Rodger Stevens Reviews Flip!

It's nice when someone else can tell you about how fabulous Like the Spice is. Rodger Stevens has reviewed Flip for WAGMAG and we couldn't agree with his opinion of us more.


“Flip”

Like the Spice
2008-03-04

Who would have thought that Rachel Beach’s architectonic reliefs and Nora Herting’s rollicking cheerleaders would make such a lovely couple? Evidently the good eyes at Like the Spice did, and, boy, were they right. Beach and Herting both take a reductive approach to their respective subjects, but rather than boiling the flavor out of them, they’ve distilled their complexities into singular, powerful ids. Beach’s sculptures, with their arresting silhouettes and precious interiors, are descendents of architectural design motifs – moldings, cornices, banisters, and the like – but they have evolved into sensual, almost living, creatures, with luscious contours and richly pigmented skins. Herting’s happy body clusters are reverse engineered. Aggregated figures and parts of figures that started as players in choreographed routines are here removed from their former public lives and presented as symbols or schematics of interaction frozen against static patterns. The effect is monumentalizing in a way: cheerful leapers take on the gravity of war memorials. But like Beach’s, her process too concentrates the vitality of a big theme into highly enriched little morsels, gobble-able in an instant but packed with sustenance. Taken together these artists offer a ravishing spectrum of animate form.

—Rodger Stevens

See the original posting at WAGMAG.

Bridge Art Fair, 2008

Please join Like the Spice at Bridge Art Fair
Thursday, March 27 – Sunday, March 30, 2008
The Waterfront,
222 12th Avenue, New York
Booth 6



Showcasing the work of

Anna Druzcz:
Born 1979 in Poland, Anna Druzcz studied photography at Ryerson Polytechnic University in toronto and earned her masters degree in fine art photography from the Rochester institute of technology. There, using a combination of photographic and digital techniques she built her current visual methodology. Her most recent series features digitally composed photographic landscapes cobbled together from organic and synthetic sources.

Rachel Beach:
Was born in London, On Canada in 1975. She received her MFA from Yale University in 2001 and BFA from NSCAD University in Halifax, Canada in 1998. Beach's works have been described as " tough, precise and disciplined with a hard edged cheeriness" and "steeped in a pleasant pluralism, bound by a shared material intelligence". Beach lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.


Liz Brown:
{b.1977} earned her MFA from the Mount Royal Graduate Program at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004. Her subjects are intended to be amusingly romantic, assembled from the ideal world that is delivered by traditional media. Her goal is a work that exists as itself, rather than a revelation of the thoughts other process of the artist.

Jason Bryant:
{b.1976} grew up in rural North Carolina. Receiving his BFA at East Carolina University, he then earned his MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art. Bryant's unique approach to poplar culture shows in his lavishly detailed, pristinely finished drawings and canvasses, reinvesting their stars with a bit of privacy, a bit of agency.

Nora Herting:
Nora Herting received her BFA from the University of New Mexico in 1999 and her MFA from Ohio State University in 2005. Nora has showed her photographs, installations and performance works across the country and internationally. She was an artist in residence at the McColl Center for the Visual Arts and was a winner of the Vermont Studio Artist Scholarship both in 2007. This is Nora’s first show at Like the Spice.

Eric LoPresti:
{b.1971}, lives and works in New York. In 1993 he received a BA in Cognitive Science from the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY, then in 2002, his MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art, Maryland Institute, Baltimore MD. His imagery is often made as allusions to hidden forces, the world that exists beside us, and beyond our control.

Dean Goelz:
Dean Goelz graduated from The Maryland Institute
College of Art in 2001 where he earned his Bachelor in
Fine Arts. He works as a freelance artist doing
anything from design work to commissioned sculptures
while operating a successful mural and faux finishing
business. His work has shown nationally as well as
internationally. He lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.


Chadwick Whitehead
Born in Greece in 1977, Chadwick Whitehead, grew up an American in Michigan. He attended collage in chicago and Tokyo, receiving his MFA in 2006 from the School of Visual Arts. Whitehead currently lives in Brooklyn, making image filled with distinct strokes, narrative and character driven marks. Through printmaking, he has found a gauge for reducing forms and color.

Allison Edge:
Allison Edge lives in Brooklyn, New York. Originally hailing from Charlotte, North Carolina, she received her BFA in painting from the University of Georgia (1997) and her MFA in painting from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (2000). Primarily working in oil on canvas and watercolor on paper, her works captures the reoccuring themes of youth worship and idealized beauty, influenced by fashion advertising, boyfriends/friends, Pre-Raphaelites and growing up in the 80’s. Allison’s work has been exhibited at Caren Golden Fine Art (NYC), Jack the Pelican Presents (NYC), Lincart (SF) and Lump (Raliegh, NC), among others.

Ross Racine:
Born In Montreal (quebec), Canada, Ross Racine currently lives and works in New York. His digital prints are drawn completely freehand, on the computer. Joined together the pieces reveal familiar opposites of handmade and digital, organic and mechanical, subjective and technological, physical and virtual.

Brian LaRossa:
Was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He received in Master's degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2002. His digital drawings are a careful arrangement of many smaller instinctual compositions. LaRossa's work is influenced by the equivalence of energy and matter, biological differentiation and conversion, the nature of moderation, and the superficiality of time.

Abby Goodman:
Influenced by consumer culture, mass media, and contemporary society, Abby has created a world of fantasy, calling attention to the artifice which occurs when the lines between fact and fiction are blurred. From installations of painted-on newspaper clippings, to embroidered canvases, to welded steel, her technique is as ecclectic as her subject matter. Ms. Goodman's work has a dominant personality marked by humor and humanity ties each piece together, making them cohesive as a group, but individually strong.

It Took Four Years To Arrive But Man, It Was Worth It

How was your Leap Day? You know what would have made it better? If you had been here to join our Leap Day Dinner, which took place on February 29th! Of course, if you were, you'd probably still be sleeping off that delicious food. Really, was that chicken cooked by angels or what?



The dinner was brought to us by Scottadito Osteria Toscana Restaurant. The Scottadito is committed to supporting sound and sustainable practices in the growing and harvesting of our food resources. Their meats are antibiotic- and hormone-free; their seafood is either wild or certified organic. Their dairy, flour, eggs, sugar and produce are certified organic and locally-farmed. What this means is that the food was something that could make a grown man weep. Honestly, everything was good, but we just can't say enough about that chicken!



Accompanied by the exquisite flower arrangements of Stella Goodall, we enjoyed talking to Rachel Beach and Nora Herting, the artists of our current exhibit, Flip, which runs until March 30th. If you haven't, come and see!



Rachel talked about what influenced her work, and how she melds 2D and 3D, making sculptures that draw you in the moment you see them. She told us about her early influences, including her time at Yale, as well as the inspiration she found in minimalist painter/sculptor Frank Stella. Then Rachel spoke so passionately about the joys of the artistic community in Martha, Texas she made us begin to consider a Like the Spice field trip!





Nora was our second honored guest, and she was just as terrific. Nora surprised some of us with the story of how she had worked as a JC Penny's Photo Studio employee, but then surprised all of us with the explanation of WHY she'd taken the job. All of this fed into a discussion of her cheerleader pieces, including a presentation that put the beauty of her pieces into a new framework. Nora was just as much fun as her work would imply, and it was great to have her.



Miss out? Don't make the same mistake twice! Remember that Like the Spice does a monthly dinner each and every month. Our next one is coming on March 28th, so save the date! We'll be sure to get you more details as we get closer. And did we mention the chicken already?