SEVEN

September 23 – October 31, 2015

Rachel Hellmann
Scott Ingram
Ryan Martin
Stephanie Patton
Celeste Rapone
Russell Shumaker
Adrian Tone

All human action has one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, and desire. – Aristotle

Seven is known as the number of completeness and perfection. We round out our week in seven days, renew our bodies every seven days and we are surrounded by seven seas. The number seven in numerology speaks of constantly not taking things at face value to understand the hidden truths, as are the artists exhibiting in Seven. Through the eyes of Rachel Hellman, Scott Ingram, Ryan Martin, Stephanie Patton, Celeste Rapone, Russell Shoemaker, and Adrian Tone, we are invited to share their colors of vision and interior landscapes as art.

Adrian Tone’s luminescent abstract purple and silver Untitled painting is at first overpowering through its eight-foot stature but then reveals to the viewer subtle shape and form in its unusual vertical stance and human presence. As interested as  to how Tone created this radiant work on paper, viewers are also taken with Scott Ingram’s glowing abstraction: Untitled (Number 26). Ingram unexpectedly recontextualizes a combination of common building materials including latex, gesso, and marble dust to create a seemingly fragile yet strong painting. In contrast, Stephanie Patton’s organic yet synthetic white vinyl sculpture Strength is emotional intensity beautifully transformed through shape and form.

Providing a sense of familiarity and terror, Celeste Rapone’s Burnt Ham with Flag Cake is the American dream and nightmare vividly painted on an everyday picnic tablecloth. Russell Shoemaker’s painting: Recursion (Remix) II, reassembles memories through abstractly painting a shifting environmental scene. Line and form create optical illusions in Rachel Hellman’s Backsplice. Perfectly symmetrical lines in this acrylic and wood sculpture create multiple locations within one space. Ryan Martin’s Shake the Disease realistically depicts a portrait of a young man covered in paint not revealing if the disease is physical, mental, or just the pleasure of being an artist.