Here & There by Erika Ayn Finch
Courtesy of New England Home, www.nehomemag.com

Newport Biennial 2022

Newport Art Museum, Newport, Rhode Island

Newport Biennial 2022
January 8, 2022 – May 29, 2022

Opening Reception 
The art and artists of the Newport Biennial will be celebrated at an opening reception on Friday, February 11 from 5-7pm.

The juried exhibition is one of the Newport Art Museum’s longest standing traditions. For over 30 years, it has included an array of works of art in all media. Now called “The Newport Biennial,” this exhibition features the work of New England artists and showcases the fresh approaches to art making in the region. After the events of 2020 and 2021, we hope that this is an opportunity for everyone to celebrate the resilience and creativity of today’s artists.

This year’s juror is Dr. Kimberli Gant, the McKinnon Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at the Chrysler Museum. She has held curatorial positions at the Newark Museum, The Contemporary Austin, and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art. She has curated numerous exhibitions including Brendan Fernandes: Bodily Forms, Multiple Modernisms, Wondrous Worlds: Art & Islam through Time & Place, and De-Luxe. Kimberli holds Art History degrees from the University of Texas Austin, Columbia University, and Pitzer College.

Featured Artists: Penny Ashford, Jillian Barber, Meris Barreto, Reenie Barrow, Rebecca Boxx, Nicole Browning, Wendy Brusick, Semaj Campbell, Howard Cannon, Rick Catallozzi, Diana Cheren Nygren, Nicole Chesney, Alexandra Chiou, Daniel Clayman, Birchfield Coffey, Nicholas Costopoulos, Robin Crocker, Sonja Czekalski, James Dye, Katie Dye, Deb Ehrens, Bethany Engstrom, Jamaal Eversley, Natalie Featherston, Mark Fernandez, Gail Fischer, Carol FitzSimonds, Ira Garber, Natasha Harrison, Anna Hitchcock, Kathy Hodge, Peter Hussey, Erica Licea-Kane, Rebecca Klementovich, Peter Landry, Scott Lapham, Elizabeth Lind, Pascale Lord, Saberah Malik, Kristen Mallia, Susan Mead Matthews, Eileen McCarney Muldoon, Nick McKnight, Heather McMordie, Chil Mott, Paul M. Murray, Kat O’Connor, Hillel O’Leary, Stephanie Osser, Agustín Patiño, Elizabeth K. Peña-Alvarez, Ponnapa Prakkamakul, Ellen Pratte, Mariana Ramos Ortiz, Suzanne Révy, Nina Ruelle, Lilla Samson, Ellen Schiffman, Janice Smyth, Derrick A Te Paske, Julie Angela Theresa, Lisa May Tobin, Carrie Usmar, Nadya Volicer, Jennifer Walker, David Weyermann, Mark Wholey, and Caren Winnall.

Read Michael Rose’s complete review here.

From Pedestal to Wall: An Interview with Dr. Sven Hauschke
Courtesy of Neus Glas / New Glass www.neuesglas-newglass.com

New Britain Museum of American Art

New Britain Museum of American Art Acquisition and Exhibition

Permanent Collection Installation: Recent Gifts and Acquisitions

Show runs Thursday, June 17, 2021 —  Sunday, July 25, 2021

The New Britan Museum of American Art is thrilled to present a selection of acquisitions and gifts that have entered the Museum’s collections in the last five years, currently on view throughout our second floor in Robert and Dorothy Vance Gallery, Stitzer Family Gallery, and nearby A.W. Stanley Gallery. These works, many on view for the first time, span over 100 years of American art history and reflect a multitude of important art historical periods and figures. Artists featured are both internationally recognized and locally beloved, and include Milton Avery, Joan Snyder, Elizabeth Catlett, Jim Dine, Abraham Rattner, Cauleen Smith, Betye Saar, Shantell Martin, Carol Summers, Leonard Everett Fischer, Kara Walker, Paul Baylock, Carrie Mae Weems, Eric Aho, Joseph McNamara, Nicole Chesney, Stephanie Syjuco, Martine Gutierrez, and many others.

In Stitzer Family Gallery, numerous works by Pop artists and printmakers Jim Dine, Carol Summers, and Gordon Mortensen are on view thanks to the generosity of Dr. Paul M. Kanev, who has long supported these artists. Celebrated Connecticut-based artist and illustrator Leonard Everett Fischer is represented by his surreal painting Arizonascape, 1998, gifted by the Artist. The Museum is also debuting MADRID INTERIOR (Portrait of Antonio López García), 2015 by Joseph McNamara, donated by Gail and Ernst von Metzsch in 2019. In A.W. Stanley Gallery, also on the second floor, a suite of early Milton Avery landscape paintings gifted by Russell N. Shenstone in 2017 are being shown together for the first time, in dialogue with several mature work by Avery.

