deborah dancy

deborah dancy

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Room: a sketchbook for Analytic Action

Room Journal


Body of Evidence

Review by Noah Reyes

Review by Catherine Fox


https://www.marciawoodgallery.com/exhibitions/162-deborah-dancy-body-of-evidence/
Deborah Dancy Blind Faith, 2022 acrylic on canvas 60 x 50 inches
Deborah Dancy
Blind Faith, 2022
acrylic on canvas
60 x 50 inches

Bringing together multiple recently created bodies of work, Body of Evidence, Deborah Dancy's second solo show at the gallery, provides a comprehensive survey of Dancy’s explorations in various mediums including painting, sculpture, and photography, which she unites to pursue a trenchant investigation of abstraction, narrative, and the pernicious undercurrents of American history. Alternately lyrical and subversive, Dancy’s works often operate on multiple levels at once, drawing in the viewer with their aesthetic appeal before revealing unexpectedly sharp barbs of critique and confrontation layered underneath.

In the large-scale, abstract oil paintings for which she best known, Dancy is fundamentally concerned with the sensory and formal aspects of fashioning an object-space upon the canvas, implying the presence of some sort of entity rather than that of mere materials. The complex maneuvers Dancy pursues to this end are subtly animated by her distinctive color palette: pastel pinks and blues tempered by smoky grays and blacks, olive greens and golds. These sickly sweet hues seduce the viewer—offering easy suggestions of innocence or virtue—while the darker shades obscure further discernment, confronting the viewer with the dynamics of their own seduction. In this sense, these paintings function as complex visual puzzles that invite the viewer to consider a range of emotional responses to the work, from attraction and intrigue to repulsion and disgust, all while edging toward the sublime.

Often created with acrylic rather than oil paint, Dancy’s works on paper possess a starkly graphic sensibility, implying a speedier, more cavalier process than her large-scale paintings. This relative quickness allows the artist to convey a sense of urgency within these works, which are focused less on internal structure and more on the immediacy of mark-making. More stripped down than her paintings in terms of color and composition, these works on paper indicate Dancy’s training and previous experiences as a printmaker.

A specific series of works on paper included in Body of Evidence is derived from the book Currier & Ives: Printmakers to the American People by Harry T. Peters, first published in 1942. Currier and Ives ran their namesake printmaking firm in New York City from 1835 to 1907, producing archetypal images of the nineteenth century that are still invoked today in the lyrics of Christmas songs and on holiday cards. What is less well known, however, is that the firm’s best-selling series proliferated racist caricatures of African Americans, representing a third of Currier and Ives’s business by 1884. Dancy identified some indication of this disturbing history in the book’s dedication “to the memory of those resolute Americans whose sturdy achievements in building an empire provided inspiration for the prints in the Currier & Ives Gallery.” As a means of disrupting the common rose-colored view of these images and highlighting the imperial impulse they contain, Dancy has applied abstract techniques similar to those in her other works on paper to pages culled from Printmakers to the American People.

Challenges to traditional notions of propriety and class occur repeatedly throughout the exhibition, raising questions about the endurance of such ideologically driven ideals in the forms of nostalgia and kitsch. In the sculptural series Domestic Resistance, for example, Dancy engraves text upon found silver plates and serving trays—“defacing” them, in her own words, tarnishing their supposed purity. The engraved text comes from artist books Dancy previously created: The Practical Speller (1998) and The Conjurer’s Apprentice, or The Legend of Yellow Mary: A Slave Girl's Tale of Survival by her Wit and Extraordinary Powers, as written by herself (2004). These books adopt the narrative structure and typographic design of nineteenth-century chapbooks published by formerly enslaved African Americans, such as Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (1861) and The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845). Accordingly, the text engraved in silver shows fleeting glimpses of stories-in-progress. One reads, “Brought from the West Indies / a small brown girl / nine years young / stood in a room and / wept.” Because of their reflective surfaces, the silver objects in Domestic Resistance also implicate the viewer’s presence within this violent history—another subtle confrontation.

By contrast, the black objects Dancy has documented in the series of photographs included in Body of Evidence are formally opaque, inscrutable despite their reflective surfaces. Primarily showing vessels, bowls, or figurines, these tintype-inspired photographs display a certain classical quality yet also depict these objects in a form of conceptual portraiture. One photograph shows a coil of hair purchased from a beauty supply store wound tightly in a mound, either a monument to Black womanhood or else—as the artist has pointed out—a sinister trophy. This ambiguity, which pervades the entire exhibition, recalls questions asked by artist and writer Kristina Kay Robinson: “Are you an art lover or a voyeur? An observer or a participant? Do the images please you and, if so, is it joy you feel or the pleasure of consumption?”

