Thomas Beale
Bruce Gardner
Naoko Ito
Luci Jockel
Margaret Parish
Lauren Rosenthal
Carrie Witherell

“We may learn a great deal from books, but we learn much more from the contemplation of nature—the reason and occasion for all books. The direct examination of phenomena has an indescribably disturbing and leavening effect … [a] revitalizing quality altogether absent … in even the most faithful copies and descriptions of reality.”

— Santiago Ramón y Cajal, 1897

Installation View

Thomas beale

Thomas Beale is a New York-based sculptor. He founded and directed the Honey Space, an innovative “no-profit” gallery in Chelsea, from 2008 to 2012. Starting with found and reclaimed materials, notably wood and shells, Beale processes them into small, workable units, which he then assembles to create the organic and sensuous shapes of his sculptures. The diversity of those individual segments lends richness and a sense of movement to both his large, and small-scale work.

↑Thomas Beale – Untitled, 2001 – Found wood – 52″ x 54″ x 74″

↑Thomas Beale – Ghost, 2006 – Found wood – 3′ x 2.5′ x 7′

↑Thomas Beale – Untitled, 2012 – Found wood and vintage suitcase – 21″ x 13″ x 6″

↑Thomas Beale – Venus, 2002 – Found wood – 4.5″ x 3″ x 3″

↑Thomas Beale – Untitled, 2012 – Found wood and graphite – 30″ x 28″ x 42″

↑Thomas Beale – Origin, 2001 – Found shells – 14 x 14 x 6 inches

BRUCE GARDNER

Bruce Gardner specializes in the Japanese art of Hikaru Dorodango. They are balls crafted from soil, molded by hand into perfect spheres, dried, and then polished to create a sheen. This is a traditional pastime among many children in Japan, and through many years of perseverance Bruce has been able to refine the process himself and has added his own techniques to create one of a kind spheres from local soils found near his own home in New Mexico.

↑Bruce Gardner – Untitled, 2016 – 2017 – (shelf installation) wood, dorodangos – Dimensions variable

↑Bruce Gardner – Untitled, 2016 – 2017 – (floor installation) wood, sand, dorodangos – 8 x 8 feet

NAOKO ITO

Born in Tokyo, Japan, Naoko Ito is a New York-based artist working in sculpture, installation, and video. Her pieces are inspired by urban attempts to tame or contain nature. In the installation that she is bringing to (in)animate, Naoko employs glass containers and severed tree branches which convey the illusion of plant material growing through glass.

↑ Naoko Ito – W as in Wind , 2011- Glass jar, tree – 40 x 80 x 60 inches (101.6 x 203.2 x 152.4 cm)

LUCI JOCKEL

A RISD graduate, Luci Jockel is a multimedia artist whose painstaking work is constructed of woven bee wings, bones, and other materials. In her practice, she seeks to give a voice to the deceased beings in the hopes of building an interconnectivity between human and animal.

↑Luci Jockel – Shroud, 2016 – Fawn skull, honey bee wings, beeswax, PVA glue – 8 x 3 ¼ x 3 ¼ inches

↑Luci Jockel

Death’s Head Hawkmoth, 2015 – Honeycomb, beeswax skull, steel, brass – 4 ½ x 2 x ½ inch

Bee Stick Pin, 2016 – Honeybees, beeswax, shellac, silver, gold leaf – 5 x 1 x 1 inches

Orbs, 2017 – Honeybee wings, PVA glue, propolis, tulip tree thread – 14 x 1 ¾ inches

↑Luci Jockel – Ossuary, 2017 – Inkjet print on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Paper – 7 x 7 inches each (8 ½ x 8 ½ framed, edition 2 of 20)

↑Luci Jockel – Lunula, 2016 – Honeybee wings, PVA glue – 8 ½ x 8 ½ inches

↑Luci Jockel – Preserved, 2017 – Wax – 51 x 54 inches

↑Luci Jockel – Study for Gold Veil I, 2017 – Honeybee wings, PVA glue, wood, glass – 14 ¼ x 5 ¾ x 2 inches

MARGARET PARISH

Margaret Parish is a RISD graduate with a keen eye for the subtle and those natural processes that involve decay, transformation, and surprise. A hunter and collector of uncommon objects affected by time and the elements, she creates intriguing sculptures, photographs, and installations by combining unexpected materials such as metal and plaster of Paris, potatoes and nails, etc. In her practice, the actions of seeing/noticing and making, are organically interconnected.

