Royal Baby, 2009 by Jennifer Knaus

Are you curious about the artwork that will appear in “Enchantment”?  Well if you are, just click below to download a PDF exhibition checklist.  And just to make sure you’re properly informed, you can even download a PDF version of the exhibition’s press release.  Enjoy!

Checklist

Press Release

Enchantment, this year’s Distinguished Artists Symposium and Exhibition, will take place from November 6, 2009 through January 17, 2010 at the Joseloff Gallery.

Enchantment will focus on Romanticism and the figure in academic art with paintings from the late nineteenth century alongside works by contemporary artists who utilize the genre to engage in wider themes.

Lectures will take place on Wednesday November 4 and Thursday November 5 , ending with a symposium panel discussion on Friday November 6, preceding the opening reception.  The exhibition will continue through January 17, 2010.

The exhibition will include painters and illustrators who are dedicated, to some degree or another, to the rigors of the academy, characterized by a formal process of copying prints from past masters, drawing from plaster casts, and drawing and painting from a nude model. Strictly speaking, drawing was the foundation of all academic painting; there was a hierarchy of subjects such as history and mythology, with emphasis on detail through an idealized lens.

Others in the exhibition use contemporary methods to embrace and subvert these themes.  This includes combining the subject from one masterpiece with the style from another; artists who mine the past to create paintings that reinterpret old themes in today’s visual language; use allegorical references to depict contemporary events; through photography, explore the transition between the authentic work of art and its reproduction; exaggerate the idealization of form and subject using humor and irony; depict recognizable contemporary figures as heroic icons from the past.

A goal of the Distinguished Artists program is to bring artists, historians, and critics to campus to engage in a dialogue with students, faculty and the community related to a particular topic through lectures and discussions held in the days leading up to the opening reception.

Lectures

Julie Heffernan
Wednesday November 4, 2009, 1:30-3:00pm, Wilde Auditorium

Julie Heffernan’s theatrical and opulent paintings reinterpret allegory, portraiture, history painting, and still life with a haunting mystery and ominous beauty.

Peter Trippi
Thursday November 5, 2009, 1:30-3:00pm, Wilde Auditorium

Peter Trippi is editor of Fine Art Connoisseur, a bimonthly magazine for collectors of representational painting, sculpture, drawings and prints — both historical and contemporary.  Trippi was director of the Dahesh Museum of Art in New York City between 2003 and 2006.

Symposium

Panel Discussion, “Enchantment Then and Now: Drawing Connections” moderated by Peter Trippi
Friday November 6, 2009, 1:30-3:00pm, Wilde Auditorium

This lively discussion will include a panels of participating artists including James Gurney, Alison Moritsugu, Graydon Parrish, and Patricia Watwood, and the director of the Dahesh Museum of Art, David Farmer.

Opening Reception

The opening of the Enchantment exhibition
Friday November 6, 2009, 5:00-7:00pm, Joseloff Gallery

Would you like a sneak peek of the work that will be in the Enchantment exhibition?  Visit our Flickr page: www.flickr.com/photos/joseloffgallery

Click on any picture to see it larger.  The exhibition will be on display through October 4, 2009.

See more photos on our Flickr page: Hartford Art School Faculty Exhibition 2009

The work is pouring in and we’ve already had a mention on Courant.com which was quick to point out that we will be showing the work of nearly fifty faculty members.  Forty-four to be exact!  What a great show.  A crowded house of fantastic work.  Want to take a peek?

Hanging in progress, the gallery a mess.

New paintings by Cat Balco.

Another impressive egg tempera painting by Fred Wessel.

Our installers, hard at work.

A new piece by Jimmy Rhea.

Work by new adjunct – and recent graduate of the Illustration MFA program at Hartford Art School – Chuck Primeau, alongside a new painting by Dennis Nolan.

And there is so much more I haven’t shown you…  I hope you will join us next Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 5pm to see the finished product at the opening reception.  Visit our website for more information, or call the gallery at (860) 768-4090.

The beginning of the fall semester at the University of Hartford signifies the start of the exhibition season at the Joseloff Gallery.  The first show of the season is the 2009 Hartford Art School Faculty Exhibition. This exhibition features works by distinguished faculty who teach in ceramics, drawing, illustration, media arts, sculpture, painting, photography, printmaking, visual communication design, and foundation studies.