Artists and Language
https://sites.suffolk.edu/artgallery/artists-and-language/https://sites.suffolk.edu/artgallery/artists-and-language/
Double Consciousness
https://www.caldwell.edu/double-consciousness-deborah-dancy-and-karen-revis-exhibition-to-open-at-caldwell-university-sept-14/https://www.caldwell.edu/double-consciousness-deborah-dancy-and-karen-revis-exhibition-to-open-at-caldwell-university-sept-14/

“Double Consciousness: Deborah Dancy and Karen J Revis” exhibition to open at Caldwell University Sept. 14

Photo credits: Top two images by Karen J Revis, bottom two by Deborah Dancy.

The Mueller Gallery at Caldwell University will present the exhibition “Double Consciousness: Deborah Dancy and Karen Revis” Sept. 14 to Oct. 16. An artist’s talk will be held Sept. 14 from 5 to 6 p.m. followed by an opening reception from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

Caldwell University Mueller Gallery director Suzanne Baron says, “Double-consciousness is a concept in social philosophy referring, originally, to a source of inward ‘twoness’ putatively experienced by African-Americans because of their racialized oppression and devaluation in a white-dominated society. In the book ‘1971: A Year in the Life of Color,’ Darby English writes about the 1972 exhibition ‘Contemporary Black Artists in America’ at the Whitney, saying that the exhibition featured ‘modernism as a language of equality—a way partly to get the conversation back to the subject of art but also to make the point that painting itself cannot practice discrimination.’” However, English goes on to state that “The Whitney’s exhibition should have sparked debate about what successful activism would mean. Instead it prompted vigorous invective against both abstraction and the larger issue of robust interracial sociality which the au courant language of Black Power vigorously opposed but Contemporary Black Artists in America exemplified.” (English, Dec 20, 2016)

Baron says that 50 years later, the issue of what is appropriate subject matter for African American artists endures. “While one can bring to mind contemporary African American nonobjective artists—Mark Bradford, Martin Puryear, Sam Gilliam, James Little—most of the artists that represent the world of contemporary African American Art remain figurative.

In explaining the exhibition, Baron continues, “Abstract painter Agnes Martin famously relinquished pressure to centralize both her gender and sexuality in her work. She shared her wishes to remove the inherent ‘qualifiers’ expected of minorities when conveying their vision, with the quote, ‘I’m not a woman, I’m a doorknob leading to a quiet existence.’ A doorknob represents her hope for anonymity regarding external perceptions of her being. The presumption of representing an entire demographic while adhering to the constrictions of each qualifier influences the identity of each artist, ultimately resulting in this feeling of ‘twoness.’”

Baron says that for both Deborah Dancy and Karen J Revis—two self-identifying contemporary African American women artists—the solution to this question of subject matter reveals itself through this idea of Double Consciousness. Baron says both Dancy and Revis question the narrative of one singular reified self and allow multiple parts of their identity to coexist within their artistic practices. “As if addressing this idea of Double Consciousness, of twoness, directly through their artistic practice, both Dancy and Revis produce work that on one hand has roots firmly in modernist abstraction and nonobjective art and the other in political art that addresses their given identity as African-American women.”

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity … two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

– W. E. Burghardt Du Bois

MORE ON THE ARTISTS

Deborah Dancy is a multimedia artist whose paintings, drawings, digital photography, and small sculptures play with the shifting intersection between abstraction and representation. She has received numerous awards including: A Guggenheim Fellowship, Yaddo Fellow, The American Antiquarian Society William Randolph Hearst Artist and Writers Creative Arts Fellowship, and the National Endowment of the Arts NEFA award. Her work is in numerous collections including: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, 21C Museum, The Baltimore Museum ,The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Birmingham Museum of Art, The Hunter Museum, The Detroit Institute of Art, The Boston Museum of Fine, The Montgomery Museum of Art, The Spencer Museum of Art, The Hunter Museum of Art, Vanderbilt University, Grinnell College, Oberlin College Museum of Art, Davidson Art Center, Wesleyan University, and The United States Embassy Harare, Zimbabwe.

Karen J Revis is an artist based in New York City who is driven by process and materials. She is a printmaker who uses a variety of techniques including monotypes, lithographs, etchings, linoleum cuts, collagraphs and papermaking. Her KAREN J REVIS Studio portfolio comprises abstract works, vibrant with color and texture.

Revis’ monotypes have been used to create textiles designs. She partnered with Brooklinen to create a line of bedding and A-Street Prints to create a line of wallpaper. Revis also created a limited edition of prints for Room and Board.

