Painting
"Painting to the Edge"
June 3-16, 2024
Resident Faculty: Gianna Commito
Visiting Artists: Sharmistha Ray & Karen Seapker
We will consider “the edge” as both a formal and conceptual device to frame and define meaning from within a painting. The edges created by the meeting of paint strokes delineates form and space through shifting value and vibrating colors. The edges where recognizable imagery dissolves into abstraction and the tangible becomes transcendent are pivotal to the development of one’s personal visual language. How do the edges that exist in your work create or overcome boundaries? Is your painting holding an image inside its edges, or opening a window onto a view otherwise unseen?
Non-credit Tuition Option - $1,100
Undergraduate and Graduate Credit: Undergraduate (3 credits); Graduate (3-4 credits). Standard tuition rates apply. More info available on admissions page (link below).
About the Artists
Sharmistha Ray
Visiting Artist
Sharmistha Ray (they/them) is a visual artist, art critic, curator, and educator. The core of their practice is painting but they also employ interdisciplinary methods to make sculptures and installations that examine the complex inheritance of multiple cultures through the lens of their queer identity and historical modes of western and non-western abstraction. In 2020, they co-founded the feminist artist collective Hilma’s Ghost as a participatory and collaborative model for research, exhibitions, and pedagogy.
Ray’s and Hilma’s Ghost’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions and projects internationally at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT; Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens, NY; Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, IL; Gallery RGR, Mexico City, Mexico; The Parallax Center, Portland, OR; The Armory Show, New York, NY; Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY; India Art Fair, New Delhi, India; and Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai, India. Ray is the recipient of the Montblanc Young Artist Worldwide Patronage Award, TED Fellowship, and Joan Mitchell MFA Grant, and has been an artist-in-residence at Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, NY, and Art Cake, Brooklyn, NY. Reviews of their work have appeared in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Artnet, Hyperallergic, Art India, and TimeOut Mumbai.
Ray received a dual degree MFA in Painting and MS in Theory, Criticism and History of Art, Design and Architecture from Pratt Institute and BA from Williams College.
They have taught at Rhode Island School of Design and Parsons School of Design and are currently Assistant Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon School of Art.
Instagram: @sharmistharay / @hilmasghost
Karen Seapker
Visiting Artist
Karen Seapker’s paintings have been featured at museums and galleries in the U.S. and internationally. She uses a dynamic, gestural style and vibrant palette to create paintings and works on paper depicting abstracted imagery that allude to the power of human relationships, our connections to nature, and the passage of time. She received her MFA from Hunter College in New York, NY. Her work has been exhibited in shows at James Cohan Gallery in NYC and Shanghai, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA, and California College of the Arts. Her work was included in Crystal Bridges Museum’s survey of contemporary art, State of the Art 2020. Her work is in various private collections as well as the collection of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Reviews of her work have been in publications including Burnaway, Hyperallergic, and ArtForum. She lives and works in Nashville, TN.
Gianna Commito
Resident Faculty
Gianna Commito earned a BFA from The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Alfred, NY and an MFA from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA. She paints with casein on marble dust or clay ground to reflect her interest in architecture, building materials, and by extension a continuing exploration of public versus private space and the development and collapse of the built environment. She has been invited to participate in numerous exhibitions across the country and is represented by Rachel Uffner Gallery in New York City, Abattoir in Cleveland, and Marrow Gallery in San Francisco. Her work has been recognized in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Art Papers, ArtForum.com, Wallpaper, and Art in America. Commito has received two Ohio Arts Council grants, a Pollack Krasner grant, the Cleveland Arts Prize for Emerging Artists, and the Wayne P. Lawson acquisition award from the Columbus Museum of Art. Her work was featured in the inaugural edition of the FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art in Cleveland, OH, and is placed in prominent collections such as the Akron Art Museum, Columbus Art Museum, Columbus Museum of Art, and the Progressive Art Collection.
Header Images: (Left) Detail of "Of the East" (Center) Detail of "Forest Bathing," by Karen Seapker
(Right) Detail of "A Nascent Map of Nonbinary Consciousness and Non-dual Philosophy Part I: Rebirth - Emerald Chrysalis - Shakti; One North Star, Cardinal and Fixed, Immovable Entity, Guiding Light (?); Four Spinning Bhavachakras Uncovered in the Geological Structure of Layered Planetary Systems; Resplendent Rainbow Fortune Emerging Through Awakened Self-Knowledge - The Spectrum of All Things - Dark Light; Eight Ebullient Comets Reaching into Ancient Stardust, etc.," Gouache, watercolor, ink, and colored pencils on Fabriano Murillo paper, 39 x 55 inches, 2022, by Sharmistha Ray