Exhibit @ VenturefOrth Extended until AUGUST 17th

Exhibit at Venturef0rth. EXTENDED UNTIL AUGUST 17TH If you did not have a chance to visit you can now go until August 17th

This is a a show of my new media work - LED Drawings

@ Venturef0rth Philadelphia Ventureforth is located at

417 North 8th street, suite 201, Philadelphia, PA, 19123.(@ Willow Street. One block North of Callowhill Str. )

New Exhibit at Venturef0rth. Opening reception Thursday May 28 @ 6 PM

Please Join me in this fun opening this coming Thursday This is a a show of my new media work - LED Drawings

@ Venturef0rth Philadelphia

Line and Color

Opening Reception:  Thursday, May 28 @ 6pm

Come and visit until June 26.

Ventureforth is located at

417 North 8th street, suite 201, Philadelphia, PA, 19123. (@ Willow Street. One block North of Callowhill Str. )

You are Invited ... New Exhibit @ Rowan University Gallery

Simulate/Permeate @ Rowan University

LED DRAWINGS The Squash Players

Rowan University Art Gallery

Westby Hall, 237 Mullica Hill Rd Glassboro, New Jersey

January 20 – March 7 Opening Reception and Artist Talk: Wednesday, February 11, 5 – 7pm

LED drawings

As a counterpoint to the intangible nature of the digital and video art on display at the gallery and throughout the University campus, Maria Schneider’s LED drawings are deeply rooted in their physicality. In fact, they harken back to the most basic art practice of drawing. Schneider begins with a pencil on paper drawing, which is then scanned and laser printed onto layers of polycarbonate and illuminated with LED light. The drawings evoke a common experience and a familiar medium, but are transformed by the technological process to become something new.

http://www.rowan.edu/artgallery/exhibitions/current.cfm

A group exhibition of artists working with technology that explore the role of materiality, experience, and authorship in art.

A year's effort will be on Exhibit

The email came over the spring break. I was thrilled. Eileen Tognini, the modern art curator, had selected two pieces of my new work to be exhibited at the Main Line Art Center Exhibition Galleries from May 9 to June 6. Eillen Tognini is one of the most forward thinking curators in the Philadelphia area (CFEVA Board of Artistic Advisors; Drexel University.). It has been over a year of hard work for me. An idea that came to mind at a visit to NextFab many months ago, finally came to fruition. My brain is in constant search mode. Ideas come to mind at rapid speed, and that is what happened that Philadelphia summer. The laser printer and the electronics' lab I saw at NextFab seemed really interesting to go unnoticed. A rush of ideas and possibilities came to mind. But making those ideas reality was not easy by any stretch of the imagination.

Using traditional drawing techniques, I take my pencil drawings and transform them by laser printing them on transparent polycarbonate sheets, lighting them with LEDs, making the images glow. The images acquire a different dimension. I draw images that are familiar to me and my daily life? That was the start. You see some of them here. At the same time, I have always been fascinated by layers, real and abstract, and how layers change everything and add complexity to any work of art and situation. A light projected on an image creates a shadow. The shadow grows and changes depending on our position and the position of the light. Our perception of things changes the same way.  I print different layers on the sheets and these different layers create a perception of depth. The LED lights make the image float in space. In addition, when a light is projected on the image, this outside light creates shadows of the image on the wall. The perception changes as the light or the viewer moves.  Our perception of things changes as we look at situations from different angles.

You may wonder what happened with the bulls, my mixed media works.... They are still part of my exploration and my regular work. Holding a brush in front of a traditional canvas is still a wonderful struggle for me. But more about that in the next post.

On view at The Main Line Ar Center (www.Mainlineart.org) May 9- June 6.

In my studio..those fleeting moments of creativity

I have been thinking about creativity and my art, and how I come to create one image or another, one painting, one sculpture. I work in my studio in the wee hours, as you may know. There is something about these magical hours for me. If I can stay awake, there are no distractions, no pressures, no time. I sit in my studio, sometimes reading, others just listening to music. My mind is quiet, a little aloof. I will be thinking about a painting, a sculpture, all day long - how to change it, how to add something, how to make it as I feel it should be and then a fury of thoughts will rush into my mind, thoughts held from the day, waiting in my subconscious, ready to come out. These creative moments happen mostly at night because it is when I let my mind wonder, out of the mental to- do list. Those are my moments of creation, those fleeting moments where there are no boundaries, no constrains. An idea runs through and you have to grab it! Then, the real work starts. These ideas have to be put into concrete pieces. Crafting the painting, the sculpture, making it work will consume many hours and days. Experimenting, changing, adding, subtracting is part of the art. It is a struggle and I welcome it. It thrills me. Paintings and sculptures will hang in my thoughts all day, at the supermarket, at the pick-up line for school, while driving. [That is maybe why I like driving so much, you can get lost in thought.] And then, go back to the studio.

I have been working in different themes: The Economic Crisis has been a central theme...Se acabó la fiesta (The Party is over), Just Go (Carpe Diem). These are the pieces I have been working on…two of them have been selected to be exhibited at Philadelphia City Hall. More on that in my next post..

"The Unbearable Lightness of Being" - A Walk into Abstraction

Some years ago, while I was studying  at the Art Students League of New York, my work was mostly abstract.  Back in Philadelphia, my work became more figurative again, but I never lost the taste for abstraction.  As an artist, it is important, I believe, to move from the comfort zones - what one does well and people like- to other territories where one can grow in unexpected directions.  From experiments in printing this past Spring, ( see "In Rememberance 1 and 2" in previous posts), I became enthuse with a theme that has been in the back my mind...mixed with event of our times. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"  written by Milan Kundera is the point of departure of this work .  It explores the ethereal nature of our life and circumstances...

All the work is on oil and ink on canvas and incorporates mixed media elements such as cloth.