More About In Harmony

The Flinn Gallery is pleased to present In Harmony, the final exhibition of the 2022-2023 season.

Tomoko Amaki Abe seeks to “co-exist in harmony with nature” by collaborating with her materials. Working in a wide variety of media from glass to paper and ceramics to wax, she creates works of art that probe the line between decay and regeneration. Echoes of natural forms like fallen leaves under snow and industrial waste like mylar netting in water populate her works, prompting viewers to contemplate – and perhaps reevaluate – their relationship with our shared environment.

Both the beauty of nature and the “fragility of our existence” are her subjects. Born in Japan, Abe graduated from the Edinburgh College of Art with a BA in painting and First Class Honors. She also received an Erasmus scholarship to study at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Salamanca, Spain. Now based in the greater New York area, she has been an artist in residence at Bullseye Glass, NY and Urban Glass, NY, and she has exhibited widely both domestically and internationally.

In Harmony features the artwork of multi-media artist Tomoko Amaki Abe, sculptor Jack Elliott, and abstract painter Hisako Kobayashi. Through juxtaposition, the artists explore the tension – and potential harmony – between artifice and nature, intention and spontaneity, transience and permanence. They “dance” with their materials, creating artworks of abstract beauty and emotional power that invite viewers to consider the possibility of achieving balance both within and beyond ourselves.

A professor of design and environmental analysis, Jack Elliott uses his sculptures in wood to inspire reflection on environmental issues. Using only wood from trees that have been naturally felled or removed because of disease or construction, Elliott creates “Arborworks” that explore the relationship between nature and humans, shifting our focus from the anthropocentric to the biocentric. His sculptures reveal the hidden beauty of the wood through strategic cuts and careful juxtapositions of the organic and geometric, light and dark, natural and artificial.

From central Alberta in western Canada, Elliott holds a BA in physics with a minor in sculpture from the University of Alberta and two MAs, one in architecture and a second in product design, from the University of Calgary. He is an associate professor at Cornell University, where he studies sustainability in the built environment. Sculpture only recently returned to his practice, but his art has already earned residencies at the American Academy in Rome and the Atkinson Center for Sustainable Futures at Cornell, a fellowship from the New York Foundation of the Arts, and awards from the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY.

Hisako Kobayashi is an abstract painter who employs color and gesture to achieve harmonious compositions with the emotional resonance of music. She explains, “I want a process in my work which harmonizes the disorder of nature, our nature – the way music can embrace the impulses that both fuel and disrupt our lives. To make a whole from these parts: that is what I am after.” In Kobayashi’s hands, our essential, and often conflicting, qualities as humans are allowed to sing as one. The artist’s sublime all-over canvases of atmospheric color vibrate with feeling, “visually expressing the invisible.” Having grown up in Japan, Kobayashi moved to New York City, where she still lives today, to earn an MFA in painting at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She has exhibited on five continents for more than three decades now, and both private and public collections proudly hold her work.

Curated by Kira Albinsky and Francene Langford, In Harmony opens with a reception on Thursday, May 18 from 6-8pm.

Events:

Opening Reception Thursday, May 18, 6-8pm

Artist Talk: Tomoko Amaki Abe, Jack Elliott, and Hisako Kobayashi Sunday, June 18, 2pm

The Flinn Gallery is sponsored by the Friends of Greenwich Library. It is located on the second floor of the library at 101 West Putnam Avenue, Greenwich, CT. Gallery hours are Monday- Saturday 10am-5pm, Thursday 10am-8pm, and Sunday 1-5pm.

For more information, please visit Click for Details.

Date & Time

June 17, 2023
6:00pm - 8:00pm

Additional Dates

This event also occurs on:
06/18/2023, 06/19/2023, 06/20/2023, 06/21/2023 and 7 other dates

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