August 11 - August 24 2017

KAREN CAPPOTTO | PASQUALE NATALE | JUDITH TREPP | SUSAN BERNSTEIN

Opening Reception: Friday, August 11, 6-8 pm

Karen Cappotto

Meadowville, Poetry of Place

This chapter of the Meadowville series seeks to emphasize the poetry of place.

While casting a wide arc, these paintings fluidly speak to an awareness of Provincetown’s rich history. How we balance what we have, and what we’ve lost with optimism in an otherwise uncertain future. Karen’s work aims to offer a sense of well-being, thoughtfulness, and belonging to a community that continues to honor its past, while laying the ground for the creative and fertile future.

Karen Cappotto is inspired by evidence of the handmade in a world where technology prevails and is known for her distinct palette and combination of medium.

Cappotto’s work is in PAAM’s Permanent collection and she has received multiple awards and prizes for her mixed media constructions. In 2011, her company Peg+Dick was launched when Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams asked her to produce their decoupage accessories. Her work has been seen in Elle Decor, The Washington Post, Provincetown Arts, and This Old House.

Cappotto is a founding member of the non-profit group Provincetown Commons, dedicated to developing a sustainable creative economy in the place that continues to inspire her work.

Cappotto is represented by AMP Gallery.

Pasquale Natale

Missing

“This past year has been filled with sadness, grief, bewilderment, anger and loss. The work I have made is a product of those feelings, and is as yet still being formed. I am lost yet determined, how I feel is what you see.”

Pasquale Natale graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. He is both artist and curator. Numerous solo exhibitions of his work include: 2013 and 2015, A Gallery, Provincetown; 1998, 2000-01, 2003-06, The Schoolhouse Gallery, Provincetown; 2003, Battelle /Harding Gallery, Greenfield MA; 1998, Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY; 1994-96, Albert Merola Gallery, Provincetown; 1993, “Chairs,” Academy of Performing Arts, Orleans MA; 1992-93, Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown. Group exhibitions over the years include: 2013-14, A Gallery and PAAM; 2014, AMP Gallery, Provincetown; 2012, A Gallery, FAWC, and PAAM; 2011, ARTStrand, Provincetown and PAAM. Other gallery shows and permanent collections include: Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston; Cape Cod Museum of Art, Glimpses of Provincetown Collection; The Collection of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum; Barbra Mathes Gallery, NYC; Grammercy Park Hotel, NYC; Chateau Marmont Hotel, Los Angeles; ART Chicago Art Fair, NYC; Santa Fe Art Fair, Santa Fe; Takara Gallery, Houston; 1995 Armory Show, NYC; Citicorp Building, NYC; Watershed Center for the Arts, N. Edgecomb ME.

As a Curator, Natale has been responsible for exhibitions including: 1993, “Positive Alliances,” PAAM; 2000, “The Art Colony’s First Century,” PAAM; 2001, “Emerging Artists,” PAAM; 2007, “James Hansen Retrospective,” PAAM; 2012, “Getting to Zero,” Art Current; 2013, “Susan Baker, Painting a Building, Building a Painting,” PAAM; 2013, “James Balla, Into the Blue Again,” PAAM; 2014, “Couples/ Duos,” PAAM.

Judith Trepp

Undertow

“In describing my work I use the term “Organic Minimalism.” Implicit in this designation are my artistic roots: Abstract Expressionism, an important artistic movement from my original home in the USA, and Konkret Art or Minimalism, the culturally predominant art of German speaking Switzerland where I now spend the major part of each year. These movements have been intertwined in my work resulting in a very individual artistic perception. I am committed to making art with emotional directness, deliberately using the minimum of means – lines, color and texture – thus subscribing to the adage “Less is more.” Another way to understand my paintings and sculpture is that each is concerned with the emotional division of space. In this space total movement joins active stillness.”

“Perhaps the image of standing before an image, an object, is too concrete, too material. The Sufis describe the presence of love in this world as the fragrance of the invisible flower that is God or the Divine. Trepp’s works are like that, I believe. They are the evidence of that which we hope does exist, or of that which will come to exist; evidence of that which is real, but which nevertheless must remain a mystery while we are in this world — and that which, above all, makes this world a worthy home, at least for one eternal moment.” — Mitch Bogen

Judith Trepp, a native New Yorker, graduated from Bard College. She was accepted and lived in the first federally sponsored housing for artists, Westbeth, in the USA. She has lived in Zurich, Switzerland, the major part of each year since 1970. From 1974-85 she also lived in Tuscany, Italy, and since 1990 has maintained an atelier in Provincetown, Massachusetts, USA, where she had a one-person show at the Provincetown Art Museum (PAAM) in 2011. In addition, Trepp has traveled extensively in various regions of India and Japan as well as in Europe. These diverse enlargements of vision — intellectually and culturally — resonate in her work.

Trepp’s written art criticism for the International Herald Tribune and is Zurich correspondent for ARTnews, USA. VISARTE Residency at La Cité International des Arts, Paris from 11/20012-3/2013.

For further information regarding Trepp’s background, publications, and exhibitions please go to the website judithtrepp.net.

Susan Bernstein

Jerry Can, In Honor of Water Carriers

“Water is absolutely essential to life. Most of us in the US rely on a water infra-structure where we just turn on the faucet for clean water. Globally, just 57% of us get water thru a piped connection. Water for basic human needs including drink-ing, cooking, bathing and farming must therefore be retrieved from afar. This dai-ly walking task falls primarily on women and girls. Clearly we have our own water rights/justice issues in the US as exemplified in Flint, Michigan and the Mni Waco-ni protest against DAPL. All those who protect and fight for clean water access are our moral heroes.

There is UN and NGO urgency for clean safe accessible water as a global “human right”. The strides in the past two decades to improve water access show a direct impact on addressing extreme poverty, children’s health, women’s empower-ment, and education. We still have a long way to go, one fourth of the human population drinks from a contaminated water source. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, women and girls spend 40 billion hours/year walking to retrieve water. Wa-ter is heavy. The 20L “jerry can”, used universally to transport water, weighs 40 lbs when full. Just try lifting it one inch off the floor. Now imagine hoisting it on your head and walking for miles on uneven terrain.

I wanted to try to comprehend the magnitude of our basic human right of clean wa-ter access as a global humanitarian and environmental issue. I chose to make in clay the iconic “jerry can” in a symbolic effort to honor the world’s water carriers who, despite all odds and injustices, persevere for hours every single day to bring water to their families and communities. It forces the question of what can we all do together to alleviate this burden?

Susan Bernstein’s work is all hand built, using coils of clay or slab to build up the piece. Her ceramics speak to the time and place where they are made. This is made relevant in the work by her keen awareness and intimate connection to eve-ryday life, yet it can also reveal what it means to be human. “I am inspired by look-ing at images and films of potters around the world from South Africa, Burkina Fa-so, Nigeria, Ghana, Mexico, India, Korea. Even within widely diverse cultures, there is an inextricable kinship within a common craft language. I am in love with the dense physicality and pure nature of clay in all its stages. However, my great-est artistic challenge and passion lies not just with clay and ceramic form but its capacity to transcend its physical state and touch something deeper about our shared humanity.”

Bernstein is a resident studio ceramic artist and teacher at Mudflat Studio in Somerville, MA. She has exhibited her work at AMP Gallery since 2013.

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