PAC is in the stacks @ Sachem Public Library!
Patchogue Arts Council & Patchogue – Medford Library partner for their first traveling exhibition that has officially hit the road. You can now find this exhibition at the Sachem Public library.
Into the Spines & On The Stacks @ Sachem Public Library located at 150 Holbrook Rd, Holbrook, NY 11741-1399 August 5 – October 4, 2024
A special exhibition created by the Patchogue Arts Council & Patchogue-Medford Library travels to the Sachem Public Library!
Into the Spines and on the Stacks is a selection of works curated from an Island wide call and invitation to artists. PAC • MoCA L.I. encouraged artists to respond to works of literature and consider creating miniature installations. Into the Spines and on the Stacks is an intimate exploration of books as physical objects. Each piece is a miniature installation within the confines of a book jacket. The viewer must peer into the spine to see the installation. This is the first PAC • MoCA L.I. exhibition to travel!
Artists in Into the Spines include John Cino, Andrea Cote, Cui Fei, Kathryn Ko, Maria Macedonio, Loretta Oberheim, Eileen Palmer, Seema Pandya, Chris Vivas, Annemarie Waugh, Amanda Reilly, and Jayne Dion.
When you find one of the works take a picture and share it! @PatchogueArts and @PMLIB | Don’ forget to #PACinthestacks
DOWNLOAD THE EXHIBITION GUIDE HERE TO SEARCH THE STACKS @ SACHEM PUBLIC LIBRARY
Seema Lisa Pandya (not a specific book) Making Waves, 2023
About Seema Lisa Pandya | Seema Lisa Pandya is a Brooklyn based multidisciplinary artist, an accomplished sustainability green building consultant, an adjunct professor of sustainable design, and community builder. As an artist, she explores the intersections of sustainability, art, cultural, and the built- environment. Her work focuses on two predominant themes, universal principals of physics and environmental sustainability. Emulating from a deep interest in basic universal forms, her art explores sacred geometry, gravity, the push-pull balance of things in relation to one another, the boundaries between negative and positive space, and biological fractal division. This has inspired the creation of a variety of work over the years ranging from public art sculptures, interactive kinetic sculptures, slatted light sculptures, site-specific installations, public guerrilla street art, amoeba shaped fractal paintings, video animations, and her current series of large sculptures made from discarded played tabla drumheads. Her world view stems from the intersection of a sustainability oriented lens, the creative art making process, and decades of leadership work forming community and cultural organizations such as the co-owner of Denver’s Revoluciones Collective Art Space, and the Executive Director for Brooklyn Raga Massive. Seema is also a graduate and undergraduate professor of sustainable design at both FIT SUNY and New York School of Interior Design.
Eileen Palmer | Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
The novel “Remarkably Bright Creatures”, by Shelby Van Pelt is about an older widowed woman who works at a local aquarium. She develops a relationship with an octopus named Marcellus who has a penchant for escaping from his tank and collecting various treasures. The book is about grief, friendship, and freedom. Loved the book and working on this project.
About Eileen Palmer | Eileen Palmer is a multi-media artist in the broadest sense. Her media include mosaics, collage, print making, painting, metals, clay, jewelry design, glass, and fiber arts. In addition to creating art, Eileen also is a Museum Curator and Program Developer. She holds a Master’s degree in Museum Studies from Harvard University; her passions include developing programs for people challenged with disabilities, and collaborating on public works of art with a social impact.
Amanda Reilly | Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
I chose the book “Alice In Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll for this particular project because the surreal imagery of Lewis Carroll’s work has always been a favorite of mine. All throughout my career I’ve been inspired by the fantastical surrealist monsters and characters of that story. I also love seeing how different visual artists of vastly different styles interpret his writing in their artworks.
About Amanda Reilly | Amanda Reilly is an interdisciplinary female contemporary fine artist & illustrator based out of New York. She is known for her energetic illustrative style and subjects immersed in chaos. She graduated from Farmingdale State College in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in graphic design from their Visual Communications program. At FSC she received an outstanding academic excellence honors award by the Visual Communications department. Before graduating she started professionally showing at various art galleries within New York. She was awarded a spot in the Society Of Illustrators Student Scholarship Exhibition as well as the Director’s Cut new emerging talent show at The Art League Of Long Island in 2012. In 2020 “Human Nature” her solo show at Muñeca Arthouse of 30+ new works were featured on Hi-Fructose & she exhibited and was published in the Society Of Illustrators 62 (2020).
Amanda has championed unique opportunities for artists in Long Island & New York. From 2015- 2018 she co-created Sideshow Sketch Night, a live figure drawing event bringing the boisterous and colorful world of the NY sideshow and cabaret scene to the growing art scene of Long Island. She curated exciting themed costumed drawing events that highlighted sideshow, burlesque & boylesque performance art. In 2022 she founded & currently curates PAC Paint Showdown with the Patchogue Arts Council, which specifically invites artists to collaboratively live paint in public with one another in friendly competitive events.
