Friday, March 20th
Refreshments at 6:30pm and Presentations begin at 7pm
$5 Suggested Donation
At The Bing Arts Center, 716 Sumner Avenue, Springfield
Priya Nadkarni, painter
Paul Hetzel, photographer
Andrae Green, painter
Beryl Salinger Schmitt, painter & textile artist
Donna Beck, paper & mixed media artist
Priya Nadkarni is a painter who is interested in the peculiarities that pervade our culture—especially ones that reveal the underbellies of the American consciousness. She has shown her work in both solo and group exhibitions at spaces such as the Kimmel Center Galleries at NYU, Jersey City Museum, Cuchifritos Gallery NYC, Zimmerli Art Museum, Concordia College, and the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. She is a recipient of the international Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and was a 2013 artist-in-residence at the Blue Mountain Center. Priya is originally from New Jersey and currently lives in Springfield, MA. She received her MFA from University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she was awarded a graduate school fellowship in her final year, and holds a BFA from Rutgers University.
Paul Hetzel seriously took up photography in 1994 while on a trek to Mt. Everest. Initially shooting in film, he converted to the digital medium I’m 2004. His predominant interest is in creating images in black and white. He has been fortunate to photograph in such distant lands as Nepal, Tibet, Patagonia, Easter Island, Iceland, and Namibia as well as various locations throughout the United States. However, some of his favorite images have been captured close to home.
Beryl Salinger Schmitt is a painter, textile artist, and art educator who works across a spectrum of fine craft and art media. She spent part of her childhood in Kuala Lumpur, Malyasia and holds a BFA in textiles from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland where she specialized in the centuries-old Indonesian art-form of batik and other traditional wax-resist methods. Her studies also included drawing, painting, pastels, printmaking, ceramics, and graphic design. Her work is enlivened by a creative mix of disciplines, and she is known for her vibrant imagery and originality in the exploration of theme.
Donna Beck‘s work revolves around her handmade and surface-designed papers and pulp. Much of her inspiration comes from nature’s sacred places and artwork: an intricate, meandering grapevine tendril; a perfectly round, smooth, wave-tumbled stone from the coast; birch bark; manzanita burls; a carefully woven bird’s nest; a bone; a poppy seed pod; an antler. She uses these natural pieces to form her sculptural “Lorica” nests, collages, and handmade books. Donna is also an educator; she is an adjunct professor in the art program at WNEU and teaches community workshops regularly. Her passion is to inspire and facilitate the creativity of others.
Andrae Green was born in Kingston at the St Andrew Hospital at about eleven fifty pm Tuesday on the 28th of November 1978. At the age of four he attended the St. Cecilia Preparatory School, then later was accepted as a student of Calabar High School. Then he went to the Edna Manley School for the Visual and Performing Arts. At the college he obtained a Diploma in Painting and was awarded the prize of Most Promising Student. Two years later he was given a grant by the Chase Fund of Jamaica to attend the New York Academy of Art where he received a Masters of Fine Arts on May 15th 2008. In 2011 he was awarded a residency at the CAC at Woodside in Troy, New York. Andrae Green’s paintings have been shown both locally (in Jamaica) and internationally. In 2012 he was one of two artists chosen to represent Jamaica in the 5th staging of the Beijing Biennale 2012. 2013 was a phenomenal year for Andrae Green which saw him having his first solo show at the UMASS Student Art Gallery, also he was selected as apart of the American delegation that represented the United States of America at the Carrousel Du Louvre in Paris, France.