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September 10, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Victoria Price Art & Design Features Two Local Artists in The Singular & the Eternal
Santa Fe- The Singular and the Eternal: Nancy Hidding Pollock & Rita Bard Imagine the World opens with a 5-7p.m. reception Friday, October 10, at Victoria Price Art & Design, 1512 Pacheco St., in Santa Fe. The exhibition will include new paintings by the two artists. It will remain on display through November 8.
Victoria Price Art & Design is pleased to present The Singular and The Eternal, featuring new work by two local artists: Rita Bard and Nancy-Hidding Pollock.
Both Pollock and Bard were trained in other fields-Pollock as a metalsmith and Bard as a stained glass artist. In turning to painting over the past decade, both artists found themselves asking questions of their imaginations and the world. Where Pollock turns to the sky and the clouds, Bard turns to an imagined world of animals and iconic shapes. The worlds they fashion mirror their minds as much as reality.
Nancy Hidding-Pollock paints many subjects-from landscapes to portraits-in oil on canvas and other mixed media. Recently, she has developing a series of landscapes, or more accurately, "skyscapes," that often include a gridded structure and math or scientific equations or problems that reflect the seen and unseen.
Pollock previously specialized in the art of metalsmithing, receiving commissions while still in college, where her art studies included watercolor, oil painting and drawing. Upon graduation, Pollock began selling her metal work in galleries around the country. After taking time off to raise her three children, she began working in two-dimensional media, developing her current painting themes over the last three to four years.
Recently Pollock was chosen as one of 20 artists who will be represented the opening of Santa Fe's newly constructed Civic Center.
Rita Bard's paintings primarily investigate shapes, color, and structure. Her aesthetic sensibility is informed by many years of working as a stained glass artist and also very much by what she perceives as an American visual mixture of simplicity/ naiveté and exuberant expression and commercialism. Her current paintings are inhabited by fantastical creatures engaging in very human interactions within manmade environments. When asked about the origin of these pieces, she said, "Strange as they may be, they are nowhere near as strange as the 'real world.
Bard was born in Kentucky to an American father and German mother. She spent several years in Germany studying glass design and execution at Hadamar Glasfachschule before moving back to Kentucky where she earned her living as a stained glass artist. Bard later received her BFA from Maine College of Art before moving to Santa Fe and since then has been in several solo and group exhibitions on both the West and East coasts.
Bard will have a one-woman show at Santa Fe's Center for Contemporary Arts in April.
Gallery owner Victoria Price says of the pairing of Pollock and Bard: "Both artists are dealing with the interplay between the imagined and the actual, between the dream and reality, between the metaphysical and the physical. Their paintings capture the place where these contrasts interact with one another, and in doing so, they form a third reality that the world calls 'art'."
The title of the show is from a poem by Mary Oliver:
How many, how many, how many
make up a world!
And then I think of that old idea: the singular
and the eternal.
One cup, in which everything is swirled
back to the color of the sea and the sky.
Imagine it!
How blue is the sea, how blue is the sky,
how blue and tiny and redeemable everything is, even you,
even your eyes, even your imagination!
Note to Editors:
Interviews can be arranged with the artists. Contact Victoria Price Art & Design at:
info@victoriaprice.com