Saturday, December 26, 2015

Holiday Hours by Appointment through Jan. 3rd

Sara Nightingale Gallery will be open sporadically through Jan. 3rd and available for viewings by appointment. Please email sara@saranightingale.com or call/ text 631-793-2256 to schedule an appointment.

Perry Burns, 3rd Eye Bullseye, oil on canvas, 36" x 36"

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Cara Enteles, Mirrors in the Garden, Opening Saturday, Nov. 14th, 5- 7 p.m.



Cara Enteles, Gone Wild, Oil on acrylic panel, 48” x 43"

Sara Nightingale Gallery is pleased to present Cara Enteles, Mirrors in the Garden, opening Saturday, November 14th, from 5 - 7 p.m.

In this selection of recent paintings Cara Enteles explores the impossibility of symmetry, order and exactness in nature. Drawing from Shakespeare’s line in Hamlet, “art holds a mirror up to nature”, she seeks to illustrate the dichotomy between organic, natural growth and the human gardener's attempt to control it. An avid gardener herself, Enteles splits her time between New York City and a home in the Catskills where access to the surrounding wilderness informs her work.

Enteles has long been addressing environmental issues in her work - oil spills, colony collapse disorder, and fracking are some examples - and her paintings allude to circumstances in which human activity threatens nature. Yet the work is neither sententious nor moralistic. In fact, the casual observer will find a collection of beautiful paintings of plants and animals, albeit with an unusual sheen in the surrounding water or an emphasis on “alternative pollinators” should the honey bees become extinct.

Because she paints on industrial supports, aluminum sheets and layers of plexiglas often bolted to the wall, Enteles’ work contains an inherent tension between the organic subject matter depicted and the materials with which they are constructed. Birds, butterflies, bees and flowers set against a backdrop of reflective plexiglas literally hold a mirror up to nature, while gold-toned plexiglas backings on her bee paintings evoke pollen. The transparency that plexiglas affords provides a means for three-dimensional representation - Enteles paints on both sides of the plexiglas - further reinforcing the realistic and imperative nature of her concerns, while also acknowledging the implicit contradiction that plexiglas is itself a man-made, petroleum based product.

Enteles received her BFA from Parsons School of Design. She exhibits internationally and her work is held in private and public collections including Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Microsoft and WilmerHale. Her work has been shown at Wave Hill, The HVCCA and The Islip Art Museum. This will be her third solo exhibition at the gallery.

The exhibition will run through December 14th.

For information or more images contact Sara Nightingale at 631-793-2256

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Stephanie Brody-Lederman, Out Gallivanting, Opens Saturday, Nov. 14th, 5 - 7 p.m.



Sara Nightingale Gallery and guest curator Karyn Mannix are pleased to present Stephanie Brody-Lederman, Out Gallivanting, opening Saturday, November 14th from 5 - 7 p.m.

Stephanie Brody-Lederman’s paintings and mixed media works combine her observations and memories of visual occurrences with text gleaned from conversation, poetry and other sources. The works depict seemingly quotidian experiences and impressions of everyday life, and, indeed, their inspiration derives from simple objects or events such as a recollection of a woman’s scarf, a label on a can in a grocery store, or snippets of overheard conversations. Yet Brody-Lederman’s personal narratives are imbued with emotionally charged undertones that generate “impressionistic portraits of uncertain psychic atmospheres”*. It is this ambient concern for the mysteries of human nature and affairs of the heart that lends a universal context to the work.

It has been said that no two people can truly share a memory, even if the actual experience is shared, because each person forms his or her own version of what actually transpired. Likewise, an individual may have several versions of a private memory, and these can change and evolve over time. In theory, this feature of the human experience seems alienating, but it gives life to Brody-Lederman’s work as each viewer projects his or her own memories and emotions onto the canvasses, engaging in a dialogue with the artist’s experiences as well as their own.

Stephanie Brody-Lederman has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards and has exhibited internationally at galleries and museums, including OK Harris, Musee Bourdelle in Paris, The Museum of Modern Art, NY and The Cooper Hewitt. Her work is held in public collections such as Tate London, The Brooklyn Museum and MoMa, NY.

There will be an opening reception at Guild Hall in East Hampton for her solo exhibition, Dancing with Truffaut, on Saturday, October 24th, 4 - 6 p.m. The exhibition will run through Jan. 3rd.

On Saturday, Nov. 14th Brody-Lederman will give a talk about her work at Guild Hall, East Hampton at 11:30 a.m.

For more information and images contact Sara Nightingale (631)-793-2256 sara@saranightingale.com or Karyn Mannix (516) 318-0000 karynmannix@optonline.net.

