Color as Space, Modes of Abstraction is a group exhibition featuring the work of Louisville based artists, Rita Cameron, Julia Coash, Alana Fitzgerald, and Catherine Rubin. These four artists are engaged in compelling color relationships,  and describe space and formal relationships like shape, form and movement in magnetic ways. There is a breadth of media used within this exhibition, such as collage, painting, paper weaving, and digital methods creating dynamic energy on each surface.

 

Artist Biographies

 

Rita Cameron

Rita received a Masters in Art from Morehead State University in 1994, and has created original oil paintings from her artist studio in Louisville, Kentucky, since 1995. Rita’s concentration is in creating original acrylic or oil paintings, with mixed media. Her work has evolved from rural landscapes to abstraction over the years. Nature influences her work, however, the overlaying of color transparencies is her main focus. Simply stated, Rita creates abstract art focused on color relations and their contrasts. An inspiration to creating abstract artwork, is her desire to explore  aspects of color theory and composition.  Rita also relies on the audible and emotional  influences music contributes to each piece, guiding the activity of line and movement within the oil painting.

 

Julia Coash

Julia Coash is an artist and educator whose interests in global studies, anthropology, and visual culture are important influences on her creative work and teaching. Her artwork has been exhibited in Cairo, Paris, Bermuda and throughout the United States. She taught and was Co-chair of the Dept. of Visual and Performing Arts and Director of the Master’s in Liberal Studies Program at Albertus Magnus College. She has also taught at Bermuda College and the American University in Cairo, Egypt. Coash received her MFA in Painting from James Madison University; her MSEd in Higher Education and BA in Ethnographic Photography (President’s Scholar Degree Program) both from Southern Illinois University. Her grants and residencies have included:  Residency with the Masterworks Museum in Bermuda; EBUKI Conference in the Solway Plain, England; research in Japan and Southeast Asia, Jen Tough Residency, Santa Fe, NM as well as grants from the C. Lowndes Foundation, Kentucky Foundation for Women Artists, and the Great Meadows Foundation.  Her works are held in public and private collections such as the Shapin-Nicholas Art Project Foundation, Masterworks Museum, Bermuda, and Southern Illinois University. She has been featured in recent exhibitions at: the Painting Center (New York City), 21c Museum Hotel (Louisville), Moremen Gallery, (Louisville), Shapin Nicholas Art Project (Louisville) as well as juried shows at SITE Brooklyn, Five Points Gallery (Torrington, CT) and the Ely Center for Contemporary Art (New Haven, CT).   

 

Julia’s Strata paintings are layered with scraps of recycled paper gleaned from her trash bin. Paint melds these layers of household detritus while transparent washes of color reveal the archeology of cultural debris. Exposed (or excavated) pentimenti leave shards of information to encourage the viewer to explore beneath the surface. The horizontal format encourages rhythmic travel across the picture plane and through the strata of her material life.

 

 

Alana Fitzgerald

Alana Fitzgerald is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans painting, drawing, sculpture, digital collage, installation, and social practice. Investigation the spaces between eco-feminism and relational aesthetics, her practice invokes speculative futures through vibrant and ritual intervention. She creates ephemeral gestures and sculptural offerings to nature, aiming to restore sacred relationships with land, ancestry, and the unseen forces of the world. Her educational gatherings-often held outdoors or in repurposed institutional spaces-bridge pedagogy, craft, and collective ritual.

 

Originally from New York, Fitzgerald earned her BFA from the Cooper Union in 2009 and is currently pursuing her MFA at the Hite Institute of Art + Design at the University of Louisville. She was an Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellow at Yale University’s Norfolk Program in 2008, where she began her investigation into outdoor installation and digital collage after lightning storm felled a huge old tree. Her work has bee exhibited in galleries, waterways, and forests across the U.S., including BRIC (Brooklyn), Cressman Center (Louisville), La MaMa Galleria, and the Shaker Village of Harrodsburg.

 

Catherine Rubin

Catherine Rubin is a Louisville based artist.  Her mentors include the late Una Verne Pigman, 3rd generation weaver from Knott County, Kentucky and Gunnild Gaarsdal, director of Skals Handarbedsskole Skals, Danmark. 

 

Catherine’s formal education includes Danish and American folk schools. She studied at Skals School of Arts in Skals, Danmark, under full scholarship, and earned her MFA from the Kolding Kunsthandvaerkerskolen in Danmark. She has continued her education through scholarships and assistantships at Anderson Ranch, Arrowmont and the Haystack Mountain School. 
 

Her work is included in the Gori Fabrik Collection in  Danmark, the Kentucky State Parks Collection, and the Morehead State University Permanent Collection.

 

Rubin’s work has evolved from her early interest in textiles to more recent explorations that toggle between painting, printmaking, cutting and shape making using digital and analog processes.