Sep 29th, 2020 • 8 minute read
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The Bi-Weekly Curation: Fall Fun!
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As we approach the long trudge of winter, we get the short, sweet burst of autumn. The days get shorter, while the air is crisp and the breeze has a chill. Fall has officially arrived. When we think of fall we think of new school supplies, changing leaves, apple picking, and haunted hayrides. Is there truly a more delightful time of year? It’s finally time to enjoy sweater weather during the day and snuggled-up cozy nights. And after this long period in quarantine over spring and summer, we get to embrace the joy of staying in.
This week artist and curator Mel Reese brings together a collection of Art in Res pieces that celebrate the new, cooler, color-filled season. Scroll through the post to see Mel’s placement of each piece, as well as how the selected works come together in a thoughtful, coalescent collection. Make sure to also catch Mel’s helpful educational tips on curating your own collection!
As the days get cooler and we all hunker down, it’s the perfect time to make our living spaces as cozy as possible. Is there any better way to enjoy art than with a cup of tea in hand? Placing stunning new artwork on your walls is a meaningful and personalized way to bring warmth into your home.
Now let’s put on those sweaters and scroll onward ;) –– happy browsing!
Shorter Days
As the sun rises and sets earlier each day, we simply must get cozy. The sun becomes a scarcity and we settle into a soothing pile of blankets, evading the chill of the outdoors. This transition is so aptly and succinctly portrayed in Ashley Marie’s iconic minimalist piece Dancing Sun 5. We feel protected by this warm forcefield of cool yellows and pale browns with a hint of pink. Together, all snuggled up, we are ready to welcome the cooler season and say a firm goodbye to the oppressively hot days of summer.
Ashley is an Austin, Texas-based abstract artist, dietitian, and yoga instructor. Her paintings focus on the use of color, rhythm and beat found hiking and immersing oneself within nature's wild beauty.
Crisp Breeze
The cool blues and vibrant greens of this Kristin Reed painting embody the complete energy of a crisp fall breeze. Heart Diptych reminds me of those early fall nights, when the temperature is cool but not cold. You can open a window, letting in gusts of fresh, crisp air. The breeze is tantalizing on your skin, almost begging you to buy new sweaters and drink hot apple cider. It’s a welcome contrast to the stale frayon of summer air conditioning. Within this piece, we see a visual representation of the calming, soothing cool energy, the chill of windows left open all night and the return of natural sounds, lulling us to sleep.
Kristin Reed is a Brooklyn based artist who has been creating abstract paintings and collages since 2009. She currently has a studio residency in Chashama’s Brooklyn Army Terminal studios. Since beginning a meditation and Reiki practice in 2005 Reed’s work made a turn toward the abstract and spiritual. Currently her abstract work and earlier activist work are finding each other within themes of ecology and extinction.
Fall Decay
Yes, I am shamelessly curating my own work into my curation this week. But, as you may know, I am an artist first and a curator second. Many of my abstract paintings were created during and in direct conversation with this season of change and decay. Golden Honey was made during my residency at Vermont Studio Center where I was inspired by my daily observations of the beautiful changing landscape that surrounded me. And Vermont truly is the king of fall. When the snow melts and the sun is shining bright, it catches the earth in such a way that makes the decay of fall glimmer like golden honey.
Mel Reese creates abstract, minimal, color-based paintings exploring the act of painting itself through various techniques of layering. Layering occurs through repeated actions of outlining forms by ‘painting’ the negative space with liquid masking tape—a technique adapted from her printmaking experience. The shape of each form layer is not only informed by the forms and colors laid down prior, but by canvas size and the way in which the edge of the form interacts with the canvas edge. Melanie currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Apple Picking
The work of Bret Shirely is bold in palette and design. This painting is pure fun –– vibrancy that is reminiscent of that childlike joy of apple picking. With the two colorful shapes, we see the classic apple dichotomy –– green vs red –– Granny Smith vs Red Delicious. The playful bright red line swirls between the two and makes Through Such Urns feel like a poorly mapped path you might bobble and weave along, following through the orchards, gleefully picking as many apples as you can carry.
Bret Shirley was born in San Jose, CA and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY and has participated in numerous residency and fellowship programs. Shirley is also the founder and director of BS, an artist run studio complex and project space in Houston, TX.
