Past Exhibits

Sheila Blake : Memory is a Funny Thing

November 1 - December 1, 2024

Memory is a funny thing. In a way, I’ve been doing these paintings my whole life. I’ve been painting and drawing and living my life, and now they’ve come together. The result is part two of my painted memoir.

My sources are: old black and white photographs, memories and the feelings they trigger. They get louder and louder as I paint, and through the feelings I create a time; a scene that’s alive. As I’m working, details from my past get clearer so that I can paint the books on the shelves as I remember the titles. I want the colors of the air to reverberate the way it did at my fourth birthday party.

I take the freedom to choose the colors and model the space so that they add up to the air in the painting and the feelings of my memory. The worn upholstery, the faces of my family: they become more and more present.

One of the delights and challenges in making these paintings come alive is the choice as an artist to paint objects that I had no idea how to paint – upholstery, radiators, Venetian blinds, a VW van, a Chenille bedspread – and put them into space and light.

I hope that these feelings make the paintings as powerful and relatable as life.

Ceppetelli & Malone: “The Back Pages”
Work from the Duly Noted Painters Collection

October 4 - 27, 2024

Foundry Gallery presents The Back Pages, the Washington DC-based collaborative painting duo of Kurtis Ceppetelli and Matt Malone's fourth exhibition with the gallery. The show will exhibit never before seen work spanning 14 years and culminating with a silent auction of their newest painting “The Eulogy”.

The artists paint on drop cloth canvas using charcoal and a collection of salvaged latex house paint they refer to as an “orphanage of color”. Like jazz musicians, at times they work simultaneously, while at others one will step back and observe until inspired to act again. This unspoken dialogue results in intriguing compositions with multiple layers of meaning. Broken lines combine with loose painting to strike a balance between figurative and abstract elements. During their process rapid changes occur frequently, often leaving a piece unrecognizable from one moment to the next.

“The Eulogy” is the duo’s most recent painting and serves as a metaphor for their process. What started out as an elaborate interior scene has been reduced to a single chair barely holding itself together. A color field of light pink and purple attempts to engulf it, blurring the lines between object and surrounding. It gives praise to what is essential to convey meaning through the elimination of unnecessary distractions.

Three large scale figurative pieces anchor the exhibition. During the paining process of “First Time Felons” and “My Dream Starts with You” the canvases were folded in half resulting in mirrored imagery. The paintings were then altered slightly allowing the viewer to unlock similarities within each image. Furthermore, the complementary blue/black/purple and red/orange/yellow of the two paintings present another contrast to investigate relationships.

“Line In the Sand” from 2011 is one of Ceppetelli and Malone’s first paintings. Although void of figurative imagery, from a composition standpoint there are similarities to the other works in the show. Once again, the canvas is divided in half with elements spilling over from one side to another. It is the first step in an ever-evolving process and hints at the later work to come.

Kurtis Ceppeteilli (b.1977, Sudbury, Ont. Canada) & Matt Malone (b. 1979, Indiana, PA) live and work in Washington DC. Their work has been exhibited at The Phillips Collection, DC; Brookland Art Lofts, DC; Gallery O on H, DC; Gallery Underground, VA; NSCAD, Nova Scotia; Bus Boys & Poets, DC; Otis Street Arts Project, MD; Hillyer Art Space, DC; Art Enables, DC; Watergate Gallery, DC; among many others.

Gordana Geršković & Deb Furey: Double Vision

September 6 - 29, 2024

Double Vision is a joint exhibition featuring two Foundry Gallery artists who explore textures, figures and discovery through photography and multimedia / collage.

Deb Furey’s work celebrates the interplay of characters and veiled glimmers of color and emotion through drawing, mixed media and collage of organic features. Furey has shown work extensively throughout Maryland and the DMV. Her large and small works have a moody and contemplative tone, incorporating marking and text that is almost readable by design.

Gordana Geršković’s work is a captivating exploration of intricate textures, urban abstractions and the beauty found in decay. Through the lens of her camera she reveals the often-overlooked organic changes and weathered fades that shape our surroundings, inviting viewers to see the world's true and fresh perspective. A multiple-time recipient of the prestigious Best Washington DC Photographer award, Geršković’s artistry has also garnered frequent appraisal from the Washington Post. Mark Jenkins, an eminent art critic, once remarked, "Geršković’s small-scale photos most often capture a place and time where atrophy and beauty dovetail."

Artists’ Choice: Regional Juried Group Show

August 2 - September 1, 2024

Foundry Gallery is honored to host this regional juried show featuring a diverse collective of local artists, selected through a rigorous artist call that celebrates our community’s vibrant artistic spirit.  The featured artist spans various mediums from oil on canvas to photography and digital compositions.  This exhibition’s purpose is to display shared experiences and individual expressions. 

As we navigate these artworks together, I invite you to join me in exploring the narratives woven into each brushstroke, photo, and pixel. Let us celebrate the talent and craftsmanship displayed and the unique stories that resonate within these walls, connecting us through art’s timeless language.

Thank you for embarking on this journey with us. Together, we illuminate the rich and thriving collective of artists showcasing their creativity within our local community.

Featured Artists: Alexis Joseph, Ashley Brown, Bobbi Kittner, Brian Howell, Dina Salem, Ellen Maidman-Turner, Jayne Bentley Gaskins, Jessica Cherry, Jim Haller, JM Joint, Kailyn Townsend, Karen Egbert, Karen Waltermine, Kathy Cornwell, Kenneth Bachman, Luther Wright, Maria Evans, Mentwab Easwaran, Michael Dugger, Michael Harsley, Paige Billin-Frye, Saba Akram, Sarah Strickler, Sweta Shah, and Victoria Perry

All-Member Show: A Group Exhibit by Foundry Gallery

July 5 - 28, 2024

Join Foundry Gallery for a tapestry of our gallery’s members, each artist displaying their unique style as a collective narrative that resonates with creativity and passion.  Our group exhibit celebrates the diversity of artistic expression among our members by showcasing the spectrum of styles, mediums, and perspectives in a collective exhibit. 

Our members invite you to join them to explore the realms of imagination and emotion through their various works of art. Our members will exhibit works such as painting, photography, and mixed media.  The "All Member" exhibit features artworks from Duly Noted Painters, Roderick Turner, Josef Isaiah Keyes, Deb Fury, Dilip Sheth, Tasha Overpeck, and many more!  Enjoy the watercolor works of the people and places of Washington, DC, vibrant abstract figurative works, and photographs of the world as we see it.
   
Foundry Gallery and its members are dedicated to pushing boundaries and challenging perceptions with artworks that tell stories of their journeys with color, form, and texture.  Our “All Members” group exhibit is a testament to the amazing artists who call Foundry Gallery home.  Our members take this opportunity to showcase their individual voices while harmonizing as a collective in an artistic expression similar to a chorus.

Allen Hirsh: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in Fine Art

June 7 - 30, 2024

“In my work, I explore the dynamic interplay between art and mathematics, using mathematical equations to transform and reinterpret visual imagery. This fusion of disciplines allows me to push the boundaries of traditional photography and digital art, creating pieces that are both visually striking and intellectually stimulating. By applying algorithms and equations to my photographs, I can manipulate elements such as color, texture, and form, generating new patterns and perspectives that challenge the viewer’s perception of reality. This process transforms ordinary scenes into abstract compositions, revealing the hidden structures and symmetries that underpin the visual world. The result is a body of work that exists at the intersection of art and science, where each image is both a work of art and a visual exploration of mathematical concepts.”

Roderick Turner : Life in DC

May 3 - June 2, 2024

“The show entitled ‘Life in DC’ was inspired by my residency in Giverny, France years ago. The exhibit features various cityscapes from around the District of Columbia with one work that was painted during my past residency in France. It was there that I learned to appreciate our culture, and the importance of depicting its societal elements. Just like the French had done for their present audience and for future generations to see. Thus, my trip taught me to embrace accessibility and share it. The results are my inspirations drawn from our city in the form of cityscape paintings. The oils and watercolors focus on southwest and southeast Washington DC with glimpses of other areas in the city. The works record the historical changes in and around DC. These depictions consist of the gentrification and revitalization of our ever-changing District. Thus, its title ‘Life in DC’.”

Visual artist Roderick Turner was born in Providence, RI, and currently resides in Washington, DC. He attended Prince George’s Community College, MD, where he received an associate degree in fine arts, and at the University of the District of Columbia where he received his Bachelors of Art. In addition, Turner has travelled abroad in his independent studies to places such as France, Monaco, and Italy. In 1995, he joined the National Gallery of Art Copyist Program.

