500 W 52 Artists
Exhibiting works by Artists with Studios at 500 West 52nd street, organized by Natasa Simovska Poposki
including Mikel Glass, Douglas Florian, Michael Massen, Marilyn Traynor, Nadiya Jinnah and Beryl Barr-Sharrar
Mikel Glass: Artists spend a tragically huge amount of energy worrying about the “art world.” Instead, I believe that an artist’s personal and social responsibility is to mine their psyche and produce mini zeitgeist capsules as historical record. My focus has evolved over the nearly thirty years I’ve worked in Hell’s Kitchen. Initially I concentrated on painting the homeless, and re-purposing found-objects to create paintings and kinetic sculptures, which were the subject of a mid-career retrospective entitled The Discarded at the The Taylor Museum in Colorado Springs. Neighborhood real estate development inspired an inspection of the art market construct.A solo show, Fair, at (Art)Amalgamated in Chelsea, studied the mechanics of the market using the art fair paradigm as the vehicle of exploration. I then co-founded and co-curated a series of immersive multimedia shows called THE(UN)FAIR and the (un)SCENE that combined the spirit of a Happening with the aesthetics of a museum exhibition. The past several years have been largely devoted to avoiding the siren song of the studio in favor of my converted garage in New Jersey in order to focus family obligations – namely, portrait commissions that help support three college tuitions. Eventually, when my kids support me in my old age, I’ll be able to once again fully indulge my extraneous flights of fancy.
Nadiya Jinnah was born in Uganda, East Africa of Eastern descent, where she spent her childhood and adolescent years. At age 17 moved to London, UK to study Art where she completed her graduate, Post graduate and Fellowship in painting and sculpture. She relocating to New York City where has been living for many years now. This blend of East and West backgrounds has created what the artist describes as “a rich culmination of cultures which has become a force of artistic inspiration”
Nadiya explores these vast experiences in an artistic process that can be described as an introspective journey. She begins her process by exploring her inner landscape – a very personal place – and extends out to the external landscape. Her paintings are therefore called “Lifescapes.” They are always changing as they are cast and go through a series of rituals. Each painting starts on a clay surface, as a three-dimensional carving which becomes a negative mold. This impression is then transferred as a mirror image into a flexible acrylic base, ready to peel , stretch and paint with oil colors and metallic powders. This intricate and meticulous process affords her an infinite variety of textures and depths in order to capture the feeling of an organic landscape-rocky surface, heather on the fields, or an ocean floor.
Her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions worldwide including those at the Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair in Turkey, the Florence Biennale in Italy, the World Trade Center, Osaka Matsuzakaya Gallery, in Japan, and Estense Castle, Ferrara, Italy, to name a few. Her work is also in many private, corporate and public collections including the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, AT&T Conference Center, and Heublein Inc., among others.
Marilyn Traynor: “I fell in love with New York City the moment I arrived from Canada in 1977. I was exhilarated by all the offerings of the City, especially its cultural richness and open acceptance and vowed never to leave. So…I stayed to study art, to live, to work and to paint, most of the time in this neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen. New York City continues to teach and inspire me and I continue to love living here, all the time striving to unlock the elusive mystery of what art means to me”.
Douglas Florian http://www.douglasflorian.com
Crossing in Blue by Nadiya Jinnah
In Memorium by Mikel Glass
Beryl Barr-Sharrar
Beryl Barr-Sharrar
Beryl Barr-Sharrar
River Poem. Acrylic on paper. 39 x 48_.Framed. Beryl Barr-Sharrar
Anna Luvia Poor Allure by Douglas Florian
Insomniac by Douglas Florian
