SOFA WEST: Santa Fe 2011

Dealer Presentations

SANTA FE, NM. “We have an excellent roster of dealers for SOFA WEST: Santa Fe 2011,” says Mark Lyman, Founder/Director of SOFA and President of The Art Fair Company. “It’s exciting to see the fair spread its wings in terms of its breadth of offerings.”

New dealers include Russell Bowman Art Advisory (Chicago) and other respected outsider and folk art dealers in SOFA WEST’s spotlight presentation of The Intuit Show of Folk and Outsider Art (see Intuit Dealer Presentations release); two contemporary, medium-based arts dealers from London, UK, Flow Gallery and ZeST Contemporary Gallery; Chinese and Japanese ceramic art dealer Dai Ichi Arts (New York); fine art dealers 222 Shelby Street Gallery and Eight Modern, both of Santa Fe; and Mindy Solomon Gallery (St. Petersburg, FL); Darrell Bell Gallery (Saskatoon, Canada) presenting contemporary Canadian sculpture and furniture; Jerry Szor Contemporary Jewelry (Dallas) and llyn strong gallery (Greenville, SC), adding to the fair’s contemporary studio art jewelry mix; and Douglas Dawson (Chicago), specialist in historic, antique and contemporary art from Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Lyman is also excited about the new participation of the prestigious Landfall Press of Santa Fe, which for 40 years has collaborated with top artists to produce printed multiples in a broad range of techniques and media.

Lyman adds that returning galleries are also very strong, including Asian arts dealer Joan B. Mirviss Ltd. (New York); European art jewelry dealer Charon Kransen Arts also of New York; studio furniture dealer William Zimmer Gallery (Mendocino, CA); kiln-formed glass art dealer Bullseye Gallery (Portland, OR); Habatat Galleries (Royal Oak, MI); Sherrie Gallerie (Columbus, OH); Oliver & Espig Jewelers (Santa Barbara, CA); Maria Elena Kravetz (Cordoba, Argentina) and Santa Fe’s own Blue Rain Gallery, Clark + Del Vecchio, TAI Gallery, David Richard Contemporary, Jane Sauer Gallery, Elliott Arts West (formerly Elliott Brown Gallery of Seattle) and SWAIA @ SOFA (Southwestern Association for Indian Arts).

	Bodil Manz Clark + DelVecchio

SOFA WEST dealer presentations reported to date include:
Landfall Press (Santa Fe) will work with ceramic artist Diego Romero, represented at SOFA WEST by Clark + Del Vecchio, to create a unique print which will be available for purchase at the fair. Garth Clark says, “Diego is one of a handful of potters, the so-called Free Spirit potters, whose work takes on pueblo reality instead of the sentimentalized revival ware that dominates the Native art market.”

Clark + Del Vecchio (Santa Fe) will also present renowned Akio Takamori’s ceramic vessel-based sculpture, often large-scale and painted with erotic images. The gallery will also mount a solo show of famed Danish potter Bodil Manz master of eggshell porcelain, whose modernist, cast porcelain cylinders are so translucent, light and shadows pass through their walls.

Manhattan’s Joan B. Mirviss, Ltd. will focus on master Japanese potter
Sakiyama Takayuki whose organic effect is achieved by combing the clay and double-folding it over on itself to form a dynamic vase which references the folding of waves and tidal swells. Mirviss says, “The impact of Sakiyama’s work on both sophisticated academics as well as beginning collectors is immediate—it is strong yet flowing, sculptural yet functional, elegant yet boldly compelling.”

standing male figure from Burkina Faso Douglas Dawson

Douglas Dawson (Chicago), historic, antique and contemporary non-western art dealer, reports it will offer an earthenware standing male figure from Burkina Faso, circa 300 BC; and a 20th century ceremonial vessel from the Igbo Culture of Nigeria.

222 Shelby Street Gallery (Santa Fe) will present Nino Caruso’s modernist, desert-inspired terracotta (‘baked earth’ in Italian) sculptures, formed with New Mexico micaceous clay. An internationally acclaimed artist and scholar, Caruso has realized commissions throughout Europe as well as the US and Japan, written four books on ceramics and created a TV program, The Art of Ceramics.

	Hans-Henning Pedersen Flow Gallery

Flow Gallery of Notting Hill, London will feature Danish woodturner Hans-Henning Pedersen, among other artists, whose paper-thin wooden vessels are made from beech and ash found locally on the island of Bornholm where he lives and works. Influenced by the clean, simple lines of Scandinavian design, Pedersen’s vessels celebrate the wood grain and natural imperfections of his material.