Turner has had one-man shows and several group exhibitions in the eastern United States, including: Chattahoochee Valley Art Museum, LaGrange, GA, Agora Gallery, New York, Smithsonian Anacostia Museum, Washington, DC, African American Museum, Philadelphia, and the John A. Wilson Building, Washington, DC. His work is represented by the Foundry Gallery in NW Washington, DC.

Turner has served as a panelist for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanity (DCCAH), the Anacostia Museum, and American Dreams. He has painted public murals (interior and exterior), since 1988 throughout the District of Columbia, most notably: Barry Farms Recreation Center, SE Washington, DC, and the New Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital, SE Washington, DC.

Turner has been the recipient of various honors and awards including the Arts and Fellowship Grant 2024, the FY 2023 Arts and Fellowship Program (DCCAH), the Commission for Kimball Elementary in 2019, the Public Art Building Communities Grant (PABC) in 2008, and the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest International Artist Grant 1993.

CityPaper Review

Dilip Sheth: Come into my World

April 5 - 28, 2024

“An undefined energy inspires me along my creative process and the subject figures of my paintings move from abstract to surrealistic to realistic forms that breathe between layers of colors and details embodied in my work. My painting style creates a sense of unity that brings tranquility and joy. African art and west culture have a heavy influence which is prominent in my work. With the use of bold colors, the real world I see becomes my world on canvas.”

Dilip Sheth was born and raised in Addis Abada Ethiopia. He migrated to the United States in 1980. His artistic career began in childhood, showing promise early on in elementary school art classes, and later enrolling at the Corcoran School of Art after being inspired while working at a fine art gallery in Bethesda, MD. Throughout his art career, he has lived in Washington DC with his wife and two children. In addition to his own artistic practice, he owns an art gallery and framing shop which allows him to share his work with the larger community participate in exhibits throughout the country.

Tamsin Avra:…So That This May Become False

March 1-30, 2024

“This body of work is a reflection on the concept of prophecy, on what it means to speak of impending doom. Most things are quite certain these days, data-driven and statistically highly probable. We generally trust that all will remain constant, like the Sun that rises every morning. We trust that any and all chaos is an unknowable act of God.

“These pieces consider whether the Unthinkable can be thought, and whether it may live inside us as potentiality. When asked why she had never written about the Bomb, Hannah Arendt replied, ‘You do it! It’s in your bones!,’ referring to the radioactive particles, leftover from an extensive program of nuclear testing, which live inside the bodies of all persons born 1951 or later, a reminder of how the Unthinkable has made us in Its image.

“Common to all these pieces is the incorporation of hand-sewn glass beading: self-imposed tedium. Integral to this project was a purposeful slowing down and refusing to optimize my process. One person suggested to me that I could save time by drawing my lines with a pen rather than painstakingly sewing on each bead. To the contrary, these works reject the headlong rush toward predetermined ‘completion.’ These tiny beads, for me, are a granular visualization of contingency. Each a different moment, each capable of altering in some small way both the past and future of the piece, capable of making something true, or false.

“Ultimately these pieces are expressions of hope. It is the duty of art to doomsay, but unless you are a speculator or a stockbroker there is no reason to speak of doom if it is inevitable.”

Tamsin Avra is a DC-based multimedia art maker. She has painted her whole life but has not received any formal art education. Her sources of inspiration are many and varied but include artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Paul Klee, thinkers such as Gunther Anders, and Biblical parables and symbolism.

Kathryn Mohrman: TWO BLUE CITIES

February 2 - 25, 2024

“The color blue joins water and sky with the land.  In many cultures, blue represents spirituality and prosperity, as well as protection from the evil eye.  It’s no surprise, then, that citizens of Jodphur in India, and Chefchaoen in Morocco, have painted their buildings blue over many centuries.

“Today, visitors to both places are assaulted by the abundance of blue.  Instead of the expected adobe and weathered wood, people are welcomed by a wide range of tones, from baby blue to cerulean and indigo.

“Both cities grew in the 15th century.  Jodhpur attracted increasing numbers of Brahmins, the elite Hindu caste.  According to local lore, Brahmins painted their houses blue to distinguish themselves from lower castes.  Chefchaouen expanded at the same period, largely by Jews leaving Spain at the time of the Inquisition, bringing with them a tradition of using the color blue for fabrics, prayer mats, and buildings.

“Come with me to experience the visual excitement of these two blue cities.”

Mrinal Joshi: Watching Ships Drift into the Blue Abyss from Under a Rock

January 5 - 28, 2024

“On a hot summer day in Naxos, I gazed into the Aegean Sea, where the undulating waves carried ships to and from the island. In this intimate yet infinite landscape, tinged with the whispers of ancient myth and history, I encountered the sublime. It was a moment of reckoning with my solitude and a labyrinth of emotions woven together by the endless sea. 

And amidst the crashing waves, I felt like Ariadne.”

This body of work is my attempt at capturing the poetry of this minutia. Intertwined with this is a personal odyssey of love and abandonment, drawing parallels to the myth of Ariadne. These paintings contemplate the transience of human connections and offer a glimpse into the deep introspection that emerges when confronted with the sublime.”

Nami Oshiro: Great Tribulations

December 1 – December 31, 2023

“My work depicts surrealist scenes of desperate characters undergoing upsetting, identity-related experiences and emotions. Growing up in a doomsday cult – where I had to stifle my cultural pride and sexuality – gave me lots of cognitive dissonance, which developed into an overblown sense of the absurdity of everyday life. Everything I draw and how I draw it is informed by this absurdity.

I create my art by hand, eschewing digital touches. Drawing and painting directly onto the paper helps me feel connected to what I make.

My style is influenced by my Okinawan-Japanese background, especially by movements like ukiyo-e and shin hanga, featuring flat colors, stilted perspectives, and glorification of the human body. When I work in color, I try to infuse a sense of Okinawan flavor through bright, garish palettes like one might see in bingata textiles, which capture the vibrance of the Okinawan spirit.

I’m also inspired by 19th and early 20th-century illustrators like Edmund Dulac and Aubrey Beardsley. The Golden Age of Illustration and shin hanga are both estuaries of eastern and western influences, and they resonate with my identity as part of the Okinawan-American diaspora.”

Josef Keyes: Can They Hear Me Now…

November 3 – November 26, 2023

“For as long as I can remember, my comfort embraced the quiet. Throughout my childhood, an illness in my throat prevented me from verbally expressing myself confidently. It was as if I had to force every word out with excruciating effort. One sentence would leave me out of breath and frustrated. As a result, depression always had a looming presence in my life. Dealing with this made me withdraw deep within myself. Constantly seeking ways to express my thoughts, feelings, and dreams; I sort alternative channels to convey these elements within my life. When my body started to heal itself, I discovered the enchanting and expressive world of art, or perhaps it discovered me.

“Like a harmonious dance, art and I intertwined. With my natural gift of imagination as a guiding light, I embarked on a path of self-discovery, with art as my documentation. My lifestyle became a bold but subtle statement of ‘I’m here’. The inspiration that I started to investigate, the artists of past and their abstracted work left me with the possibilities of creating my own language. The often loud, powerful, and vibrant work that I came across birthed new energy within me. So, I started to paint, capturing the vivid hues of my imagination, pouring this language of stories, and lessons onto my own canvases. Each brushstroke became a revelation, a glimpse into the depths of my soul that words could never quite express early on in my life and still to this day.

“Can They Hear Me Now…” was first started in 2017, and is the manifestation ofthe inspiration I’ve gained through searching and listening to all kinds of artists and scholars throughout my life. Abstraction was the language I gravitated towards; its imaginative possibilities caught my interest early on in my career. During my first years of working, I didn’t see many artists that looked like me whose work I really enjoyed. So, I started to create what I wanted to see and feel through my work. I needed my work to speak. And this work was that effort.”

Katherine Blakeslee: Change and Challenge

October 6 – October 29, 2023

Katherine Blakeslee's lifelong interest in art began during her childhood in Maryland.  Self-taught as a watercolorist, Blakeslee is drawn to the medium’s translucence, mystery, and capacity to reflect mood.  Blakeslee is challenged to share creativity with the water and pigment; with none in complete control. Sometimes the result of letting go is a happy accident.

 The peace and beauty we seek in nature can be destroyed by epidemics, earthquakes, floods, storms, wildfires, and human activities, including violent conflict. When political tensions and conflict collide with nature, the result is a complex emergency, a situation most difficult to change. This exhibit was inspired by the fragile calm and beauty of our world and the challenge we have been given to preserve it. We do not own but are stewards of this planet and all that it offers.

 Travels throughout the developing world during Blakeslee’s career in international development have left her with indelible images and enduring commitment to humanity and nature.