Andrea Cote | From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg
I remember my mother reading “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” to my sister and I when we were young. The story of two children who run away to live at The Metropolitan Museum of Art sparked our imagination – what child doesn’t dream of escaping the banality of their home lives and and what better place to live than the MET? I still have vivid memories of the illustrations and many details of the book, from bathing in the fountain and gathering tossed coins, to sleeping in and hiding under the grand canopied bed.
But it’s the mystery at the core of the book that gives this book nook its name – “Shadow of an Angel.” Claudia’s longing for adventure and the journey to herself along the way mirrored my own experience of looking to figures in art that represented my journey as an artist. In my case, I remember looking to Degas’ bronze statue of the Young Dancer, in the same way the marble Angel spoke to Claudia.
My mother, Sandi-Jo Gordon, inspired a lifelong love of books and museums and created book artworks herself. This piece is dedicated to her memory.
About Andrea Cote | Andrea Cote is an interdisciplinary artist working in photography, video, printmaking, and performance. Her practice encompasses studio-based work, mixed-media installations, and public projects that involve community participation.
Based In Hampton Bays, she has exhibited her work in North and South America at venues including Islip Art Museum, Delaware Art Museum, Abrons Arts Center, The Print Center, The Moore Gallery, and PanAmerican Art Projects. Her performances have been featured at The Watermill Center, The Neuberger Museum, The Philadelphia Fringe Festival, The Peekskill Project, Chashama, The Dumbo Arts Festival, and Photo Buenos Aires. She is the recipient of several grants including NYSCA Creative Individuals Grants in 2014 and 2018, two SOS grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a fellowship at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. She received a NYSCA Artist Support Grant with the Patchogue Arts Council for a community project for 2023. She will be a Community Artist-in-Residence at The Church Sag Harbor in late 2023 and a featured artist for Parrish Art Museum’s Road Show in 2024.
Dr. Kathryn Ko | Saturday by Ian McEwan
Dr. Ko, a neurosurgeon, is reading Ian McEwan’s novel “Saturday”. The protagonist, a neurosurgeon, faces an emergency brain surgery. As the story unfolds, Dr. Ko is abruptly summoned for an actual emergency procedure.
Both the fictional and real-life surgeries are successful, providing a surreal synchronicity to her day, Saturday, July 1, 2006. July 1 is both the commencement and culmination of medical training cycles. It’s a significant date that requires reflection on one’s professional journey.
No writer can truly articulate the internal thoughts of those who operate on the human brain. The sliding scale between success and failure is less than millimeters, something a neurosurgeon must live with. To do our very best and hope that our best that day is enough.
For a short video on July 1 click HERE
About Kathryn Ko| Kathryn Ko, MD, MFA, FAANS, completed training at Mt. Sinai Medical Center and earned a Master’s of Fine Art in 2012. Her neurosurgery practice and art studio are located in New York City. She is the Artist in Residence at the Living Museum and served as the inaugural Artist in Residence for the American Medical Women’s Association. Her paintings, drawings, cartoons and videos can be viewed on Instagram @doc_ambidexter.
Cui Fei | Wild Mind, Wild Earth: Our Place in the Sixth Extinction by David Hilton
This work is inspired by my evening walks along the Hudson River Park. I am often captivated by the wooden pilings of the ruined piers in the river. When it’s foggy, the sky and water merge together, creating a gray and indeterminate space punctuated by dark, twisted, and tilting pilings. Seen in this atmosphere, the pilings take on an elegiac presence. These last remnants of a bygone industrial age are gradually giving way to natural decay, reminding us that we are but temporary inhabitants of this planet.
About Cui Fei | Cui Fei was born in China and now lives and works in New York. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as the Warehouse Gallery at Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; Queens Museum, Queens, NY; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Jeju Museum of Art, Jeju, Korea; Rietberg Museum Zurich, Switzerland; and the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne, Germany, among others.
She is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, the Artist’s Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Artist Fellowship from Socrates Sculpture Park, the SIP Fellowship from the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, and the Workspace Grant from The Center for Book Arts. She was selected for the Art Omi International Artists Residency, the Artist-in-Residence Program at Light Work, the Emerge Program at Aljira & Creative Capital, Newark, and the AIM program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Her work has been reviewed in various magazines, including The New York Times, Art in America, and Yishu.
Chris Vivas | Being and Nothingness by Sartre
The book chosen, Being and Nothingness, by Sartre relates to the existential concepts within my art, dealing with the precarious nature of existence and meaning. Existential writers have had a tremendous influence on my artistic philosophies over the years working with ceramic and porcelain as a metaphor for the strengths and weaknesses in life.
