the viewer the truth? So, go see for yourself!
I enjoy a chat with my old friend and colleague, Luvon Sheppard, who is the owner of Joy gallery, and I am still amazed that he has the energy to help all these up-and-coming artists! Now, we must move on to look in at a two person show at Rochester Contemporary Art Center just down East Avenue.
Anne Havens and Sue Havens, now open at
Rochester Contemporary Art Center
137 East Avenue, Rochester, NY
Open from March thru May 9th, the exhibition at RoCo features Anne Havens and Sue Havens - two artists who share a lot in common and who were there when we arrived to enjoy the opening. Anne Havens is someone who I had lost touch with since she began to spend so much time in Florida.. Anne was a Print Club of Rochester board member ( and Past President ) and she is an artist who really has a graphic sense, expressed in her mainly abstract artwork. Sue Havens is Anne's daughter, and Sue is a graduate of The Cooper Union, and she also attended Bard College up along the Hudson River.
Sue Havens large work at Rochester Contemporary
There is so much to see in this show, that we couldn't take it all in at the opening! This exhibition looks like a life's work on view... with both artists who are into forms of abstraction. I will have to go back to see it again. What I can say is that I was captivated by Sue Haven's large piece, which in fact is a kind of collage, almost like a quilt of colorful little painted grids and patterns. Anne Havens has been working for years on prints and paintings, ceramics and artist books, and she and I share a real interest in strong graphic expression and simplification of the mark and of movement.
Anne Havens presents her variety at Rochester Contemporary
Our final stop in this tour of art galleries, and I am looking forward to seeing the new space that Rochester Institute of Technology has opened ( or should I say - recently moved to ) right across the street from the Strong Museum of Play. Inside the spacious gallery you can find the artworks of Lydia Boddie-Rice.
This is the largest show of Lydia's recent work that I have seen yet, and I did write about her work ( see my September 7th post from 2024 to this blog ) before - and this new work really touches me. Once we were in the gallery, we were greeted by the Director, John Aasp, and we remarked on how nice the place looks especially with the new videos that Lydia now presents.
Lydia makes her art into kites that fly, and they are suspended from the ceiling in the gallery space. She sometimes dedicates her kites to specific people she knows, and you really need to read the wall label to get the full impact of what she has to offer ( see below ):
Lydia Boddie-Rice dedicates her kites to specific people
Lydia mentions that the video production was handled by two brothers from Atlanta, Georgia who also published her new book "Rising on the Wind". The two brothers have a business called: Alchemy Publishing and they did a really nice job taking the kites to another level. Also I bought a copy of Lydia's book and really enjoyed the text and photos as we looked up at the kites and spent time with the videos.
One of the videos presents our friend Luvon Sheppard! This really brings the show around full circle!
Luvon holds onto a work of art by Lydia Boddie-Rice
and in the videos
Lydia''s work really takes off!