John Charles Koebert: Selected Works

September 1 – October 1, 2023

The work of John Charles Koebert represents a decades-long commitment to craftsmanship. Evolving each geometric work from a painstaking study, the larger piece represents a leap in scope and artistic precision. However, the inspiration for each piece is part of Koebert’s personal history. Every shape, color, and line call back to a story carried across years of artistic discovery.

Study for Meeting Lorraine at Take Off II is as smooth as the chrome on a vintage car, yet the story is a bittersweet tale of reunion and parting. The shapes are reminiscent of the landing gear of an airplane or a black and white photograph of a long-lost love.

The two pieces which represent Study for Samara are held together by the juxtaposition of lush layers of orange with violet tones. Delightful pastel shapes are blended with subtle lines, like the map of a distant paradise. Is Samara a person, a place, or an ideal? With memories the destination is the same.

What are the exact stories for these pieces? You’ll have to ask the artist himself. As Koebert says, “The exhibit is personal statement about my life and my commitment to art. All of the pieces have a story to tell.”

Artists’ Choice: Regional Juried Group Show

August 4 - 27, 2023

Foundry Gallery’s Artist Choice juried exhibit presents a dynamic cross-section of artists working in the DC region.

 Wohl’s Dave is both a tender and brutal examination of life on the fringes. The weathered face reflects the weariness of experience and the strength to continue.

Gurshman’s Snow Mystery presents angular patterns of winter. The shifting layers and colors evoke memory and sensation, like a child watching the snowfall on a winter night.

 The interlocking geometric creatures of Hagan’s North Country could be interpreted as the runes of an ancient civilization, or the coat of arms for an alien race.

Bernstein’s Lilac Steps provides a glimpse into a lush garden, inviting the viewer to participate in a summer meditation enveloped in the calming colors. The textures are so lush you can smell the pollen through the paint.

 Crocket’s Shapeshifter Protea is scientific in approach, and epic in scope. The portrait of the flower shrinks you to the size of a dragonfly, and the lightest breeze moves the flower like a vast ocean.

 The exhibit will also feature work from other singular artists throughout the region, including Rebecca Adams, Rachael Bohlander, James Earl, Daniel Horowitz, Michael Horsley, Alexis Joseph, Sharmila Kapur, María Marcos Alvarez, Grazia Montalto, Mariya Nakova, Sharon Robinson, Carolyn Rogers, Elena Rousseau, Stephen Schiff, Arleen Seed, Bryan Sieling, Adam Sneed, Sarah Sohraby, and Bora Uyumazturk.

All-Member Show: Altered Perspectives

June 30 - July 30, 2023

One of the pleasures of art is the opportunity to see the world in a new light, or to be presented worlds you’ve never seen before. Foundry Gallery’s July All-Member exhibit offers a broad survey of the ways in which intuition and the materials of the artist create Altered Perspectives. Hirsh’s Enchanted Doily presents a shuttlecock in space or a whirling paisley vortex. You may think you took a bad acid trip at your grandparents’ house the colors are so lush. Sheth’s Deep Sea I finds you staring into the last remnant of Atlantis or an Angler fish on the attack. Either way you are in a place of serene contemplation. O’Hanlon’s National Cathedral is classical and haunting in its depiction of the architecture reserved for the cycle of life and memory.

Ceppetelli & Malone: Duly Noted Painters: Weight of the World

June 2 - 25, 2023

Foundry Gallery presents Weight of The World, the Washington DC-based collaborative duo of Kurtis Ceppetelli and Matt Malone’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.

Ceppetelli and Malone capture emotionally charged aspects of living of which the majority of people tend to overlook or turn away from. The hardships that arise from a shared human experience and uncertain futures, this series of new paintings is informed by and embodies the struggles and uncertainty in the post pandemic world.

Both artists work together in the same space similar to jazz musicians. At times they work on the canvas simultaneously while at others one will step back and observe until inspired to take action again. The artists work on drop cloth canvas using charcoal and a collection of salvaged latex house paint which they call an “orphanage of color”.

This unspoken dialogue between the two artists results in intriguing compositions with multiple layers of meaning. Broken charcoal lines combine with loose painting to strike a balance between figurative and abstract elements. The frequently bright color palette masks and contradicts a tense underlying narrative of tough times.

Ceppetelli and Malone’s process also parallels the Basquiat and Warhol collaborations from the mid 1980’s but takes it one step further as indicated by the quote, “I think those paintings we’re doing together are better when you can’t tell who did which parts” -Andy Warhol

Figuratively: Works from Foundry Gallery’s Figure Drawing Sessions

May 5- 28, 2023

The human figure has remained as the most powerful subject matter in art, transcending time and cultures all over the world. It embodies a core expression of the human mind on how we view ourselves and the space we occupy.

Figuratively aims to explore this relationship by showcasing works from the gallery’s Tuesday figure drawing sessions. We invited members and non-members to submit works in a variety of styles and media that they executed in the 3 hour sessions. Stylistic diversity in this exhibition ranges from short poses that capture the gesture and movement of the human form to longer developed poses focusing on anatomy and tonality, and sometimes, portraiture.

Hester Ohbi: Cohesion/Fragmentation

March 31 - April 30, 2023

Studio Visit

In preparing for her latest exhibit, Hester Ohbi has been drawn to making disparate marks, shapes, and fleeting lines flowing through space. The paintings reveal sprays of paint, passages of color and color erased, connections, and disconnections emblematic of recent unforeseen events in Ohbi’s life – unexpected demands, interruptions, emotional and existential tangles. Eventually these painted fragmented marks seem to come together in cohesion, accepted with gratitude as parts of life’s transience through space. Ultimately notes of distress are integrated with the reprieve of quiet spacious moments in which an inner world may be glimpsed.

Ohbi is an intuitive abstract painter who loves the physical process of painting, using acrylics as well as pastels and collage. Each painting begins with certain colors in mind as well as the amount of energy she wants to convey. After applying initial marks and colors the painting begins to tell her what it needs next. Ohbi engages in constant dialogue with the painting, often viewing it from over ten feet away to take in all the textures of the surface. The process continues until the painting says it is finished, held in a state of sublime tension.

There is always a mystery about the meaning of the painting as it reveals unknown parts of the artist. A quote from Edward Hopper is especially relevant when viewing this exhibit: “If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.”

Deb Furey: Hidden Light

March 3 – March 26, 2023

Studio Visit

Deb Furey’s Hidden Light is an exploration of the many versions of self - and others - through both figurative and abstract methods. The imagery throughout much of the work suggests disguised emotions, desire and contemplation. Furey uses these to create a scaffold for working with contrast and color. The diverse exhibit includes large charcoal drawings, oil and mixed media work.

The concept for this body of work is grounded in Furey’s interest in darkness offset by light and glimmers of color. She is fascinated with the use of photography of found and constructed textures that contrast with drawn/painted images and that add a degree of unpredictability to the process.

“This has been tremendous year for me in discovering voice and intent in my work,” notes the artist, “I continue to explore methods and themes of past and future possibilities.”

Washington Post Review

Denzel Parks: Twilight Time

February 3 – 26, 2023

Studio Visit

Denzel Parks’ Twilight Time primarily explores his reflection on the space he has occupied emotionally, mentally, and physically over the past three years. The concept for this exhibition is completely inspired by his effort to understand and explore self-reflection, during a time when he was experiencing both the serenity and sadness of existing in a state of isolation.

Throughout his creative process, Parks has developed a dreamlike world within his work, to help clearly reference how surreal self-reflection can be when you are in a state of visualizing and analyzing memories, revisiting experiences, or mentally highlighting significant changes in your life.

Twilight Time both captures the continuation of Parks’ current journey and brings closure to a very transformative journey of self-discovery, realization, and exploration. From the artist: “I wanted to explore how I've grown as an artist as well as a human, how my experiences impacted this transformation solely through reflection, and how I perceived these past experiences in my current state of existence.”

All-Member Show: Internal Weather

January 6 - 29, 2023

A new year brings reflection and possibilities. Time feels as if it has reached its slowest point, but even the coldest days can bring the hopeful warmth of the sun. The work featured in Foundry Gallery’s January All-Member exhibit speaks to these conflicting emotions: excitement and hesitation, mourning and joy.

Hirsh’s Windblown Lamp evokes the carapace of an insect or an indigenous headdress, a desire to break the chains of hibernation in flight or dance. The mixed media techniques in Avra’s Talking About the Weather are musical: beaded patterns which could symbolize the cyclical rhythms of all life are imposed on vibrant brushstrokes creating an urgent melody. The growth of spring rising to the surface. Fleming’s Nevermore brings to mind a refuge from the bleakest winter nights. A land both imposing and limitless.