In 2017, Revis started Revisionary Prints to explore her experience growing up in an all-black community in the ’60s and being black and existing in today’s political climate.”Two of Revis!” prints were selected by Colossal Media as the first in their Represent: Black Arts mural project, with murals in New York and Los Angeles. ​

Revis is a member of The Black Women of Print (BWoP) and Black Artist and Designer Guild (BADG). She was a recipient of the Robert Blackburn Workshop SIP Fellowship in 2018. She has served as a board member of the Women’s Studio Workshop. Revis has attended residencies at The Morgan Paper Conservatory, Cleveland,OH; BACAS, Teggiano Italy; Pyramid Atlantic, Silver Spring MD; The Women’s Studio Workshop, Rosendale NY; and Henry Street Settlement, New York. Her work is featured in The Art of Encaustic Painting: Contemporary Expression in the Ancient Medium by Joanne Mattera (Watson- Guptill Publications). She studied Fine Art at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and continues to collaborate and exhibit her work widely.


Confuse the Issues: Art, Text and Identity
https://www.gettysburg.edu/offices/schmucker-art-gallery/exhibitions/confuse-the-Issues-art-exhibitionhttps://www.gettysburg.edu/offices/schmucker-art-gallery/exhibitions/confuse-the-Issues-art-exhibition
Two Coats of Paint


https://twocoatsofpaint.com/2022/04/deborah-dancy-to-seduce-and-unnerve
Circling Time
https://zam.umaine.edu/circling-time-deborah-dancy/



Circling Time: Deborah Dancy

January 15 – April 30, 2022

Circling Time features nearly 30 paintings by Connecticut-based artist Deborah Dancy. Her gestural compositions, often monochromatic and balanced with bright pops of vivid color, are rooted in abstract expressionism. Some of Dancy’s works span six feet and embrace the large-scale format often favored by the early abstract painters. The artist uses a form of inventive biomorphic abstraction to evoke emotion and express an unbridled freedom. Opting not to begin a work with preconceived ideas, the artist instead chooses to highlight the beauty of the unpredictable and the process of revision. Dancy embraces the idea of a “beautiful mess” expressing that “incompleteness—the unfinished fragment of what ‘almost was’ and ‘might become’—amplifies meaning.”

Dancy uses both additive and reductive processes in constructing her paintings. She adds painted passages that might later be scraped away as she searches to achieve a balance in the composition. The artist’s spontaneous process contributes to the sense of free flowing emotion found in many of her paintings. Dancy encourages various interpretation and formulation of meaning through the eyes of the viewer. The artist states “Experiencing a painting of mine can be like going to a country that is completely different. I want someone to embrace the different, the difficult, the frightening—even the ugly—in a culture that is vastly different from their own.” By not fully revealing her intention in the paintings, the observer is inspired to experience a unique, unrestricted, and deeply personal encounter with a painting.

Green forms left of a nest of black marks, oil painting pastel colors behind a grid of blue-black marks, oil painting

Left: DEBORAH DANCY (American, born 1949). Aliens, 2018. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist.

Right: DEBORAH DANCY (American, born 1949). Lost in Translation, 2018. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist.

Zillman Art Museum
40 Harlow StreetBangor, ME 04401
Tel: 207.581.3300Fax: 207.581.3111



TOP
What Might Become
https://marciawoodgallery.viewingrooms.com/viewing-room/5-deborah-dancy-what-might-become/
A Faint Light
https://www.dariamag.com/home/a-faint-light


Deborah Dancy | A Faint Light
Mar 31 – May 29, 2021

Robischon Gallery presents A Faint Light, an extensive, dynamic two-part solo exhibition by distinguished artist Deborah Dancy. In this second solo exhibition with the gallery, Dancy’s signature large-scale abstract works on canvas and paper, ignite the viewer’s imagination with the grit and gravitas of the artist’s brushwork and her uncommon use of color. The provocative works from Deborah Dancy’s ongoing Oblivion series are included in part two of the exhibition, featuring redressed porcelain period figurines and an accompanying range of unexpected mixed media figurative drawings.

Dancy states:

“A Faint Light explores the fragile and nuanced space between defined and suggested structures. In the paintings and works on paper, we discover meaning through the illuminated and obfuscated forms. These elements teeter between hope and potential despair. Incomplete and fragmented shapes hover, float and collide with one another in an ambiguous space. These spaces are both beautiful and unnerving. In this realm of the incomplete, the fragment, and residue of “almost was” and “might become,” we see a faint light.

As subtle as the paintings are, the Oblivion series on paper and the altered figurines are anything but. They are pointed, sardonic, and unapologetically political. Humor is a sharp tool in critiquing and dismantling idealized notions of the social, cultural, and historical narrative. Their transformative position argues for another outcome.”

Whether it’s the charged mark-making of Deborah Dancy’s bold abstractions or her visual disruption of an intentionally prettified past, Dancy’s expressive work takes a firm hold throughout the gallery, as it simultaneously encourages reflection and cultural dialogue.

