The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC) plans four new shows this September.
Opening on Saturday, Sept. 21, the BWAC will feature the following exhibitions: Salon des Refusés, Ancestral Voices of the Americas and Beyond, Unseen Realities and Emergence: Self Discovery from Form to Flame, according to a press release.
Salon des Refusés 2024 is a reboot of the famed exhibition of art rejected by the French Academy of Fine Arts in their Paris Salon of 1863. Among the artists shown in the first Salon des Refusés of 1863 were many who would transform modern art in the following decades, including Manet, Courbet, Pissarro and Whistler.
This year the Brooklyn Museum announced an open call to Brooklyn artists for a fall show celebrating the museum’s 200th anniversary. Thousands of artists applied, many had to be rejected due to limited space. BWAC President Alicia Degener and co-curator Janet Morgan have opened our gallery to a selection of these artists, the press release said.
Ancestral Voices of the Americas and Beyond is a national juried show which aims to celebrate heritage, ancestry, culture, traditions and the stories of our diverse communities. The exhibit, curated by Latinx artist Tamavis D. Santiago, seeks to highlight artists who draw on their own diverse cultural backgrounds and family histories to reflect how spiritual and ancestral traditions have shaped contemporary society. The show will feature work in all media, traditional and experimental, to express the artist’s tales of migration, settlement, and the ideals that have shaped their lives.
Unseen Realities is the theme of this season’s BWAC members exhibition. Artists were invited to search within themselves to express and make visible that which is invisible; that is, to represent within their art what they consider to be those elements or characteristics which are inborn or inherited, and which have affected their lives. As with all of our member shows, viewers can expect an energetic display of a wide variety of imagery and media.
The solo exhibition area features Wendy Kusmaul Keeling, with a presentation of ceramics entitled Emergence: Self Discovery from Form to Flame. Keeling utilizes various firing methods, including wood firing, gas reduction and mixed media, to create primitive and instinctual figures that delve into the central themes of the female journey. Her forms confront grief, trauma and the need for protection, while striving towards self-discovery, empowerment and the reclamation of identity.
Keeling is a Hambidge Fellow and was recently awarded an Individual Artist Grant from South Arts. Her work has been exhibited across the United States and Japan and is part of the permanent ceramics collection at the Macon Museum of Arts and Sciences as well as a permanent public installation in Tokoname, Japan.
There is a reception with the artist on Saturday, Sept. 21 from 4:00pm to 6:00pm.
All four exhibitions open Saturday, Sept. 21, and will remain on display through Sunday, October 13.
The BWAC Gallery is located in the historic Beard and Robinson Stores at 481 Van Brunt St. in Red Hook. Gallery hours are 1:00pm to 6:00pm, weekends only, or by appointment.
