FIRST STREET GALLERY is pleased to present Dialogues, an exhibition of recent oil and mixed media paintings and collage by New York artist Suzi Evalenko. This is the artist’s eighth solo exhibition at First Street.

Returning to the genre of still life (in the main) in her new show, Evalenko also returns to a decades-long engagement with themes that tap into the artist’s personal history. The show’s title refers to two dialogues that are going on simultaneously in these works.

The first conversation, between the past and the present, is carried by two objects: a long Turcomen wrapping band of the kind used by nomads to secure tent poles and other gear; and a glazed two-handled earthenware lamp with its ‘hands’ planted on its graceful curves – feminine, yet resolute. Treasured possessions that the artist has lived with since her earliest childhood memories, these tokens of family and home remain sources of inspiration and invention, painted often, since her first oil of the lamp in 1976 (on view).

The second dialogue continues Evalenko’s exploration of the tension and interplay of figurative content and abstracted imagery: cut from unrelated oils and other media, breaking through the painted still life or hovering on its own planes; flat elements juxtaposing volumetric depiction; mirrored content that is simultaneously solid background and reflected foreground, defying easy apprehension of the enclosed space. Rich color and movement, hallmarks of Evalenko’s work, abound.

See more of her work here, and on Artsy.net
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 6pm
Special Exhibition Hours: Sunday, May 15, 1 – 5 pm
Artist also present in the Gallery on Saturday, April 30, May 7 and May 21, 2 – 5pm

FIRST STREET GALLERY is pleased to present Unease, an exhibition of sculpture and drawings by Marion Held on view from April 26 through May 21, 2022.

Marion Held’s mixed media sculptures are filled with stories the works can tell or suggest, hovering between the deeply personal and the universal, the real and the imaginary. The work Pale Memory, for example, consists of a length of silk, printed with ambiguous biological images, caught in the machinery of an antique clothes wringer. It is evocative of timelessness, memory, corporeal and spiritual matters—concepts and themes that are central to Held’s artistic explorations. Held works with a wide variety of materials, natural and handmade, cast, sculpted, printed, sewn, drawn, found, and repurposed. The incongruous elements are juxtaposed in playful and unexpected ways, inviting the viewer to add to the story the work conveys.

In this exhibition appropriately named Unease, Held’s drawings are a visceral response to the pandemic of the past two years. Suggestive of enigmatic organisms, they are created in charcoal, micron pen, graphite, and watercolor, and reflect the uncertainty and angst of life during COVID-19.
Held has exhibited widely in the US and internationally, including Canada, Japan, Senegal, Israel, Poland, and Spain. Selected reviews of her work are published in The New York Times, Newark Star Ledger, Sculpture magazine, Art and Visual Perception, NY Arts, American Ceramics, and more. She lives in the greater NY metropolitan area and is exhibiting at First Street Gallery for the first time.
Special Gallery Hours for this Exhibition: Sunday May 15, 2-5pm
The Artist will also be in the Gallery: Saturday April 30, May 7 and May 21, 2-5 pm