GALLERY EXHIBITIONS ARTISTS NEWS + VIDEOS CONTACT Deborah Dancy | A Faint LightINSTALLATION | ARTWORKS | EXHIBITION NOTES | ARTIST(S) EXHIBITION NOTES Deborah Dancy | A Faint Light Mar 31 – May 27, 2021 Robischon Gallery presents A Faint Light, an extensive, dynamic two-part solo exhibition by distinguished artist Deborah Dancy. In this second solo exhibition with the gallery, Dancy’s signature large-scale abstract works on canvas and paper, ignite the viewer’s imagination with the grit and gravitas of the artist’s brushwork and her uncommon use of color. The provocative works from Deborah Dancy’s ongoing Oblivion series are included in part two of the exhibition, featuring redressed porcelain period figurines and an accompanying range of unexpected mixed media figurative drawings. Dancy states: “A Faint Light explores the fragile and nuanced space between defined and suggested structures. In the paintings and works on paper, we discover meaning through the illuminated and obfuscated forms. These elements teeter between hope and potential despair. Incomplete and fragmented shapes hover, float and collide with one another in an ambiguous space. These spaces are both beautiful and unnerving. In this realm of the incomplete, the fragment, and residue of “almost was” and “might become,” we see a faint light. As subtle as the paintings are, the Oblivion series on paper and the altered figurines are anything but. They are pointed, sardonic, and unapologetically political. Humor is a sharp tool in critiquing and dismantling idealized notions of the social, cultural, and historical narrative. Their transformative position argues for another outcome.” Whether it’s the charged mark-making of Deborah Dancy’s bold abstractions or her visual disruption of an intentionally prettified past, Dancy’s expressive work takes a firm hold throughout the gallery, as it simultaneously encourages reflection and cultural dialogue. Deborah Dancy (CT) has degrees in both painting and printmaking, including an M.F.A. and an M.S. from Illinois State University, and a B.F.A. from Illinois Wesleyan University. She is the recipient of a prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship; a National Endowment of the Arts NEFA award; New England Foundation for the Arts/NEA Individual Artist Grant; a Yaddo fellowship; a Connecticut Commission of the Arts Artist Grant; and a Nexus Press Artist Book Project Award, among other recognitions. Her work is included in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Boston Museum of Fine Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Birmingham Museum of Art; the Hunter Museum; Baltimore Museum of Art; Detroit Institute of Arts; Montgomery Museum of Art; Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas; Grinnell College in Iowa; Allen Memorial Museum of Art at Oberlin College; and the United States Embassy in Cameroon. Dancy’s work is also included in many corporate and private collections such as the General Electric Company, the Bellagio Hotel, and Chemical Bank. She has been included in exhibitions at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; the Spencer Museum at the University of Kansas; the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College; DeCordova Museum in Massachusetts; Bruce Museum in Connecticut; and New Britain Museum of Art in Connecticut, with an upcoming solo exhibition at the University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, ME, among others. ROBISCHON GALLERY|1740 WAZEE STREET|DENVER, COLORADO|80202|© 2021 303.298.7788|mail@robischongallery.com site by artsystems
The Weight of the World. Five Points Gallery, Torrington, CT.
https://artnewengland.com/ed_review/deborah-dancy/
https://artnewengland.com/ed_review/deborah-dancy/
Exhibitions in Abstraction
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http://www.robischongallery.com

