Berkshire Artist has Season Opening Exhibition at Simon’s Rock
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| OrangeSweep 2, oil on canvas |
A painter and printmaker for over 25 years, Shapiro has been working in her studio in Monterey, MA, since the early 90’s. But despite her national presence, this exhibition will mark her first substantive showing here in the Berkshires.
New York based critic Lilly Wei described Shapiro’s work in a recent exhibition as ”mercurial-the images streaming, coming together, moving apart, advancing, retreating…dedicated to the viewer who understands perceptual, experiential art- and finds in it sufficient engagement, sufficient beauty, sufficient meaning”. A review in the Seattle arts magazine Redheaded Stepchild called an exhibition of Shapiro’s work at Francine Seders Gallery “a visual experience without equivalent. There is a sensuality in the paintings that is not of the sort seen in so much art of the moment (a contemporary sensibility tied to the feeding on quick, glossy materialism). In Shapiro’s paintings, the world of the senses expands to meet the sublime.”
Though Shapiro’s abstract paintings and prints don’t directly reference nature, she says landscape and her experience of it are an intrinsic source for the work. “The alteration of light and color through time, the association of vertical and horizontal intervals, the distance between forms and their relativity to scale, the cycle of cluster to interstice to matrix as the seasons change, the nuance of variation with the geometry of form and growth, these are among the relationships that my work is connected with. It is the interrelationships rather then the things themselves that are important.”
Julie Shapiro has had numerous solo exhibitions at galleries including Elizabeth Harris in New York City, Francine Seders in Seattle and the Widener Gallery, Trinity College, Hartford, CT. Her work has also been included in many group exhibitions including The Drawing Center, New York City; The Brooklyn Museum; Time and Abstraction: Julie Shapiro and Denzil Hurley, Southern Methodist University, Dallas; Julie Shapiro/William Brayton, Lenore Gray Gallery, Providence, RI; Personal Forms/Universal Content, Milwaukee Art Institute and most recently in conjunction with a painting symposium at University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Upcoming exhibitions of Shapiro’s work include a two-person show in New York City.
Shapiro received her BA from University of California, Santa Cruz and her MFA in painting/printmaking form Yale University. She also attended the Yale Summer School of Art, Norfolk, CT. She taught for a number of years at Hampshire College, Amherst, MA and before moving to the Berkshires at Southern Methodist University. She has been a Visiting Artist at numerous colleges including Massachusetts College of Art, in Boston, University of Washington in Seattle and American University in Washington DC. She has received support form a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and the Ford Foundation, among others. Her work is included in private and public collections throughout the country including PepsiCo, Southern New England Telephone Company, Signet Collection, Guilford College, and the Weatherspoon Art Museum.
Julie Shapiro lives in Monterey, MA with her husband Allan Dean, a classical trumpet player and professor at Yale University and her daughter Essy, a student at Mt Everett Regional High School.
This exhibition opens on Friday, September 4 with a public reception for the artist from 5-7pm. It will be on view thru October 9, Friday-Sunday, 12-5 or by appointment (phone 413.528.7389). There will be a Gallery Talk open to the public on September 16 at 5pm. The exhibition is organized by Margaret Grant, Gallery Director. The Gallery at Liebowitz is located in the red bard at the corner of Alford and Hurlburt Roads, Great Barrington, MA.
