Works by
John Fazzino
Daniel Gottsegen
Brooke Hammerle
Mary Hughes

June 1 – 30 , 2004

For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life – the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.  -Monet

The title From the Landscape refers to the ways in which each artist in this exhibition borrows, transforms, or utilizes elements or aspects of the landscape in their work. For many artists, the urge to explore that world is as enduring as the call to work from the figure. Both are reflections of us – who we are, our best hopes for ourselves. The natural world is a never ending resource of sight, sound, and color.

John Fazzino makes ceramic objects inspired by his life-long love of the garden. He states:

Gardening has been my passion for as long as I can remember. I am thrilled to have my hands in the earth, planting flowers and vegetables, and watching as they grow. The time I spend in gardens is as important to me as the time I spend in the studio. My mind is always engaged as I look for ways that I can meaningfully integrate my work into the garden setting in general or into a specific garden. I want my work to enliven a space, creating dynamic interactions or quiet moments. 

For much of his life, Daniel Gottsegen has explored the wildness of the natural world, often spending extended periods of time immersed in the wilderness studying and experiencing it from both a scientific and personal perspective. He writes:

I paint to explore and to express my relationship to the land, environment, material, and place. I do this because it is, and has always been, my most natural way of being in the world, and because of both my cultural heritage and my personal history.

Painting for me is a physical and spiritual exploration. It is improvisatory, often even revelatory. Though the images, because of the process, reflect perhaps some the isolation and alienation that seems to me abundant today, my hope is that the work is in some way redemptive. For me this is the truth of my love of place, and my love and practice of painting always.

Brooke Hammerle turns her gaze to the landscape through the lens of a camera and seeks to create:

a balance between nature and abstraction. Although I visualize my images through the lens, my former background as a painter prevails in my concern for the formal elements that I find there, and the isolating and organizing of form and color for their own sake. My images create a world of spatial ambiguity, like mirrors, where surface and reflection become suspended between color and light, between the “reality” of a photograph and the “illusion” of a painting.

Mary Hughes has written:

The origin of this body of work dates back to time spent in the west of Ireland studying the landscape. Seemingly endless stone walls provided an integral part of the landscape, dividing field from field and field from road.

The sense of history contained in these walls caught my imagination and I found myself “building” walls in paint. The stacking of shapes and the laying of paint was a meditative process that resulted in imagery that acted as a metaphor for the walls, a contemplative moment that reflects on the traces of the past and the vestiges of history.

Fazzino holds an MFA from the Swain School of Design/UMASS Dartmouth program in Artisanry and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. He is an Adjunct Professor of Ceramics at Providence College where he also oversees the Ceramics Studio. His business, Ceramics for the Garden creates unique objects that are incorporated into the natural settings. Recent exhibitions include Small Works, Attleboro Museum, Attleboro, MA; Earthworks, Helme House Gallery, Kingston, RI; Q@X, Gallery X, New Bedford, MA and RI Pride Art Show, The Space at Alice, Providence, RI. His work is held in a number of private collections including The Estate of Anthony Quinn and the Mayor’s Office, Providence, RI. He lives in Cranston, Rhode Island.

Gottsegen lives and works in Woodstock, Vermont. He has an MFA from California College of the Arts, Oakland and San Francisco, CA and a BA from Brown University. Until 2005, he was an Associate Professor of Painting at the University of Lowell, Lowell, MA and prior to that he was a Full Professor at California College of Arts and Crafts. Recent exhibitions include solos at Karpeles Museum, Santa Barbara, CA; Sylvia White Contemporary Artist, Los Angeles, CA; and group exhibitions at Katherine Butler Gallery, Sarasota, FL; Topanga Canyon Gallery, Topanga, CA; and Works on Paper, Long Beach Arts, Long Beach, CA.

Hammerle has a BFA in Photography from the University Without Walls. She has also done course work at Rhode Island School of Design, Art Students League, Academia De Belle Arts, Florence, and the Corcoran Art School. She is principal photographer for the Brown University Art History and Visual Art Department as well as the David Winton Bell Gallery. Recent exhibitions include solos at Hunt Kavanaugh Gallery, Providence College, Providence, RI; Koussevitsky Gallery, Berkshire Community College and group exhibitions at Wheeler Gallery, Providence, RI; Newport Art Museum, Newport, RI and Visual Arts Gallery, Brown University. She lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.

Hughes holds an MFA in Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Arts, Boston, MA and a BFA from Boston University for the Arts, Boston, MA. She has also taken courses with the Lacoste School Art, Lacoste, France. She received a Fulbright Scholarship to Ireland in 1997 and was awarded more recently an Artist’s Grant to the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT. Recent exhibitions include Fenway Studios Centennial Exhibition, St. Botolph Club, Boston, MA; The Tile Project: Destination: The World, Transcultural exchange/ Sponsored by UNESCO; and Boundaries and Beyond: New England Landscapes, Mary Hughes & Kathleen Robbins, Gallery at the Clown, Portland, ME. She lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.