On view September 5 – October 28, 2017
‘Rii’
An Installation of Paintings
Art reception on September 9th Saturday 6 – 8:30 pm
EBK Gallery [small works].
218 Pearl St.
Hartford, CT
‘Rii’, the title of this work is simply the plural form of rio – the Venetian name for the small narrow canals that run beneath the 400 or so bridges connecting the many smaller Venetian islands.
‘Rii’ is not meant to depict any particular small canal, just as its 90+ interrelated component parts are not designed to act as singular representations, but rather to magnify and insinuate aspects of the local Venetian landscape.
I have travelled many times to Venice and the surrounding islands. While on sabbatical in 2015 I was fortunate to have a studio that over looked a small canal in the district of Cannaregio. I spent a great deal of time observing the interplay of pattern, light, and color as uniquely reflected in this small canal. The relative nature of color — as exemplified and magnified by the shifting patterns upon the water created an environment where nothing remained static, nor as it first appeared to be. I wondered what was below these patterns.
What lies beneath the surface of things has always intrigued me. This curiosity seems to have permeated my work over the past forty years — metaphorically, or quite literally. However, after sitting at that window, I realize that I am interested in what lies both below and at the surface.
My hope is that the shifting surfaces of ‘Rii’ would engage the viewer’s peripheral field until a moment of focus upon a single panel might bring the viewer’s attention from the reflective surfaces of the encaustic medium directly through its layers until floating back to the surface.
A note on encaustic:
Encaustic is a wax based paint composed of beeswax, resin and pigment. It is kept molten on a heated palette and applied directly to a prepared surface with a brush. Multiple layers of encaustic are fused through the heating process.
Rii
2017
encaustic on panel
25’ x 8’10”
photograph: John Polak
click on an image to enlarge or forward through
Felice Caivano is a visual artist living in western Massachusetts. At the center of her work is an interest in what lies beneath the surface of things. This curiosity has embedded itself in her art for nearly forty years – metaphorically or physically. Her practice has evolved from a deep need to make things, driven by a very specific set of ideas. However, in recent years, what Caivano refers to as ‘informed intuition’ has crept into her process.
Ms. Caivano has been a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome, Italy, and an Artist-in-Residence at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy. Among her awards she has received a Fellowship in Sculpture from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and a Samuel H. Kress Foundation grant to attend the workshop, Working Methods of Early Italian Tempera Painters, at the University of Delaware. She has presented numerous artist lectures and exhibited her work nationally.
She is Chair of the Visual Art Department at Holyoke Community College, Holyoke, MA and Fine Arts Curator at Trinity College, Hartford, CT. She earned a BFA from the Hartford Art School, and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Gallery Sheet and Pricing PDF
CV / Resume
(artist name and resume here)