NEW YORK, NY (March 20, 2012) - The ArtBridge Drawing Room is very pleased to present MsBehavior, a three-women exhibition featuring the paintings and drawings of Amy Feldman, Polly Shindler and Amanda Valdez. Be it on canvas or scratch paper, sturdy-near-primal assert their right to take up space and interact, while the handling of materials, unsteady edges and uncertain compositions activate the work with energy, humor and disheveled charm.
Even as they further articulate their shapes in paint, gesso and fabric, the finish... Read more
NEW YORK, NY (March 20, 2012) – The ArtBridge Drawing Room is very pleased to present MsBehavior, a three-women exhibition featuring the paintings and drawings of Amy Feldman, Polly Shindler and Amanda Valdez. Be it on canvas or scratch paper, sturdy-near-primal assert their right to take up space and interact, while the handling of materials, unsteady edges and uncertain compositions activate the work with energy, humor and disheveled charm.
Even as they further articulate their shapes in paint, gesso and fabric, the finished works retain the rough immediacy of their preliminary sketches. For Feldman, moments of material misconduct shake up established compositional codes, while Shindler’s scratch marks aim to evoke a primitive age of symbol and ritual. Valdez also makes room for her materials to act out, situating the resulting mess in the context of human experience, “culturally, the ideal of perfection carries a high value and currency,” she says, “the experience I have is of being imperfect—continuously imperfect even in the process of making.”
AMY FELDMAN received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a MFA from Rutgers University. She has recently been included in exhibitions at Sue Scott Gallery, New York; Bronx River Art Center, Bronx, New York; and Participant Inc., New York. Feldman has been a Visiting Artist at Virginia Commonwealth University, Lehman College, and Wave Hill, and received a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Grant. She also was awarded fellowships from VCUArts at Plant Zero, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Amy is currently an artist-in-residence at The Henry Street Settlement/Abrons Art Center and is preparing for exhibitions in New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Los Angeles and New Orleans.
POLLY SHINDLER was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1977. She received her B.A in history from the University of Massachusetts in 2011 and recently, her M.F.A in painting at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She currently resides in Brooklyn and has a studio in Bushwick with other Pratt Alumni.
AMANDA VALDEZ is a Brooklyn based artist, born in Seattle, Washington. She received her MFA from Hunter College in New York City and BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, additionally she studied at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. Amanda has been the recipient of a Yaddo Artist-in-Residency, MacDowell Colony Artist-in-Residency, the 2011 College Art Association MFA Professional-Development Fellowship, and is a contributing arts editor at Dossier Journal and Bomb Magazine. Recent shows include Faraway Neighbor at Flux Factory, Queens, Don’t Fence Me In…Or Out at Lesley Heller Workspace, New York City, and Xanadu: A Stately Pleasure Dome at Soil Gallery, Seattle.
