Kyle, Lorenz Works At Longyear

MARGARETVILLE — Opening this week at Margaretville’s Longyear Gallery are two concurrent solo exhibitions featuring artist Hedi Kyle’s solo exhibition “Spiral Tropes” and artist Patrice Lorenz’s solo exhibition “Paintings and Drawings.”
Displayed in separate spaces of the gallery, these two shows will be accompanied by a group show of all Longyear Gallery member artists in the gallery’s two other areas and will run from Friday, September 30th through Sunday, October 23rd, with the Artists’ Opening Reception held at Longyear Gallery on Saturday, October 1st from 3-6 p.m.
Featured artist Hedi Kyle says that for her new exhibition, “Spiral Tropes,” “the spiral emerged as my guiding character having frequently appeared in my work even when it wasn’t intended to.”
Early in the pandemic summer of 2020, she explains, “I began circling with a type of highly saturated paint I had never used before and was almost shocked with the results. I asked myself where that intensity of color come from during such awful times, and my first impulse was to put the drawings away until further notice.” Yet two years later, notes the artist, “the spirals have re-appeared and have become prominent in this exhibit as part of my attempt to explore them, absorbing the figure of the spiral through the flow of the paint, the motion of the brush, and the rubbing of the wax.
In a spiral
By repeatedly drawing the spiral,” she continues, “I learned more, especially in regard to the direction of spiraling, clockwise or counterclockwise. In the third dimension this would become even more obvious, as I could get lost in the process of coiling, winding, and shaping the now flexible spirals and damp strips of paper.”
In “Spiral Tropes,” both flat images and three-dimensional objects are represented. Drawings were done mostly by brush with walnut ink, rubbing wax and graphite. For Kyle, “the three-dimensional pieces represent examples of taking the freedom to interpret spirals by curling paper in any way it wants to go.”
Hedi Kyle retired to the Catskills in 2013 after a 40-year career in book conservation and teaching book arts. Places of employment include the NY Botanical Garden, the American Museum for Natural History, and in Philadelphia the American Philosophical Society and the University of the Arts.
Book design
Known for her innovative design of book structures and as the co-founder in 1983 of the Paper and Book Intensive (PBI), she co-authored the 2018 book The Art Of the Fold with her daughter Ulla Warchol.
Patrice Lorenz’s new exhibition at Longyear Gallery, “Paintings and Drawings,” includes pieces from a series of paintings and drawings the artist began two years ago. According to Lorenz, “the series, titled ’Figure it Out,’ emerged in response to the isolation I was experiencing given the pandemic and the consequent introspection it afforded me. It has also signaled a re-emergence of the figure as a subject in my work.”
Patrice Lorenz is a founding member of Longyear Gallery. This is her fifth solo exhibit at the gallery. Her other upcoming exhibits include “Behaving Badly : Smoking, Drinking and Swearing” in October 2022 at the Lockwood Gallery in Kingston, NY and “Dear John Burroughs,” funded by a Delaware County Arts Grant, at the Hunting Tavern in Andes NY, June 2023.
Longyear Gallery exwill be on view Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and Holiday Mondays each weekend. Gallery hours are from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Longyear Gallery is located Downstairs in The Commons, 785 Main Street, Margaretville.
For information, please see Longyear Gallery’s website: longyeargallery.org, or call 845 586-3270.