*Edward M. Gomez, Art & Antiques, September 2012

image: Stephanie Brody-Lederman, In Perfect Bloom, oil and acrylic on canvas, 48" x 48"

Sunday, September 6, 2015

Selected works from True Confections, Monica Banks and Christa Maiwald










                                          email sara@saranighitngale.com for more details

Friday, July 31, 2015

True Confections Opens Thursday, Aug. 6th, 6 - 8 p.m.



Sara Nightingale Gallery
is pleased to present True Confections, Monica Banks, Christa Maiwald opening Thursday, Aug. 6th from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. The exhibition runs through Sept. 3rd.

True Confections is a multimedia exhibition featuring sculpture, installation, photography, embroidery, performance, and edible sculpture. As mothers who are responsible for nurturing others and maintaining domestic life, Christa Maiwald and Monica Banks explore the surreal and emotional aspects of feeding others, honoring occasions, and witnessing life's transitions inside and outside the home. The artists share an ethos in their separate practices which reflects Flaubert’s declaration that “We are bourgeois in our lives so we can take chances in our work."

Monica Banks’ sculptures of miniature porcelain figures—humans as well as bees, mice, birds and teacups—depict organic forms on the threshold between life and death or figures who are suffering. The tiny scale of the works acknowledges the larger universe we inhabit and brings history and world events into the present moment. In True Confections, Banks creates porcelain cakes and cake stands as pedestals for her sculptures. The cakes are an homage to her experiences, which include the joys and playfulness of domesticity as well as the cruelty of nature, the despair of loss. Other works included in the exhibition are her swings, "Abject Pottery", which are playground swings crafted to hold miniature distressed dinnerware, a tribute to the fleeting nature of childhood.

Christa Maiwald will exhibit work from her ongoing Landscape Cake Series, in which she bakes elaborate cakes, then photographs them in nature. She will also present a cake performance at the opening reception. These performances, now becoming a convention in her practice, investigate the ritual of sharing her freshly baked cakes/confections with strangers. They also explore themes of consumption, ephemerality and craft, as well as gender roles (baking has long been associated with women’s work—as has embroidery, the other medium that Maiwald pursues with prolific obsession). The act of an artist cutting up his or her work and disseminating it among a crowd is subversive, but also generous. Slices of cake are given for free to willing participants, bypassing the traditional monetary exchange and commercialism associated with the art world. The exhibition will also include work from Maiwald’s hand-embroidered Cat Series, in which cats and humans engage in activities ranging from the sweet to the feral.

Monica Banks was born in in New York City and lives and works in East Hampton NY. She has exhibited sculpture at White Box in New York City, The University Museum of Contemporary Art at U Mass Amherst, The Carriage House at the Islip Art Museum in Islip NY, the Catherine Konner Sculpture Park in West Nyack NY, The Fells in Newbury New Hampshire, The Center for Architecture in New York City, The Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington NY and other venues. She created "Faces: Times Square", a block-long sculpture which stood in Times Square from 1996-2009, for which she won an award from The Public Design Commission of the City of New York. Her permanent public works are located in the Bronx, Binghamton NY, and Charlotte NC. She has been exhibiting sculpture and doing site-specific installations since 1989.

After earning her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1973, Christa Maiwald moved to New York, where she established herself as a video artist with solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Anthology Film Archives, Holly Solomon Gallery, and Franklin Furnace, among others, and was included in the 1979 Whitney Biennial. After a detour into screenwriting, children’s book illustration, cooking school, restaurant work, and starting a family, she resumed her career as an artist with paintings, sculpture, installations, and, since 2000, hand embroidery and photography. In addition to a one-artist exhibition at Guild Hall in 2013, her embroideries and photographs have been shown in solo and group shows internationally, including at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City, Galerie Houg in Lyon, France, the Parrish Art Museum, the Heckscher Museum of Art, and galleries in New York and on the East End. She has lived in East Hampton full time since 1985.

For more information or images contact Sara Nightingale at sara@saranightingale.com

There will be an artists’ talk with coffee and confections in the gallery on Sunday, Aug. 16 at 11:00 am.

Images: Top: Monica Banks, Tribute, porcelain, 10 1/4" x 7" x 7"
Bottom: Christa Maiwald, Sky Cake (Angel Food), archival pigment print, 16" x 20", edition 5

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Reinventing the Helm closes Monday, Aug. 3rd




Sara Nightingale Gallery is pleased to present Reinventing the Helm, June 6th - Aug. 3rd.

