A Gathered Place

The College of New Rochelle will feature “A Gathered Place,” an exhibition of recent work by two Westchester artists, Leslie Madigan and B. Avery Syrig, in the Mooney Center Gallery on the Main Campus in New Rochelle from August 22 through September 15, 2012. The artists’ reception is on Sunday, September 9 from 2 to 4 pm.

Both of these artists—in their own unique and different works--use natural materials to reveal aspects of our identity, place, and history within the natural world.

B. Avery Syrig, who lives and works in Cortlandt Manor, NY and is a graduate of Alfred University, uses natural materials to explore questions relating to our human condition: How are we bound up in our lives? Do these binds help us grow? How do we grow within these structures? Her sculptures are placed within a ‘frame’ and pushed to their outermost points; experimenting with how far we can hold onto and yet defy structure.

To examine relationships with common ground and the order of nature, Leslie Madigan, who trained at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and lives and works in Hastings on Hudson, NY, gathers materials and creates environments in book forms, placing them in containers she calls journey jars. Each jar is identified by location and materials gathered at the site. The “spring bud” series builds contrast utilizing an altered book covered with materials from a specific site; these from the area surrounding her yard. Each work addresses the containment of time and the search for the idyll.

The Mooney Center Gallery is open Monday-Thursday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., and from Friday-Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For further information contact Castle Gallery Director Katrina Rhein at: (914)-654-5423 or email: krhein@cnr.edu.