Brand Library Art Galleries March 3, 2007

The Brand Library Art Galleries is pleased to present Signs + Symbols: Artwork by Shannon Fincke, C. Martino, and Stephanie Han Windham.

On view: March 3 – April 20, 2007
Reception: Saturday, March 3, 4-7 pm

The three artists featured in this exhibition have in common a love of surface pattern and color. Each in their own way utilizes layers of media, creating surfaces representative of equally complex and layered meanings. They also concern themselves with signs and symbols; their symbolic iconography sometimes conveys a message from the artist’s imagination, sometimes a message about the contemporary culture we all have in common, and sometimes a serendipitous message that is completely unique and the result of the interaction between viewer and art object.

Shannon Fincke earned her master of arts in painting and art education from New York University. She has exhibited her work throughout the United States and is currently an art educator with the Los Angeles Unified School District. In 2006 she had a prestigious solo show curated by Marshall Astor at the Angels Gate Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Fincke’s work is expressive and painterly, articulating ideas in a two-dimensional visual language. Using a single symbol or icon throughout a series of paintings, she works and reworks the surface of her canvas with acrylic paints and paper collage until tension resonates between the dynamic background and the repetitive static symbols. Her two most recent bodies of work, the Chairs and Planes series, showcase paintings ranging in scale from intimate to all-encompassing multi-panel pieces.

C. Martino has been creating and exhibiting his artwork in Los Angeles and San Diego for the last decade, most recently showing at the Art Institute of California and Basile Gallery in San Diego. A self-taught artist, he has a master’s degree from San Diego State University. Martino’s recent work is characterized by layered imagery and a copius vocabulary of repetitive symbols and icons that express the psychological and spiritual turmoil of the urban environment. His colorful and highly graphic works draw upon the motifs of pop and graffiti culture to create a complex but cohesive whole. The array of media and techniques Martino employs—including copper, tin, stencil, masonite, acrylic paint, recycled vinyl, and paper—are reminiscent of the materials and textures of which the city itself is comprised.

Stephanie Han Windham earned a master’s degree in fine arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Windham has exhibited widely in the Los Angeles area and is also a successful graphic artist whose illustrations have appeared in Communication Arts Illustration Annual and Step by Step Graphics. The lotus flower, the dahlia, the passionflower; all feature in Windham’s current body of work. Many of the flowers Windham depicts have religious or folkloric symbolic significance. The lotus flower, for example, has a symbolic history over 5000 years old and its image is used around the world to communicate a variety of messages. At the same time flowers can be imbued with significance that is singular to the person viewing the image. Windham’s striking canvases with their richly colored backgrounds and energetic calligraphic lines are instruments capable of conveying a wealth of meaning.


Brand Library Art Galleries
Glendale Public Library
1601 West Mountain Street
Glendale, CA 91201
Telephone: 818-548-2051 / Fax: 818-548-5079
www.brandlibrary.org

Brand Library Art Galleries is located in northwest Glendale, easily accessed via the Golden State (5) or Ventura (134) freeways. Hours are Tuesday and Thursday, 1-9 pm; Wednesday, 1-6 pm; and Friday and Saturday, 1-5 pm. Admission to all events is free and open to the public unless otherwise stated. There is ample free parking. Call 818-548-2051 for additional information.

Official Website: http://www.bandlibrary.org