New exhibition January 14 – February 25, 2017
Reception: Saturday evening, January 14, 6:30 – 8:00, Public Invited
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10:00 – 5:30

Lorraine Glessner and Jill Parisi

Kenise Barnes Fine Art is pleased to open the 2017 exhibition season with an exhibition featuring two artists whose focus on material explorations invigorates painting and printmaking.

Lorraine Glessner is a well-known artist working in the alchemic medium of encaustic paint (wax and pigment). Continuously investigating the limits of materials and art making, Glessner has innovated a highly idiosyncratic, layered and complex painting style. Recently, Glessner’s material investigations have produced a lyrical new series of acrylic paint on Plexiglas. The clarity and luminosity in this work is remarkable and is an extraordinary addition to her repertoire.

Glessner is a collector of images. She layers satellite images of abandoned manufacturing sites, amusement parks and housing developments as well as her own photographs of the facades of derelict urban dwellings and faded cemetery flowers. Collages made with found images gleaned from design and interior magazines, coupled with her digital studies, trigger memories and create personal connections to the body, landscape, intimate spaces, and home. The artist’s trove of images are translated into paintings using layers of encaustic wax, fabric, hair, and most recently, acrylic paint on acrylic panel. As layers accumulate, patterns fuse, splinter, fragment, and regenerate, becoming metaphors for the volatility and vulnerability found in the relationships between earth and its inhabitants and in humanity itself.

Lorraine Glessner earned her BA from Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, PA, and her MFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA. Her work has been shown throughout the United States and is in many private and public collections.

Jill Parisi employs a myriad of printmaking processes using a multitude of tissue-weight and hand-made papers. Her ephemeral three-dimensional prints are distinctive among contemporary printmakers. Parisi draws inspiration from botanical and zoological texts and from direct observation of wild plant specimens. Under the artist’s skilled hand, these natural forms morph into newly imagined ecosystems. Nature’s highly detailed patterns are observed, revised, and celebrated through Parisi’s re-imagining. Slowly and carefully built, these new, fantastic and ephemeral species are realized in translucent tissue-weight papers and glass. Her meticulous process of hand-cutting and hand-coloring the etchings invites careful and repeated consideration. Pinned into deep frames with fine entomology pins, the fictional flora and fauna give the impression of magical botany.

Parisi earned a BA and MFA at State University of New York at New Paltz, New Paltz, NY, where she is currently a professor. Her work is in numerous private and public collections, including a permanent painted glass block construction commissioned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Art for Transit Program, New York, NY.

We maintain an extensive lower level inventory warehouse that includes a private presentation room. Our flat files house hundreds of unframed works on paper. We always have a wide selection of paintings, drawings, prints, monoprints and photographs to offer collectors.

Kenise Barnes, director: [email protected]
Lani Holloway, gallery manager: [email protected]
B. Avery Syrig, sales support and admin. assistant: [email protected]