Close Reading
A group show at the Locust Valley Library curated by Phil Falino
with Martha Wills Abbot, Isabel Bethencourt, Sarah Brenneman, Phyllis Falino, Phil Falino, Amanda Hunter, Anna Jekel, Dylan Musler, Mariah Rolle, Christiana Rifaat, Katherine Spencer & Colby Cannon Welsh
The 12 artists in this show read their surroundings and experiences quite closely. This is true whether they’re focused on the momentary visions that captivate their attention while they’re traveling overseas, the mediated landscape found on-screen in a video game, the psychological dynamics at play amongst familiar social milieus, the poetic meanings that emerge between disparate or minimal images in a collage or from the materiality of “found” objects, the expressive power latent in geometric forms, or the world of beauty they find in a planting of flowers.
“Close reading” emerged as a concept about 100 years ago in an attempt to establish a literary criticism focused without sentimentality on language and form. In his essay “The Perfect Critic”, T.S. Eliot argued for impersonal and empirical scrutiny of brief texts, not the closeness of intimacy, recognition, or a personal attachment to the object of study.
In contrast, poets and theorists both before and after Eliot have argued that it's effectively impossible to participate in a purely impersonal and empirical study of art or literature. Many writers and schools of thought (from Kant to Baudelaire to the phenomenologists and beyond) emphasize the importance of art as an experience. Look closely at the object, they say, but there’s even more to learn if you pay closer attention to how you are perceiving and understanding, within your own subjectivity.
And so it is with the artists in this show. They are reading both the details of the stimulus coming in—their noses against the page, so to speak, considering formal nuances such as quality of light, color, compositional arrangement, illustrative detail, energy, and how these influence the form of an image—while remaining sensitive to the feelings that arise in their own subjectivity: the reverberations, recognitions and intimate connections they feel while they are looking, weaving, sketching, framing, scraping, overpainting, applying thin washes of color, or snapping the shutter.
In his 1957 book The Poetics of Space, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard writes that poetic images reverberate in the mind of the open and enthusiastic reader: “I only read and re-read what I like … every reader who re-reads a work that he likes knows that its pages concern him.” Poetry, Bachelard says, “speaks to us,” stimulates our consciousness and keeps it from becoming “somnolent.” We read something that reverberates in us and we feel as if we could have written it ourselves. We should have written it, we think. In a way, we did write it, because we have had the same insight ourselves and it feels perpetually fresh and true. It is much the same with “reading” visual art. Perhaps some of the work in this show will speak to you in the same way.
Text by Phil Falino
Martha Wills Abbott is an artist and designer based in Brooklyn. Martha recommends reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Isabel Bethencourt is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Brooklyn. Isabel recommends reading Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner
Sarah Brenneman is an American artist based in West Orange, New Jersey working primarily in painting. Her overarching interest lies in abstraction as a universal language and she works primarily in acrylics on large and small canvases and panels as well as on more intimately sized works on paper with gouache, watercolor and pencil.
Brenneman received her BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, OH, and her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. Her work has been exhibited throughout the Tristate area, as well as internationally in Busan, South Korea, Reims, France, and St. Petersburg, Russia. Brenneman’s work is included in the permanent collections at the Aspen Contemporary Art Collection, the Cleveland Clinic, the Sprint Collection, and The Progressive Corporation. The artist is based in West Orange, New Jersey. Sarah recommends reading First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami
Phyllis Falino is an artist who has worked primarily in watercolor for over 70 years. Her subject matter ranges from still lives and flowers to landscape, animals, classical architecture, travel picturesques, ornate birth announcements and portraits of her extended family. She is based in Manhasset.
Phyllis Falino enjoys reading the local paper, books on watercolor, an illustrated book on John Singer Sargent or perhaps sight-reading a piece at the piano.
Phil Falino is an artist based in Brooklyn working mostly in painting and video. Phil is interested in the bases of aesthetic experiences, be they cultural, neurological, bio-evolutionary, phenomenological, or absolutely inscrutable. His most recent work is concerned with the music and biography of Beethoven. He grew up on Long Island. Phil recommends reading Magnificent Rebels by Andrea Wulf
Amanda Hunter is an artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. In 2014 she graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Painting and a concentration in Art History. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Chautauqua School of Art (2012) and the Vermont Studio Center (2017) and has exhibited in select group shows.
Amanda creates non-linear works that celebrate incidental moments and the poetics of happenstance. Through painting, she uses the language of collage and tricks of trompe l'oeil to translate one-to-one renderings of cut magazine scraps. Inspired by the history of scrapbooking and elementary coloring books, the surface of the artwork becomes a repository of intimately sized fragments puzzled together in search of new meaning. Amanda recommends reading Men and Apparitions by Lynne Tillman
Anna Jekel is an artist living in New York City. From Newton, MA, she grew up in a creative household where she was frequently drawing, crafting, taking photographs, and playing dress up. She graduated from Northeastern University with a B.S. in Theatre Production. After graduation, Anna held various positions as a costume designer, but started painting during pandemic lockdown. She has since dedicated herself entirely to painting and currently maintains a studio practice in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Recently she completed residencies at the School of Visual Arts and Field Projects Gallery and had a solo exhibition, also at Field Projects Gallery, entitled Untamed/Untold. Her work reflects her struggle with depression and explores gender, sexuality, and love as well as human connection to the natural world. Anna recommends C. P. Cavafy Complete Poems Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn
Dylan Musler is an artist based between upstate NY and NYC. Dylan is pursuing her MFA in Studio Art at Hunter College. Dylan recommends reading Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi
Mariah Rolle is a handweaver who lives and works on Long Island. Her art is inspired by the handwork of the old world and how closely aligned craft is to nature through materials. Mariah recommends reading 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez
Christiana Rifaat is a photographer based out of Warwick, NY. She first discovered her love for film photography while growing up here, in Locust Valley. Christiana recommends reading The Best American Nonrequired Reading by Various Authors, Series Edited by 826 National
Katherine Spencer was born in 1983 in Chestertown, MD. In 2012 she received a Post-Bacc in Fine Arts from Brandeis University. She graduated from Yale University in 2007 with a BA in Classics. She has exhibited work in group and solo shows in Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York, and was a resident at the Vermont Studio Center.
In 2022 she founded a non-commercial art space, The Tender, in West Concord, MA, and curates monthly shows of work by emerging contemporary artists there. She lives in Concord, MA and works in Framingham. Katherine recommends reading Keats by Lucasta Miller
Colby Cannon Welsh is a multidisciplinary visual artist working in combination of video, painting, sculpture, performance and installation. Key interests include social motivation, patterns of repetition, cultural phenomena, perceptions of nature in relation to technology use, environment health, and definitions of freedom. Cannon was born in the USA and immigrated to Australia at age 8; currently lives and works in New York. Colby recommends reading Topographia Hibernica by Blindboy Boatclub