Kindred Spirits
Exploring Abstract Expressionism Today
Abstract Expressionism was a post-World War II movement that happened in New York during the 1940s and 50s, and there are numerous artists that work in abstract expressionistic modes today. This exhibition represents the work of six contemporary painters that have been influenced by this movement of art—the first art movement to put New York City at the center of the Western art world.
Download a PDF of the full exhibition catalog here…
Essay: Carlos Ramirez
About the Artist Essay, 2016
Carlos Ramirez’s joyous, deep paintings invite us to connect with him at a level beyond words. His large-scale abstractions are serene and yet buoyant, tethered yet open, intuitive yet structured—closing the gap between the dualities that exist in both life and painting.
Read the essay here…
Essay: Jay Zerbe
Essay for Painter Self-Published Book, 2014
One can get lost in the gestural patchwork of Jay Zerbe’s paintings—paintings that defy boundaries as the eye wanders beyond the substrate’s format—elevating the imagination and heightening sensibilities. Like moments of flux caught by the eye of a millisecond camera, they are mysterious views into the workings of something grander and indecipherable. Powerful, stimulating, intriguing, and always challenging, they resonate deeply with our inner being, breathing in and out—inviting us to fully investigate them.
See a preview of the book here…
Essay: Jacqueline Iskander
Essay for Artist Brochure
One of Jacqueline Iskander’s most vivid childhood memories involves wandering the Missouri countryside when she was barely a teenager. Awakening one winter morning to a snow-covered landscape, she instinctively donned her boots and coat, walked up a gravel road, and proceeded in the direction of a lake.
Download a PDF of the full brochure here…
Essay: Adele Sypesteyn
Essay for Artist Website
From a place of quiet solitude, Adele Sypesteyn creates work that gives voice to her interior world—one beyond words. She has ferried through life’s valleys of losses and gains, and the excavation of that life is from a reservoir brimming with experience and depth. Out of this excavation she creates layer after layer on her canvases, a subconscious recorded history of sorts, which she then offers to us as a portal to our own awareness and peace.
Essay: Audrey Phillips
Essay for Artist Brochure, 2012
Abstract rhythms, immediately felt, can serve as an expression of the inner self. Painter Robert Motherwell noted this in discussions of his work, as did other abstractionists who sought to move beyond referential notions of reality, focusing instead on the expansive possibilities of an interior world.
Download a PDF of the full brochure here…
Profile: Sam Gruber
Published in Expressive Drawing, Steven Aimone, 2009, Lark Books
Sam Gruber owned and operated an employment agency in Manhattan for many years. He finally sold it in 1967, when he was 60. He had begun playing the cello when he was 40 and was glad to be able to devote more time to his music during this period of his life. But, according to May (his widow), Sam felt like he could never “catch up” with other musicians, because he had begun playing so late.
Download a PDF of the full artist profile here…
Profile: Bill Traylor
Published in Expressive Drawing, Steven Aimone, 2009, Lark Books
Bill Traylor was born into slavery on a plantation, near Benton, Alabama. After the Civil War, Bill continued to live on the plantation, but in 1939, he left because everyone of importance to him had moved on. Bill’s wife had died and his nine grown children had moved away from the area, so he relocated to Montgomery.
Download a PDF of the full artist profile here…
Profile: Jan Bailey
Published in Expressive Drawing, Steven Aimone, 2009, Lark Books
Jan Bailey is a well-respected poet and the author of three poetry collections. She continued to write until the death of her mother several years ago. After this pivotal event, she found herself with a serious case of writer’s block at the age of 63.
Download a PDF of the full artist profile here…
Profile: Pam Moran
Published in Expressive Drawing, Steven Aimone, 2009, Lark Books
Like so many of us, Pam Moran enthusiastically created drawings as a child. When she decided to pursue this more seriously in college by majoring in art, however, she hit a roadblock in her first composition class.
Download a PDF of the full artist profile here…
Profile: Elizabeth Layton
Published in Expressive Drawing, Steven Aimone, 2009, Lark Books
Elizabeth Layton was the daughter of a newspaper publisher in Wellsville, Kansas. A mother to five children, she was a journalist and creative writer who, following her father’s death, served as the manager of the newspaper. For 30 years, however, she suffered from severe bouts of manic-depression.
Download a PDF of the full artist profile here…
Essay: Nick Cave
Published in The Fiberarts Book of Wearable Art, Katherine Duncan Aimone, 2002
Nick Cave has been called many things – an artist, an academician, a designer, a dancer, a performance artist, a sculptor. His multi-media/multi-dimensional approach to his art reflects the direct way in which he responds to his own personal history, and his need to stretch conventional boundaries. Cave says that he strives to create meaning in his work that “makes a difference in the lives of individuals.”
Download a PDF of the full artist profile here…
Essay: Mary Jaeger
Published in The Fiberarts Book of Wearable Art, Katherine Duncan Aimone, 2002
Influenced by centuries-old techniques, Mary Jaeger’s work supplies an innovative bridge between the distant past and the yet-to-be future. Fusing the energies innate to Western innovation and Eastern mastery of process, she creates bodies of work that echo her creative desires and changing interests. She has cultivated her own aesthetic through processes that are used as tools for the expression of her ideas.
Download a PDF of the full artist profile here…
Essay: Catherine Bacon
Published in The Fiberarts Book of Wearable Art, Katherine Duncan Aimone, 2002
Catherin Bacon is the first to admit that she doesn’t fit into the “one-of-a-kind” handmade category. She is a designer who collaborates with others who make the fabrics and accessories that she assembles into singular and striking ensembles.
Download a PDF of the full artist profile here…
Essay: Tim Harding
Published in The Fiberarts Book of Wearable Art, Katherine Duncan Aimone, 2002
With the eye of a surgeon who knows the anatomy of the world beneath his scalpel, Tim Harding cuts through layers of fabric in a revealing way. The armature of clothing, on which he hangs his formal considerations, is secondary to his obsession with texture, color, line, and mark.
Download a PDF of the full artist profile here…
Essay: Jean Williams Caciedo
Published in The Fiberarts Book of Wearable Art, Katherine Duncan Aimone, 2002
When Jean Williams Caciedo was a child, she carefully arranged dollhouse furniture in shoe boxes, building small architectural kingdoms from her imagination. At an early age, she was interested in the structure of things, and that interest has compelled her to stretch the boundaries of the definitions of both art and craft.