This year’s Faculty exhibition will include the first McLean Fellow in sculpture, Meredith Nickie, and new members of the faculty and adjunct faculty: Dan Buttrey (photography), Andy Deck (media arts), Steven DiGiovanni (drawing), Santanu Majumdar (VCD), and Leslie Smith, III (drawing).

The exhibition will begin with an opening reception on Wednesday September 9, 2009 from 5-7PM in the Joseloff Gallery, and will run through Sunday October 4, 2009.  We hope to see you there!

Participating faculty Include:

Doug Andersen | Catharine Balco | Marion Belanger | Anthony Billard | Power Boothe | Stephen Brown | Dan Buttrey | Robert Calafiore | Harriet Caldwell | Ellen Carey | Alan Carlstrom | Christine Dalenta | Andy Deck | Terry Feder | Susan Finnegan | Donna Forma | Mary Frey | Jenni Freidman | Hirokazu Fukawa | Gilles Giuntini | Lloyd Glasson | Gene Gort | Walter Hall | Dawn Holder | Deb Kline | Tim Lawless | Jim Lee | Santanu Majumdar | Rey Milici | Meredith Nickie | Dennis Nolan | John Nordyke | Ryan O’ Rourke | Carol Padberg | Ruta Parker | Jeremiah Patterson | Natacha Poggio | Jimmy Rhea | Kevin Sepe | Leslie Smith, III | Mark Snyder | Bill Thompson | Murray Tinkelman | Matt Towers | Fred Wessel |John Willis

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday from 11am to 4pm, and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4pm.  Admission is free.

The Nancy Graves crates are on their way out, leaving the gallery empty and dark for the remaining summer months.

The gallery will be closed for maintenance, repair, and our usual summer break from now until September 9th when the Hartford Art School Faculty Exhibition opens at 4:30pm.

Please check back for updates, visit our calendar page to plan your gallery visits for next year, and have a great summer!

There have been two recent mentions of the Nancy Graves exhibition in the media lately, did you see them?

On April 19, Alan Bisbort of the Hartford Advocate wrote a wonderful review of the show on his Blogbort page titled Nancy Graves, Real Inspired in which he began:

One of the most colorful, engaging and, yes, fun art exhibitions of the year may fly beneath your radars, if you’re not careful.

It is “Nancy Graves: Inspired Vision”, at the Hartford Art School’s Joseloff Gallery, University of Hartford.

Thanks, Alan. I think we’d have to agree.

Then on May 3 we had another wonderful surprise.  Did you happen to see the front page of the Arts section in last Sunday’s Republican-American newspaper?  Tracey O’Shaughnessy wrote a lovely article about Nancy Graves and a review of our exhibition.  If you didn’t get a chance to see it in full-color in the paper, please visit Tracey’s website to read the story.

(Photo featured in the Republican-American article courtesy of Roger Castonguay, Jr. of The Defining Photo LLC.)

Please join us from noon-1pm on Wednesday April 29, 2009 for a gallery talk and discussion with the director of the Joseloff Gallery, Zina Davis.

Learn about world-renowned artist Nancy Graves while touring the exhibition Nancy Graves: Inspired Vision.

The talk and discussion are free and open to the public.  Free parking will be available in visitor lot K in front of the Hartford Art School.  Please call the gallery for more information, or email joseloff@hartford.edu.

An article about  our upcoming Nancy Graves exhibition by Roger Catlin of the Hartford Courant featuring the piece Cobwebbed Corners of the Sky, 1992 appeared on Courant.com on Friday. Check it out: http://www.courant.com/entertainment/events/hc-artweek0409.artapr09,0,1248931.story

That’s right, the Joseloff Gallery has taken the leap, we’re now everywhere online.

We have a Twitter account, http://twitter.com/joseloffgallery for quick updates and reminders.

Or if Facebook is more your speed, we now have a Joseloff Gallery Facebook page.  Feel free to become a fan and receive updates on events and exhibitions, as well as photos and gallery sneak-peeks.

If you have any opinions about what you would like to see on our Facebook page, please email joseloff@hartford.edu.