Fresh Art at The Karin Sanders Gallery

from: The Independent Newspaper, June 6, 2007
www.indyeastend.com
"In the Gallery" by Joan Baum



May 26 – June 26, 2007: “Fresh Art” at Karin Sanders Fine Art, 126 Main Street, Sag Harbor, NY.

Though only in her second season, Karin Sanders is moving her gallery to a more "progressive and hip" edge, show-casing more emerging and established artists with a "fresh, innovative vision who are working in media that are inventive and unique." By edge, she means "cutting edge, NYC style," SoHo or Chelsea, with no distinction made between photos and painting - "it's all about art."


works by Orly Cogan

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Too unsettling? Try Cara Ober, whose mixed media canvases, like Ms. Cogan's, have serious fun with stereotypes about women and women's work. Describing her pieces as 'narratives,' Ms. Ober uses lettering, paste ons, paint, and ink to create pseudo-primitive views that move from symbols of innocence to experience.


summertime skin

In 'I'd Rather See You in Summertime Skin', a dictionary definition of 'pretty' is painted near a stick-figure honeymoon couple. The eye then travels down the canvas, past a blue bird (of happiness?) and a colorful cliche family beach scene, where black cursive writing scrawls out the picture title. Two smaller works, from Ms. Ober's 'Meshuggeneh Series,' joyfully continue the gentle satire.


untitled from the meshuggeneh series

Fresh Art includes works by Orly Cogan, Richard Alvarez, Jill Corson, Cara Ober, Diane Rollins Feissel and Michael Souter.

Eye to Eye in May Urbanite Issue

Cara Ober
Coupled Up in Bedroom Skin
2006
40 x 40 inches
Mixed media on canvas


So much of what art is, lies in the process of creation, yet we seldom have the opportunity to enter an artist’s mind to get a sense of how a work of art actually develops. I have always found the work that best expresses its process to be the most interesting. Perhaps it is that I can feel the spirit of the artist when I have a sense of her struggle to find that final form that, in a sense, represents the artist’s development.

Cara Ober is a young Baltimore artist who is garnering a great deal of interest both within and beyond this city. We recently had an exchange about her work, and I found her to be especially forthcoming.

Of the painting shown here, Ober says, “This image is a painting I sort of hate but love too much to get rid of. I have been fascinated with shadows and darkness, and the idea that for everything light and good, there is a balance. So I wondered what would happen if I made a really dark, almost black painting ... Paintings need to have a bit of agony in them to be really interesting, a struggle where you push yourself somewhere new and unknown, where you really have no idea what to do next, or where you have to let go of the elements you love best in order for the whole to work.”

—Alex Castro

I Believe opens May 5 at the Patterson

This is a show of 14 painters... Reception is 4-6 pm.

ArtDC

I will have two large drawings on display at the DC Art Fair with the Randall Scott Gallery. Booth 704.

"Randall Scott Gallery also showed well, especially the burned glass abstractions of Etsuko Ichikawa, which are reminiscent of the gunpowder pieces of Cai Guo-Qiang, but Ichikawa is developing her own method involving the use of molten glass that makes Cai's seem like childwork in comparison. Also notable were the imaginary teen worlds of photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten, and the gorgeous mixed media pieces by Cara Ober, which were my wife's favorites in the entire event."

- from Mid Atlantic Art News: F. Lennox Campello's art news, information, gallery openings, commentary, criticism, happenings, opportunities, and everything associated with helping to spread the word about the visual arts scene in and all around the Mid Atlantic region from Philadelphia to the great metropolitan capital of the United States of America.

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wall photo from Baltimore