AES makes its art fair debut at Intersect Palm Springs!
Featured work: Ali Dell Bitta “landscaping memory: no. 007,” 2022, low fire clay, mid range stoneware, glaze, underglaze, rubber, plastic, and enamel paint.
Palm Springs Convention Center, Palm Springs
Booth #119
February 9-12, 2023
Click here to view a checklist of available works
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Artist Estate Studio makes its art fair debut!
As an agency tasked to steward the legacy of artists, Artist Estate Studio brings an all-women presentation to Palm Springs.
This installment offers a multi-narrative rethinking of the art historical canon by exhibiting the work of five women artists including: the color-theories-made-personal in the works by Swedish-American painter Siri Berg (1921-2020); the lyrical paintings of Chinese-American painter Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022); the bucolic abstractions of Judith Dolnick (b.1934); the fractured mosaic-like painted panels that capture ancient architecture by Hermine Ford (b.1939); the stark and strictly black and white oil-stick paintings by Joan Witek (b.1943); and the colorful tectonic mixed-media ceramics of Adirondack based sculptor Ali Della Bitta (b.1981). Grounding this selection are important prints by Joan Mitchell and Elizabeth Murray.
Of the artists presented, many have rarely, if ever, exhibited on the West Coast.
Dates and Times:
Opening Night Preview!
Thursday, February 9 | 5 - 8 pm (VIP/All Access Pass only)
General Admission:
Friday, February 10 | 11 am - 6 pm
Saturday, February 11 | 11 am - 5 pm
Sunday, February 12 | 11 am - 3 pm (10 - 11 am VIP hour)
Artist Estate Studio, Booth 119. Photo: RJ Sanchez
Siri Berg (1921-2020) “Kabbalah,” 1984-85, oil on canvas, 35 x 95 in (88.9 x 241.3 cm)
Siri Berg (1921-2020) was a native of Stockholm, Sweden. While attending the German Gymnasium and Victoria College in Prague she took life drawing classes at the Rotter-Schule für Werbegrafik. She then entered The Institute of Art and Architecture at the University of Brussels before immigrating to the United States at the age of 19. Siri worked briefly in interior design until she began pursuing her true passion—painting and color.
In the early 1980s, Siri Berg concentrated on the subject of the The Ten Sefirot of the Kabbalah—the attributes in Kabbalah through which The Infinite is revealed to create both the physical realm and the chain of higher metaphysical realms. Reinterpreting this subject of Jewish mysticism, Siri used color, value, and design to express an ascending and descending order through value gradations from dark to light as a way to “resolve opposing aspects of life as they relate to abstract art.”
Referencing the tradition of abstract geometric painting, specifically Johannes Itten (1888-1967) and Josef Albers (1888-1976), Berg’s work is noted for its purity. In her Kabbalah Series she explored, through progressions and variation, the systematic evolution of a theme.
Major monographic exhibitions include Swedish Embassy, Washington, DC (2019); The Bonniers Konsthall Museum, Stockholm (2018); Shirley Fiterman Art Center, New York (2016); The Painting Center, New York (2012); The William Whipple Art Museum at Southwest Minnesota State University, Marshall (2008); Gibson Gallery Museum at SUNY Potsdam (2006); Swedish American Museum, Chicago (2003); The Robert C. Williams American Museum, Atlanta (1997); The Yeshiva University Museum, New York (1991); The American Swedish Museum, Philadelphia (1986, 1999); Prominent public collections include The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Southwest Minnesota State University Art Museum MN; New York University, New York; Gray Art Gallery, NYU, New York; Moderna Museet (Museum of Modern Art), Stockholm, Sweden; The Swedish Ambassador’s Residence in Washington D.C. among others.
