Category Archives: Jeff Stroud

Objet D’art

Objet D'art: Photography Exhibition, Church St. Art & Craft Gallery of Mt Holly, NJ, Jeff Stroud

Objet D’ Art, Group Photography Exhibition at Church St. Art & Craft Gallery, Curator Jeff Stroud

Call to all local photographers! March Photography Exhibition Church St. Art & Craft Gallery of Mt Holly, NJ, has invited me to curate this year’s photography exhibition which will be held in March 2016. The theme this year is:  Objet D’ Art:  A small object that is valued because it is beautiful or interesting; an object that artist value.

The theme here is to show your creative artistic side by exhibiting small objects you find in your home, everyday object you use or collection, or any small found objects that catch your imagination while creating a single image of fine art.

Drop off dates Feb 26-28th during business hours WednesdayFriday 11-6:00 pm, Saturday 10-6:00 pm. Sunday 12-4:00 pm 

There is a $10 submission fee.  You may submit up to 3 photographs, framed and properly wired for hanging.  The show will run from March 2nd through the 26th and we will be holding a meet the artists reception on March 12th from 4:00 – 6:00 pm. Open to the public and there will be refreshments served.

I look forward to hearing from you as well as curating this exhibition. You are welcome to invite friends and share this post with other photographers.

Objet D’art: Photography Exhibition, the exhibit for the month of March at Church St. Art & Craft Gallery will be non-juried and curated by our guest photographer Jeff Stroud.

Theme: Objet D’ Art:  A small object that is valued because it is beautiful or interesting; an object that artists value. 

“The theme here is to show your creative artistic side by exhibiting small objects you can find in your home, everyday object you use or collect or small found object that catch your imagination while creating a single image of fine art with blurred/bokeh background.” – Jeff Stroud

Objet D'art: Photography Exhibition, Church St. Art & Craft Gallery of Mt Holly, NJ, Jeff StroudFor any questions regarding the theme or medium, please contact Jeff at jeffstroud.52@gmail.com

Like Church St. Art & Craft Gallery on facebook

Jeff Stroud on DoNArTNeWs

the reluctant bloger – A Creative Journey

Facebook: Jeff Stroud – Nature Spirit Photography

Twitter: @jstroud52

Red Bubble: Jeff Stroud – Nature Spirit Photography

Like DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog on facebook

Follow the new DoNArTNeWs.com

Follow DoN on Twitter @DoNNieBeat58

DoNArTNeWs on Tumblr

DoN Brewer on Pinterest

@donniebeat on Instagram

Affiliate Marketing [disclosure page] Shop on-line and help support DoNArTNeWs

Donate via safe and secure PayPal in the sidebar.

Studio

Bruce Garrity, Studio VisitBruce Garrity, Studio Visit, Rutgers-Camden, Recent Work, detail of large painting, photograph by Jeff Stroud

Bruce Garrity, Studio Visit, Rutgers-Camden, Recent Work

“I am really into architectonic, geometric abstract art like Sangram Mujamdar. He’s a really good painter, he’s Indian, American, teaches at MICA, you would probably like his work. I don’t know that I’m influenced by him but he’s somebody who is a contemporary, and I think my work somehow relates to his and what he’s doing. it’s also that they are representational that I like about them. There’s a few people around like that, Gideon Bok in Boston, they are more about perception.”

bruce5Bruce Garrity, Studio Visit, Rutgers-Camden, Recent Work, photograph by Jeff Stroud

The studio on the Rutgers campus has high ceilings, big widows, rolling lockers and space to paint big. Bruce Garrity‘s paintings are big, really big. So big that when he show’s them he has to rent a moving van. But the flexible space isn’t crowded and I didn’t notice any paint smell so I guessed the vivid paintings were acrylic.

“No, these are all oil paintings. We don’t use very much turpentine and usually what you smell is turpentine, I don’t use it very much. There are some passages that are sort of washy, but they were painted a while ago. I don’t use a lot of medium, I use a little bit of this alkyd because I need them to dry. But normally, I don’t even put any of that into it, it’s the oil paint, it’s thick, but it’s just the paint.”

I like using Liquin, but it smells. It’s good for outdoors but my studio smells like fumes.

“I just use a little and then the smell goes away after a day or two. In here it’s gotten to the point where we don’t use that much. My students have one can that they all wash their brushes in and that’s about it. We go though maybe a quart of turpentine per semester.”

I’ve been using Gamsol to clean my brushes.

“Some people say that’s a problem because you just don’t smell it, there’s still fumes in the air. There’s a school of thought that it’s better if it smells a little bit because then you’re aware of it in the air. We use a little of it so there’s not a lot of it in the air.”

bruce4Bruce Garrity, Studio Visit, Rutgers-Camden, Recent Work, photograph by Jeff Stroud

Bruce, you’re canvasses are huge, I struggle with just small ones.

“You know, it’s the scale. The scale that I’m comfortable with is essentially life-size at the picture plane. So, if I make a figure, the whole figure is six feet tall. So, it really has to do with the scale more than anything else. I like big paintings, too. But they’re a pain in the ass. You have to have to right space for them. But, you know, it’s how I like to paint. It is what it is.