Purchases on view include numerous works that were acquired as part of the Museum’s 2020/20+Women @ NBMAA initiative dedicated to increasing representation of women in the arts. These include prints, photographs, and sculptures by Betye Saar, Elizabeth Catlett, Carrie Mae Weems, Ana Mendieta, Martine Gutierrez, and the Guerrilla Girls, among many others. With these and other purchases made in 2020 and 2021, the NBMAA has increasingly reflected the diversity of our community and nation, doubling the number of Black and African American female artists and tripling the number of Latin American female artists represented in our permanent collection.

We extend our profound gratitude to those who are able to support the New Britain Museum of American Art through invaluable donations of acquisition funds or artworks that expand and strengthen our collection and provide us with the ability to tell a richer and more nuanced history of American art in our galleries. We are honored to present these and other recent additions to the collection, for the benefit and enjoyment of our Museum visitors for generations to come.

NIGHT VISION:NOCTURNAL MUSINGS BY NAGA ARTISTS

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Violet Nocturne 2, 2019 by Nicole Chesney is a deliberate attempt to evoke the feeling of moodiness and the deep range of tones associated with the night sky. Wisps of paint sit atop a surface of glass – absorbing rather than reflecting its surroundings.

Since we aren’t having a reception tonight for Night Vision: Nocturnal Musings by NAGA Artists we thought it best to share this cocktail recipe that was inspired by our exhibition.

The Nightcrawler by The Industrious Spirits Company

• Into your favorite cocktail glass full of crushed ice (if you have the means) or just regular ice (if you don’t)
• Add 2 oz ISCO Structural Vodka
• 1/2 oz Fernet Branca
• Top with your favorite cola. We like Mexican Coke, Moxie or Maine Root Root Beer.

Then, sip and ponder the questions that only the night can answer.

Enjoy!

Naga Announcement

gallery naga

Although Gallery NAGA remains closed, Nicole Chesney’s new paintings are installed in her studio in Rhode Island (aka NAGA South).

If you are considering a painting we would be happy to provide additional photos and videos or discuss a studio visit that aligns with Rhode Island’s Department of Health’s safety guidelines.

safety guidelines

photos: Studio DTW

“I was trying to find a creative way to hold up our postcard-sized Rick Fox paintings to show scale without showing my disastrous quarantine fingernails. Here is one sitting in a Magnolia tree…  nature’s easel!! They looked beautiful bouncing in the wind.” (see a video here)
–Andrea

“When I told Nicole Chesney about a dream I had – a yellow painting glowing from inside a public space – I never thought she’d make it come to life and then surprise me with it.  It took a year, but I finally used the extra time I had on Mother’s Day, to install it.  It was worth the wait; it makes me smile at every point in my day.”
– Meg

Specular, 2020
Oil painting on acid-etched and mirrored glass
68 inches by 64 inches by 1 inches

Glint, 2020
Oil painting on acid-etched and mirrored glass
60 inches by 54 inches by 1.5 inches

view at www.gallerynaga.com
view at www.artsy.net

Nicole Chesney: Current
May 1 – 30 at Gallery NAGA

To mark the beginning of another month in this surreal time, Gallery NAGA will present the third solo exhibition of glowing, ephemeral paintings by Nicole Chesney.

Nicole Chesney’s abstract paintings are oil paint on acid-etched and mirrored glass. The title of the show, Current, is defined as, “belonging to the present time,” as well as “a body of water, air, or electricity moving in a definite direction.” Current continues Chesney’s endless wondering with notions of sky and water and investigations of perception.

Chesney is a student of color, always within reach in her studio is Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Weather and The National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Night Sky. Darwin used Abraham Werner’s book to describe his discoveries and color observations on HMS Beagle voyage, which included the Galapagos Archipelago. Chesney is also on a journey, her discoveries about color in her paintings. Each of her works is like a new look at a familiar animal. A deliberate nod to the influence of Werner is made in the titles of Verditer and Verditer Green. Werner’s spelling is actually “verditter,” while Chesney has opted for the more contemporary spelling. These two paintings are also Chesney’s first explorations of green mirrors.

Werner was a mineralogist and geologist. Early in his career he published the first textbook on descriptive mineralogy. Having started as a jeweler’s apprentice, Chesney feels the allure of rare and precious gems. The recognition of this shared desire is especially apparent in Azure and Beryl. Azure comes to English from a poorly translated Arabic word meaning lapis lazuli. The word beryl is derived from the Latin beryllus, which referred to a “precious blue-green color-of-sea-water stone.” Each Chesney painting speaks of color, but also about substance: Mother of Pearl in the reflective whites, sea foam in the blues, and reflective metals in the dark tones. Chesney’s paintings create a meditative repose on color and space where the viewer may rest from the other hopes and desires clamoring for attention in our current tumultuous world.

