New Works
Sculptures and Paintings
by Lorenz and Nathenson
Showing until June 16
Elaine Lorenz and Howard Nathenson return to the Passaic County Arts Center
with a collaborative exhibition of new works from their studios.
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MEET THE ARTISTS
Elaine Lorenz
Elaine Lorenz was born in the Bronx, NY and was influenced by both the artistic community of New York City and the countryside of the Berkshire Mountains where her family summered. Her parents were landscape painters, gardeners and also ran their own Industrial Design business. Elaine Lorenz majored in sculpture as an undergraduate at Marietta College in Ohio and received an MFA in sculpture from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She worked as an artist in the Point of Sales Display and Graphic Design industries. At the same time she began teaching sculpture in adult education classes, art centers and museum educational programs. Elaine Lorenz is now a tenured professor at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ where she teaches sculpture and ceramic sculpture.
Always looking for new materials and methods, Lorenz has made sculpture in such diverse materials as wood, metal, concrete, encaustic over a wire armature and ceramic, while maintaining an overall view of nature as a dominant source of energy and influence on her work. Her approach in making art has been abstract, only alluding to things, relationships or emotions and leaving room for the viewer’s interpretation. Lorenz's sculptures range in size from large-scale site-specific installations to life-size freestanding work as well as more intimate pedestal pieces.
Lorenz has exhibited her work in numerous group exhibitions and sculpture sites throughout the US among them the Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY; The Fredonia Sculpture Project, Fredonia, NY; Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin; Knoxville Museum, Knoxville, TN; The Hunterdon, Morris, Newark and Montclair Museums, NJ; Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, Hempstead; and the International Sculpture Center, Washington, DC.
Lorenz’s sculptures are in private, public and corporate collections ranging from Alabama, California, Florida, New Jersey and Texas. Awards include: a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, NJ State Council on the Arts Fellowship Grants in 1988 and 1999, Athena Foundation Grant for Socrates Sculpture Park, a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Grant, a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship, and a NJ State Sculpture Commission for the NJ Environmental Center Headquarters at DeKorte Park, Lyndhurst, NJ. She has been the Vice President of Exhibitions for the Sculptors Guild since 2011.
Howard Nathenson
Howard Nathenson was born in Denver Colorado and is a painter and a photographer. He received a BFA in painting from the University of Denver and an MFA in painting from the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught drawing, painting, and photography at The University of California, Berkeley; California State College, Los Angeles; William Paterson University, Paterson, New Jersey; and Keane College, Newark, New Jersey.
Nathenson specializes in drawing, photography and painting, his imagery ranges from symbolic photographic realism, semi abstract compositions, to compositions that celebrate the subtle processes and formal constraints of the compositions themselves, such as illusionism contrasted with texture, black and white combined or contrasted with color, combinations of materials, and suggested imaginary narratives.
Nathenson has displayed his work in numerous states, including at exhibitions in California, New York City and New Jersey. His paintings were shown in the Whitney Annual and the “Extraordinary Images” exhibition at the Whitney Museum. Nathenson’ s landscape vignette drawings were shown at Artist’s Space in New York City, and his still life black and white photograph series “Chiaroscuro” was shown at the Morris Museum, Morristown New Jersey. Nathenson was awarded a New Jersey State Fellowship for the Arts, in photography, and served on the Fellowship’s selection committee the following year. His work is in the collection of the Neuberger Museum, The Brodsky Museum at SUNY, The Bergen Museum, The University of Denver and many private and public collections.
ARTIST STATEMENTS
Elaine Lorenz
Elaine Lorenz’s new ceramic sculptures reflects her ongoing interest in creating negative spaces within her forms. There is a sensuality and slight figurative quality to this body of work. Some sculptures incorporate a sense of balance and precariousness as well. Lorenz finished three of the sculptures with a hand painted multi-colored patina and used a dark clay body for the other three, leaving the surfaces untouched.
Howard Nathenson
The abstract paintings comprising this exhibition are examples of a continuing series by the artist called MARKS AND LAYERS. The acrylic paint is applied through the use of paint rollers, sponges, pouring and splashing, and the addition of lines and shapes applied with color pencil and/or oil crayon. Paint brushes are rarely used. The idea is to create layers of thin paint, spread and manipulated for effect. Mr. Nathenson looks to the period of Color Field paintings of the 1980s of which he was a part, for inspiration. Any particular imagery that the viewer perceives is, as far as Mr. Nathenson is concerned, a good addition to the experience. The visual content and, in particular, the colors are always influenced by nature, as well as the artist's moods and emotions.