NICK LENKER
HOLLY ROBERTS
EXHIBITION OPENINGS:
Nick Lenker, Holly Roberts, and Kathleen Clark
Candela Gallery is pleased to share three solo features by artists incorporating the photographic image from the perspectives of ceramics and painting. These exhibitions open Friday, March 15th, running alongside the 2024 NCECA ceramics conference (March 20 – 23) and closing Saturday, April 20th, 2024.
NICK LENKER
The front gallery will highlight the ceramics works by Philadelphia artist, Nick Lenker. Lenker applies found imagery to the surface of his geometric ceramic objects, which include references to his personal relationships through the visual language of video games and 3d modeling. The solo exhibition will include 35 works from the Philadelphia artist’s series IRL Objects. In this series, Lenker discusses identity and isolation in a world of avatars: where do the lines get drawn between the “irl” self and the virtual self? How does one influence the other? How do we seek real connection in a convenient, yet disconnected, landscape?
Lenker will be giving an artist talk about the series Thursday, March 21, at 6pm. RSVP here.
NICK LENKER
NICK LENKER
Nick Lenker holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University and a BFA from University of the Arts with a Ceramics focus. In 2021, he completed a residency at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia. In 2019, Lenker completed the courtyard commission for Project HOME’s most recent project, the Gloria Casarez Residence (an LGBT-focused homelessness-prevention project). In 2020, Lenker had a solo exhibition at the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum. He was included in the international exhibition of ceramic art for Art Macau in Macau, China, as well as in the Korean International Ceramics Biennale, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, in 2021. Lenker’s work is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Alfred University’s Alfred Ceramic Art Museum, New York, as well as in numerous private collections.
HOLLY ROBERTS
In the second gallery space, we share a fresh selection of inventory by mixed media artist, Holly Roberts. Roberts pulls fragments from photographs, intuitively collaging them and combining them with layers of varying muted paints to conjoin human and beast, mundane with the mystical. This latest selection of thirteen works, spanning twelve years of Roberts’ process, will include imagery of anthropomorphic creatures, mythical moments, and patchwork portraiture ranging in size from intimate to grand.
HOLLY ROBERTS
HOLLY ROBERTS
Holly Roberts, born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, earned an M.F.A. from Arizona State University, Tempe, in 1981. Her pieces are nationally and internationally exhibited and have been published in three monographs as well as a comprehensive catalog published by the Griffin Museum of Photography to accompany her retrospective there. She has twice received National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, as well as the Ferguson Grant from the friends of Photography. In 2024, Roberts will have a retrospective at The Museum of Photographic Art in San Diego (MOPA), and is planning a monograph of her work to accompany the exhibit. She currently lives and works in Corrales, New Mexico with her husband, Robert Wilson.
KATHLEEN CLARK
The back room will showcase images from Kathleen Clark’s book, The White House China, from the series of the same name. The photographic and mixed media reconstructions are based on the collection of dinnerware at the presidential residence in Washington, DC. Depictions of presidential china are based on the official state and family china collections of the presidents they represent or that of their predecessors.
“Aiming to correct certain historical omissions, I began this project in the spring of 2016 to explore the iconography and incongruity of an America established through violent conquest yet framed by elegant theory.”
KATHLEEN CLARK
Los Angeles based artist, Kathleen Clark, makes images exploring social justice, history and culture. A National Endowment for the Arts recipient, she has an MFA from the University of California, Irvine and has exhibited at Southern Exposure and Photoeye, San Francisco; COCA, Seattle; The Woman's Building, Los Angeles, Portland Center for the Visual Arts (PCVA) and The Portland Art Museum. The archives of her collective mixed media performance and installation works with The Girl Artists (1979-1988) are included in the collections of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute.
Her mixed media photography series, The White House China garnered the following awards: 2022 Lensculture Critics Choice 22, Winner; 2020 Critical Mass, Top 50 Finalist, Photolucida; 2020 Honorable Mention, Center Santa Fe Project Launch Grant; 2020 PX3, Prix de la Photographie Paris, Honorable Mention
Additionally, she founded and directed several Los Angeles photo and art galleries, was Photo Director at Los Angeles magazine and LA Weekly. She also served as a faculty member at USC and Art Center College of Design, where she continues as a visiting lecturer.
The back room will also include a selection of painted works by Willie Anne Wright, whose work can also be seen at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in their retrospective about the local artist, titled, Willie Anne Wright: Artist and Alchemist.
Willie Anne Wright holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University. She also studied photography at the Maine Photographic Workshops in Rockport, Maine, as well as the Visual Studies Workshops in Rochester, New York.
Among the institutions that have acquired her photography are the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia; Mariner’s Museum, Newport News, Virginia; Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, Florida; High Museum, Atlanta, Georgia; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana; Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, Alabama; Longwood University, Farmville, Virginia; University of Maine, Bangor, Maine; University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia; Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia; and the New Mexico History Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico.