Cheryl Molnar’s Landscape Collages

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Linnea

The Hamlet

Cheryl Molnar is a collage and multimedia artist, and in fact what I first thought were sharp-edged paintings are carefully composed and assembled landscapes. Unfortunately, my camera is adding the 70s yellowish cast to these photographs (and no, this is not an Instagram filter, just a bad photo). I liked how her landscapes captured the quintessence of places, even as the collage pieces fractured the space into geometric, almost abstract designs.

Detail of collage

The edges show just a bit at the end, and you can also see the transparency of the layers here.

Industrial Park

Voila–something not yellowed…! But I’ll spare you and just show you some of the lovely images you can also find on her website:

New Highway

American Dream

Park Homes

Susan Graham’s Sugar Sculptures

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Linnea

Susan Graham’s Toile Landscape is a collection of works that were just at Schroeder, Romero & Shredder Gallery that the artist moved back to her Smack Mellon studio in time for DUMBO Arts Festival. I loved the intricacy of her all-white creations (yes, despite the yellow tint to my photograph these are white.)

Detail of above

Graham presents trees, towers and other tableaux here with delicate lines. Graham made these pieces out of sugar–in fact out of sugar, egg whites, wood and wire. (In fact, s culptures made of sugar are by no means a new thing, and apparently can last quite a long time.) In addition to sugar, the artist also works with porcelain. Here we have small landscapes of sorts, but more confrontationally in terms of material vs. content, she makes delicate white guns and lawnmowers.

The Dumpster Project

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Linnea

Some people, like me, clean house when they move, getting rid of the extra stuff that has accumulated along the way. Others, like artist Mac Premo, move to a smaller studio and decide to put all the stuff to good artistic use. In The Dumpster Project, Premo doesn’t chuck his decades-worth of collected objects into a dumpster as I would: he obsessively makes a home for it in the interior wood structure he built inside a dumpster.

Each of these objects have a personal meaning for the artist, recalling memories and stories. In addition to loving sorting them here, he posts an entry about one every day on the project’s blog. So for example, you might learn that the Chairman Mao watches pictured above were gifts from friends, and similar stories exist for each object on display.