taking a look
2007 Theme series
Bert Gallery Program

Talk by Susan Fader of Ditto Editions on Fine Art Digital Printmaking

Thursday, July 19, 2007
during Gallery Night Providence
at Bert Gallery starting at 6.30pm

Providence, RI. Artists, art collectors and dealers will not want to miss an informative lecture by Susan Fader, co-owner of Ditto Editions, one of the country’s leaders in Fine Art Digital Printing, located in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

In her talk, Susan will unravel the mysteries surrounding the fine art digital print process, explaining that it is more than scanning an image, color correcting and printing on a digital printer. She will demonstrate how recent technological advances will impact the understanding and positioning of digital prints not only as a reproduction method but also as a way that many artists create new work.

The program is in conjunction with the Bert Gallery exhibit “What is original art? Is it a giclee?”
• On view July 10 – August 24, 2007
• At Bert Gallery, located along the Providence waterfront at Corliss Landing, 540 South Water Street, in Providence, Rhode Island
• Open Gallery Nights: July 19 & August 16
• Gallery Hours are Tuesday – Friday from 11-5pm, Saturdays 12-4pm or by appointment.
• Exhibits are free and open to the public.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION OF SUSAN FADER

Ditto Editions is owned and operated by Nick and Susan Fader. The Fader’s have over 50 years experience in painting, graphic design, marketing, print production and color management. As artists themselves, Nick and Susan uniquely combine their appreciation of art and the needs of their clients with their knowledge of art reproduction.

Susan Fader attended Rhode Island School of Design and graduated from Philadelphia College of Art with a BFA. Before Ditto Editions, she worked in Advertising (including opening her own company, Design Studio Two), marketing consumer brands and pursuing her interest in fine art through Chinese watercolor, traditional western fine art and decorative painting. Her work was recently selected for a thirty minute segment by HGTV. In addition to owning Ditto Editions with her husband, Susan manages, serves on the board of LynnArts and is Vice President of the Creative Economy of the North Shore (CEANS).

Space at Alice
220 Westminster Street
at the corner of Eddy Street
621-6127
www.artsandbusinessri.org

June 14 through July 21
Rediscovering Nature (in an Unnatural World): Paintings by Paula
Martiesian
and Michele Provost
Artists opening reception June 14, 5 to 8 p.m.
Gallery Night receptions June 21, 5 to 9 p.m.
and July 19, 5 to 9 p.m.

The Space at Alice, in conjunction with Cornish Associates, presents recent paintings by Paula Martiesian and Michele Provost. Martiesian and Provost first met in 2003 at the suggestion of fellow painter Bunny Harvey. Harvey thought the two painters shared common interests and would benefit from each others’ company. Over time the two painters became colleagues and friends.

Both Martiesian and Provost work exclusively from nature, responding to what they see with very unique approaches to color, abstracted space and line. Both create not just individual paintings, but sophisticated spatial and philosophical environments - locales that they return to again and again to explore from different perspectives.

Yet the two artists are radically different. Martiesian is a colorist who uses saturated hues, abstracted space and definitive line to translate what she sees in real life to the canvas. Martiesian states, ” My inspiration is not literal, but environmental. I have always been in love with trees, rocks, water - life that isn’t defined by right angles and straight lines. I fantasize about what the world might have looked like before mankind arrived and I search my immediate surroundings for hints of that world.

Many who are fans of my paintings believe my works are abstractions, but I quite literally “see” the scenes that I paint in the urban and rural green spaces around me. I accentuate the landscape I love - wild, unkempt and irreverent - and avoid certain elements altogether. My landscapes have no fences, no manmade grids, no telephone wires. They are microcosms of a world without human interference.”

Provost makes almost magical landscapes by interweaving strong shapes with a central notion of line that entwines, binds and finally, creates mass. Her landscapes are built on years of observation, a viewing of specific places that have grown to almost mythic proportions. Using painter’s mediums, Provost layers, scrapes and embeds line and color, finally building a surface that combines the gesture of drawing with the sensuous qualities of painting.

Provost states,” Juxtaposing tensions and relaxation, directing the eye from clue to clue, depicting interiority, the straining to describe and comprehend the ineffable, the ceaseless seeking to find the perfect memory of that momentary flash of perfect clarity, the attempt to recognize that which “we haven’t the subtlety of heart to see”[Pynchon], the paintings become visual metaphors and mysteries for the process of thought, understanding and the substance commonly referred to as life.”

Auction Hits in the Rhode Island Market

March 6th – April 19th
Gallery Night: March 15th
Closed Gallery Night in April

The billion-dollar art auction market is booming across the world and some Rhode Island artists are making their mark. Who are the 19th and early 20th century Rhode Island artists who have hit auction highs? What if an artist sells for $5,000 in a gallery and $500 at a Sotheby’s auction—how do you interpret the data? Visit Bert Gallery and get an insider’s look at how different Rhode Island artists are faring in the auction market. Find out about the secondary market, a critical component in securing an artists’ reputation in the art world.

April Gallery program

• Saturday, April 14, 2007 at 4pm - What does auction data mean? Discover the inner workings of the auction market. Among the panelists are Charlie Wharton of UBS Financial Services, Inc. and Dan Mechnig of Meckandil Tool Co., Inc., both local collectors.

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