Un/natural Occurrence
Gray Contemporary Gallery

Houston, TX

Artist Deborah Dancy
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Artist Deborah Dancy
In works with a visceral, spontaneous feel, Deborah Dancy explores the amorphous zone between abstraction and representation.
Text by Robert Kiener
Connecticut Winter 2017
Deborah Dancy Hey Diddle Diddle
Hey Diddle Diddle (2012), oil on canvas, 60″H × 60″W
Deborah Dancy Self
Self (2015), digital print, 12″H × 12″WSelf (2015), digital print, 12″H × 12″W
Deborah Dancy Residue and Thingness
Residue and Thingness (2016), digital print, 25″H × 24″W
Deborah Dancy Queen Bea
Queen Bea (2016), digital print, 48″H × 58″W
Deborah DancyI Did Not See That Coming
I Did Not See That Coming (2016), oil on canvas, 32″H × 34″W
Deborah Dancy Gray Slump
Gray Slump 1 (2016), digital print, 30″H × 40″W.
Deborah Dancy Good Vibrations
Good Vibrations (2016), oil on canvas, 48″H × 54″W
Deborah Dancy
Deborah Dancy
Deborah Dancy Be Still My Beauty
Be Still My Beauty (2015), digital print, 20″H x 20″W
With Miles Davis’s moody, improvisational Stairway to the Gallows blasting away in the background, Deborah Dancy layers thick gobs of blue oil paint onto a just-begun abstract painting in her spacious, light-filled Storrs studio. She uses a brush to add a sinuous green line, then coats on yellow paint with a plastic spatula. Pausing, she stands back and inspects her work before hurriedly scraping off much of the paint she’s just added.
Oblivious to a friend who has quietly walked into her studio, she’s lost in the moment, caught up in what she has called the “conversation” or “orchestration” she has with every painting and drawing she creates. Dancy, a much-lauded painter who lists a Guggenheim Fellowship among her many awards and grants, stands back and considers her painting.
“It’s a beautiful mess,” she says with a broad smile as she lays down a brush that’s heavy with oil paint. As she looks over her work she adds, “It might stay a butt-ugly mess or turn into something beautiful. I never know. When I am painting, I am going in blind, and I may come out bruised and battered thinking, ‘What the hell happened in there?’ Other times it goes wonderfully, and I think, ‘Wow, what the hell happened in there?’ It’s a matter of intonation. I never know until I’m finished.”
Dancy, who has taught art at the University of Connecticut for the last thirty-five years and whose work has been included in scores of collections from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts to Detroit’s Institute of Arts to Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, confesses that she is fascinated with the “unexpected” in her abstract art. “I like to keep ‘thingness’ at bay; I want my work to be an exploration, ambiguous and beautiful,” she says.
In addition to her paintings, Dancy also creates drawings on paper that she describes as “first cousins, once removed from paintings.” As she says, “Drawings happen faster. Because they are not on canvas, they are a much more direct type of attack. Working on paper, or taking photographs, which I also do, is like learning another language. Both are an extension of my painting.”
Because her work is abstract, she is used to people questioning her about what a piece “means.”
“I am completely okay with someone asking me, ‘What does this mean?’ or ‘Why did you put this here?’ ” she says, “There’s nothing wrong with asking.” Her ideal viewer, she explains, is someone who is willing to “take a journey” with her. “Experiencing a painting of mine can be like going to a country that is completely different. I want someone to embrace the different, the difficult, the frightening—even the ugly—in a culture that is vastly different from their own. I like someone who may not know exactly how to decipher my work.” She laughs as she admits, “Sometimes even I don’t know what to make of it!”
Her often-whimsical titles, such as This is Another Fine Mess You’ve Gotten Us Into or I Did Not See That Coming reveal her subtle sense of humor.
Manhattan gallery owner Gaines Peyton, who has represented Dancy for almost two decades, says, “Deborah’s work is so visceral, nuanced, and lyrical that buyers inevitably develop their own connection with her paintings. They find them continually compelling.”
While Dancy’s present work is colorful and expressive, she was widely recognized for much more somber, darker paintings she created in the 1990s that were based on her investigations into her own African-American heritage. “These works reflected my exploration of my ancestors,” she explains. “It was a difficult time, realizing that I couldn’t trace my family earlier than the 1870 census because they were then listed as property.”
After working—and re-working—her painting, Dancy turns off Miles Davis and stows her oil paints for another day. She smiles when she’s asked why she paints. “I have to,” she answers as she wipes thick gobs of oil from a spatula. “It is who I am. It is a need, a drive. I love making a mark on canvas. I love the way that sometimes something serendipitously happens that makes me sit back and say ‘WOW! I can’t not be an artist!’ ” •
Editor’s note: Deborah Dancy is represented by the Sears-Peyton Gallery, New York City, searspeyton.com. To see more of her work, visit deborahdancy.com
 
 
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New England Home Magazine
 
 
 
 
 
 

http://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2018/06/state-abstraction-connecticut.html
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Contributed by Sharon Butler / Co-curators Daphne Anderson Deeds and Jacquelyn Gleisner have organized “State of Abstraction,” a sophisticated  group exhibition comprising elegant work by more than twenty Connecticut artists who explore a wide range of abstract strategies. Thoughtfully installed at the Washington Art Association, the work speaks of emotion, material experimentation, history, and the meditative process of making.

“State of Abstraction,” curated by Daphne Anderson Deeds and Jacquelyn Gleisner. Artists include Cat Balco, Melanie Carr, Julia Coash, Kevin Daly, Deborah Dancy, Howard El-Yasin, Roxanne Faber Savage, Joseph Fucigna, Elizabeth Gourlay, Hong Hong, Blinn Jacobs, Zachary Keeting, Bob Knox, Connie Pfeiffer, Janet Lage, David Livingston, Ken Lovell, Olu Oguibe, Ryan Paxton, Tim Prentice, Suzan Shutan, Matthew Weber, and John Willis. Washington Art Association & Gallery and The Judy Black Memorial Park and Gardens, Washington Depot, CT. Through June 16, 2018
 

Monsters

Ordinary Beast

Thrilled to have my photo as the cover art for Nicole Sealey's critically acclaimed new book of poems, published by HarperCollins.