“Ten Spheres 22 (Kabbalah Series),” 1986, Monoprint, 18 x 31 in (45.7 x 78.7 cm)
“Ten Spheres 23E (Kabbalah Series),” 1986, Monoprint, 18 x 31 in (45.7 x 78.7 cm)
Ali Della Bitta (b. 1981), “landscaping memory: no. 007,” 2022, low fire clay, mid range stoneware, glaze, underglaze, and mixed media, H: 6.75 L: 3.5 x W: 4.5 in
Ali Della Bitta (b. 1981) is inspired by landscape ecosystems in flux and is specifically respondent to the increase of human impact on our natural spaces. This concern led to her research into endangered plants in the Alpine Region of the High Peaks in Northern New York State and inspired multiple excursions to our National Parks and exploring public lands across the United States. Della Bitta’s most recent landscaping memory series stems from these experiences. Primarily using the medium of clay, she layers various materials in the making of her sculpture.
The landscaping memory series focuses on the relationship to the environment: how we shape landscapes as a species and how it shapes us in return. Landscape ecosystems are constantly changing through disturbances that are anthropogenic or caused by natural processes. We are seeing the impact of these changes in our planet on a large and small scale. Just as landscapes may be altered and restructured so can our memories. Memories of smell, place, sound, a flash of emotion all layer and merge to create a life narrative. The malleability of human memory, the construction and the loss all hold a place in this body of sculpture.
Ali Della Bitta received her BFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and MFA from Purchase College. She has held teaching positions at Purchase College, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and is currently Associate Professor of Ceramics at State University of New York, Plattsburgh. Solo exhibitions include Art-St-Urban, Urban, Switzerland (2018, 2015); Plattsburgh State Art Museum, Plattsburgh (2017); Earlville Opera House, Earlville (2014); Collar Works, Troy (2013); among others. Group exhibitions include: “Lush,” Westobou Gallery, Augusta (2022); “Nächste Benefizveranstaltung, Art-St.-Urban, St. Urban, Switzerland (2018); Jay Invitational of Clay, Jay (2018, 2017, 2016); “Ways and Means: a new look at process and materials in art ,” 1285 Avenue of the Americas, New York (2016); Outlet Fine Art, Brooklyn (2015); among others. In September 2022, Della Bitta’s work was featured by Ceramics Monthly.
“landscaping memory: composition no. 002,” 2022, low fire clay, mid-range stoneware, pigmented high fire porcelain, glaze, underglaze, and epoxy, rope, rubber, and metal, H:7 L:6 W:5 in
“landscaping memory: no. 004,” 2022, low fire clay, mid range stoneware, glaze, underglaze, rubber, metal, and enamel paint, H:7 L:6 W:5 in
“landscaping memory: no. 006,” 2022, low fire clay, mid range stoneware, glaze, underglaze, metal, epoxy, rubber, enamel paint, H:6.75 L:7 W:7.25 in
Judith Dolnick (b.1931) “Perhaps to Dream,” 1998, acrylic on linen, 36 x 36 in (38.5 x 38.5 cm)
Judy Dolnick (b. 1934) has been working and exhibiting her lush abstract paintings since the late 1950s where, upon her return to Chicago with her art degree from Stanford, she, alongside artists Robert Natkin, Gerald van de Wiele, and Ann Mattingly opened the Wells Street Gallery, as a reaction to the lack of opportunities for emerging artists to exhibit the expressionistic paintings they were making at the time. With the struggling folk singer Odetta rehearsing upstairs, Dolnick and her crew created what critic Max Kozloff called "an avant-garde exhibition place filled with the most advanced abstractions in town.”
Dolnick moved to New York City in 1959 and began exhibiting alongside such seminal abstract artists as Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn and Franz Kline at the prestigious Poindexter Gallery. Critic Michael Brenson called her work the contemporary answer to “Matisse, Kandinsky and Dufy.”
