KENT, Conn.—Kenise Barnes Fine Art, 7 Fulling Lane, will open its midsummer exhibition Saturday, Aug. 2, focused on three artists with keen observations and connections to the natural world.
Margot Glass focuses primarily on drawing, using various traditional methods and materials as a foundation for her work, including traditional silverpoint and 14k gold point, homemade organic inks, and oil and acrylic painting with mixed mica using fine point crow quill pens in place of brushes.
Glass is inspired by the tradition of idealizing nature in art and design as ornaments across cultures while seeking to observe and represent her subjects as accurately as possible in all their irregularity and imperfection.
Central to her work is the exploration of ephemeral, fragile subjects, focusing primarily on weeds or other plants generally considered to be undesirable, to recognize their beauty in all their imperfection and asymmetry. Her focus on these marginal plants is guided by the question of what we value, what we consider “belonging” to mean, and to highlight the beauty of what is present in the disrupted landscape that we find ourselves in today.
Glass grew up in New York City, and studied art at The Art Students’ League, Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design and Fashion Institute of Technology. Her work has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally.
Richard Klein has been copper plating organic objects for more than three decades using found objects that are intrinsically fragile and impermanent. The process allows him to encase natural objects in a thin coating of metallic copper, permanently preserving them.
In his most recent work, the artist juxtaposes electroplated natural findings with photo gravures of urban landscapes. In particular, the artist’s interest in both fungi and copper hint at the convergence of natural and technological evolution.
Klein is the former exhibitions director of The Aldrich of Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Conn. His work has been shown widely in the U.S. and is in many public collections. The artist lives and works in Connecticut.
Francis Sills’ work is grounded in the realist tradition. The artist works directly from observation in nature. In dealing with the intricacies and challenges of working from observation, the artist comes to understand and know his world. His flora series is an ongoing group of paintings utilizing the flowers and plants from the artist’s home garden.
Sills’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States, has been featured in publications such as Wall Street International Magazine, American Art Collector, The New York Times, I Like Your Work Podcast, and can be found in The Fine Art Program and Collection at Montefiore Einstein, New York, NY. The artist lives and works in South Carolina.
Contact Lani Holloway, Kenise Barnes associate director, at Lani@kbfa.com, 860-560-3085 with inquires or to arrange a preview of the exhibition.