The artists in this invitational group exhibition examine the genres of traditional maritime and marine art using ship portraiture, seascapes, novels, folklore and ancient myths about the sea as inspiration. The obvious and straightforward have been mostly, but not altogether, thwarted here in deference to an updated and contemporary view of all things nautical. One painting by Perry Burns, whose swerving lines suggest the surface of the sea, was literally turned on its side and renamed “Waterfall” - a good metaphor for what one can expect from the exhibition.

While not specifically divided into categories, the works address several themes such as “lost souls”, meteorological events, marine life, nautical terminology and even edible “fruits of the sea”.
Seagull sculptures by Rossa Cole, fabricated from the plastic six-pack holders that endanger marine life, hover over a large scale sculpture of a wooden boat’s ribs by Simone Douglas. Peter Buchman’s rubbings/ stencils of manhole covers juxtapose one from New Orleans with one from Santa Monica, implicitly reminding us of the potential impact of too much or too little water. Dalton Portella’s White Water super-imposes images of multiple storms in one composite photograph, yielding a surreal depiction of waves, clouds and sunlight which, according to one viewer, “looks almost biblical”. A lighthouse made of reclaimed lumber by David McQueen aims its beacon through a gallery window toward the ocean, its light a guide for someone trying to return.

The list of artists includes those with international representation and museum exhibition history, as well as emerging artists from Brooklyn, Wynwood, the West Coast and Ireland. One can expect a plethora of boats, ships, sharks, clouds and even a cake, as well as characters who may or may not be schooled in the art of helmsmanship.

Reinventing the Helm opens on Saturday, June 6th from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. and runs through Aug. 3rd.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Conditional/ Return, Opening Friday, April 17, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.


Sara Nightingale Gallery is pleased to present Australian born, New York based, artists Zev Jonas and Simone Douglas, Conditional/ Return, Opening Friday, April 17, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. The exhibition investigates the kinships, as well as the disconnects, between people and their environments. Jonas’ contemplative photographs examine solitude in nature, while Douglas’ nautical sculpture - a reference to her upcoming large scale desert installation - suggests a reunion with the land.

Jonas’ images, taken from his ongoing series, The Condition, explore the tension between isolation and connection, while considering the relationship we have with our surroundings. The work focuses on the beauty and sensuality of seclusion, as well as the search for a sense of purpose and place. Jonas shoots his work on film and presents it with minimal alteration. His images are untitled, undated and non-location-specific, so viewers can interact with the images with no preconceived notions.

Zev Jonas’ work has been exhibited in the US and Internationally. His solo exhibitions include a presentation at the Australian Consulate, New York timed with the release of a limited edition monograph, a copy of which is housed in the Rare Printed Collection of the State Library of Victoria in Australia. His 2011 solo show, Passage, in NY was a “Notable Show of the Year” in NY Photo Review.


Douglas’ Return encompasses work made over a decade of engagement with landscape and environment. It draws from two of her ongoing projects, Promise and Eternal Return. The former is based on a story of a search for the inland sea in the Australian desert; an explorer sails into the desert looking for the sea and finds himself in the ancient seabed. Douglas is constructing a large scale ship made of ice scheduled for installation in the Australian desert in July 2016. It’s mass has been calibrated so that it will take one month to melt completely, leaving in its wake a trace of red native wildflowers, watered by the melting boat. Eternal Return is a body of photo-based works that “hold night and day, the moon and the sun within one moment of extended time.”

Simone Douglas’ practice includes photography, video, sculpture, installation and site-specific works. She is committed to environmental legacy, intercultural facilitation and making art that serves as a medium to activate key issues of our time. Douglas has exhibited in museums internationally and her works are held in the public collections of the V&A Museum, London, the Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Douglas is the director of the MFA Fine Arts Program at Parsons The New School for Design and serves on the editorial committee of Project Anywhere. She is an honorary faculty member (Research) at The University of Sydney and has curated exhibitions at major international cultural institutions.

The exhibition will run from April 17 - May 17. For more information or images contact Sara Nightingale, sara@saranightingale.com

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Entitled, Opening Friday, March 20, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.

Sara Nightingale Gallery presents Entitled, Opening Friday, March 20, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.

You are. Everyone is.

Please join us for a special toast at 6:45 p.m. EDT on Friday, March 20.

Perry Burns
Cara Enteles
Christa Maiwald
Steve Miller
Kelly Neidig 
William Pagano
Maggie Simonelli
Mike Solomon
Ross Watts
Gus Yero

To request a digital catalogue, please email sara@saranightingale.com


Monday, January 19, 2015

Works on canvas by Steve Miller


Conditions on the Flow, 40" x 64", mixed media on canvas (top)
One Way or the Other, 40" x 82", mixed media on canvas (bottom)

Thursday, January 1, 2015