Dolnick is most influenced by expressionism, and her works pay homage to Van Gogh (with whom she shares a birthday), Paul Gauguin, and Odilon Redon. Except for the slight pull of nostalgia, Dolnick's nonfigurative paintings are without a hint of gravity. Her seemingly endless expression of color is spontaneous and intuitive. In a mode of receptive reverie, Dolnick offers a surreal world dense with bucolic, ambiguous and semi-familiar shapes that suggest landscapes through scattered pulses of paint. Rhythm and gesture play a critical role in the process of Dolnick's work, a process she has continued to develop despite of her absence from the New York art world. This selection of paintings are like bright daydream fantasies.
Judith Dolnick received her BA from Stanford University (1955) and MFA from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago (1957). Solo exhibitions include Outlet Fine Art, Brooklyn (2015); Klonaridies Gallery, Toronto (1986, 1989); Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, New York (1983, 1987); Hoshour Gallery, Albuquerque (1979); Poindexter Gallery, New York, NY (1976); Well Street Gallery, Chicago, IL (1957, 1958, 1959). Recent group exhibitions include “Judith Dolnick, Hermine Ford, Libby Hartle, Joan Witek,” Salon Zürcher, New York (2018); “Side by Side: Robert Natkin and Judith Dolnick,” Edward Hopper House Museum, Nyack (2016); “Arshile Gorky and a selection of contemporary drawings,” Outlet Fine Art, Brooklyn (2014); “To be a Lady: forty-five women in the arts,” 1285 Avenue of the Americas Gallery, New York (2012); “The Wells Street Gallery Revisited,” Lesley Helley Workspace, New York (2012). Dolnick’s work can be found in the permanent collections of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, The Mint Museum of Art, Mint, Charlotte, NC, The Palmer Museum of Art, Penn State University, PA, and The Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, among others.
Untitled (497C), c.1986, acrylic on canvas, 13.25 x 12 in (33.76 x 30.5)
Untitled (181), c.1986, acrylic on linen stretched over canvas, 12.5 x 17 in (31.7 x 43.2 cm)
Hermine Ford (b. 1939), Untitled (433), 2022, Oil and ink on Muslin on shaped panel, 62.5 x 45.5 x .75 in (158.8 x 115.6 x 2 cm)
Hermine Ford (b. 1939) has developed a distinct style honing her aesthetic since the early 1970s. By re-imagining the past through elements of architecture, earth, and memory, Ford enhances our contemporary experience in her meticulously composed painted shaped panels.
Channeling her Abstract Expressionist roots (her father was the painter Jack Tworkov), Ford begins working gesturally upon a cut out surface which she invents by merging shapes found in nature and those found culturally in artifacts such as relics, shards, and ancient ruins. She then focuses on the surface imploring designs and patterns excavated from a vast library of diverse idiosyncratic forms that include weavings, Roman tile works. Embracing a process of reclamation, Ford offers a kind of exploded or fractured geometry trying to be whole again. From this perspective, her work exists as precious quarries of our visual history.
“We make objects of all sizes—buildings, art. Then they get old, sometimes are torn down, even made to disappear, by water, wind, war, volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, or fire. Or they fall down from their own weight, or are pushed over, stepped on, shot at, blown up, smashed. Yet, the pure material remains. The materials are reused down through the ages. Architecture and painting and sculpture are made from these raw and recycled materials. An artist's eye and hand moves over the materials while at the beach, or visiting an Italian city, or in the studio, remembers them as they used to be and rearranges them: the broken buildings, the stones, the tiles, the pigments. In my work I'm re-imagining the past, making it present.”
