Exhibitions & Events

We use the work of our hands and our mediums to balance “head and heart,” the intersection between cognitive approach and intuitive process. At times, we may identify more strongly with one over or other. Different circumstances call for different approaches, and it can be difficult to know which is more appropriate. While these approaches speak different languages, both will guide us, once we decide which method serves us best. 

The Head and the Heart is a body of work consisting of pairs of themed paintings, one created with a cognitive approach and the other following an intuitive process (head vs. heart), in oil and cold wax medium on paper. 

The Working Heart is a collection of abstract woven work that expresses what we hold and what happens when we allow our intuitive process to push against the bounds of a material framework – the overflow. While the work appears to be wholly heart-based, it relies on the framework that supports it to give it strength, much like our heart-based processes rely on our heads to balance them. 

JOANNE G GOELLNER 

Joanne has had a lifelong interest in art. As a child, she wanted to be a fashion designer, an architect, a graphic designer and ultimately studied illustration in college. After earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts at State University of New York College at Fredonia, she pursued certification in Art Education and a Master of Science in Art Education from State University of New York College at Buffalo. As an artist and educator, Joanne appreciated having the unique opportunity to inspire a diverse population of students, instilling a love of art, helping them become critical thinkers, decision makers and creators themselves.

Although on hiatus from education to raise a family, Joanne remains immersed in her visual arts roots. Her current body of work is comprised of colorful, abstract paintings created in oil and cold wax. This process is different from her illustrative beginnings. Instead of taking a story or idea and depicting it with art, she creates art that tells stories on their own. While painting is her primary form of expression, Joanne works in a variety of mediums including photography, mixed media and three-dimensional art. Joanne also enjoys music, writing, reading and travel. Artists who inspire include Kat Green, Rebecca Crowell and Linda Benton McCloskey. 

Joanne lives in Western New York with her amazing husband Jake, their four children, and lovable Labrador Hazel.

ARTIST STATEMENT FOR THIS EXHIBITION 

Cold wax medium is a paste made of beeswax and a small amount of solvent that has a soft, frosting-like consistency. Oil paint mixed with cold wax is added in layers to canvas, board or paper and selectively scraped, scratched or dissolved away. The process is a balance of intuition, intention and risk as I respond to the changes in surface, concealing and revealing, until an idea, mood, or meaning organically emerges and the painting’s story feels complete. 

I hope that the story speaks to the viewer and they can find personal meaning in my art.

TAMI FULLER

Tami Fuller is a fiber artist based out of East Aurora, working as an abstract weaver and felt artist. Born and raised on a family sheep farm, and connected to the fiber community in a professional capacity, using traditional women’s work as a medium to explore these concepts was a natural choice. She is self-taught and works in the abstract using woven tapestry, soft sculpture, mixed media and metals.

Her work is driven by first person experiences with exploitation, and she uses fiber in non-traditional methods to explore feelings of entrapment and suspended states. Embedding foreign objects and protrusions within her early work began as her way of expressing the struggle to find healthy expression for damage. She began by deliberately interjecting chaotic elements and foreign objects into linear weaving as an exercise in letting go of conforming to external standards, and her work is informed by her own understanding of self through the process of self-exploration. Her work mimics a sense of escape and overflow.

Fuller’s work blends the fluidity and softness of wool with sharp lines and metal. The contrasting elements create work that is thought provoking, visceral, and at once stark and delicate. Her work represents personal growth and shadow work exploring trauma and self-exploration. Her forms are an invitation to contemplate how the unraveling of one’s identity during crisis mirrors the disintegration from straight lines into abstract and the illusory unraveling is not a fall to ruin as it appears, but rather can be a path to personal freedom and empowerment. She uses intuitive and deliberately unorthodox weaving methods as a way to uncover latent imagery hiding in the personal subconscious, unrecognizable to the ego. She is especially fascinated with how free form weaving and abstract felt sculpture allow those images to rise naturally as an end product of a successful self-actualization and integration process. 

Christina Hammill Paul

IT’S ABOUT LIGHT 

Opening Reception: Thursday, January 5, 2023      6-8PM

On view in the East Gallery through January 28, 2023 

My paintings have been described as elegant, complex and thoughtful. Mostly soft in palette with fluid shapes, lines and textures, they capture light and the feeling of a space, be it intimate or expansive. I work in acrylics with a new-found freedom from the subject, using nature and the figure as a point of reference and release. I find solace in painting and work intuitively toward conveying serenity and a place calming to the mind. 

About the Artist:

Christina Hammill Paul has been painting on and off since her teen years. After majoring in fine art in college, she built a career as a graphic designer and art director. There was never enough time to devote to her own art. Now semi-retired and recently relocated to WNY, she paints every day in her Orchard Park studio. Her current mentor is William (Skip) Lawrence.

Christina received a B.A. in Art from St. Elizabeth College in New Jersey. After college she lived in New York City for twelve years and took extension classes in painting at The New School AND NYU, and spent several summer weeks at The Provincetown Workshop. After moving to the Boston MA area in 1979, she maintained a studio at The Umbrella in Concord MA, took part in many shows and began to sell her work. She was Creative Director at Candlewick Press, a children’s book publisher in Somerville MA, for twenty years. In 2019, she retired from that position and relocated to the Buffalo NY area. She still works part time as Creative Director at-large focusing on the design and art direction of some of Candlewick’s high profile books.

The Creation

The Evolution

The Artist

Artwork by Willy B. 

Opening Reception: Wednesday, February 1, 6-8PM

On view until February 25, 2023

The City 

Solo Photography Exhibition

Agnes Ge

Opening Reception:

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

6-8PM

On view Feb 1- 25, 2023