Chesney’s work is exhibited and collected internationally including the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, New Britain Museum of American Art, The Newport Art Museum, RISD Museum, Palm Springs Art Museum, The Corning Museum of Glass and many more.

Luxe Design

Luxe. Interiors + Design

Blush silk velvet from Jim Thompson Fabrics covers the walls in the foyer, which is furnished with a channel-back settee from Hickory Furniture. Created using layers of oil paint on etched mirrored glass, the artwork by Nicole Chesney is from Gallery NAGA in Boston.

Culture Abounds In An Urban Northeast Getaway

By Tate Gunnerson
May 6, 2019

A Renaissance couple: There’s no better way to describe the husband and wife who hired designer Lisa Tharp to renovate their recently purchased, turn-of-the century urban apartment in the Northeast. In fact it was their passion for literature, science and art that guided Tharp’s concept. “This was an opportunity to showcase who they are–to reflect their intellect and quiet sophistication,” Tharp says. “In every room, there’s something to stimulate conversation and inspire curiosity.”

Read more here.

More of Lisa Tharp’s designs here.

New York Times

Nicole Chesney mentioned in The New York Times

A Couple with a Glass-Filled House (No Stones, Please)

By Warren Strugatch
December 31, 2018

HEAD OF THE HARBOR, N.Y. — Harlan and Olivia Fischer discovered fine art in the early 1990s, an unexpected consequence of Mr. Fischer’s Jeep having been struck by a drunken driver and totaled.

Although his injuries were minor, Mr. Fischer, a financial planner, said the crash required him to undergo extensive rehab and got him thinking. “I realized that, had I been killed, I wouldn’t have left much of an imprint” outside of business, he said.

After the accident, the Fischers, of Head of the Harbor, N.Y., threw themselves into volunteer work for organizations including the Smithtown Township Arts Council. Mrs. Fischer retired early from her job in human resources at Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and devoted more time to these pursuits. By the mid-90s they were regularly purchasing works by painters they met through the arts council, including Agnes de Bethune and John Dorish.

They still buy oils and acrylics in styles ranging from Abstract Expressionism to photorealism. But one day in 1995, on a visit to a friend in nearby Nissequogue who’d remodeled his garage around his growing glass collection, they found a new focus. “The minute the two of us saw his glass art, we thought it was great,” Mrs. Fischer said.

Several weeks later they visited the Heller Gallery in Manhattan and bought their first glass object, “Solar Gray” by Michael Taylor, which consists of clear and black shardlike shapes radiating outward; it’s currently displayed in their bedroom.

The Fischers bought four or five more pieces over the next several weeks and didn’t stop there. In 2005, having run out of space, they commissioned a 2,000-square-foot addition to their contemporary home.

Their collection today exceeds 200 works and features artists including Lino Tagliapietra, Zora Pavlova, Dan Dailey and Laura Donefer.

The Fischers, who have no children, say they plan to give their collection to a museum someday, possibly a local one — “So we can see it when we want to,” Mr. Fischer said. In the meantime, Mrs. Fischer said, they continue to acquire pieces with a goal of upgrading their glass objects.

Mr. Fischer is a board member of various glass collectors’ groups, and the couple are founding members of the Ennion Society of benefactors at the Corning Museum of Glass.

They discussed their collection in a visit to their home on Long Island’s North Shore. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

This is quite a collection! How have you built it?

HARLAN FISCHER I find I either like a piece or I don’t. Generally I like pieces that are scaled large and display intense color. When Olivia and I started collecting glass, the feeling was similar to how I felt in high school when I discovered jazz. I heard a record of John Coltrane playing “My Favorite Things.” Epiphany!

OLIVIA FISCHER One of my favorites is “Aver 4,” by Nicole Chesney. To me it is bold and vibrant, at the same time ethereal with mysterious depth.

How do you acquire most of the art here?

MRS. FISCHER Most of our collection comes from galleries. We go to the SOFA [Sculpture Objects Functional Art and Design] exhibition almost every year. And a few pieces are purchased from friends.

MR. FISCHER We try not to walk into galleries as strangers. We usually acquire works by established artists. We listen to suggestions, too.

It must be challenging to move some of these pieces, yet you do it.

