Theater for the New City Exhibit TRANSFORMATIONS Weaves Life Into Art

TRANSFORMATIONS, an exhibit showcasing the work of two artists undergoing transitions in their life and showing ways to weave art out of life and images, is running at Theater for the New City's art gallery through April 26, 2016.

The exhibit curated by Mel Blatman and Alex Singletary at the theater located at 155 First Ave. presents prints and other work by Diana T. Myers and Maxine Feldman.Myers is retiring after decades spent as a housing consultant, helping people find affordable housing, and Feldman is going through a divorce.

The two are presenting work, each reflecting transition and stability and showing ways to weave imagery and life into art.

"We're both going through changes in our life," Myers said at the opening, where more than a hundred people viewed the dozens of works on display.

The two artists, who met at a print making class at Peters Valley Craft Center, in Layton, New Jersey, became friends before teaming on this combined exhibit.

Their work looks at ways of weaving various elements and media together to create art work, a little bit the way birds create a nest out of otherwise more ordinary elements.

Rather than simply admiring her own art, Myers did what many artists would view as unthinkable: she began cutting her prints into long strips, which she weaves back together.

The result is images woven not out of uniform, but colorful, elements. She uses each strip as an iridescent thread to create new work, disassembling art that she reassembles in new ways.

"I decided I'm going to cut and weave. I just decided that would be a great thing to do," Myers said. "I had pieces where I thought that would be beautiful."

Her woven monoprints create patterns where colors weave in and out of each other with strips overlapping, putting together each painting like a beautiful puzzle and adding depth.

She then went even further, rolling strips not to create a nearly flat patchwork, but objects that, depending on the pattern, look like brick, rock and even metal.

While Origami is the art of folding paper to create shapes, Myers rolls and paints strips, shaping them to look like different materials ranging from metal to clay and fabric.

"I love the texture," Myers said in front of one work that seemed to be made of rocks, but was actually painted paper. "They're rolled or curled instead of folding. I started as a sculptor for years. Then I went into print making. I missed the three dimensions. Texture is very important in my work."

Then she added a kind of fourth dimension, life itself, using these woven patterns as backgrounds for photographs that weave people into the pictures.

Myers in "Back on My Feet," a series of works being shown at TNC, collaborated with Genny O'Donnell, director of the Coordinated Homeless Outreach Center, an emergency shelter located in Norristown, Penn.

In these works, photographs show black and white profiles of homeless people posing with examples of Myers' work, which they selected, behind them in color as the background.

"When you look at them, they don't look homeless," Myers said of the diverse group, showing a wide range of ethnicities and emotions. "Homelessness can affect anybody."

The pictures capture dignity, power and now and then the pain of people at various moments in their life. The images weave life, not just images, into the work.

One woman wears an elaborate hat and clothes that she got that day, when a shipment of clothing arrived.

"They had just found out they got housing," Myers said of another woman, her hands raised in victory, wearing a white shirt and jeans.

Feldman's work weaves together different media, using clay to make clay monoprints, also showing how different elements can be combined to create enthralling images.

The prints show bursts of energy with cool and hot colors. One looks like a city at night, filled with a pattern of light and darkness. Another looks like a jungle, but each is really a series of colors, patterns and shapes.

"I work on a slab of clay kept wet. You keep it covered. I mix liquid clay," she said. "It's like painting. I paint onto a slab of clay. Through the printing process, I transfer images onto materials."

Feldman's work seems to bridge the gap between painting and sculpture, pottery and embroidery as she creates images that overlap, once again pointing to ways that shapes and colors create art.

"This process combines my love of working in clay, creating surface designs and working spontaneously," Feldman added.

Her work creates different patterns, sometimes seeming to create different places as if viewers travel around the world from work to work.

"Forms, patterns and colors found in nature influence my work," Feldman said. "The colors and patterns of rural and urban environments find their way into my work."

In some works, she like Myers cuts and weaves together strands, rather than using thread, but creating complex patterns much as Myers does.

The two friends, then, have not only seen their lives change, but their methods of doing artwork alter as well.

The exhibit shows that life itself is about ways we weave ourselves in and out of each other's world.

And it shows how art, rather than being about one thing, often can be strongest when it breaks down barriers, between painting and sculpture, life and shape and art and life itself.

"They look like paintings," Myers said of one work that, like so much in the show, jumps from one genre to another and mixes media. "But they're prints."

TRANSFORMATIONS, Theater for the New City Art Gallery, 155 First Ave., Monday-Friday 10 a.m.-7 p.m., Saturday noon-7 p.m., Sunday noon-6 p.m. through April 26, 2016. Admission to art exhibit is free. For more information, go to www.theaterforthenewcity.net or call the theater at 212-254-1109.