from the chocolate show

In February I curated a group show at Catalyst Gallery of works inspired by the theme of chocolate, with about 30 works in a variety of media by 13 artists. We had a chocolate tasting at the reception, with Cacao Prieto's single-origin Dominican dark chocolate made in Red Hook, Brooklyn. We sold art and chocolate bars. Visit our gallery website to see photos of the works. After the show closed, I was offered the opportunity to install it in a storefront space in Cold Spring through March, where it is on view daily through 4/2 (in a slightly different iteration) at Robert A. McCaffrey Realty, 140 Main St. Though only 10  miles away, it is still the first 'traveling' exhibition I organized.

Here are my pieces from the show, some older, some new. I had been making these chocolate foil wrapper collages over the past year, which started as a way of 'sketching' with cutout shapes to find ideas for painting surfaces, so they were like studies, but I liked the surface of the foil, how the pieces looked alongside each other once I'd made a couple dozen, and the way it became a freehand design project. I am continuing to make them alongside my painting, and sometimes when I can't get myself going, I start putting pieces together and it unlocks something for me. I've been thinking more about this and how it fits into my other work, but I haven't found a way to describe it yet, or even to understand if it IS something.