Cristy West: Distillations

December 2 – December 30, 2022

“I am constantly exploring new media and new ways of using them,” says Cristy West. “It’s always an adventure!  I think this searching and discovery conveys itself to the viewer, enriching the work.  In the end my paintings are maps of meaning, distillations of experience.”

 Mark-making continues to be the starting point for West, or as she would say, “a doorway into new territory.” Turning to poetry for guidance and inspiration, she cites the famous lines of British poet John Keats: “Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter.”  “I believe Keats was pointing to the music of life that is playing continuously below the surface.  That’s it!  That’s what I’m trying to get at, too!”

All-Member Show: Reality

November 4 – 27, 2022

The artistic process is not confined to one medium. Every artist is motivated to reveal different truths vividly through the surface and tools of their choosing. Foundry Gallery’s November All-Member exhibit offers a broad survey of the ways in which inert materials become a heightened Reality.

Hirsh’s Carnival Dumbbell transforms a prism of coordinates into a whirling dervish of delights. A colorful alternative to the bleaker periods of the late fall and early winter. Truesdale’s Centurion presents a lonely warrior on guard duty emerging from the layers of abstract lines, their eyes to the horizon awaiting dawn. Depending on your perspective, the anime characters of Oshiro’s I Need a New Pretend can soften the devastation of self-doubt and recrimination displayed in the piece’s text or offer a bleaker view of isolation through the brightly colored veneer.

Sheila Blake: Memory Is a Funny Thing

September 30 – October 30, 2022

From the Artist: I’ve begun to paint my memoir. I invited the spirits of my former life and trusted that I would have a chance of touching on what Wallace Stevens called the essential poem at the center of things.

 In my childhood, as in most, I made my way stumbling through the cultural landscapes I was thrown into. Saved by art school; I found a way into an artist's life: living, painting, and raising kids in city apartments, cabins, and suburbs. 

 I got the scenes in these paintings from old snapshots.  Something happens when I start to paint from them, something else happens.  Andrew Solomon wrote: "The artist escorts his subjectivity into imagehood, a process akin to birth. Thus, every work of art is in some way a portrait not of its ostensible subject but of the artist, as likely to betray him as his children.”

 What’s happened so far is: I’ve outed myself as a Jewish girl, I’ve memorialized my Uncle Lionel and Aunt Mary; I have no idea what they would think. I found my mother when she was calm or serene, before my brother was born. After painting my self at my fourth birthday party, and at Miss Marlos school of dance, and spending Sunday with my cousin and brother, waiting for the TV to be turned on, I could have called this exhibition, My Struggle, but that title has already been taken.

 I have yet to paint my father..

Kathryn Mohrman: Tribal Angola

September 2 - 25, 2022

Tribal Angola reflects the insights Kathryn Mohrman gained into the tribal people of Angola and the desolate mystery of the landscape.

 When Kathryn registered for a photo tour of Angola, she inadvertently travelled back in time. She and her tour group visited seven tribes in southwestern Angola, people who are living as their ancestors have for hundreds of years.  She was especially intrigued by the women the group met, as she learned to distinguish among the tribes based on their sense of beauty.

 These people are painfully poor in an economic sense, but rich in culture and tradition. Kathryn’s goal in sharing these photos is to convey the dignity of the people that were encountered. She was amazed at the effort they took in creating elaborate hairstyles and wearing literally thousands of beads as an everyday matter. Beauty, kindness, and the shared rituals of humanity are reflected in these images.

Artists' Choice 2022: Regional Juried Group Show

August 5 - 28, 2022

Foundry Gallery’s Artist Choice juried exhibit presents a dynamic cross-section of artists working in the DC region.

 Harland’s Shards evokes broken glass, beads of sweat, or hard candy. The geometric shapes are imposing, but the lush colors seduce the eye.

 Berg’s Biography 1 presents a chamber play tableau, the lead character casting cautious glances at the surrounding shadow figures. The vibrating pencil-marks suggest breaking free from the stage.

 The Patterns of text in Kazemzadeh’s Where Do We Go From Here? repeat words of desperation and violence, while the shapes and wood borders provide an earthbound calmness to the horror. The work proposes a reality where beauty can be created from the darker corners of existence.

 Berger’s The Warmth of Winter renders the world in hushed golden tones, setting the modern home in a daguerreotype and reminding the viewer that the need for sanctuary is timeless.

 The beads atop the gentle sea creatures in Avra’s The Birth of Venus provide graffiti or thought bubbles, showing that nature has a unique style and sense of humor.

 The exhibit will also feature work from other singular artists throughout the region, including Sara Bardin, Vivian Cavalieri, Martin de Alteriis, Diana Derby, Marc D'Shawn, Barry Dunn, Jennifer Eddins, Eleanor Glattly, Michael Horsley, Nancy Howren, Jerry Kirk, Anthony Le, Marthe McGrath, Nami Oshiro, Michael Syphax, Iza Thomas, Richard Williams, Andrew Wohl, and Anna Yoo.

All-Member Show: Connections

July 1- 31, 2022

As the longest day of the year passes, we take for granted the heated embrace of humanity. We try to find ways to busy ourselves, we try to ignore the drums of our souls. However, summer is waiting with more opportunities for physical and emotional Connections. Foundry Gallery’s July All-Member exhibit celebrates these connections.

Furey’s Ji with Flowers invites the viewer to look upon a composed expression carved in stone (or maybe porcelain?), both fragile and strong against a fading past. Park’s Twilight Time is an ancient call to dance against the dusk, in defiance of the coming night. On The Mind by Duly Noted Painters is a delirious ode to Kerouac’s humanity, reveling in its flesh. Barker-Wilson’s Totem to All Living Things reminds us that the expression of light and color is a universal desire.

Katherine Blakeslee: Currents

June 3 – June 26, 2022

Currents shape our lives and our planet. Sometimes they are barely perceptible, at others dramatic and forceful, even portending possible disaster.  From Blakeslee’s childhood in Maryland, currents in the sky and water have drawn her in through their mystery and beauty.  We may be washed along and comforted by gentle currents, or buffeted by the impact of wind, water, disease, politics, demographics and war.  Technology has added new possibilities and a new layer of complexity to these forces and their impact on us all.  Looking closely at our world reveals them and their changing patterns.

 Watercolor is an old medium, but it captures feelings, images and currents, ancient and modern. Blakeslee loves the way in which the artist and the medium work together or maybe even at cross-purposes, for the happy accidents and the sometimes unexpected results that are greater than the sum of the parts.  Alcohol ink with which Blakeslee has been experimenting more recently has some similar qualities. This new exhibit aims to reveal currents, leaving the viewer to imagine how they affect us and the world around us.

Pete Seligman: Places in Mind

May 6 – May 29, 2022

Places in Mind is about uneasy mental states. Living through life’s landscapes. It’s about geographical and psychological places. Disquieting as well as humorous scenes. Some of the collage paintings share a sensibility: a little sideways feeling.

The collage paintings tell a story. Apartment Building Listserv examines social media disgruntlement and the rudeness of some online conversations. In Brunch Gone Sideways guests are misbehaving in many different and unexpected ways; chagrin is written all over the host’s face in the lower right side of the collage. The mystery of how things begin is depicted in Creation Myth, where a truck on an empty rural road is approaching an increasingly colorful and complex roadway and landscape; yet the road seems to be accelerating toward the truck, toward a collision.

Each landscape painting also tells a story. Each starts with a photo taken by Pete. Then painting takes over. The landscapes try to resonate with the following reflection by N. Scott Momaday:

“Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder upon it, to dwell upon it…He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it.”

The canyons of Escalante, Utah and the always changing landscapes in Dolly Sods, WV are that kind of place for Pete.

Gordana Geršković: PHOTOPOETRY

Featuring Poetry from Fran Abrams, Duncan Cleary, Luther Jett, Serena Agusto-Cox, 

Gregory Luce, Gabriel Pech, and Ann Quinn

April 1 – May 1, 2022

Photographer Gordana Gerskovic has an extraordinary eye: 

the ability to see the unseen and overlooked, to find art and splendor in the everyday and decayed.

Her photographs of organic change and worn surfaces continually surprise us, make us slow down and see the world differently. 

In her most recent work, Gerskovic collaborated with seven poets exploring the relationship between two art forms

by adding text to image.

This exhibit invites viewers and readers to enjoy the art of PHOTOPOETRY

where images and poetry come together to enrich each other.

Allen Hirsh: Phases

March 4 - 27, 2022

The elements which form the cradle of life are often taken for granted. We ignore the dazzling intricacies of what is beneath our feet, until visions of extraordinary magic remind us of the gifts of existence.

