(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Roselle Kline Chartock, of Great Barrington, Mass., is one of three new artists exhibiting this month at 510 Warren Street Gallery‘s May Invitational until Sunday, May 26, 2013. Chartock is a native of Hudson, N.Y., and the work in her exhibition, A Relative History of Hudson, addresses her personal connection to this riverfront town. The other artists in this month’s invitational show are Bob Crimi and Hans Heuberger.

All of the artworks in Chartock’s mixed-media show, A Relative History of Hudson, include images of, or connections to, her father, Bill Kline, a Hudson native (as is Chartock), or to her grandfather, Samuel, who started the first shoe store of its kind in Hudson in 1900, a few years after arriving in the United States from Hungary.  The store, which was located at 553 Warren Street, just up the block and across the street from the gallery, closed in 1972.

Besides the collages in which Chartock uses old family photographs, there are pieces that incorporate nude cutouts of women that were among the souvenirs Bill Kline brought back from his visit to Paris and the Folies Bergere in the late 1930s. “I found in the basement of the house on McKinstry Place where I grew up, a treasure trove that has already provided me with precious raw materials,” she says.

Before becoming a full-time artist and writer, Chartock taught for 45 years on all levels, the last twenty-five as professor of education at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) in North Adams, Mass. Throughout her teaching, Chartock continued her early enjoyment of drawing and always found ways to integrate art within her classrooms.

As her interest developed in collage, she was inspired by 1940s pulp fiction covers, by old (family) photographs and by advertisements, particularly those depicting women and fashion, appearing in contemporary and vintage magazines and postcards. These images often find themselves in offbeat environments that she enjoys creating for them. Recently, Chartock has begun to incorporate fabric in her collages, many of which a friend labeled “elegant but irreverent.”

Through her ongoing study of collage, Chartock has learned about the pioneers of this genre, going back to Picasso and Braque, and she is always seeking to expand her knowledge of the unlimited techniques that one can apply within this medium.  Collage offers the opportunity to experiment and play with diverse images, colors, and designs, and Chartock is particularly excited when all three elements come together in a harmonious composition.  She continues to learn from the work of historic collage artists like Hannah Hoch and Kurt Schwitters, appropriation artists like Richard Prince, and photographers, including Grete Stern. Their work reminds her that original ideas can come from viewing all kinds of art, historic and contemporary, and abstract and realistic, as well as from talking with other artists.  She feels most fortunate to be able to engage her imagination on a daily basis.

She has exhibited in over a dozen venues, and her work is in several private collections.