Snuggles
In the two visceral, almost goofy figures of Sara Silkin’s piece Connected By A Don(u)T we find love and humor and awkwardness. These are all the classic traits of love and the perfect, cozy snuggle. With the crisp fall in the air, we lean towards love and warmth, snuggling all the more. The cool, muted, pastel colors of Connected By A Don(u)T embody that loving cling to another human body as a way of staying warm. And we all know, the snuggle is the loveliest way to stay warm.
Sara Silkin is a French-born artist who grew up and currently resides in Los Angeles. Her work investigates the different cultures, history, and colors that make up the female body.
Fall Colors & Textures
This Barbara Bryn Klare painting is an obvious pick for autumn –– a visual representation of all things fall. It’s orange color and texture come together like a patchwork quilt, a flannel shirt, or a pile of fresh raked leaves. Enamored with the delicious textures of the fabric, Orange (Deconstructed) draws us in close where we can take in all the fine, gorgeous details –– the tears, loose strings, and the pops of strategically placed blue and green accent colors.
Barbara Bryn Klare is an artist and curator with art studios north of San Francisco and in the foothills of southeastern Ohio. Her art practice combines a lifelong study of textiles, drawing and painting. The ragged strength of worn fabrics forms a foundation for collage, objects, large-scale installations, and social practice: often, thread becomes line and cloth becomes paint.
Changing Leaves
I’d be remiss if I didn’t include a plein air painting of the changing fall leaves within this curation and Steve Zolin’s Connecticut River in Autumn 2 hits the nail on the head. We know, instantly, that this is the fall painting. We are immediately transported into that calm, idyllic scene. It’s so close we can almost smell the curl of smoke in the air, the leaves changing all around. This piece embodies the classic autumnal dream –– leaf-peeping in New England, as we always intend to spend our falls.
"I treat my art like a living thing, sometimes directing it, other times letting it go where it wants to go. This has led to many interesting stops from gestural figure drawing to cityscapes to abstract sculpture and back again." Born in 1972 and raised in West Orange, NJ, Steve Zolin earned his BFA cum laude at Washington University in 1994 and won an MFA Fellowship at Florida State University, graduating in 2005. Between degrees he spent nine years in Santa Fe, New Mexico enmeshed in the art scene there. Married to photographer Robin Noble-Zolin, he now resides in Manhattan where he exhibits regularly.
Swirling Portraits
This deep, swirling portrait by artist Anne-Sophie Plume is a thoughtful, visceral representation of stoic contemplation and a classic handsome face. We feel for the subject, understanding the tight jaw and severe brow. The brewing storm of musty fall colors building in the background juxtaposed against the look of determination staring right back at us is all of us heading into this particular fall season, voting season. Climbing into our sweaters and layers, staring straight ahead, unwavering in determination we march into this voting season prepared to act, to make our voices heard, and take action toward change, toward a better, brighter future.
Anne-Sophie Plume is a French artist who lives and paints in Brooklyn, NYC. Anne-Sophie says about her work, "I paint exclusively from life and perception. I am engaging in the exploration of the material and how I transfer my life experience to the process of looking and making my mark. My canvas shows the outcome of the investigation of my unique experience of reality.”
Bringing it Together
This particular fall season, we feel the desire to be outside during these final days of easy, enjoyable weather. We started our self quarantine at the end of winter and we collectively dread our cold houses yet again. But, for now, we find vestige in these cooler days before we are forced back indoors. We take lasting gulps of the crisp cool breeze of Kristen Reed’s painting and look forward to the simple joy of apple picking with Bret Shirley’s reds and greens. We are in awe of the changing colors of Steve Zolin’s landscapes, Barbara Bryn Klare’s textured explorations and Melanie Reese’s celebration of the simpler beauties. We begin to embrace the shorter days of Ashley Marie’s setting sun and settle into our homes snuggled with loved ones like in Sara Silkin’s painting. But most of all, we are confronted with the overwhelming desire of duty to take the necessary actions for a better future this November with Anne Sophie H. Plume’s determined, swirling fall portrait. There are many changes happening this fall and we look forward to the positives they will bring.
With these new viewing tools in hand, happy collecting!
Curated by Mel ReeseZhuzh by Emily Berge
Virtual installations courtesy of ArtPlacer