Tuesday, December 20, 2011

NetWorks 2011


To accompany the debut of Art Rhode Island, WSBE Rhode Island PBS will re-broadcast the two-part NetWorks 2011. The video portraits of 13 artists will air on Saturday, January 7 and Saturday January 14 at 7 P.M., as part of the ongoing WSBE series, Rhode Island Stories.

These artists are profiled in NetWorks 2011:

Andrew Moon Bain

Andrew Moon Bain grew up in Seattle, WA and moved to Rhode Island to attend the Rhode Island School of Design. His paintings incorporate multi-colored screen printing and collage, as do his large scale mixed media installation pieces. Also an accomplished musician and producer, his band Boo City can be seen playing regularly around the region.


Philip Jamoulis Jameson
After retiring from practicing medicine Philip Jamoulis Jameson fully reconnected with his lifelong passion for photography. His large format, black and white images are rich with glorious detail. A master darkroom technician, he follows in the footsteps and traditions of the masters of landscape photography before him, yet his images seem to bring something fresh and vital, reviving that sense of awe and wonder in the world around us.

Nilton Cardenas
Since leaving his native Peru for the United States in his early twenties, Nilton Cardenas has embarked on a quest to recapture many aspects of his native land in paint. Drawing heavily from his ancestral past, his images are rich and vibrant "dances" of color on the canvas.

Barnaby Evans
Best known as the creator of WaterFire Providence, Barnaby Evans has had a rich and diverse career as a urban landscape photographer, an installation artist and a biologist. His intense desire to better the planet and his deep connection to it and keen civic involvement has lead him on an ever changing path of discovery which often manifests itself in mighty works of spectacle.

Nancy Friese
As a landscape painter Nancy Friese spends most of her time painting outdoors. The freshness of her canvases reflect the robust process of her connecting with nature in every stroke of her brush. The vibrant energy of her surroundings is deftly captured in both oil and in watercolor and when the paintings are finished, the viewer then gets to be an active part of the process.

Shawn Kenney
Moody night time scenes, space, and atmospheric darkness fascinated Shawn Kenney as a child. After a life altering injury as an adult, he needed to reclaim his art making abilities. During rigorous instruction and self-reflection, he embarked on a series of still life paintings of ordinary food items which began the process of reconnecting the brain to the hand. His continuation of an ongoing series of farm related scenes and animals keeps him searching for answers in the mysterious relationships arising in each new piece.


Scott Lapham
Photographer Scott Lapham searches for "reality" with every click of the shutter. Using large format studio cameras in the field allow him to connect to his subject matter in a very physical way. His sense of place and love of history mixed with intense technical ability allow him capture those fleeting moments that inform us all of who we are and where we come from.

Janet Prip
A fifth generation metal smith, Janet Prip embraces that tradition in a refreshing way. Her technical proficiency in mixing and juxtaposition of unusual materials reflects a profound and effortless design sense. Her keen eye can turn stones, pottery shards, sea shells, and sea glass into fantastic objects which defy their original form.

Andrew Raftery
The work of Andrew Raftery takes the mundane and turns it into an incredible feast for the eyes. His print series "Suit Shopping" and "Open House" are based on buying a suit and finding a house, respectively. His dutiful devotion to the techniques, methods and tools of the old masters of printmaking makes his work even more profound. His ability to create seemingly endless detail in these works is a true wonder.

Duane Slick
From the Meskwaki Nation, and a first generation Urban Indian, Duane Slick is a painter/storyteller. His subdued palette is no match for incredibly vibrant narrative images which are at once a remembrance and requiem of personal history, and a search for meaning. We see recurring characters in fields of white, darkness, and emptiness. In more recent pieces, the stark, essential qualities of line and absence of color create the sense of constant motion, resonating far beyond the visual scope of the canvas.

Esther Solondz
Esther has been working for several years with a variety of ordinary materials such as salt, water, soap, and rust to create her art. These materials each have their own special properties that allow them to transform into highly various states, (ie. solid to liquid and then back again.) She utilizes these properties to let surprising things happen as the materials interact and change. Salt mixed with water transforms into crystals, wicks and travels, forms mounds or stalactites. When salt is mixed with iron, rust forms in all its many guises and colors, sometimes eroding other materials, or leaving the accretion of marks behind. She received an MFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design, and has done graduate work in film at New York University. Her work has been widely exhibited and reviewed over the last 20 years in one person and group shows at museums and galleries throughout the Northeast.

Mark Taber
The sculptures of artist Mark Taber reflect his intense ability to travel without moving. The found objects and "junk" he uses to form these fantasy "vehicles", everything from the kitchen sink and wheel barrows to tractor seats and piano keys, seem like they belong more in the new places he finds for them rather than the original place and purpose they once held. A virtuoso blues and boogie-woogie piano player, Taber is as much in control behind a keyboard as he is in his studio.

Laura Travis
An artist and art educator, Laura Travis has a deep interest in accessing history through her stone carving. Her connection to the traditions of Celtic art and culture encountered while studying abroad in Ireland continues to inform the basic elements in her art. Her continuous dedication to that age old tradition and her career as an art educator combine to create a refreshing look at Celtic art and cements her place firmly within that tradition.