For Immediate Release For Further Info, please contact Pamela Siemon 203.263.3449

Fenn Gallery Announces “Light & Shadow”

Woodbury, CT - Fenn Gallery’s next exhibit, “Light & Shadow”, features limited edition mezzotint prints by Carol Wax and painted wood wall sculptures by Marlene Sloan. The show runs from Dec. 13 - Jan. 28, 2007. The public is invited to the Artist Reception on Sat., Dec. 16th from 4-6 pm.

Recognized as a “virtuoso printmaker and art historian” by Holland Cotter of the New York Times (Mar.13, 2005), Carol Wax is widely recognized as one of the most gifted and innovative artists working in the mezzotint manner today. Mezzotint, derived from the Italian “mezzo” for half and “tinto” for tone, is a tonal engraving process which begins with a black background from which tones are deducted through burnishing. It’s akin to a method of drawing in which a white sheet of paper is blackened with charcoal, and the image is “drawn” with an eraser. Considered the most difficult and physically demanding of print processes, mezzotint was invented in 1642, and became widely popular as a means of reproducing portraits painted by famous artists.

Wax capitalizes on the dramatic lighting effects capable with the mezzotint process for rendering mechanical objects from past eras - sewing machines, movie projectors, typewriters, electric fans and the like. Her glowing, intense imagery includes velvety blacks and a wide range of intermediate grays which enable a subtle progression from light to dark. Wax accentuates the way in which old machine parts imitated human forms; hinges for joints, levers for limbs, fan blades shaped like ears. The mirroring of human or animal forms often endows Wax’s subjects with primitive mask-like qualities that she exaggerates to infuse the inanimate with the anima. Often, her mechanical subjects take on a humorous, cartoonish quality.

For example, the typewriter in “Remington Return” is rendered as a flat surface. The appearance of depth is achieved purely through manipulation of light and shadow. While the basic shadow forms are faithfully reproduced as observed, artistic license was taken to enhance some forms and to bring out the “Edward Scissorhands” characteristics of the typewriter’s moving parts.

Wax’s mezzotint prints are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Philadelphia and Brooklyn Museums of Art, among others. Among the honors her work has garnered are The American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Louise Nevelson Award for Printmaking,1994, and over thirty prizes in international competitions. In addition to mezzotint workshops and lectures presented throughout the country, she is the author of The Mezzotint: History and Technique, 1990;1996. Earlier this year, the Herakleidon Museum in Athens, Greece exhibited Wax’s complete body of prints, documenting her first 30 years of printmaking.

Also on display are assemblages in wood by Stamford artist Marlene Sloan. Sloan collects wood fragments of all types and then composes them in unusual and innovative ways. The previous contexts of the wood fragments are hidden by the fact that everything is painted in one color; either flat black, white, silver or gold. This takes away their individuality and stresses their new function as part of a larger whole, and allows the interplay of light and shadow to accentuate form and surface. The viewer can dwell on the transformed objects which have been reborn as art, or enjoy the over all texture and harmonious feel of the whole work. Sloan received her Master of Arts at New York University. ###