Artistic Continuum At Ashawagh Hall

New York City-based Berry Campbell Gallery will present “Continuum,” a special exhibition at Ashawagh Hall in Springs, East Hampton, featuring works by local contemporary artists represented by Berry Campbell: Eric Dever, Mike Solomon, Susan Vecsey, and Frank Wimberley.

Berry Campbell represents many artists connected to the East End community. Started in the 1960s by the Abstract Expressionists, the “Springs Invitational” exhibition, hosted by Ashawagh Hall, is hailed as a cornerstone event of the local community. To further this tradition, Berry Campbell is featuring four of the gallery’s contemporary artists who continue this legacy by exhibiting at this historic venue.

Over the last decade, Eric Dever has pursued intensely focused investigations into methods and materials, creating works which gradually have evolved into sensitively executed and intimate works of art. Dever was born in Los Angeles, California and received his Bachelor of Arts degree from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks. He moved to the East Coast to study at New York University where he received his Master of Arts.

For more than a decade, Eric Dever purposefully redacted color, using a limited palette: white for four years, white and black for two years, followed by white, black and red. “I found myself taking cues from flowers as they blossomed and color entered my paintings.” However, instead of exploring just one color at a time, Dever embraced the entire spectrum. Initially he used mostly mixed tints, but with this epiphany of color, he began creating new mixed hues.

Mike Solomon studied at the Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting in Maine (1975) and continued his studies at the Yale Summer School of Music and Art, Norfolk, Connecticut (1978). He spent the rest of 1978 in New York City studying independently with artists Ray Parker and David Budd. In 1979, Solomon earned his Bachelor of Arts at the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he studied with Charles Garabedian and John McCracken. In 1989, Solomon earned his Master of Fine Arts from Hunter College, New York. Additionally, he served as studio assistant to John Chamberlain and Alfonso Ossorio. Mike Solomon recently participated in the Parrish Art Museum’s “Artist Stories from the Pandemic.”

Susan Vecsey lives and works in both New York City and East Hampton. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Barnard College, Columbia University, New York and her Master of Fine Arts from the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, studying under Graham Nickson. In 2012, Vecsey was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome.

Vecsey is currently included in the exhibition “blue.” curated by museum director, Dr. Charles A. Riley II, for the Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn, New York. This group exhibition includes works by Jeffrey Gibson, Helen Frankenthaler, Sean Scully, and Henri Matisse. Vecsey’s work will become the museum’s most recent acquisition.

Frank Wimberley, who lives in Sag Harbor, feels abstract painting is a continuous adventure. Born in 1926, the artist is a well-known presence in the art scene on the East End and an important figure in African-American art since the 1960s. Acclaimed for his dynamic, multi-layered, and sophisticated paintings, Wimberley is among the leading contemporary artists to continue in the Abstract Expressionist tradition.

What has always excited him is to take the theme or feeling from the very first stroke he lays down and follow it to its particular conclusion, “very much like creating the controlled accident.” His improvisational method is akin to jazz, an important part of his life and a theme in his art. Despite the spontaneity of his process, Wimberley makes each decision deliberately, respectful of what emerges and where it is going; he enjoys the surprise of arriving at definitions that seem to come to life on their own. Similarly, his works engage the viewer in their strong physicality and unpredictability as well as in their insights into the ways that pictorial experiences are perceived and understood.

The Studio Museum in Harlem recently acquired a work by Frank Wimberley for its permanent collection

Ashawagh Hall is located at 780 Springs Fireplace Road in Springs, East Hampton. “Continuum” will be on view from Friday, October 9, through Monday, October 12, for Columbus Day weekend. Hours are Friday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Artists in the exhibition will be present each afternoon.