Congratulations to Forum Gallery Artists

Robert Bauer

William Beckman

Alan Feltus

Mark Podwal

Michael C. Thorpe

On the openings of the following museum exhibitions:

Bronlyn Jones + Robert Bauer

May 25 – September 8, 2024

Center for Maine Contemporary Art

21 Winter Street, Rockland, Maine

The Center for Maine Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition featuring work by Bronlyn Jones and Robert Bauer opening on Saturday, May 25th, 2024. Including intimate works made over the past several years, the exhibition is a meditation on chance, choice, and control.

Pairing sparse, geometric works with precisely rendered portraits and landscapes is perhaps, on the surface, counterintuitive but Jones and Bauer’s paintings and drawings share deep formal and conceptual connections. Powerful yet subtle movements, focused observations, and a slowing down of time come together to create an atmosphere of reverence for the subject, for the material, and the process. 

The exhibition features several graphite drawings by both Jones and Bauer and this process is the root of the works on view. Jones’s attentive drawings in which she meticulously recreates the notebook pages of the likes of Ellsworth Kelly through delicate linework share a kinship with Bauer’s drawings of gardens and fields that show the history of Bauer’s decision-making through layers of softly placed and erased graphite. In fact, both Jones and Bauer use erasure as a tool to distill their works to their most potent essences, mindfully removing the extraneous and keeping only the necessary.

William Beckman and Alan Feltus featured in:

191st Annual: Academy Style

June 20 - September 14, 2024

National Academy of Design

519 West 26th Street, Floor 2, New York, New York

Opening Reception

Thursday, June 20, 2024, 6-8 PM

The 191st Annual encompasses aesthetic and conceptual approaches including abstraction, minimalism, realism, figuration, and portraiture in a range of mediums such as drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, video, architectural models, book projects, and printmaking.

Founded nearly 200 years ago in 1825, ‘Academy Style’ at the National Academy has undergone many transformations over the years. Today ‘Academy Style’ is diverse in practice, decidedly contemporary (members were invited to submit works made in the last three years), and reflective of an institutional identity and ethos initiated and led by artists and architects. In the earliest years of the National Academy, the artwork produced by the membership followed the English tradition in both style and method, with an emphasis on painting focused on history, landscape, and portraiture. The Academy initially engaged with the ‘arts of design’ as defined in 1825 to include painting, drawing, architecture, sculpture, and engraving. Now, nearly 200 years later, more recently elected Academicians work in mediums that had not yet entered the Western canon when the National Academy was founded: installation, moving image, printmaking, digital art and socially engaged art and architecture, among others – all examples of 21st Century ‘Academy Style.’

The National Academy of Design's Annual Exhibition is the longest-running serial exhibition of contemporary art and architecture in the United States. The 191st Annual: Academy Style will feature work by 116 National Academicians and is the first in-person Annual held since 2015 and the first in the Academy's new home in Chelsea.

A Jewish Zodiac Mosaic Floor by Renowned Artist Mark Podwal

Opening Sunday, June 9, 2024

The Museum at Eldridge Street

12 Eldridge Street, New York, New York

Opening Reception

June 9, 2024

The Museum at Eldridge Street is thrilled to announce the installation of its new mosaic floor, based on Jewish interpretations of the zodiac, designed by renowned artist Mark Podwal. The spectacular floor brings symbols of the astrological zodiac to life through a mosaic tile design fabricated and installed by artisans from Progetto Arte Poli, a storied and innovative studio workshop based in Verona, Italy. The new floor is located in the vestibule just outside of the historic Main Sanctuary.

“In all of early Jewish art, no single motif has aroused more surprise and scholarly interest than the zodiac mosaic floors of ancient synagogues,” said Podwal, whose work has been collected by nearly 80 museums, cultural institutions, and synagogues around the world, including Prague's Altneuschul, the oldest continually active synagogue in Europe.

Zodiac mosaics can be found in synagogues dating back to the Roman Empire. Archaeological researchers have excavated synagogue mosaic floors at several ancient Jewish sites, including the village of Huqoq, which is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Astrological imagery continued to infuse Jewish art in the medieval period, when zodiacs appeared in liturgical books and ritual objects in connection with Jewish festivals and life cycle events. In the 17th and 18th

centuries, ornate painted motifs of the zodiac decorated the walls and ceilings inside wooden synagogues across the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, including the Gwo?dziec Synagogue, which was gloriously reconstructed as a centerpiece of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. At the turn of the 20th century, the zodiac made its way to the Lower East Side, adorning the walls of the Bialystoker Synagogue and the Stanton Street Shul, both of which are standing today.

Michael C. Thorpe: Homeowners Insurance

June 8 – December 1, 2024

Fuller Craft Museum

455 Oak Street, Brockton, Massachusetts

Opening Reception

June 8, 2024, 3pm

Michael Thorpe: Homeowners’ Insurance presents the quilt-based work of American conceptual artist Michael C. Thorpe. The fifteen forms on view illustrate Thorpe’s distinct visual language known for its geometric shapes, colorful textures, and energetic stitching. A true storyteller, Thorpe shares his world through his expressions—his friends and family, inspirational figures, daily surroundings, athletic endeavors, even painterly abstractions and meaningful texts. By depicting harmonious narratives, Thorpe aims to inspire connection between people from all walks of life.

Homeowners’ Insurance reflects Thorpe’s evolving approach to making, one he admits is “subject to change” and currently rooted in exploring multiple, co-existing ideologies. With quilting as a foundation, he brings together contrasting ideas—intention and intuition, structure and freedom, technique and theory—to suggest the expansive possibilities of art and life.

This exhibition is made possible with support from Morse Insurance Company, Eastern Bank, and Ann’s Fabrics, as well as support by the Gretchen Keyworth Fund and the Jonathan Fairbanks Fund.

Michael C. Thorpe: NO EXPECTATIONS

June 22, 2024 - November 10, 2024

Hickory Museum of Art

243 Third Avenue NE, Hickory, North Carolina

What happens in basketball is so parallel to what happens in art.... because you have to work so hard when nobody’s watching, just for that chance to get that moment to shine ? that one shot, that one show.

? Michael C. Thorpe

HMA welcomes former college basketball MVP turned textile artist Michael C. Thorpe who tells stories about his world expressed in quilts of colorful fabric, meandering stitching and printed canvas, and in playful pencil and stitched drawings.

The exhibition will explore the interconnectedness of Thorpe’s passions ? the creative process and basketball. The lessons that art and sports teach will be incorporated into curriculum for city and county schools.