Expansion: Amanda Walker & Matthew Garrett: March 17 - April 17, 2022
Opening March 20, 3-6 PM

Two artists EXPAND their relationship with art-making in the self-titled show, Expansion.

For Matthew Garrett, expansion came by seeing the world through a new lens. "I rarely picked up a "real" camera during COVID, but I never put down my phone," states Matthew. "The ever-present camera serves as a notebook for anything and everything that I need to remember, whether that's a loved one's face, a shopping list, or an appealing collection of visual shapes and structures."
Early in his career, Garrett's work centered on finding the structure and form in his daily surroundings, but those formalist bounds loosened over time. Most recently, just by holding and using a different device to make photographs, that initial instinct returned.
These new images celebrate structure (and structures). They compress depth, reveal layers, and feel more succinct than previous efforts. "To me, they stand out as the brief, understandable phrase plucked from the din of a crowded event."

BIO: Matthew Garrett studied photography at Louisiana State University before completing his BFA at Mount Allison University in Canada. He then continued his education by working with Sean Kernan through most of the 1990's. Garrett is a founding member of Kehler Liddell Gallery and was one of the leaders of New Haven's Photo Arts Collective for its entire 20+ year lifespan.
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Matthew Garrett’s Instagram

Amanda Walker's relationship to expansion marks the intersection between intuition and mythology. "Expansion, she states, is the result of an ongoing interest in the fluid nature of mythology. I am fascinated by how people explain scientific and metaphysical questions like "how did we get here" and "why does a snake shed its skin," as well as how those explanations and practices reflect on the storytellers themselves." 

Walker reflects that "Although there are many similarities across cultures, there are also differences that reflect different environments and customs. The myths are often massive and operatic in their scope and creatively inspiring. I began to ask myself how I would explain the world if I hadn't grown up in the solidly protestant, white, middle-class culture of Texas. How would I view a dark stand of trees, illness, or the destructive nature of humankind?" This body of works stems from that question. 
These paintings also mark a transition in medium from her previous way of working, which was drawing with watercolor and sewing, to painting with acrylics. Working on unprimed canvas, I layer acrylic paint with collaged painted muslin. The raw canvas allows the colors to bleed into one another, not unlike watercolor, and the collage of painted muslin provides both depth and a hard edge. 

BIO: Amanda Walker was born in San Antonio and raised in Dallas, TX. A costume designer by training, the pandemic has meant more time to work on visual art, her first love. Influenced by history and myth as well as over 25 years designing costumes for theater, Amanda's work centers on narrative and the exploration of artifice. Amanda is a graduate of the Yale School Of Drama class of 2004 and has taught costume design at Mt. Holyoke College. She has been a member of Kehler Liddell Gallery since 2017. Currently, she lives in Bethany, CT, with her husband. 
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Shop: Amanda Walker Expansion
Web site: Amanda Kate Walker

Forest – Wander

Frank Bruckmann and Roy Money
April 21, – May 22, 2022
Opening: Sunday April 24, 2-5 PM

Artists blur the lines of self and trailblaze into the current exhibit at Kehler Liddell Gallery

Frank Bruckmann, oil painter and a founding member at KLG unveils an exhibition featuring objects he’s foraged and found to be profoundly compelling. Bruckmann has explored his favorite places in Edgewood Park and the West Rock Ridge, unearthing skulls of birds, forest creatures and edible mushrooms that are blown up in his studio to epic proportions “to reveal their integrity and to give them the respect that such beautiful things deserve.”  

In addition to these paintings of enormously valued foraged objects, Bruckmann has also hung forest landscape paintings “to give the viewer the sense of walking into the magical realm of discovery that our forests and parks offer.”  For instance, “the viewer follows a park trail that leads to a gnarly cooper beech with complex root systems and mycelial networks crowned with seasonal fungi OR the soil of a decomposing stump which spurts forth a cluster of suedelike textured, neon orange Laetiporus sulphureus, aka, chicken of the woods.”  “All these discoveries have earned my time and attention; I’m there, stationary in the woods, knowing that people, their kids, their dogs will pass by me, the weather and the light will change, and I will come away with this tableau, this scrap of life; an experience.”  Bruckmann’s work is painted with top-notch oil paints, on hand-stretched finest quality canvas or panels to retain it’s value for generations.

Roy Money, photographer, presents a series of framed photographs, comprising tree environments that are both spiritually and physically close to home. Money marvels that he “has not yet found a better place for my camera work than wandering in the woods. I have strayed near and far, as far as I can go, but these pictures are from a neighborhood park.” 

One portion of Money’s oeuvre intentionally lacks focus as it “evolved out of a chance event ten years ago, when I followed a conventional exposure of birch trees with one involving intentional camera movement. I found the result more commensurate with my experience and was astonished. In the case of these pictures, the subject matter is blurred because of the camera movement. I  think of the blurred boundaries as a displacement of my animation by the subject back to the source. There is no sharp separation between us as it has occupied me. The blur expresses my acknowledgment of its capacity to move me and a bow to its presence.”  

Money’s remaining pieces in Forest – Wander, also reveal trees and forest, but these are shot in a “still photograph” style, his more traditional practice.  All of Money’s archival digital photographs are surrounded by brushed silver frames, offering simple and clean lines.

Biographies: 
Frank Bruckmann studied at the DuCret School of the Arts, NJ, Arts Students League, NY and Paris American Academy, France. He has instructed painting at Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT, Silvermine Art School, New Canaan, CT and Rowayton Arts Center, Darien, CT. He has won awards for his work such as the John Slade Ely House Members Exhibit Award, The Weiss Sisters Award and Elizabeth Pragst Memorial Award.  He has shown at many regional galleries, including Silvermine Gallery, New Canaan, CT and Inverary Gallery, Villanova, PA; Lupine Gallery, Monhegan, ME. His work is in numerous public and private collections globally.  Visit fbruckmann.com

Roy Money completed an MFA in photography at the University of Delaware and taught photography at several schools before and after the MFA. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows at the Tennessee Historical Commission, Nashville, TN, Janvier Gallery, Newark, DE, John Hancock Center in Chicago, IL, Hamden Hall Country Day School, European Café, Artspace, New Haven Lawn Club, Silk Road Art Gallery, West Cove Gallery, and George St Gallery in New Haven, Mary Daly Art Gallery, Madison, CT, Barratt Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, Ridgefield Art Center, Ridgefield, CT, Weir Farm, Wilton, CT,  PhotoPlace Gallery  Middlebury, VT, and  Darkroom Gallery in Essex Junction, VT. Visit www.roymoney.com