Thursday, June 14, 2017
3:00 PM
Free and Open to the Public
Join us over some light refreshments and food and learn about Amy’s process and inspiration with her monoprint artworks. There will be catalogs for sale with a suggested donation of $5.99, all proceeds will go to the Art Center Sarasota. A catalog signing with the artist herself will occur after the talk.
On View May 25 – June 30, 2017, The Third Entity: Works by Amy Ernst and Amy Ragus
“The Third Entity” investigates the shared methods and subjects of Amy Ernst and Amy Ragus, two artists who work primarily in collage. Their works on paper include Ragus’ digital photo collages and Ernst’s monoprints and paper collage, as well as collaborative pieces created specifically for this exhibit.
“Both artists use methods that place separate pieces of imagery, texture, or pattern in a simultaneous image,” says Sarah Viviana Valdez, Art Center Sarasota’s exhibition coordinator.
“This layering creates unexpected tensions that transport the imagery into the realm of the surreal. They’re open to the fluidity of random combinations.” Valdez adds that the artists have been good friends since the 1970s.
Amy Ernst, a Sarasota resident, is the fourth generation of artists in her family; her great-grandfather Philip was a portrait painter; her grandfather Max was a surrealist master; and her father, Jimmy Ernst, was a leading abstract painter. Ernst makes a unique contribution to this profound family legacy with collages and monoprints. The artist notes that she works from within: “The imagery flows through meditative inspiration. Almost like automatic writing, it becomes and then begins to breathe life once the image is created. When I’m asked how long it takes for me to complete a work, I answer ‘a lifetime and a moment.’”
Amy Ragus’ photo-collages have been exhibited in one-person and group exhibits in the U.S. and abroad. Trained as a painter at Wellesley College (BA) and Columbia University (MFA), she turned to photography in the 1980s. She describes herself as, “a painter who uses photo fragments as brushstrokes on a larger field.” Ragus is a three-time MacDowell Fellow and has been an artist-in-residence at the Hermitage Artist Retreat in Englewood and other venues around the country. Most of the collages in this exhibit were shot in and around locations in Sarasota County.
Art Center Sarasota
707 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota FL
941-365-2032
artsarasota.org