Beth Lipman, Still Life with Eggs, 2010, glass/mixed media, 15 x 36 x 21 in.
(LENOX, Mass.) – Sienna Patti, founder and director of Sienna Gallery, will open SPQ Projects, a second gallery space that will feature contemporary visual art from a variety of internationally-acclaimed artists as well as some of the field’s most cutting-edge new figures, on Friday, July 1. The new gallery will be located at 53 Church Street and the opening exhibition, Decadence and Disarray, will include work by Jordi Alcaraz, Lauren Fensterstock, Timothy Horn, Stacy Howe, Jim Kazanjian, Beth Lipman, Myra Mimlitsch-Gray, and Jonathan Wahl. A public opening reception will be held on Saturday, July 9 at 5 pm.
Patti conceived SPQ Projects as a forum through which to represent and support emerging and established artists creating work that melds art, craft, and contemporary design with attention to new and innovative uses of material and medium. SPQ Projects will provide these artists with the opportunity to show their work in an intimate setting in the relaxed yet vibrant cultural climate of Berkshire County.
Stacey Howe, Secret Life of a Four Poster Bed, 2011, Pen and ink, wintergreen transfers on paper, 96 x 48 in.
Decadence and Disarray explores the unexpected ways in which the ornate, the opulent, and the glamorous crumble and decay, and the subtle beauty of these transformations. The work selected addresses this theme in a variety of ways: Lauren Fensterstock, whose recent commission by Tiffany’s firmly establishes her at the forefront of her field, contributes her Black Mirror series, four monolithic wall-mounted pieces composed of delicately arranged crushed charcoal and black paper. Timothy Horn’s Ophelia, a blown glass sculpture, recalls a single antique pearl earring. Newcomer Stacy Howe’s intricate black and white drawings reveal hidden worlds of household objects, people, creatures, and jewels. And Beth Lipman’s Still Life with Eggs, Urn and Roemer, a glass and mixed media interpretation of a classic two-dimensional still life with accompanying photographs, renders a scene both luxuriously gilded and eerily forgotten.
Open six days a week, SPQ Projects will serve as an extension of Sienna Gallery, which will continue to represent the finest in contemporary art jewelry from around the world. Upcoming Sienna Gallery exhibitions include Found Subjects, which features jewelry and mixed media by award-winning jeweler and longtime Sienna Gallery artist Sondra Sherman, and COSTUME COSTUME, a curated collection of work by emerging jewelers which explores costume jewelry as a subject for new work.