Over the past few years much of my work has been described as precarious, which I welcome. Being influenced by existential writers such as Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus, I have been intrigued with the duality of strength and fragility found within human existence. Exploring how strength synthesizes to weakness and vice versa has led me to working in ceramic for several years.
Ceramics, being strong enough to be used for space shuttles and yet delicate enough to shatter when dropped, functions as a perfect metaphor for the human condition. The human race is capable of such outstanding achievements, as the atomic bomb, but at the same time can mark our destruction.
About Chris Vivas | First exploring this concept I studied at Stony Brook University, where I received support under professor Toby Buonagurio. Professor Buonagurio directed me to further my studies in Japan after I graduated in 2003. I attended The Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park in Shigaraki, Japan from 2004 into 2005. Following my residency in Japan I returned to New York where I worked at Dowling College as the assistant technician and as the Artist in Residence at Stony Brook University’s Craft Center. In 2006 I entered graduate school at SUNY New Paltz to further my investigations of studying medium, aesthetics, and concept. I have exhibited artwork throughout the United States along with being in permanent collections in New York, Europe, Korea, and Japan. Residencies also include the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York City, The Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park in Japan, AIR Vallauris (Artist in Residence Program) in France and Stony Brook University’s Craft Center Artist Residency. Currently, I reside on Long Island in New York State where I teach at St. Joseph’s College, Suffolk County Community College and Usdan Center for the Performing Arts.
Loretta Oberheim | Soundings by Hali Felt
“Shoal Crevasse” pays homage to the ocean floor and the groundbreaking exploration of Marie Tharp, which is the focus of the book “Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor” by Hali Felt.
Before Marie Tharp’s, the ocean floor was a complete mystery. Her cutting-edge research in the 1950s allowed scientists to understand Earth’s evolution. Marie transformed data, creating beautiful ocean floor maps, as well as pushing the envelope to explain the theory of the Continental Drift. She did this during a time when educated women were scarce, and those who were educated were forced into a secretary position. She pushed against the social norms of the time, stayed confident in herself, and in the end, prevailed.
Marie Tharp’s tenacity and confidence in herself/work is something every woman, no matter scientific or artistic, should strive towards in their lifetime.
About Loretta Oberheim | Loretta Oberheim is an international award-winning artist from Long Island, New York, who is well known for her mixed media sculptors and highly texturized artwork. Loretta received a Bachelor of Fine Arts, specializing in Textile/Surface Design, from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2006.
Oberheim’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Haegeumgang Theme Museum in Geoje, South Korea, the Belskie Museum of Art in New Jersey, Tortuga Gallery in New Mexico, Museum of Contemporary Arts Long Island, Mills Pond Gallery, bj Spoke Gallery, and One Art Space Gallery in New York.
Loretta now spends her time at her home studio in Ronkonkoma, New York with her trusty assistant/supervisor, Winston (the French Bulldog).
Annemarie Waugh | The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The book I have chosen is The Underground Railroad, a historical fiction novel by Colson Whitehead. The novel tells the story of Cora, a slave in the South during the 19th century, who makes a bid for freedom from her Georgia plantation by following the Underground Railroad, which the novel depicts as a rail transport system with safe houses and secret routes. I loved this novel and I think it would make a great book nook. I would depict Cora, running underground with railroad tracks and a tunnel into darkness and a visible other world for her escape and a group of slave catchers visible in the distance.
About Annemarie Waugh | Annemarie Waugh was born and grew up in the United Kingdom and received a BA (Hons) from Central St Martins and an MFA from Stony Brook University. Waugh’s practice glides across painting, design, video, social practice, and poetry. Through her engagement with material culture, Waugh explores the tension between past and present, hand and machine, precious and worthless, construction and destruction.
Waugh has shown at Christie’s and the Royal College of Art, London, Farmingdale State College, The Zuccaire Gallery, You + Me, Artist Films, Berlin, The Museum of Contemporary Art L.I., Patchogue, The Islip Museum, Islip, NY, The Long Island Museum, Stony Brook, NY, Gallery North, Setauket, NY, Serendip Gallery, Kobe Japan, Orchard Street Gallery, NYC, and Aferro Gallery, NJ, and Chase Contemporary, Bridgehampton. Recent sponsorships include the Stephanie Dinkins Kusama Scholarship, The Office of Inclusion & Diversity, Stony Brook University Sponsorship, and The Ashley Schiff Scholarship. Special projects include The New York Times, Raygun Magazine, The Boston Globe, Doctors Without Borders, Paul Smith, London, Freuds, London, and AIGA NYC chapter. Waugh teaches visual art at Suffolk County Community College and the Memory program at the Art League.