 
Allen Hirsh’s show, Phases, emphasizes the complexity of fluids, both liquid (think oil and water) and solid (think congealed lava). Using the power of the unique mathematical painting program he has created he transforms mundane photographs into multi-layered fantasies pulsating with color, firing imaginative landscapes full of startling phases.

New Members Show: Fragments of Collective Memory

February 4 - 27, 2022

This year’s Foundry Gallery New Members Exhibit celebrates human experience through the prism of four unique artists.  The approach of each artist is a distinct practice, both textured and sensual. However, the emotions conveyed are of a shared history tinted by love, hope, regret, and fear.

Denzel Parks' You Never Close Your Eyes Anymore offers a melancholic figure in a reposed dreamlike state encompassed by fluid brush strokes and energetic colors. The baroque interior in ZhaoJuan Sun’s Ivy is a setting for a lush dinner party or the swaying hangover brought on in its decadent aftermath. Intricate geometric patterns in John Koebert’s Drawing for Hobson’s Jet are infused with a sense of renaissance craftsmanship. What looks like a totemic sculpture is a call back to a personal story carried across years of artistic discovery. Brian Truesdale’s Heathen evokes sub-conscious menace with a childhood nightmare void broken by the presence of a jagged obelisk.

The show consists of some fourteen works by the Foundry's new member artists. 

All- Member Show: Winter of Our Discontent

January 7 - 30, 2022

All-Member Show: To Winter

December 3 - January 2, 2022

This members group show includes Kurtis Ceppetelli and Matt Malone's The Towman, in which a man drags something past a snowy field and the reflection of a cool, cadmium sun. The reference draws on a painting by Daumier. Unforgiving winter also appears in Kathryn Mohrman's photograph of the Kennedy Center, lit with rainbow colors that reflect with dull beauty in the cold river. Cristy West's Owl Moon is a more muted take on the subject. And Amy Barker-Wilson's Bamboo Garden shows that themes go only so far in art shows.

The exhibit includes paintings or sculpture by Kristina Penhoet, Zhaojuan Sun, Brian Truesdale and other members of Foundry Gallery. It features a number of large works.

Kristina Penhoet: Of Memory

November 5 - 28, 2021

While Kristina Penhoet's dramatically-colored installation recently won a prize at The Phillips Collection, in this evocative new show she turns to a neutral palette and a subtle sense of fading and distant memories. Details may soften and change with time; what remains is an emotion. She urges us to understand and find beauty in the quiet moments that make us human. Penhoet works primarily in wool and textiles, creating three-dimensional abstractions through felting, hand-stitching, wrapping, and knotting.

"I'm fascinated by the challenging experiences that make up the depth and breadth of human life," she says. "The forms in my work are abstract but biomorphic, connecting the viewer to the work to create an emotional response. The repetition of forms is intended to remind viewers of the universality of their experience, leading to a profound empathy for one another."

Courtney Applequist: Moment of Interrogation

October 1 - 31, 2021

Courtney Applequist’s new show is a project done in a period of admiration, reciprocity and humanity in response to the pandemic. In a departure from painting, the work includes wall-size drawings on repurposed cardboard, paper sculpture and video.

“For the past eight months, I have been working on a collaborative social art project, Taxonomy of Breathing, that investigates our current societal moment through the lens of breath. Police brutality, smoke & wildfire, COVID attacking the lungs — breath connects them all; and in following the thread of breath through spiritual and healing practices, we discovered a platform of connection across cultural boundaries to listen and to heal.

During the research for this project, I had the privilege of engaging in dialogue with a number of women, starting with the topic of 'breath,' leading to unexpected connections around transformational journeys. Through this process, I found that a window opened up into questions around my own art process; how these social structures, these '-isms,' (sexism, colonialism, consumerism) had in-formed and formed my self-perception and therefore my art practice. We are, as a society, in a moment of shifting landscapes and structures, socially, politically, institutionally, spiritually, and we are finding new footing. As an artist, I am privileged & challenged to reflect this exploration, both collective & personal, through a practice that encourages dialogue rather than statements.

This exhibition is a manifestation of these explorations expressed through portraiture, bringing forward tensions of shifting societal landscapes by experimenting with materials and scale, challenging precepts of permanence & perception."

All-Member Show: September Song

September 3 - 26 , 2021

"The Autumn weather turns the leaves to flame," sings the narrator of Kurt Weill's September Song, but "these few precious days I'll spend with you." It may be hard to believe cool weather will ever come, but in this all-gallery show the Foundry's artists seem ready for it. From Amy Barker Wilson's somber Alchemical Nature and Courtney's Applequist's Demeter's Conspiracy to Zhaojuan Sun's fiery Interior With Guardian Parrots and Patsy Fleming's incensed Filibuster, the sense of the show is that summer is over and we can get down to the business of mourning and strangeness. The exhibit also features work by Gordana Gerskovic, Pete Seligman, Brian Truesdale and other Foundry artists.

Artists' Choice 2021: Regional Juried Group Show

August 6 - 29, 2021

The Foundry's 2021 juried show begins in a somber tone with Annette Gloomis' lovely nightscape and Wilford Scott's Phantoms. The note of alarm grows in Jim Earl's DC Fire, Chris Pavlik's A Slow Crawl and David W. M. Cassidy's White Fear Blood Justice. It reaches one kind of resolution in Brian Truesdale's Send a Reminder to Boil My Bones; and another, with a return to nature, in Anne Stine's Waterfall of Hopes.

The show, drawn from submissions by some 75 regional artists, also features work by Kim Abraham, Hui Fang, Samar Hussaini, Noreen Janus, James Klumpner, Deborah Lacroix, Lyn Laviana, Taina Litwak, Denzel Parks and Suzanne Yurdin.

Ann McCormick Saybolt: Life in Pink

June 4 - 27, 2021

Life in Pink challenges what we value and celebrate as individuals and society. This work pays attention to the beauty in the unacceptable, the mundane, and the things we would rather not see. It urges us to question our assumptions.

The work, largely photo-based, includes large-scale, off-register screen prints, risographs, conceptual pieces, and an experience that allows visitors to co-create with the artist.

Ann is a DC-based artist and will graduate in May 2021 with an MFA in media studies.

Sheila Blake: Windows Shine Black Sky

May 7 - 30, 2021

Sheila Blake is a representational modernist, a colorist, whose paintings of houses, yards and objects convey a feeling both elegiac and disturbing -- of realism pushed to an imaginary limit. In Bolinas she depicts a house and a life left long in the past. In this and her other large paintings there is a sense of near and far struggling with each other, of subtly shifting perspective; in Scotty of a hammock uncannily suspended, moving toward us. Her masterful pastels like Ironing and Still Life With Pink Telephone combine bravura drawing and color to convey a Hopper-like yearning.

Blake is part of a tradition, she says, in which "painting aspires to poetry: a fully realized world constructed from abstract and seen elements – which always discloses itself as paint. There must be strangeness – strangeness as beauty arisen from contact with a different kind of consciousness, with motion, depth, openness, rhythm, and color. I want the viewer to be able to open up and enter a strange cosmos."

Katherine Blakeslee: Connections

April 2 - May 2, 2021

The magical line between the sky and land or sea "has always captivated me, conjuring up faraway places," says Katherine Blakeslee. "As a child at the beach, I once tried to dig to China. Another day, standing with my toes in the ocean, I imagined someone in Spain wading through the same water. Bright, hazy or hidden by a storm, the horizon is a connection, not only a dividing point."

In these new works Blakeslee employs a formal simplicity and restricted palate that show how evocative that horizon line can be. We see this not only in the dramatic Spring Storm but in her whimsical depiction of the half-seen things that swim beneath the surface. In Vietnam Peace spatial contrast with a distant shore makes us think of violence, loss and resolution. Blooming Trees paints the horizon as a garden.

"I fell in love with watercolor for its ability to capture nature’s mysterious and sometimes other-worldly moods," Katherine says. "The challenge of this medium lies in shared creativity between the artist and the paint. Neither has complete control."

Hester Ohbi: Transitions

March 5 - 28, 2021

Hester Ohbi is a painter of abstract landscapes and inner transformation. “I am intensely aware of the need for a balance between activity and stillness," she says. "We paint who we are without thinking too much about it. I try to convey an awareness of the abundance of the universe and a consciousness of belonging to it, and sometimes the struggle to belong to it. There is an awareness of how life constantly changes, how thoughts and feelings come and go until we reclaim a calm oasis. You see this in some of my landscapes, a passage through engagement and profusion toward light.”

In this show Ohbi moves beyond her recent meditative blue to larger works that are more openly descriptive and passionate. It includes a series of tall, narrow paintings that seem to take the viewer by the hand and lead her to the sky or a watery reflection.