Blue Rain Gallery (Santa Fe), continues its blend of Native American and contemporary art with minimalist, blown and slumped glass forms of Sean O’Neill and glass sculptures and paintings (often mixed in the same art work along with other media) by Shelly Muzylowski Allen, expressive of both the strength and stillness of animals.

Victor Cicansky Darrell Bell Gallery

Darrell Bell Gallery (Saskatoon, Canada) will offer bronze and ceramic sculptures and furniture by Victor Cicansky and Joe Fafard, who first came to prominence on the Canadian art scene in the 1960s as part of the Regina Clay movement. Influenced by the California Funk art movement, they are widely known for testing the boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art with their playful approach to everyday life on the Canadian prairies.

Jane Sauer Gallery (Santa Fe) will present sleek furniture with Scandinavian and Asian design simplicity by Kent Townsend. Townsend studied furniture making at the College of the Redwoods in Northern California, and continued his education at Sweden’s prestigious Capellagarden. Townsend’s recent furniture is influenced by Art Deco.

New York’s Chinese and Japanese art dealer Dai Ichi Arts will offer contemporary sculpture by Yuriko Matsuda, who reinterprets the traditional decorative technique for porcelain vessels called iro-e over-glaze enameling, transposing its motifs onto nonfunctional objects such as her whimsical ode to shoes.

Eight Modern (Santa Fe) will present Ted Larsen, who uses alternative and salvage materials in his formally driven abstract sculpture, which pokes fun at what he calls ‘modernist purity.’ Using new and ‘non-art’ materials and experimentation with hybrids and scale, including recent bricologe works, Larsen hopes to “bring purist shapes and surfaces back down to earth.”

	Marcus Amerman Elliott Arts West

ZeST Contemporary Gallery of London plans a “landscape-themed two-person show with a small catalogue” by glass artist Adam Aaronson and textile artist Carol Naylor. Tentatively titled The Landscape Revisited, the gallery will showcase the artists’ complementary painterly styles, marked by fluidity and movement.

Elliott Arts West (Santa Fe) will feature Marcus Amerman, known for making an
ancient art form his own by creating a new genre of glass bead artistry in which beads are stitched down one by one to create realistic, pictorial images (many pop art based and rich with social commentary).

Charon Kransen Arts (New York), always on the cutting edge of the avant-garde and new materials in jewelry, reports it will bring brooches by Jimin Kim of South Korea, of Korean paper, latex, and brass; copper, brass, rose quartz and pigmented resin with powder coating by Timothy McMahon; and introduce Chilean Carolina Hornauer, whose brooches are made from material from last year’s earthquake in Chile.

TAI Gallery (Santa Fe) will represent Shosei Fujitsuka whose range as a bamboo artist is broad, from typical basket and vessel forms to abstract sculptures inspired by nature. Because his pieces defy neat categorization, he was for decades rejected for exhibitions in Japan. However, he has persisted in making the risky aesthetic choices that have won him international accolades and the freedom to express his distinctive voice.

Habatat Galleries (Royal Oak, MI) will represent Muranese glass artist Davide Salvadore. Descended from a family of glassworkers, he has studied with many of the top artists and glasshouses on the island of Venice. Salvadore’s own glass art references functional pieces like double-necked vessels and musical instruments from Africa, marrying African color and pattern sensibility with traditional Venetian glassmaking techniques.

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SOFA WEST: Santa Fe 2011 and spotlight presentation of The Intuit Show of Folk and Outsider Art take place at the Santa Fe Convention Center, 201 W Marcy Street, Santa Fe, NM as follows: Opening Night, Wednesday, August 3 begins with FIRST LOOK Preview, an invitation-only event for Museum of New Mexico Foundation supporters from 5-6:30 pm. SOFA WEST VIP Cardholders may enter at 6:30 pm. Opening Night Public Preview begins at 7 pm. Tickets are $50 and will be available on sofaexpo.com or at the door beginning at 5 pm. Opening Night continues until 9 pm. General admission fair hours are Thursday, August 4 - Sunday, August 7 from 12 noon-6 p.m. Tickets are $15 for single day general admission and $25 for a four-day pass. Catalogs may be purchased for $15 at the exposition.
High-resolution images and press releases are available for immediate download at www.sofaexpo.com/sfpress.