MR. FISCHER When we built the addition, we needed to move “Spiral of Life” [by Ivana Houserova] to a place between our dining room and our new gallery. We contacted Jitka Pokorna, who owned the gallery in Prague where we bought the piece. Coincidentally, she and her staff were about to fly to the SOFA exhibition in Chicago and were stopping over in Newark. We had a car pick them up at Newark and bring them here. That afternoon the four of them disassembled the piece, moved it, and reassembled it. It weighs at least 450 pounds.

How much does such a housecall cost?

MR. FISCHER They didn’t charge me anything. We had gotten several pieces from Jitka. Actually we got more pieces from her than anybody. When they were here, I asked what they wanted to eat and they all said “pizza” in unison. I guess the only word they all knew in English was pizza.

Did you get them pizza?

MR. FISCHER Yeah, I had pies delivered from a local place. They all chowed down. They stayed overnight and flew out to Chicago the next day.

Palm Springs Art Museums Must-Sees, includes Chesney Piece

Palm Springs Art Museum: Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism

“Vesper” by Nicole Chesney 2007.  Inspired by the light of a desert landscape at dusk, her piece is a mesmerizing yet technical work combining glass, oil paint and aluminum.  From the description, Chesney “superimposes sheer layers of color and after an intense and often arduous process of applying and removing layers of paint, the artist examines each finished layer and how it reacts to light.  Through this process a quality materializes that communicates a sense of wonder similar to that felt when witnessing the natural phenomena itself.”

GSC in/Paris

Read more here.

SVPN 2015

SVPN Article Introducing Sun Valley to Chesney

Read more here.

Nicole Chesney’s Mirari at Gallery NAGA, Boston

Nicole Chesney’s Mirari at Gallery NAGA, Boston
October 2014

Gallery NAGA is pleased to present our first major solo exhibition of paintings by Nicole Chesney, whose work is currently featured in a show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Landscape Abstracted.

Nicole Chesney: Mirari is on exhibition from October 10 to November 8.  A reception for the artist and the public will be held at the gallery on Friday, October 10 from 6 to 8 pm. 

Chesney is an abstract painter who uses flat sheets of glass as her surface. She began her non-traditional work with glass after having studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts, the Massachusetts College of Art and finally the Canberra School of Art at Australia National University. Never interested in sculpting glass, Chesney used the medium as a jumping off point for her paintings.  After taking classes in jewelry and print-making, she explored the material of glass for its ability to manipulate light.  “I didn’t study painting,” says Chesney.  “Like jewelry, my love affair with glass has to do with [its] precious, desirous qualities that really boil down to light.”   

In a 2014 issue of Glass Quarterly, Leah Triplett writes about Chesney.  “Her glass works are gesture-driven tableaus that explore the parameters of perception as well as the relationship of light and darkness to the human eye.  She expands this concentration by playing with the psychology of desire as it is manifested in materials, be they diamonds or cut glass.”

The title of Chesney’s show at NAGA is Mirari, a latin word meaning to marvel at or wonder.  Glass, with all its transformative qualities, is a surface onto which Chesney can add, subtract, and move oil paint around.  The difference lies in the reflective quality of glass.  Seen from one angle, her painting surfaces are matte and brushy, seen from another angle, they are reflective and elusive. Chesney is loading the surface with paint, then wiping away to reveal the layers beneath.  She does this multiple times to create sheer layers.  The glass itself is etched so that it has a tooth, or uneven quality that can grab and hold whatever oil is applied. 

Chesney’s paintings are divided between saturated, warm tones of purple, peach, and red, and cooler tones of blues, greens and whites.  Chesney uses her layers of feathery, light brushstrokes to create smooth gradients from thick to translucent and from light to dark.  Her brushstrokes leave traces of circular or criss-crossing paths on the surface of the glass.

Chesney recently completed large commissioned pieces that were installed at 7 World Trade Center in New York and the public space at the newresidence hall at Massachusetts College of Art.  Leah Triplett, in writing for Glass Quarterly, writes about Chesney’s commissioned work:

“In my work, I’ve deliberately chosen mirrors that have etched surfaces,” explains Chesney.  “There’s a lot of metaphor in that for me, about introspection, about not really being able to be objective about who we are.”  The “we” that constitutes Chesney’s audience is cut from a wide swath of the public and includes schoolchildren, bankers, construction crews, and elite collectors.  No matter their background, the visages of Chesney’s viewers shift with changes in light and perspective, which universalizes her audience as much as it particularizes the individual.  These works betray the artist’s hand in their heavily worked surfaces, but beckon the viewer past Chesney’s gesture and into a reflective plane in which the viewer sees themselves as meditated by the gaze of another.

Images of all work on exhibition can be seen at gallerynaga.com.

Read more here.