“The Quickening”
Tales of Impending Transformations
Troy Zaushny, Brad Guarino, John O’Donnell, Blake Shirley

The Underground Gallery Presents:
Falo Blu (Pola Esther, Brian Keith Stephens, Jason Theophilus), Kim Abraham, Jay Curland. And special musical guest DJ Ben Jammin on opening night.

Troy Zaushny is a painter and printmaker from New London, Ct. His work is a contemplation of spiritual identity, consciousness, and the natural world as they are being transformed by science and technology.

His recent achievements include a solo exhibit at the Pratt-Wright Gallery in Noank, Ct. and two mural commissions in New London (in collaboration with Michael McNabney). These include the restoration of “The Ladies” mural at the Hygienic, and creation of “The Hard Hat Painters” mural on Golden St. funded by the Connecticut DECD office of the Arts. In 2012, Troy was an artist-in-residence at the Alle School of Art and Design in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and produced a mural for ‘Ethiopia Reads’ with 40 kindergarteners in their school courtyard in Mercado (district in Addis Ababa).

Brad Guarino is a painter and draughtsman who lives in New London, CT. In his paintings and drawings, he contrives fictional worlds populated exclusively by men. His narratives explore the artificiality of gender constructs, how boys are socialized, and how this socialization affects their interactions with other men.

He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, including the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art’s Radius exhibition, the Sixth International Triennial of Graphic Arts (Sofia, Bulgaria), and the Balkan Quadrennial of Painting (Stara Zagora, Bulgaria.) Guarino did postgraduate study at Bulgaria’s National Academy of Art on a Fulbright Fellowship, and was twice an artist-in-residence in southern Bulgaria on Griffis and Orpheus foundation fellowships. He has won awards at the Society of American Graphic Artists’ National Exhibitions, FilmsOnArtist’s International exhibition, Lore Degenstein’s National Figurative Drawing and Painting Exhibition, and at Connecticut State Artists Annual Exhibitions. He has also received individual artist grants from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation and Connecticut’s Office on The Arts. His work has been published in New American Paintings, Manifest Drawing Center’s Seventh International Drawing Annual (INDA7), and Span Magazine (New Delhi, India).

John O’Donnell is a multidisciplinary artist and performer. His current body of work uses video, sculpture and performance to point at moments of everyday life while highlighting the mysterious moments we often overlook while shuffling to the toaster or coffee maker in the morning. His installation Psychedelic Pantry, is on view at the New Britain Museum of American Art from September 7, 2014 – Febuary 8, 2015.

His videos have been exhibited at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York and at film festivals in Boston, Los Angels, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Russia. He has created performance pieces for the Museum of New Art in Detroit, MI, Proof Gallery in Boston, MA, FluxSpace in Philadelphia, PA and SOHO20 Gallery in New York, NY. He has exhibited his prints at the Print Center in Philadelphia, the International Print Center in New York, the Sofia Print Triennial, Sofia, Bulgaria and Seoul Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea.

Blake Shirley is a painter who is interested in the instability of memory and perception. His fragmentary paintings ride the line between representation and abstraction while using geometric lines that reference architecture and an illusion of space.

He received his BFA from the University of Utah and his M.F.A. from the University of Connecticut. His work is represented by One Art Space, New York and has exhibited nationally and internationally. He has had a residency at Vermont Studio Center and the Radius Program at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. He has had grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and The Artist Trust Fund. His work is in collections at Poland’s Akademia Sztuk Pieknych in Krakow Poland, and The London College of Art, School of Printing and Publishing.

In the Underground Gallery:

Falo Blu is a collective, established by Pola Esther and Brian Stephens inviting other creative minds to work on site specific art projects. Faloblu believes that art should be fun therefore tries to induce playful function into their presentations.

The installation “Butterfly Bush” at the Hygienic Galleries is a collaboration with Jason Theophilus. It talks about fragility of life, transformation and simple idea that butterflies are good for you! They are good for your soul as much as apples are good for your body.

Kim Abraham is a Hygienic resident artist, and yogi. She uses art and yoga to try to make the world a better place and celebrates the folks taking the journey with her.

Ben Jammin (Ben Abraham) is a resident DJ. He has participated in the arts at the Hygienic as an artist, model and collaborator since 2009.

Jay Curland has been creating visual art deliberately for a year and a half and is enjoying it immensely. He is currently majoring in printmaking at ECSU where he has had great fortune in teachers, all the artists and many others. He also enjoys playing the drum set.