All-Member Show: Winter Salon

February 5 - 28, 2021

This all-gallery group show welcomes new Foundry member John Koebert - and adventurous stylistic departures by Courtney Applequist, Kathryn Wiley, Patsy Fleming, Hester Ohbi and the whole Foundry crew. Who knows - who knows - what they will do next?

All-Member Show: Requiem

January 2 - 31, 2021

Thomas Dekker called the 1603 plague The Wonderful Year. And so 2020. The gallery's all-member January show looks back, at where we are.

The densely emerging and disappearing figures in Barbara Pliskin's painting suggest the desperation and hopefulness of protest. Kathryn Mohrman's skeletal Smoke Rising reminds us that parts of our lives have turned to ash. Matt Malone and Curtis Ceppetelli's Toe Tag 2020 shows us the monotony and danger of spending too much time with our desk and plants and the reflection of our own feet - a humorous claustrophobia like that of Groundhog Day or the Statler Brothers' classic Countin' Flowers on the Wall. In Tumble Courtney Applequist ruminates on the power of losing human contact, intertwined fingers conveying the anxiety of isolation; and Jay Peterzell depicts grief in October 8.

The show consists of some two dozen works by the Foundry's member artists.

Cristy West : The Language of Marks

December 4 - 27, 2020

"I’m fascinated by marks,” says Cristy West. “Runes and petroglyphs, the scripts of other languages, children's drawings—all these point to meanings I don’t quite understand. And yet marks can have an authority that everyday words and representational painting may lack. They are our most authentic, direct form of visual expression. My intent in this recent work is to follow the mark, to layer and strip away and find the hidden meaning of each piece. I am pleased if the result evokes tensions held in balance, with more lurking beneath the surface. It is painting as discovery.”

Kathryn Mohrman: Geometry

November 6 - 29, 2020

“Geometry is the foundation of all painting,” said Albrecht Durer. The same, apparently, is true of photography and the photographer’s artful eye.

In her second solo show this year, Kathryn Mohrman refines her vision of the world’s geometry. She has traveled far and wide and the locations are clear, but a concentration on structure in every case defamiliarizes her images. Sometimes, as with Blue Mosque or Metallic Stairway, this dislocation is so pronounced as to achieve an extraordinarily beautiful formalism. In others, like Hallway, Eastern State Penitentiary and Oakland Bay Bridge, a hard-to-define disorientation reinforces the emotional content of the photograph.

"We live in a world of geometry, shapes and repetitions," Mohrman says. "All you have to do is stand a little askew to see something completely surprising."

Natacha Thys: Red, White & Blue for Who?

October 2 - November 1, 2020

Natacha Thys, a queer, Haitian-American artist and human rights lawyer, paints on the U.S. Flag to explore the collapse and rebirth of America after the 2016 presidential election. Her new work "emerged as a way of grappling with a deep sense of loss and hopelessness," she says.

Thys stays connected to her signature abstract style but introduces conceptual and mixed media elements. On one flag she lists 86 countries in whose elections the U.S. interfered and asks, Was Putin Wrong? In another the Haitian vodou god Papa Legba, guardian of the gates, rebukes U.S. immigration policies and exclaims, Here’s Your Wall! A partially-burnt flag sets out the articles of impeachment against “Individual No. 1." In Is this M.A.G.A.? the flag nearly disappears under a beautiful but violent impasto.

Thys’ vision is not completely dystopian, with other flags incorporating photographs of the Women’s March and Black Lives Matter. She asks a hopeful question heading into the 2020 presidential elections with a flag titled Confluence: Towards a More Perfect Union ?

Fran Abrams: Twenty Years of Polymer Clay Art 

September 2 - 27, 2020

Fran Abrams discovered polymer clay in 2000 when she sought a medium that would allow her to work in color and in three dimensions.  It has fascinated her ever since.  All her work is unpainted: the color is integral to the clay, which can be mixed and shaped without limit to create both paintings and sculptures.  

     This show is a retrospective of her work over 20 years, from her earliest pieces, through her development of a "silk scarf" method of sculpturally draping the clay, to her most recent work in a style she calls "progressions."  Though polymer clay is often used for craft, Abrams' aim is to establish it in the fine art world.

      She uses it to express her responses to both society and nature.  This show ranges from pieces with an intensely urban feel, like the early Some Assembly Required and more recent Hanging Around -- to American landscapes, small but somehow sweeping, like A River Runs Through It and Amber Waves of Grain.  Abrams' work is at once witty and moving.

Artist's Choice: National Juried Online Show

August 5 - 30, 2020

Stephen Wilson's Sprinkmann Building has, somehow, the calm, authoritarian clownishness our great politicians aim for but don't achieve.  Perhaps more of the moment are David Lazio's Social Anxiety, its teeth on edge within a gastric-distress-pink frame, and Maiya Lonesome's Tsunami of Emotions.  Aziza Gibson-Hunter's Aje's Horn looks like a celebratory return to balance.  And the blackened top of Tuyen Stricker's volcano resolves into a blushing crystal glaze.

     The 44 artists also include Linda Agar-Hendrix, Chris Combs, Darcy Dagremond, Lisa Denison, Pam Eichner, Douglass Gray, Jim Haller, Merrilee Harrigan, Christine Hershey, Catherine Hess, Theodore Hueblein, Tamora Ilosat, Jason Jaffery, HakChul Kim, Guy Kuhn, Leslie Landerkin, Caroline MacKinnon, Janet Hansen Martinet, Cecilia Martinez, Dawn McKenzie, Kathleen McSherry, Carol Morgan, Paul Murray, Jonathan Ottke, Deborah Perlman, Davide Prete, Jeff Pullen, Shannon Sadulsky, Kristopher Schoenleber, Karen Shulman, Brendan Smith, Bevadine Terrell, Ernesto Ulibarri, Elin Whitney-Smith, Jason Wilson, Ellen Yahuda, Irene Yesley, Carl Yonder and Kathleen Zeifang.  A total of 49 of the artists' works were chosen by jurors Matt Malone, Sheila Blake and Patsy Fleming.

Jim Earl: Now and Then: Fifty Years of Prints

July 1 - August 30, 2020

This two-month guest solo of Jim Earl's etchings and silk screens ranges from the sensitive mastery of 2 ½ Trees and Queen Conch to the loose improvisation of Sparrow's Point.  It follows his evolution from silk screen prints like Metro Test, which he began to make after seeing an exhibit of Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes.  In his etching Pasiphae a female figurine and a cow creamer recall the wife of King Minos, who took pleasure, Ovid tells us, "in becoming an adulteress with a bull." 

     Earl's work often juxtaposes the near and far, the mundane and the mythic - which is perhaps no accident.  An MIT-trained physicist, Earl taught at the University of Minnesota, where his balloon-borne experiments led to the discovery of cosmic-ray electrons, and later at the University of Maryland, where he also earned a BFA and exhibted his prints widely.  This show is a retrospective of his work.

All-Member Group Show: Unforgotten

May 6 - June 28, 2020

     Art has two impulses in times of public suffering or public cruelty: to respond directly, or to turn away toward the human and nature.  

     "How many more will be abandoned, suffer and be forgotten before we reframe our understanding?" Kristina Penhoet asks in a comment on the title of her installation.  America's social and political moment is also reflected with oblique gravity in Duly Noted Painters' Street Pharmacy and in Pete Seligman's Thoughts while driving near Escalante Utah.  

     Courtney Applequist, Cristy West and Sheila Blake turn inward, or toward memory and a somewhat-menacing nostalgia; while Katherine Blakeslee and Hester Ohbi present scenes of natural beauty.  Patsy Fleming's Mathematica (Dagwood's Wish) is unclassifiable.  Jay Peterzell's Mycenae seems to allude to a society brought down when vengeance follows vengeance.

     The gallery show also includes work by Kathryn Mohrman, Greg O'Hanlon, Joyce Wellman and Kathryn Wiley.  An expanded version is online, and includes images of additional work by Fran Abrams, Gordana Gerskovic, Allen Hirsh and Natacha Thys.

Barbara Pliskin: Paintings

April 29 - June 28, 2020     

Barbara Pliskin continues to work on her Sun Series.  Always fascinated by the sun and how it affects color, our daily lives and moods, she fills her canvases with magical reflections and intense colors.  Although the paintings in this series may look like landscapes she considers them fantasies, a kind of gestural abstract impressionism.  She works in oil and intensifies the paintings with glazes.

Kathryn Mohrman: LINE / pattern

April 1 - 26, 2020

“The artist’s world is limitless.  It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away.  It is always on his doorstep.” – Paul Strand, photographer, 1890 - 1976

Most photographs are of something.  

