Fabrics, mixed media collages, embroideries and oil paintings from eight local and regional artists are on display at the Albany Center Gallery.
“Light Within Layers” explores the stories found within, diving into the subconscious to shed light on existence itself.
Tony Iadicicco is executive director of the downtown space. He says artists drew inspiration from their own experiences to create the pieces on display:
“Ideally each artist is creating a story or work that’s inspired by either personal experiences, ideas, thoughts or inspiration and it all comes from within their mind, so we actually pulled information from all of their statements and bios, to then actually have a show that is cohesive when people experience it,” he said.
Cyndy Barbone is one of the artists featured in the show.
She operates a loom on the second floor of her garage-turned-studio in Greenwich, New York, about an hour north.
She discovered her passion when she took art classes in high school:
"I actually wanted to be an architect my senior year but I didn’t have any portfolio but I just really enjoyed it so I did everything I could not to go into art but I just couldn’t help it," she said.
In the last 10 years she began using the traditional artform to comment on modern socio-political issues.
As she works, she recognizes the long history that women and weaving share.
Another artist in the show, Leah Frankel, also weaves fabric using a loom.
The Hartwick College art professor began weaving during the pandemic.
She had worked with textiles before, but primarily utilized physical space to create art installations:
“I think there’s a lot of things in common, a relationship with the work I did before I started primarily weaving with material, string, line, intersections and thinking about natural patterns,” she said.
One of her installations features bundles of chairs hung from the ceiling by rope.
In another installation, she created an outdoor display using white sheets, rope and an everyday backyard shed.
Frankel says her early weavings were primarily image-based, but over time she refined her process.
“I think now some of my weavings that are more experimental are more thinking about just the thread and what it’s doing, how tight it is, where it’s crossing another thread. But before looking at my earlier weavings, seeing it across the room you would just see it as an image, like an illustration or a picture. And so now it’s more about the tension or more physical properties of the string itself inside the frame,” she said.
Frankel says her pieces in the show offer insight into the process of weaving itself.
For Frankel, to be an artist is to be a creator:
“Not just a consumer, but you are processing things that you’re taking in, you’re not just taking in. But you are processing and spitting out reflections, reactions. That’s the creative process, it’s sort of generating and digesting everything around us whether that’s politics or pop culture or relationships or our natural world," she said.
The Albany Center Gallery’s “Light Within Layers” exhibit runs through February 28th.
A reception for the exhibit starts Friday at 5.