Jayne Dion | Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
When thinking of recreating a scene from a book, “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” by Jules Verne immediately came to mind. Having read this book as a teenager and again several times as an adult the mastery of words Verne uses to describe the drawing room of the Nautilus are an endless inspiration for my work. “It was a vast, four-sided room with canted corners… A luminous ceiling, decorated with light arabesques, shed a soft clear light over all the marvels accumulated… for it was in fact a museum, in which intelligent and prodigal hand had gathered all the treasures of nature and art, with the artistic confusion which distinguishes a painter’s studio.” A marvel indeed to behold with eyes wide open when I saw the movie adaptation from 1954 directed by Richard Fleischer for the first time.
I used foam clay and faux painted the outside of the box to achieve the leather feel of the book cover and oil-based gold paint for the title applied by fine art brush. Foam clay again for the red chairs and the tentacles of the infamous giant squid, attacking the Nautilus. Thin sheets of foam for the walls and bookcase and larger thickness of foam sheets for the door. I hand painted miniature doll house furniture and other doll house decor, to fit in with the theme of the room.
About Jayne Dion | Splitting her time between New York and California, where she was born, artist Jayne Dion, began her career 30 years ago as a muralist for prominent Newport coast homes in California. This exposure led her to become the resident artist, lead set designer and prop stylist for South Coast Plaza, a luxury shopping center located in the heart of Southern California. Jayne’s desire for more inspiration took her outside California’s plethora of museums and theaters to New York City then to Long Island, rich in culture and deep history. After many years of vacationing along the Great South Bay Jayne now calls the Village of Patchogue her second home.
Primarily a self-taught artist. Jayne went back to college at age 45 to study and improve the lights and shadows in her work. She earned a certificate in illustration and animation with the vision of bringing her drawings and paintings to life. Jayne’s art is inspired by her love of vintage photography, life experiences, dream interpretation and her love of sketching in trees as a child, although she is trained in multi-medias of ink, oil, clay, metal, and wood, which she uses in all her body of work.
Jayne’s passion for creating art began long before her career as a muralist, when one of her pencil drawings was published in 1981, at age 14, for a book of student poetry. Since then she has been published 3 additional times: The Wall Literary Journal, volume XII, 2012, volume XIII, 2013 and volume XIV, 2014 as well as a feature in the December 2011 issue of O.C. Magazine, “A Day in the Life Of” for her work as a set designer for South Coast Plaza and in December 2018 issue of S.D. Voyager, “Art and Life with Jayne Dion.”
John Cino | Labryinths By Jorge Luis Borges
Labyrinths is a short story collection by Jorge Luis Borges. It is has been recounted that he once said why would I say in a novel what I could write in a short story. Hence his fiction is limited to short stories, very dense short stories compiled into just a few collections. Many of his stories deal with concepts of infinity, infinite regress, and infinite possibilities and finding infinity in a “Blake-ian” grain of sand. It would be unfair to leave out other influences, Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Rooms and the geometric design of De Stijl artists including Piet Mondrian which went into the creation of this piece.
About John Cino | John Cino is an artist, curator and educator who has lived for the past 30 years in Patchogue, NY. His art works are primarily sculptural cycling between and often combining the concepts of organic and geometric. Influences for his work come from nature and a variety of human endeavors including but not limited to mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology, mythology, linguistics, music and literature. He often has experiences of synesthesia, seeing shapes and forms in numbers, music and words.
Maria Macedonio | Ninth Street Women- Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel
Constructing a sculpture in book form is both limiting and liberating. The confines of the space forces one to hone in on key points from countless possibilities of subject matter from hundreds of pages of material.
Mary Gabriel’s, Ninth Street Women- Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art,
follows the journey of 20th century painters. The works, both text and sculpture, delve into the trials and tribulations of these female painters during turbulent social times. The stacked ketchup packets symbolize the perseverance of the New York School painters. Gabriel tells stories of artists preparing ketchup and water to make tomato soup as they did not have the financial means to shop for food. The painters’ stick-to-itiveness, integrity, and passion for their work created one of America’s first art movements and established New York as the capital of the art world.
About Maria Macedonio | Maria Macedonio is an artist who has a particular interest in the development of painting during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In her studio practice, over the last several decades, she has focused on the analysis of pictorial spacing.
Ms. Macedonio earned a Master’s Degree from Stony Brook University. She continued her studies at School of Visual Arts and The Art Students League, New York.
From 1998-2015, Ms. Macedonio owned and operated The Center for Visual Arts, a school of art in Blue Point, New York. Maria currently teaches art in the Connetquot Central School District, a position she has held since 2004. Maria has served as an adjunct professor at Dowling College and has guest lectured at the Islip Art Museum, Heckscher Museum of Art and the East End Arts Council. She resides in Blue Point, New York.