LIVING WALLS
Curated by
Laura James, BX200
Artists Genevieve Lowe, Michele Brody, and Jennifer Tomaiolo reveal site-specific large-scale paper art installations in the windows of Fordham Plaza through a collaboration between the New York City Department of Transportation and nonprofit Chashama. The exhibition, titled LIVING WALLS, was curated by Laura James and will be on view at the plaza outside the Metro North Fordham Station at 1 Fordham Plaza through June 30th, 2020.
Jennifer Tomaiolo’s Ocean Altar explores the play of patterns, figurative illusions, and the landscape. With an emphasis on nature and the role of women, Tomaiolo is piecing together a story that is not in the written record but of which traces remain in imagery. The ancient Greek Goddess Thalassa, the goddess of the ocean, serves as inspiration for this piece. From her ‘Ocean Altar’, Thalassa presides over sea creatures, both fanciful and real, in a swirl of ocean waves.
Artist Genevieve Lowe’s installation Ataraxia is a paper sculpture that is meant to portray portraits of objects that are very much alive and living in their found landscapes, without using the traditional modes of landscape painting. The works on paper (mostly monoprints and screenprints that are turned into cut-out plants) and “living walls” play with a different type of vitality and expectation. The organic shapes, dimensionality, and saturation offer an immediate way to inspire thoughts on our relationship with the plants and growth all around us.
Michele Brody’s CommuniTea is an interactive community-based public art project inspired by the worldwide tradition of drinking and sharing tea. The ritual performance of preparing loose-leaf tea within special paper filters is shared with individuals and groups, after which participants’ conversations are preserved by being transcribed onto the stained tea bags that have been dried and flattened, culminating in the creation of an ever-growing set of fluttering paper quilts.
About the artists:
Genevieve Lowe was born and raised in Idaho and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. Genevieve received her BA from Colorado College in 2006 and her MFA in Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design in 2013. Genevieve’s work revolves around conceptions of the American landscape; utilizing a variety of materials from printmaking to photography to sculpture to explore its different representations. Her work has been shown at various spaces throughout the United States, including David Krut Projects, Sediment Arts, Trestle Gallery and The Wassaic Project. She recently joined Transmitter Gallery as a co-director and curator.
Michele Brody is an environmental community-based artist who received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College in 1989 and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994. Brody has developed an interdisciplinary practice that incorporates a wide spectrum of resources and techniques. She is intrigued with the process of creating a controlled environment where the work organically develops and changes over time. Building from this foundation, Brody’s work represents the daily flux and naturally occurring entropy surrounding us, while exploring how memory and time simultaneously erode and enhance the interpretations of our experiences. Her intent is to evoke a visceral encounter that comments on the compartmentalized preservation of Nature and History, while planting a new awareness of the tenuous relationship between ourselves, nature and the built environment.
Jennifer Tomaiolo is an award-wining artist living and working in the Bronx. Tomaiolo, earned a BFA with honors from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, a MFA from Brooklyn College and an AS in Chemistry from NYC College of Technology. From her studio in The Bronx, she studies and experiments with the interposition of patterns and the landscape, natural rhythms that have been perceived and explored by artists in cultural patterns throughout art history that are now also being described through science and math. Patterns inspired by her travels in America, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Jordan and Morocco. With an emphasis on nature and the role of women, piecing together a story that is not in the written record, but of which traces remain in imagery.
About BX200
BX200 is a dynamic, online platform that showcases a curated selection of artwork by two hundred artists identified with The Bronx. The directory connects the borough’s artists and art organizations to curators, collectors, art enthusiasts, businesses and other artists worldwide.
For further information about BX200 and their full mission statement and more, visit their website: https://bx200.com.
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LIVING WALLS is made possible by the New York City Department of Transportation (NYC DOT)
