CHARLIE PARRIOTT, CAPPY THOMPSON & DICK WEISS
OLD FRIENDS, NEW WORK
November 17 – December 22, 2018
Opening: Saturday, Nov 17, 4-6PM
Artist Talk: Saturday, December 8, 11am-1pm
Traver Gallery is proud to present Old Friends, New Work, an exhibition by three longtime Traver Gallery artists: Charlie Parriott, Cappy Thompson, and Dick Weiss. The artists, all of whom have had numerous solo shows with the gallery, are also close personal friends and frequent artistic collaborators. For this exhibition, each of the artists has contributed an independent body of work, but instead of displaying each body of work separately, the artworks will be exhibited together, creating a dynamic visual dialog between the work that highlights the relationships between artistic themes and styles. Please join us on November 17th from 4-6pm for the opening of this extraordinary and deeply personal exhibition.
Charlie Parriott, known for his figurative, and political narrative work in glass, has long been influenced by the unique Cubist and Deco styles of Eastern Europe and the Czech Republic. For this exhibition, Parriott presents ten intimately-scaled, monochromatic, plate-glass engravings that depict a foreboding cast of characters. With oblique reference to folklore from myriad cultures, the figures and scenes in Parriott’s etchings are laden with symbolism and portray themes as wide-ranging as warfare, religion, and contemporary politics. To realize this particular body of work, Parriott worked with master Czech engraver, Pavlina Cambalova.
For this exhibition, Cappy Thompson presents 13 new figurative works in clay. In this, her first exhibition of hand-built clay sculptures, Thompson deftly translates her sensibility from the narratives of her paintings to stand-alone figures. Building upon her career-long exploration of universal themes of love, kindness, and transcendence that are found throughout different cultures and religions, Thompson reveals a modern connection to these seemingly antiquarian sentiments. It is a powerful yet sensitive message that resonates deeply with Cappy and comes through powerfully in her work. Her earthenware figures are painted loosely with underglazes, giving them a feeling of ease and emphasizing the earthy quality of the clay and the tenderness of her subject matter.
When asked about the imagery in his work, Dick Weiss says, “In some ways, everyone is a product of his or her times. My time happened to be the late 1960’s into the 70’s. Severe abstraction was strong then, and I certainly responded. A black square in a white field feels awfully good to me.” The 13 new leaded-glass screens featured in this exhibition are, in many ways, a revisioning of themes from earlier minimalistic figurative works; serene images of ancient forests where trees of monumental scale grow and collapse on each other or trails of river rocks gently washed on shore create lyrical visual rhythms and austerely beautiful compositions. Using clear glass as an essential element in his screens, Dick invites the environment into his composition, visually overlaying their surroundings in a “Zen-like quality”, becoming one with all.
For additional information, please contact Traver Gallery at 206.587.6501 or info@travergallery.com