Parallel Practices
https://news.wcsu.edu/wcsu-gallery-to-present-parallel-practices-exhibition-this-winterhttps://news.wcsu.edu/wcsu-gallery-to-present-parallel-practices-exhibition-this-winter/


21 Artists You Should Know
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The Paris Review June 22, 2017
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  •  
  • The Bookness of Not-Books
    By Albert Mobilio
  •  
  • I once owned a hardback edition of Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence that had served time at the top of a bedside pile; its cover and spine had acquired several islands of melted wax from the candle it helped support. Running my fingers from the smooth dollops to the grainy fabric—an illegible but sensual braille—always afforded a small pleasure, even if the reading itself offered much less. That long-ago volume came to mind recently while holding a copy of an artist’s book by Deborah Dancy titled Winter Morning in the rare-book room of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Dancy’s slim book is made from wax-impregnated paper into which snippets of found text have been pressed. Light as wafer, the book almost hovered in my hands, and turning its stiff, deeply yellowed pages felt like exploring a precious archaeological artifact.
    I was fortunate to handle this rare and fragile objet at the invitation of Rena Hoisington, a curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art, where she mounted the current show “Off the Shelf: Modern and Contemporary Artists’ Books.” The extensive range of artists and writers includes, among many others, Grace Hartigan, Picasso, Frank O’Hara, Ed Ruscha, Kandinsky, Susan Howe, Mayakovsky, Barbara Kruger, Robert Creeley, Kiki Smith, and, of course, the master of the artists’ book, the Swiss Conceptualist Dieter Roth. Equally wide is the breadth of approach: from Ruscha, there is an edition of Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations, the photos printed on an accordion-folded sheet in the order they appeared on Route 66, going west to east; from Barbara Kruger and Stephen King, a large-format volume with a stainless-steel cover and an embedded digital clock; from three authors—Pasolini, Luisa Famos, Andri Peer—and the artist Not Vital, a series of poems written in Rhaeto-Romansh (the national language of Switzerland) and printed on pages custom made from cedar bark that sport attached objects, such as a saw blade. The rich variety of constructions and materials, as well as the methods of representing text—thickly rendered in paint, printed in chaotic typefaces, scrawled across images—beckons the viewer to reach out and touch.  Read More
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Scope Contemporary Art Show Miami 2016

Collaborative Photographic Project
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Pernicious Beauty, K. Imperial Fine Art
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K. IMPERIAL FINE ART
 
DEBORAH DANCY
Pernicious Beauty
June 22 – August 27,  2016
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 7th  5:30 – 7:30pm
 
K. Imperial Fine Art is pleased to present Pernicious Beauty, its first solo exhibition of the work of Deborah Dancy.
 
Deborah’s work examines the intersection between abstraction and representation. That grey area just before an image defines itself. “The poetic region of the incomplete, the fragment, the ruin and residue of ‘almost was’ and ‘might become.’ I construct imagined forms from my curiosity and examination of the disjointed properties that exist between natural and architectural structures. I build on these oddly similar properties by merging disconcerting color, abutments and abrupt juxtapositions to fabricate work where reason is suspended and beauty is suspect; paint is both hard and lush and line defines and deflates.  In the end, I want to create
an ambiguous yet real space where these elements collide, mutate and coexist.”  -- Deborah Dancy
 
In addition to her paintings, Deborah will present selections of photographs from the series “Leaning Tower of Painting Mishaps and Slumps”. Depicting clay sculptures reminiscent of the paint scrapings and residue from her painting process, she considers these works extensions of her paintings.
 
Deborah Dancy is currently a professor of art at the University of Connecticut and has been on the faculty in the Department of Art and Art History since 1981.  She has received numerous significant honors and awards, including: a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, New England Foundation for the Arts/NEA Individual Artist Grant, Nexus Press Artist Book Project Award, Visual Studies Artist Book Project Residency Grant, The American Antiquarian Society’s William Randolph Hearst Fellowship, a YADDO Fellow, Women’s Studio Workshop Residency Grant, Connecticut Commission of the Arts Artist Grant, as well as a Connecticut Book Award Illustration Nominee.
 
She has exhibited nationally and internationally at museums and institutions such as The Fuller Museum, The Housatonic Museum, The Mattatuck Museum, The College of Saint Rose, The University of Rhode Island, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, The Spencer Museum, The Mead Art Museum, SACI Gallery, Florence, Italy, The US Embassy in Paris, and The DeCordova Museum. Her work is included in the collections of The Boston Museum of Fine, The Birmingham Museum of Art, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Montgomery Museum of Art, The Spencer Museum of Art, The Hunter Museum of Art, Vanderbilt University, Grinnell College, Oberlin College Museum of Art, Davidson Art Center, The Detroit Museum of Art, Wesleyan, Davidson Art Center, SACI Gallery, Florence, Italy, The Detroit Museum of Art, Wesleyan University, The Bellagio Hotel, and The United States Embassy in Cameroon.
 