That big one out there, the one that’s in the other room. That was a completely different painting in 1995. I showed it down here in the Stedman Gallery and it had a big dinosaur, and a jeep, and a bunch of other things. It was sort of like a museum/circus vibe, I was big into that back in the 90s. I kept it, because obviously no one was going to buy it. So at one point I just white-washed the whole thing.

Towards the end of the time that I was in graduate school that’s when I started to paint landscapes. I painted pretty heavily because I was in graduate school and I started do this waterfall bit that is kind of like what I would see up in the Poconos when we went on vacation. And then I started putting these figures in, kind of like Cezanne’s Large Bathers, it’s kind of like the Large Bathers of the Poconos.”

bruce3Bruce Garrity, Studio Visit, Rutgers-Camden, Recent Work, photograph by Jeff Stroud

Do you have people model for you?

“Some of them are. Either from models who were here. some are taken from drawings, photographs, a bunch of different stuff. Some are the top half might be one person and the bottom half might be someone else. They’re kind of Frankenstein-ed together, I don’t know that I would normally do that, but, that is basically how Cezanne did his. For a guy who was basically known as a perceptual painter, always painting what was in front of him, all the Bathers paintings, he made tons of them, were all from out of his head or old sketches. I think he even did some of them out of fashion magazines that his sister had. So, he was imagining girls with their clothes off, I guess.

Apparently, he was like nervous around models. It wasn’t like he never had nude models, but they made him nervous-er. I always thought that was really interesting, and everybody I always talks about the stuff that he did, looking at it perceptually, but going forward, the Cubists looked at those paintings and that’s where they got permission to do what they did. It was like, ‘He can do it. Why can’t we?'”

bruce2Bruce Garrity, Studio Visit, Rutgers-Camden, Recent Work, photograph by Jeff Stroud

Will you be showing this at your show at 3rd Street Gallery?

“Oh, yeah. It will probably be about twenty paintings. There are seven or eight big things, and a bunch of little things. We will be showing in the annex as well and there are some spots the smaller pieces will look well. I’m showing with Katherine Kurtz, she does some abstract things, some are more figurative. I would say she’s mainly an abstract painter but here she’s showing more figurative, DeKooning-ish, kind of figurative things.

The pairings at 3rd Street Gallery are kind of random, but sometimes you get these connections that are interesting. I’m looking forward to it, I like Katherine a lot. I like her work. And my work doesn’t always play well with others, they’re overwhelming and colorful and big. But I think our things are going to look good together.”

bruce6Bruce Garrity, Studio Visit, Rutgers-Camden, Recent Work, photograph by Jeff Stroud

Recent Work Bruce Garrity

September 2 – September 27, 2015

FIRST FRIDAY: September 4, 2015, 5:00 – 9:00 pm

ARTIST RECEPTION: Sunday, September 13, 2015,1:00 – 4:00 pm

Bruce Garritys poetic figurative paintings utilize a broad vocabulary of painterly means in the pursuit of visual drama. The surfaces of the works range from light washes, direct drawing, scumbles and layerings to heavy impastos of the mostly saturated color palette. Garrity draws on various methods of construction, to bring the works to fruition: direct perception, memory, invention and combinations of these. The paintings, some as large as eight by ten feet, depict figures and objects life size at the picture plane so one feels they can be entered and engaged directly. They are autobiographical of interests over a long period of time.”

The artist will present a walk through gallery talk on Sunday, September 20th beginning at 2pm.” 3rd Street Gallery

Written by DoN Brewer except where noted.

Photographed by Jeff Stroud

Like 3rd Street Gallery on facebook

Like DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog on facebook

Follow the new DoNArTNeWs.com

Follow DoN on Twitter @DoNNieBeat58

DoNArTNeWs on Tumblr

DoN Brewer on Pinterest

@donniebeat on Instagram

Affiliate Marketing [disclosure page] Shop on-line and help support DoNArTNeWs

Donate via safe and secure PayPal in the sidebar.

PHOTOgraphy

PHOTOgraphy 2015 Juried Exhibition, Laura StorckPHOTOgraphy 2015 Juried ExhibitionThe Philadelphia Sketch Club, Laura StorckUntitled (My Philadelphia), 11″ x 14″, archival pigment print

PHOTOgraphy 2015 Juried Exhibition at The Philadelphia Sketch Club

Written and photographed by Jeff Stroud

Going to The Philadelphia Sketch Club’s PHOTOgraphy 2015 Juried exhibition reception, I went as a fellow photographer to support friends and members of photographic clubs in the city and local areas. I did not go to review this collection, so, my view of the work is not as extensive has it could have been. The best way to see any collection is to go during regular gallery hours which in this case, are Wed. Fri. Sat. Sun. 1:00 to 5:00 PM.

