SUSAN WEISEND

Susan Weisend, an artist based in Aurora, New York has shown her work both nationally and internationally in group and solo exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Ireland, China, and Slovakia.

Susan is represented in public and private collections including: The Sanbao Art Institute in Jingdezhen China, The Herbert F. Museum of Art at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, The Bardiana Collection at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and the Juaniata College Museum of Art in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. Weisend has participated in peer reviewed juried exhibitions at the New York Society of Etchers Annual Exhibition, The National Art Club, New York, New York, the National Drawing and Small Sculpture Show, Delmar College, Corpus Christi, Texas, and The Printed Image 5, Sabatini Gallery, Topeka, Kansas.

Weisend was artist in residence at The Art Print Residence in Arenys, De Munt, Spain in 2016 and 2017. She is professor emerita at Ithaca College following a thirty-one-year teaching career in the Department of Art. Susan received her undergraduate degree from Syracuse University, and her graduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Artist Statement / Susan Weisend

I construct a precarious formal and conceptual balance in my artwork that is a metaphor for our relationship with the natural environment. I am drawn to the concept of art as visual poetry made of images that suggest both memory and mystery. Elements from nature often appear in my work as relics where the human presence is implied in images of beauty and loss through the passage of time. The work is suggestive; purposefully poised between subjectivity and objectivity, between memory and abstraction.

CARLA STETSON

Carla Stetson is a visual artist currently living and working in a barn built in 1840 that she converted into her studio and home on four acres near Ithaca, New York. It is also home to Sky Barn Apiaries. Her work explores the tangled interrelationships between the wild and human in mixed media drawings, prints and collage.

Stetson received a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree in sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Vermont College. She was an Associate Professor of Art at Ithaca College in New York and now works full time in her studio. Previously, she lived in Duluth, Minnesota, where she is best known for public sculpture, especially the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, the first large scale memorial to victims of a lynching in the United States.

Stetson’s residency awards include Draw International in France; McColl Center for the Arts in Charlotte, North Carolina; Saltonstall Foundation in New York; and the Jentel Foundation in Wyoming. She has received fellowships and grants from the Puffin Foundation, Intermedia Arts, Arrowhead Regional Arts Council, the Minnesota State Arts Board and Ithaca College. Her work is included in several collections, including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Tweed Museum of Art in Duluth, Minnesota, the City of Duluth, and Carolinas Health Care in Charlotte, North Carolina, the University of Minnesota and the St. Louis County Historical Association.

Artist Statement / Carla Stetson

I live and work in the countryside of New York state in an old barn that is home to quite a few wild creatures besides its human occupants. My partner and I have a small apiary where we keep bees and harvest honey. The success of that endeavor depends upon human beekeepers adapting to what bee colonies want and need; we must learn to understand their complex language. I think the positioning of wildness versus domestication is a false binary; instead, understanding that human and natural realms are entangled in fascinating, marvelous, multiple and necessary ways is essential to survival. My personal encounters and involvement with the more-than-human world and the fact that we are dependent on creatures often seen as insignificant or totally ‘other,’ combines with more global environmental concerns, giving rise to the themes that I explore in my work.

Since 2017, I have worked with images of animals in drawings. Animals serve a multiplicity of functions for humans: pets, food, clothing, medicine, proxies, aides, symbols of power or industriousness, and more. Their role in relation to humans is a murky and highly contested ground. The drawings reflect upon the natural, cultural, and political issues of the world we share. Narratives arise, psychoses are explored, and power struggles ensue as I continue to work with this series. Recently I began a series of abstract works using braided rugs as a motif. Braiding rugs from used woolens and scraps of fabric was a way to salvage valuable material and put it to new use. Nothing was wasted. It appears I have inherited this tendency towards saving scraps: talismans that evoke memories, photographs, old drawings, collected books- my flat files are full of such pieces. In these collages, the braids are animated, strands alternate between becoming unwoven or entangled and knotted. The whole is a woven impression of my current interests and obsessions.

MINNA RESNICK

Minna Resnick has lived in Ithaca, NY, since 1987, where she also maintains her studio. She has shown both nationally and internationally and has work in over 60 public and private collections, including the American Council on Education, Washington, DC, and the United States Information Agency. Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, NY; the Denver Art Museum, CO; the New York Public Library; the Newark Museum, NJ; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; and Kunsthaus Grenchen, Switzerland, among others. Resnick’s work is also represented in over 40 university and municipal collections. In 1980, she was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and she received New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in 1991 and 1995. In 1999, she was awarded a Constance Saltonstall (NY) artist fellowship. In 2007 and 2009, she organized an international printmaking exhibition and related symposium in China. From 2016-2020, she was a visiting artist in residence for 5 weeks in both the Printmedia and Drawing Department at Australian National University, and at Megalo Print Studios, Canberra, Australia. She will be a visiting artist at University of N. Carolina/Chapel Hill for 3 weeks in January 2023.

Artist Statement / Minna Resnick

Communication is elusive, dependent on historical and cultural contexts. One generation's verbal and visual mundane may be opaque to another generation. I comment on these inter-generational expectations and realities through the romanticized prism of illustrated early- and mid-twentieth century manuals on home management, décor, repair, health, education, and etiquette. The romanticizing of domestic history is particularly marked in toile wallpaper patterns, which are also referenced. Fashion magazine advertisements add a contemporary reality source.

Conception of the drawing most often comes from these visual sources. Illustration text usually provides a title for the work. I have also invented my own patterns, combining, and layering decorative work and figuration from many unrelated sources to link images from one era with another to encourage information displacement and disorientation, similar to information overload in today's easy data access. Remixing the narrative creates new associations and assigns new meaning. Each method changes and deconstructs any hierarchy of information.

LIN PRICE

Lin Price's solo exhibitions include: AXOM Gallery, Rochester, NY; The Buffalo Arts Studio, Buffalo, NY; Dowd Gallery, SUNY Cortland; SUNY Onondaga CC, Syracuse, NY; Houghton Gallery/Corning, NY; Hartell Gallery, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Group and invitational exhibitions include: The Painting Center, NY, NY; ROCO, Rochester, NY; Silverman Gallery, Rockville MD; MWPIA/Museum, Utica, NY; XL Projects, Syracuse, NY, H. F. Johnson Museum/Cornell University.

Lin lives in Ithaca, NY. Price received a BFA Ithaca College, MFA painting Bard College. She taught painting and drawing at Ithaca College (2002-2020). Awards include: New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA)/SOS grant; NYSCA Fellowship through CAP Tompkins County, NY. Price is an alumna of the NYFA/MARK and the Saltonstall Foundation residency programs.

Artist Statement / Lin Price

Themes that arise in my paintings are the experiences of desire, regret, and joy. Through imagination, playful creation of abstracted spaces, and color composition, I attempt to show a painted world that is mysterious and sometimes noble, rather like the one we live in.