↑Margaret Parish – Potato Nails, 2017 – Tubers, black walnut, celery root – Dimensions variable

From left to right:

↑Margaret Parish – Scholars Foam, 2017 – Styrofoam – 19 x 34 x 5 inches

↑Margaret Parish – Bucket Bottom, 2017 – Steel, plaster, plastic – 10 x 14 inches

↑Margaret Parish – Collard Root, 2017 – Plaster, roots, plastic – 10 x 27 inches

From left to right:

↑Margaret Parish – Untitled, 2017 – Steel, egg, plastic, canvas – 6 x 2 inches

↑Margaret Parish – Pipes and Plaster, 2017 – Steel, plaster – 7 x 9 ½ inches

↑Margaret Parish – Drawing, 2017 – Steel – 30 x 29 inches

↑Margaret Parish – Five Buckets, 2017 – Steel, plaster, plastic – Dimensions variable

LAUREN ROSENTHAL

Lauren Rosenthal is primarily interested in interconnectedness. Ecology, the science of relationships between organism and environment, serves as the conceptual framework of her investigation, and maps provide the visual language for her expression. She makes prints, drawings, and sculptures that use the river as both a literal and metaphorical symbol of interconnectedness.

↑Lauren Rosenthal – Musconetcong Drawing, 2017 – Ground rock, water – Dimensions variable

↑Lauren Rosenthal
Wickecheoke Creek, 2017
Ground rock, water, gum arabic on paper
15 x 21 inches

↑Lauren Rosenthal
Nishisakawick Creek, 2017
Ground rock, water, gum arabic on paper
11 x 15 inches

↑Lauren Rosenthal
Tinicum Creek, 2017
Ground rock, water, gum arabic on paper
15 x 21 inches

↑Lauren Rosenthal
Lockatong Creek, 2017
ground rock, water, gum arabic on paper
15 x 21 inches

↑Lauren Rosenthal – Alexauken Creek, 2017
Ground rock, water, gum arabic on paper
11 x 15 inches

↑Lauren Rosenthal – Tohickon Creek, 2017 –
Ground rock, water, gum arabic on paper
30 x 21 inches

CARRIE WITHERELL

Carrie Witherell uses a variety of mediums in the photographic realm as well as traditional painting and drawing techniques to create a rich visual impact. Her artwork features themes of the natural world and how we relate as individuals, our coping mechanisms, and personal struggles.

↑ Carrie Witherell – Horse, 2011 – Cyanotype – 81 x 120 inches

Curated by Elsa Mora

Elsa Mora is an artist and curator. A recipient of the UNESCO-Ashberg Bursaries for Artists, she was born and raised in Cuba and moved to Los Angeles, CA, in 2001, where she lived until 2014. Mora currently resides in New York with her husband William Horberg and their two children. Elsa’s art has been exhibited worldwide in art galleries and museums. She taught at the Vocational School of Arts in Camaguey, Cuba, and has been a visiting artist at the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco State University, The Art Institute of Boston, the MoMA Design Store, and the National Gallery of Art, among other places. Her work is in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, and the Long Beach Museum of Art in CA. Mora has collaborated as an illustrator with organizations such as the Museum of Modern Art, Chronicle Books, The New York Review of Books, Penguin Random House, The Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan, and teNeues, among others. She is passionate about forming and strengthening communities through the transformational power of art, creativity, and collaboration.