PHOTOgraphy 2015, Susan Knott, IncompletePHOTOgraphy 2015, The Philadelphia Sketch ClubSusan Knott, Incomplete, 4″ x 5″ negative scanned and digitally printed, 20″ x 20″

You will find works “utilizing any photography process, traditional and digital, black & white and color.” There are nature landscapes; there are street scenes, studio work, and creative blurs (abstracts). There are works from long time photographers who know their craft, there are brilliant photographs from photographs who recently begun making photos, getting the feel of genre. Creating for the jurors a task that I don’t envy, jurors Melvin Chappel, Stuart Shils, and Ron Tarver’s selections offer a vision for the senses.

Photography 2015, Molly CarpenterPHOTOgraphy 2015, The Philadelphia Sketch Club, Molly Carpenter, The Burlap Bag, photograph, 11″ x 17″, Third Prize

I am not going to select particular photos or photographs to feature here as favorites, for that would not be fair, to all the other wonderful creative works involved. To me having one’s art juried into the show is an honor in itself. To be selected to exhibit at The Philadelphia Sketch Club’s annual PHOTOgraphy exhibition is a prize worthy to place in each photographer’s artist statement.

Give yourself an artistic treat and go visit The Philadelphia Sketch Club’s galleries, the show is on display until August 15th.

The Philadelphia Sketch Club 235 South Camac Street, The Avenue of the Artists, Center City, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, 215-545-9398

Written and photographed by Jeff Stroud

View the The Philadelphia Sketch Club online exhibition here.

Like The Philadelphia Sketch Club on facebook

Jeff Stroud on DoNArTNeWs

the reluctant bloger – A Creative Journey

Facebook: Jeff Stroud – Nature Spirit Photography

Twitter: @jstroud52

Red Bubble: Jeff Stroud – Nature Spirit Photography

Like DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog on facebook

Follow the new DoNArTNeWs.com

Follow DoN on Twitter @DoNNieBeat58

DoNArTNeWs on Tumblr

DoN Brewer on Pinterest

@donniebeat on Instagram

Affiliate Marketing [disclosure page] Shop on-line and help support DoNArTNeWs

Donate via safe and secure PayPal in the sidebar.

Church St.

 Church St. Art & CraftBen CohenChurch St. Art and Craft, photograph by Jeff Stroud

Church St. Art and Craft, 2nd Annual Summer Juried Art Show, Mt. Holly

Written and photographed by Jeff Stroud

In Mill Race Village, Mt Holly’s Historic area just off Main Street, sits a small two story house on the corner of Church Street. In two rooms of that historic house will be found a monthly collection of local artist work with the co-op member artist the basis of each of the collections. The Church St. Art and Craft space may be small yet it allows one to be intimate with the art, close enough to touch and intimate enough to imagine pieces in your own home.

The exhibition during the month of July is a juried show of member and guest artists who have submitted their work to be juried by Shaun Stipick; Director of the Herman T. Costello Lyceum, Burlington City, NJ. Mr. Stipick’s vision was held upon several oil paintings, watercolors, pastels, mixed medium collage, and upcycled paintings. Nineteen artists competed for wall space and prizes; most of the artists have at least 3 pieces exhibited among this collection.

churchst4 Judy Sawicki, Still Waters, oil, Church St. Art and Craft, photograph by Jeff Stroud

Third place winner is Judy Sawicki, a guest artist, with her small oil painting. ‘Still Waters’ graces the front wall, her work is classic nature scenes capturing the essence of old masters. Second place, a guest artist as well, is Joyce McAfee’s ephemeral watercolor ‘The Dune’; the painting seems to be a mirage, ready to blow away with the next wind.

churchst3Joyce McAfee,The Dune, watercolor, Church St. Art and Craft, photograph by Jeff Stroud

churchst5Maureen Gass-Brown, Traveling Light, pastel water colors, Church St. Art and Craft, photograph by Jeff Stroud

In first place is Maureen Gass-Brown’s ‘Traveling Light’ her pastel water colors seem to capture a sense of journeying to the path paradise. Maureen’s artistry brings nature and landscape to life offering muted color brilliance to her work.

The gallery exhibition is a feast for the eyes and soul, as you travel around the room you are greeted with humor, classic scenery, walks in a garden or on a beach, Ben Cohen’s brilliant primary color pastel flash out in bold reds, yellows, blues capturing city life in a bright flash, playful and humorous.

churchst1Church St. Art and Craft, through August 2nd, Summer Juried Art Showphotograph by Jeff Stroud

Written and photographed by Jeff Stroud

Like Church St. Art & Craft on facebook

Like Jeff Stroud – Nature Spirit Photography on facebook

Follow @jstroud52 on Twitter

Red Bubble: Jeff Stroud – Nature Spirit Photography

Like DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog on facebook

Follow the new DoNArTNeWs.com

Follow DoN on Twitter @DoNNieBeat58

DoNArTNeWs on Tumblr – check Tumblr for hi-res versions of the photographs in this post

DoN Brewer on Pinterest

@donniebeat on Instagram

Affiliate Marketing [disclosure page] Shop on-line and help support DoNArTNeWs

Donate via safe and secure PayPal in the sidebar.