Pernicious Beauty will be on view June 22 – August 27, 2016 with a reception for the artist Thursday, July 7th 5:30 - 7:30pm.
 
Image: Bouquet, 2015, oil on canvas, 36” x 40”
 
 
49 Geary St., Ste. 440, San Francisco, CA  94108 | 415-277-7230 | kimperialfineart.com

 

ARTPULSE Magazine




BigRed& Shiny: Smart Curating
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Smart Painting at New Haven's ArtSpace.

Rembrandt's Dog, Global 21st Century Painting
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Rembrandt's  Dog. Global 21st Century Painting
Rembrandt's Dog's List
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809. Deborah Dancy
4 April 2015- Americas: US: Southeast, 2nd Edition, ROUGH CUT, [800-849]Bloomington Normal - Illinois Wesleyan University, Normal - Illinois State University
United States of America
(1949 Alabama /> Storrs, Connecticut, US) [LINK]
‘(…) the poetic terrain of the incomplete, the fragment, the ruin and residue of the, ‘almost was’ and might become.  – Deborah Dancy
Deborah Dancy artist
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Deborah Dancy art
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Deborah Dancy Kunst Malerei
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Deborah Dancy art painting
sources images: [portrait]  [1][2][3]
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The Bottom Line
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Review of the exhibit Chasing the Light, Sears Peyton Gallery

 

THE BOTTOM LINE
Deborah Dancy: Chasing the Light at Sears Peyton Gallery
Posted on June 26, 2013 by admin
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Posted in news, The Bottom Line

Deborah Dancy, Point Counter Point, 2013. Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 inches. Image courtesy of Sears Peyton Gallery.
Currently on view until June 29 at Sears Peyton Gallery is a collection of luminescent paintings and drawings in the exhibition Deborah Dancy: Chasing the Light. The entire exhibition, including both large-scale paintings and smaller works on paper, possesses a radiance that is both eccentric and sincere. Although the pieces stand successfully alone, the works become particularly inspiring when viewed together.
 
Dancy uses drawing in her paintings and works on paper to bridge the gap between abstraction and figuration through the intersection of line, color, and gesture. Dancy’s finished works highlight her process of adding and subtracting paint to attain a particular color palette and surface texture. Her architecturally drawn lines are fundamental to the compositions, holding their own prominence without taking away from the colors that cushion them. Where sharp edges meet soft tones, a conversation between severity and serenity begins and continues throughout the show. Although the style in which Dancy paints seems impulsive, the overall organization of shape and color indicates thought and control.

Joanne Mattera Art Blog
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Castle Hill Gallery
Deborah Dancy
David Boyajian
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The last stop on this tour is the Gallery at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle--or The Castle Hill Gallery for short. The center's director, Cherie Mittenthal (the artist whose work you saw at Kobalt, above), curated a gorgeous show of works on paper by Deborah Dancy and bronze and ceramic sculpture by David Boyajian. Dancy describes her compositions emerging "out of an active engagement of gesture and process." Boyajian deals with "nurturing, generation and growth." The exhibition is a pas de deux of related palettes and fluid expression. 
 
Deborah Dancy untitled painting, above, with a panoramic view, below, showing you where it is set 
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Another panorama, swinging toward the left, with Dancy paintings punctuated by Boyajian sculptures
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Below: A closeup of the corner seen at the far left of the panorama above
 

Below: One last image by Deborah Dancy to tide you over to the next installment
 
 
POSTED BY JOANNE MATTERA AT 1:00 AM 

State of Connecticut Artists Collection
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Connecticut Artists Collection

Deborah Dancy (born 1949)
 
Deborah DancyDeborah Dancy has been on the faculty in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Connecticut since 1981. Her professional career has been marked by a number of significant honors and awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Connecticut Commission of the Arts Artist Fellowship, and New England Foundation for the Arts/NEA Individual Artist Grant. She has exhibited in galleries and museums including Purdue University, LewAllen Contemporary, Mattatuck Museum, and DeCordova Museum. Dancy’s work is included in numerous permanent collections, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Birmingham Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Oberlin College Museum of Art, Hallmark, General Electric Company, and the Bellagio Hotel. Sears-Peyton Gallery (New York), G.R.N’Namdi Gallery (Chicago and Miami), and Charles Young Fine Prints and Drawings (Portland, Connecticut) represent her work.
 
 
 
 
 
Artist Statement (about 30 Black Men, Violets and Vinegar, and Winter Morning):
This series of work was created in 1997 in response to the discovery in 1991 of the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan. I often refer to them as my shroud pieces because archeological evidence indicates that individuals who were buried there had been wrapped in shrouds closed with copper pins. I thought of the pieces as a kind of homage to those lives – and the lack of recognition for their history and contributions – and I found myself patching together these mixed media works that addressed their presence. I constructed the poetic text fragments and embedded them in layers of beeswax on the water-colored painted surface. I wanted them to stand as figures – reminders of those who lived ordinary and sometimes heroic lives. It was my intention to make them quiet, beautiful, and haunting.
 
