Opening Reception: Wednesday, July 8, 6-8 PM
Featuring a live poetry reading by award-winning poets Ada Limón and Jason Schneiderman

"Make two homes for thyself... One actual home... and another spiritual home, which thou art to carry with thee always" ~ St. Catherine of Siena

Images of houses—rural and urban, plush and decrepit, imagined and real— explore individual interpretations of home.

This group exhibition of some two dozen works includes exteriors of houses and symbols of the home in the form of images incorporating family members, furniture, household objects, plants and intimate still life compositions. Artists include painters Angela A'Court, James Isherwood, Karen Jenkins, Kim Luttrell, Fernando Molero, Anne Pundyk, Barbara Strasen and Shira Toren; and photographers Robert Hite, Dick Lopez, Carolyn Monastra and Maria Passarotti.

The artists surprise us with their eclectic views and unexpected use of scale, compelling us to rethink our notion of home as not only a place of comfort and solace to which we retreat each day, but also home in the classic fairytale sense, where there may be an evil stepmother or a witch lurking inside, instilling uncertainty, loneliness and even a fear of death.

Highlights include Pundyk's "Grand Trianon" a watery landscape with two elegant Versailles style chairs, reflecting the opulence of the French palace, Isherwood's colorful, fragmented structures built from layers of paint, collaged and textured; and Jenkins' romantic Hopper-esque interiors, glimpsed through portals and windows.

Among the photographs are Lopez's Brooklyn townhouse façade with French doors, hidden behind menacing security gates, and Monastra's "Twilight," featuring a seemingly overgrown figure crouched in an upper window of a warmly lit, diminutive country home.

"Heading Home" has a particular relevance at the moment as the nation faces an economic downturn. People are finding themselves at home not by choice, but by circumstance, as unemployment rates rise. Home is also a place of ruin for some as they face foreclosure and are forced to move. Yet, home in the home sweet home sense will always be a beloved person or a space where we feel most at ease and can be our freest and most creative selves.

About The Poets
Ada Limón is from Sonoma, CA., and has an MFA from the Creative Writing Program at NYU. She has received fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the New York Foundation for the Arts and won the Chicago Literary Award for Poetry. Her first book, lucky wreck, was the winner of the 2005 Autumn House Poetry Prize. Her second book, this big fake world, was the winner of the 2005 Pearl Poetry Prize. She is the Creative Director of Travel + Leisure Magazine and teaches a Master Class in Poetry at Columbia University. Her third book of poems, Sharks in the Rivers, will be published by Milkweed Editions in 2010.
http://adalimon.com/Site/Home.html

Jason Schneiderman is the author of Sublimation Point, a Stahlecker Selection from Four Way Books. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including Best American Poetry, Tin House, American Poetry Review, Poetry London, and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. He has received fellowships from The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Yaddo, and the Fine Arts Work Center. The recipient of the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, he is currently completing his doctorate in English at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
http://www.jasonschneiderman.net

Summer Hours: Tues.-Thurs., 11-5 and by appointment