     The photographs in Kathryn Mohrman’s first solo exhibit at Foundry Gallery take a different approach.  The subjects are identifiable, but this is not an exhibit about content.  Rather, the emphasis is on geometry, on line and pattern.  “I took these photographs because of the shapes and repetitions I discovered, whether in architecture or water,” she says.  “The scale varies from one image to another, whether measured in acres or inches.  I created some of these images far from where I live, others close to home.  With a focus on line and pattern, the world is limitless.”

Lavely Miller-Kershman Paints Lavely Miller-Kershman

March 4 - 29, 2020

Lavely Miller-Kershman's new show is a departure and a return.  A departure from her earlier paintings of explicit injury; a return to a more-classical style and a recognition that what she is doing is, indirectly, self-portraiture.  A subconscious narrative is observable in the portraits and figures she paints.  The girls and women are young, vulnerable, stoic -- and dangerous.  They are recovering their balance.

     Her new work is painted on paper affixed to canvas or wood, and incorporates many layers of acrylic glaze.  Tiny amounts of color mixed with gel medium are applied one methodical layer at a time.  This technique is what facilitates the smooth, optical glow of the paintings.  The wrinkled texture comes from sealing and adhering the paper to a hard surface.  She applies the paint with her fingers.

Washington Post Review

Applequist & Blake: New Members Show

February 5 - March 1, 2020

Courtney Applequist

My work draws inspiration from the seen world.  I seek the use of found geometries & colors to depict the feeling of a moment, finding a degree of tension: beauty & dissonance.  I work primarily in oil paint, interjecting charcoal, pastel and other media as the moment requires.  The thoughts I start with are nothing more than a beginning, and I am driven to a new place as the piece unfolds.

Sheila Blake

I’ve been a painter all my life. Creating the illusion of space and light with paint is what thrilled me from the beginning, and it thrills me now.  I went to Cooper Union in New York, lived in California, then moved to Durham, where I taught art at Duke University.  After moving here I taught at the Corcoran.  Now I have a studio in Takoma Park, and keep the demands of life to a minimum so I can paint full time, every day.  There’s so much in these paintings: the light, the mood.  The subterranean menace.

Joyce Wellman: “Free Stylin’- Homage to Ed Clark”

January 2 - February 2, 2020

… "Mentored as a young New York artist by the groundbreaking Abstract painter, Ed Clark (1926 -2019), Joyce Wellman has entitled her Foundry Gallery solo exhibition, “Free Stylin’- Homage to Ed Clark”,  acknowledging Clark’s approach to creative technique and his life as an artist.   Over our 38-year friendship, I’ve been privileged to witness her evolution, sometimes as a patron, sometimes just dropping by her studio for tea.  What I began to recognize in Wellman’s work across media (paper, canvas, wood, artist’s books and multimedia) is what attracts and energizes me about Art - the power of intimacy, the way an artist invites you to feel and to respond through their work.

Joyce Wellman’s work displays this alchemy.  She sparks dialogue between the viewer and the art – encouraging us to create our own narratives, discover larger stories and embedded truths. Using line, circles, glyphs, color, clash, vacancy, dimension, metaphor, anthropomorphic and sacred imagery and geometry, she transforms message into form. She reveals myriad worlds from deep within her own.”...;  Michelle Parkerson, author : Her Artist Way: Joyce Wellman,  12/2020

Jay Peterzell: Now What

December 4 - 29, 2019

In this show Peterzell paints figures at moments of catastrophic injury or self-knowledge. The canvases are large. In one, Abraham sees too late that he is a submissive murderer. A madman infects the nation of pigs around him. Figures gaze ahead and see ashes. In only one painting is there a future to speak of, a portrait of Schöenberg inspired to write Transfigured Night.

Duly Noted Painters: Kurtis Ceppetelli & Matt Malone: The Hidden Figure

October 30 - December 1, 2019

Kurtis Ceppetelli and Matt Malone's most recent series re-imagines the idea of traditional still life painting. Unlike their earlier figurative work, the painters focus this time on what is left behind when the figure is gone. What remains is a still life that hints at human presence. The title of each painting at first glance seems contradictory, but it cues the viewer in to this presence. The technique of the two artists remains the same as in the past: painting on the same canvas at the same time, adding and subtracting elements until a final agreement concludes each piece.

Pete Seligman: Constructions & Collages

October 2 - 27, 2019

Meaning, in Pete Seligman's constructions, presses insistently toward us while remaining just beyond our ability to articulate it. Sometimes funny, sometimes dreamlike, they contain images that have been half rubbed-out or uncannily snipped together. There is a sense that they refer to things that happened at night. They are a kind of surrealism that still has the power to disarm and worry us.

In Biography a man says something indistinct to a larger figure that resembles him, except here the figure may also be a woman. In another piece a woman is depicted, a crime alluded to, a project mentioned - and that's all. In Dead Sea we are shown a half-misted-over daylight photograph of a desert shore and body of water, juxtaposed with a glimmering green light in the dark. In What & Where a figure - perhaps not Kim Jong Un but we think of no one else - contemplates the sidewalk from the corner of a roof, his feet halfway off the edge.

Seligman makes his pieces with snippets of newspaper text, found images, and materials that have washed down Rock Creek. "Walking along the banks of the creek is always an adventure," he says. "With the constructions I'm looking for a balance among the found elements. With the collages, I'm interested in emotional and psychological scenes. Ambiguity and mystery often play a big role."

Gordana Geršković: Mérida

September 4 - 29, 2019

Gordana Geršković's latest work takes us to Mérida in the Yucatán Peninsula, where she lived for a year and studied new forms of art under the mentorship of master painter and sculptor Abel Vázquez. Geršković captures intimate textures, surfaces and urban abstractions using a macro lens to zoom into the details. Here she contemplates the vibrant colors and worn, weathered textures of the ancient city, with its rich Mayan and colonial heritage. She also for the first time exhibits paintings as well as photographs. The Croatian-born Geršković currently lives in the Washington DC area.

Artists' Choice: Regional Juried Group Show

July 31 - September 1, 2019

Two girls sit on a dark windowsill in The Room. They are looking across the street into the window of another apartment in which a figure is - undressing? One of the girls is half-hidden by a curtain, the other has on headphones. This alternation of presence and absence, inner and outer, runs through the Foundry's juried August group show.

Elizabeth Casquiero's household landscape in A Pause in the Day bears an odd formal resemblance to Jim Earl's rigorous poetic treatment of near and far in Within the Green Cathedral. Still in the world of landscape, we feel the vibration of closeness and depth in Marlowe Emerson's Chateau Grounds #2 and Lori Katz' Fences. The show then takes us in and out of sometimes-disorienting representational space in works by Sally Canzoneri, Jana Curcio, Delna Dastur, Camilla David, Martin deAlteriis, Kim DiDonato-Murrell, Octavia Frazier, Eleanor Glattly, Tom Greaves, Rebecca Hirsh, Courtney Kolker, Deborah Kommalan and Stephen Schiff.

Regional Juried Solo Show: Joseph Shetler: The Habitual Line

July 3- July 28, 2019

Joseph Shetler approaches post-minimalism as a practice of simplicity, in art and in life. Shetler was born in Goshen, Indiana, raised in a Mennonite family. His work in this juried guest show reflects a sense of consistency and order. In earlier work he relied on the grid as a compositional principle. Now he allows it to lead into simple patterns and progressions, creating a logical drawing that can be read. The two series in this show consist of the most traditional forms of mark-making: silverpoint and graphite. They are varied and textured to disrupt what he calls the habitual line.

"Mennonite families typically live humbly," Shetler says. "Homes are not embellished with art, excess or worldly items, but are rather of modest design. One of the ways to live simply is to not place too much emphasis on the pursuit of worldly success, popular culture, and social media. I create work that reflects these values; it’s a rejection of the things that I believe complicate our lives."

Katherine Blakeslee: Reflections

June 5 - 30, 2019

Katherine Blakeslee’s new exhibition invites us to be still and contemplate. It is a reflection of the artist’s thoughts on the turbulence and change in our world today and what they may mean for the planet and future generations. Art can provide a welcome respite from the conflict and uncertainties - upheavals in technology, politics, climate and demographics - surrounding us. Her new paintings place the close-up against a deep vista.

Blakeslee has been attracted to watercolor for its translucence and evanescence. They "render it a wonderful medium through which to capture the mysterious ways light and perspective change everything," she says. "There is a shared creativity between the artist and the spontaneity of the paint, mediated by water." Recently she has been experimenting with the vibrancy of alcohol inks.