30 Black Men   30 Black Men - detail detail
30 Black Men
1997
watercolor, beeswax, and text on paper with muslin backing
60" high x 33" wide
Currently on exhibit:
Where: Legislative Office Building - Room 3200 (Environment Committee), 300 Capitol Avenue, Hartford, CT 06106
When: Monday-Friday, 10:00-4:00
 

Violets and Vinegar   Violets and Vinegar - detail detail
Violets and Vinegar
1997
watercolor, beeswax, and text on paper with muslin backing
60" high x 33" wide
Currently on exhibit:
Where: Legislative Office Building - Room 3200 (Environment Committee), 300 Capitol Avenue, Hartford, CT 06106
When: Monday-Friday, 10:00-4:00
 

Winter Morning   Winter Morning - detail detail
Winter Morning
1997
watercolor, beeswax, and text on paper with muslin backing
60" high x 33" wide
Currently on exhibit:
Where: Legislative Office Building - Room 3200 (Environment Committee), 300 Capitol Avenue, Hartford, CT 06106
When: Monday-Friday, 10:00-4:00


Sonnet
Sonnet
1993
oil on canvas
72" high x 60" wide
(purchased in 1994)
Currently on exhibit:
Where: Office of State Ethics, 18-20 Trinity Street, Suite 205, Hartford, CT 06106 (no parking available)
When: Monday-Friday, 9:00-4:00
 
 

 

Twisted & Tangled: Deborah Dancy
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30
JUL
2013
Twisted & Tangled: Deborah Dancy
categories: Abstract Art, Daily Artsy, Paintings

Sometimes, as I’m looking through my artists queue and planning which artists to feature, I have to go back and search the Artsy archives because I come across an artist whose work is so fantastic, so just up my alley, that I’m shocked I let this artist’s work sit in queue for so long.  I can’t believe I waited so long to share these gorgeous abstract paintings by artist Deborah Dancy.
As the World Turns by Deborah Dancy
As the World Turns, oil on canvas, 60×48
Dancing in the Dark by Deborah Dancy
Dancing in the Dark, oil on canvas, 60×60
Dancy spins a web of layered painterly texture, light, shadow and intricately concocted yet wonderfully spontaneous cages of line.  My eye gets caught up in each tangled maze of paint, getting utterly lost and never wanting to come back.
The Object of My Affection by Deborah Dancy
The Object of My Affection, oil on canvas, 46×46
Stormy Weather by Deborah Dancy
Stormy Weather, oil on canvas, 30×30
And have I mentioned the palette?  Warm rusty desert tones contrast with pale cotton candy pastels, keeping things fresh and light.
Gates of Paradise by Deborah Dancy
Gates of Paradise, oil on canvas, 60×48
Want to see more of Deborah Dancy’s work?  Of course you do.  Check out her website.
All images via the artist’s website.  Artist found via Sears Peyton Gallery.
 

Two Coats of Paint
Link

http://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2013/06/triangular-andrew-seto-and-deborah-dancy.html

Chasing the Light, New Works
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Chasing the Light: Deborah Dancy
May 30-June 29, 2013
Sears Peyton Gallery 

Deborah Dancy on Buddyofwork
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Deborah Dancy


DANCING IN THE DARK, 2012, OIL ON CANVAS 60″ X 60″

TENDER, DIGITAL PRINT, 2007
My primary work is oil on canvas. In these works the images flirt between fragmented figuration and abstraction. There are elements of a quasi narrative being constructed but never completed. I always struggle with the works on canvas. In my head they are more weighty. I’m suspicious when they seem to come to quickly and I labor with them, constantly revising. I beat the canvas up- scrape paint away, put it back, trying to find the balance between right line that is both tentative and true, refined and awkward.
In Tender from 2007 I have manipulated the photo, layering it with altered book pages in photoshop, It’s almost like painting on the photograph.  I love the nest of sticks in my lap. They are oddly reminiscent of the forms in my paintings; those tenuous piles precariously balanced over the figures.  -Deborah Dancy, 2012
 

Deborah Dancy at Truro Castle Hill

Deborah Dancy named Ella Jackson Chair

Gorky's Granddaughter Interview
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Book Cover

Faster Than Light Selected and New Poems by Marilyn Nelson. LSU Press, November 2012

 
 
Book Cover Photograph, Deborah Dancy

Book Cover

The New Black

Poems by Evie Shockley
 
Cover photo, Deborah Dancy 
Caged, 2007







All images copyright Deborah Dancy

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