Kathryn Wiley: New Work: Collages and Paintings

May 1 - June 2, 2019

Painter Kathryn Wiley has found a new sense of depth in her latest collages.  Red balloons rise in our direction before a retreating landscape.  Houses ascend in Wizard-of-Oz fashion above a swirl of erotic recesses.  Forests, water and rocks are somehow a disaster.  The paintings too suggest that something is wrong: despite its classical balance, Arrangement in Pink is sub-titled (I'll See You in Hell), and there is a brutalism that borders on despair in Regime Change.

Vu Quoc Nguyen: Meridian

April 3 - 28, 2019

Vu Nguyen's work is abstract, but it hasn’t always been that way.  "Over the past several years, representational elements in my work have gradually vanished," he says.  "My focus has shifted more towards the experiential aspects of art making.  I want to make thoughtful works that represent my cultural background and my relationship with the natural world.  The repetitive motion of making small marks within a confined space has a sort of meditative quality.  It describes a state of movement and continuous change."

     This show includes two seven-foot-tall paintings, Meridian 1 and 2, that represent this flow and change and discomposition.  These are set off, or perhaps elaborated, by four series of drawings devoted to earth, the motion of water, and the complexity of surface.  "These patterns reflect my observations of the elements that make up physical and non-physical spaces," says Nguyen.  "There is a sense of randomness dispersed among an organized matrix that relates to topographic maps in their description and quantification of boundaries, elevations, and depressions.  I use drawing and painting interchangeably to achieve a certain level of spontaneity.  Inevitably my early influences came from traditional Asian art, particularly landscape painting and its poetic connection to nature." 

Hester Ohbi: Through Blues

February 27 - March 31, 2019

“I am an intuitive abstract artist painting less what is visible and more what is felt,” says Hester Ohbi.  “I love color, and for this show was especially drawn to ultramarine, so bright and so profound – originally made from lapis lazuli.  It has been said that blue signifies peace, calm and spirituality.  In paintings and sculpture the Mother of God has almost always been depicted as wearing a blue gown and blue is the color of Heaven.

“A dominant theme in my work is change, the birth and death of all things. Some paintings contain fragments that have the fleeting nature of mental events.  Some contain a horizon that as I paint feels like a shift into another state of consciousness.  And these changes of color and awareness are filtered through blues.”

New Members Show: Five Artists / Five Visions

Kathryn Mohrman, Barbara Pliskin, Pete Seligman, Joyce Wellman and Cristy West

January 30 - February 24, 2019

Five wonderfully talented artists joined the gallery this year.

Photographer Kathryn Mohrman says her images of women in different parts of the world "portray my 'sisters' in our shared humanity.”  Barbara Pliskin aims at creating "an emotional outburst in the viewer that is close to my feelings about the painting.”   Many of Pete Seligman’s constructions are made from found materials: wood, metal, collage and oil paint, "but often begin with art accidents,” he says.  Joyce Wellman populates her mysterious work with "seemingly random numbers, marks, words and symbols, in varying degrees subdued vs. vibrant, or cool vs. hot, in search of a magic poetic art."  And Cristy West's exuberant abstracts are “expressions of feelings, mysteries and things unseen -- they emerge from many layers of work.”

Light in Winter

January 2 - 27, 2019

The Foundry begins the year with an all-gallery show celebrating the attenuated light,  introspection and odd cheer of winter.

Patsy Fleming: The Eleventh Woman

December 5 - 30, 2018

“I often create the figure from a model, then lead it away from reality,” says Patsy Fleming.  “In the model I may see a reflection of love or grief or desire, and I impose my own history on the figure.  Some of the women in these paintings took shape from ideas about my ancestors.  Others sprang directly from my subconscious. Robert Rauchenberg said he accepts the 'irresistible possibilities' of what he can’t ignore in his work and that’s what I do.

     “And who is the eleventh woman?  She’s the ideal, the unrealizable, both other and self, who lives only in our imagination.”

October 2018–Less is More: A Show of Small Works
September 2018 — Charlene Nield and Ann Pickett: à deux
August 2018 – Malgorzata Jablonska
July 2018 – Bare the Walls: Art raffle, fundraiser, party
June 2018 – Kurtis Ceppetelli and Matthew Malone:Model Compositions (conjunction of the figure)
May 2018 – Fran Abrams: For the Love of Lines – Polymer and Poetry
April 2018 – Katherine Blakeslee: Renewal
March 2018 – Memory
February 2018 – Here and Elsewhere: New Members Show
January 2018 – Prelude
December 2017 – Hee Hyoun Chung
November 2017 – Jay Peterzell
October 2017 – Charlene Nield and Ann Pickett: The Usual Suspects
September 2017 – Sarna Marcus: Blurring the Boundary
August 2017 – Dynamic Duos: Power and Form
July 2017 – Allen Hirsh: A Mathematically Transformed World
June 2017 – Craig Moran: Spaced Out
May 2017 – Gordana Gerskovic: India UpClose
April 2017 – All That Jazz
March 2017 – Becky S. Kim
February 2017 – New Members Show
January 2017 – Celebrate! 45 Years of Art + 1 Year in North Shaw
December 2016 – Amy Barker-Wilson: Views along the Way
November 2016 – Heather Jacks and Natacha Thys
October 2016 – Charlene Nield and Ann Pickett
September 2016 – Katherine Blakeslee: Land and Sea
August 2016 – HotHot
July 2016 – Take It Outside
June 2016 – Bare the Walls
May 2016 – Kathryn Wiley
April 2016 – Guest Artist Lindsay Mullen
March 2016 – Fran Abrams: Folded and Framed
February 2016 — Quartet Nouveau
January 2016 — At Large: A Group Show of Large Works
December 2015 – Some Women by Jay Peterzell
November 2015 – Gordana Gerskovic: Metamorphosis – From Decay to Display
July 2015 – Bare the Walls
June 2015 – New Paintings by Patsy Fleming
May 2015 – Waterwork by Alex Tolstoy
April 2015 – The Painted Word
March 2015 – Anticipation by Katherine Blakeslee
February 2015 – Six New Members…Six Directions
January 2015 – New Work by Foundry Members
December 2014 – Come in from the Cold
November 2014 – What Was I Thinking? by Donna K. McGee
October 2014 – Dramatic Color Feeling by Maruka Carvajal
September 2014 – Colors of Kurdistan by Ramzi Ghotbaldin and Sardar Kestay
August 2014 – Hot Glass in the City by the Capital Art Glass Guild
July 2014 – Fireworks by the Foundry Member Artists
June 2014 – First Second by Naomi Taitz-Duffy
May 2014 – Down & Derby by Meg MacKenzie
April 2014 – Double Takes by Judy Gilbert Levy
March 2014 – Shifting Gears by Ana Elisa Benavent
February 2014 – Take 2 by Gordana Gerskovic and Alex Tolstoy
January 2014 – Staples and Gravy by Edward Bear Miller
December 2013 – Three Women by Jay Peterzell
November 2013 – Involution by Kathryn Wiley
October 2013 – Becoming by Linda Button
September 2013 – Edges, Lost and Found by Katherine Blakeslee
August 2013 – Hot, Hot, Hot
July 2013 – Intimate Colors by Maruka Carvajal
June 2013 – Scotland: Boundless, Beautiful and Home by Lesley Clarke
May 2013 – The Colors I’m Feeling by Ana Elisa Benavent
April 2013 – OUTLOUD
March 2013 – Bits and Pieces by Sarah Alexander
February 2013 – New Member Exhibit
January 2013 – Earth Flowing Plane by Ed Bear Miller
December 2012 – A Cool Palette by Foundry Members
November 2012 – Room for Blue, Paintings by Donna K McGee
October 2012 – New Glass With Drawings by Nancy Donnelly
September 2012 – The Color of Waterlilies by Judy Gilbert Levey
August 2012 – A Small Hope, Lukman Ahmad (Guest)
July 2012 – Call & Response, The Abstract Collective (Guest)
June 2012 – Touch Points II by Katherine Blakeslee
May 2012 – Occasional Acts of Art, Peter Loge
April 2012 – Befriending the Triangle, Julia Latein-Kimmig
March 2012 – Black, White and in Between, Fran Abrams
February 2012 – The Feb Four: Linda Button, Lesley Clarke, Peter Loge and Edward Bear Miller
January 2012 – A Natural Progression, Oil Paintings by Ed Bear Miller
December 2011 – Lens. Paper? Canvas! Photography by Sarah Alexander
November 2011 – Journeys, Mixed Media by Amy Barker-Wilson
October 2011 – World on a Wire, Mixed Media by Tanja Meski
September 2011 — Mix No Match, Mixed Media by Julia Latein-Kimmig
August 2011 — Changes, Paintings by Ron Riley
July 2011 — Celebrate the Child in You, Acrylic Paintings by Donna K McGee