– Hermine Ford
Hermine Ford studied at Yale School of Art and Architecture, New Haven (1960-61) and received her BA from Antioch College (1962). She was Instructor or Visiting Artists at the following: Parsons School of Design (1977-83); Maryland Institute College of Art (1981); Rhode Island School of Design (1983); School of Art Institute of Chicago (1984); New York Studio School (1992); American Academy in Rome (2002); to name a few. Commissions include Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore (2011). In 2018 she was elected member, National Academy of Design, New York. Solo exhibitions include: Furnace-Art on Paper, Falls Village (2022), The New York Studio School, New York (2019), 57W57Arts, New York (2018), Outlet Fine Art, Brooklyn (2018). Group exhibitions have included “Mosaics” at James Barron Art, Kent (2023), “American Painting: The Eighties Revisited,” Cincinnati Museum of Art (2021), “Red Telephone,” at Fierman, New York (2019), “1970s: 9 Women and Abstraction,” at Zürcher Gallery, New York (2016) among others. Public collection include Arkansas Arts Center, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Hood Museum at Dartmouth, Hanover; Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown; RISD Museum, Providence; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven among others.
Untitled (456), 2021, Ink, gouache and pencil on paper, 11 ¾ x 8 ¼ in (29.8 x 21 cm), framed: 15 ½ x 12 ⅛ in (39.4 x 30.8 cm)
Untitled (455), 2021, Ink, gouache and pencil on paper, 11 ¾ x 8 ½ in (29.8 x 21.6 cm), framed: 15 ½ x 12 ⅛ in (39.4 x 30.8 cm)
Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) “Sunflower V: from the Sunflower Series,” 1992, lithograph in colors, 56 ½ x 41 in (144 x 104 cm). This work is number 3 from the edition of 34, on Rives BFK wove paper, with the blindstamp of the printer and publisher, Tyler Graphics, Ltd., Mount Kisco, New York, framed
This work is one of Joan Mitchell's most sought after lithographic series featuring the life cycle of the sunflower.
In 1969, Mitchell completed a major series of paintings titled “Sunflower” one of which is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1989.349) and another at Smithsonian American Art Museum (1980.137.81).
In 1972, Mitchell returned to printmaking creating etchings with Arte Adrian Maeght, Paris. She titled this series “Sunflower,” which became a favorite leitmotif, and which grew in Mitchell’s gardens at Vétheuil where she settled in 1968.
The Joan Mitchell Foundation makes this statement about the 1972 edition which can be applied to the edition she would complete with Tyler Graphics two decades later and of which this print belongs:
"Sunflower-like forms emerge and dissipate in a riotous, scratchy landscape of growth. The autumnal tones of the Sunflower series point to Mitchell’s identification with the feeling of the dying sunflower."
Mitchell considered sunflowers to be ‘like people’ — subjects to empathize with whose life cycles were played out with exuberance but brutal swiftness.
Elizabeth Murray (1940-2007) “Charlotte,” 1998, eight color lithograph on John Koller handmade paper, 12 3/4 x 15 3/4 in (32.4 x 40 cm)
Artist Estate Studio, LLC, has had the honor of managing the Estate of Elizabeth Murray since 2016. Offered here is "Charlotte" a print from 1998 originating from a series of artist prints published by Brooke Alexander for the benefit of the Poetry Project.
Sale of these editions will benefit The Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency.
The Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency (EMAR) program by Collar Works is designed to provide a diverse group of emerging and established artists an immersive, supportive, productive, and communal atmosphere for art-making and dialogue on a bucolic 77-acre farm in Washington County. The summer residency is offered for five weeks, with two and four-week residencies for individual artists and one-week residencies for families.
Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022) “Been There and Back,” 2015, acrylic on canvas, 54 x 48 in (137.2 x 121.9 cm)
Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022) was a Chinese-American painter, printmaker, and performance artist whose high-spirited practice fused Eastern and Western aesthetics. She was active in the artist communities of the Bay Area of San Francisco, CA, and Taos, NM. An intense, unpretentious woman with a soft voice and fierce spirit, Ms. Ting was born in Shanghai, China, at the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War and during the communist takeover of the mainland.
While her career is book-ended by an interest in the expressive possibilities of abstraction, Ms. Ting’s paintings from the 1980s, 90s and early aughts focused primarily on figurative work that explored notions of womanhood, immigration, and a somatic relationship between landscape and place. Embracing the processes of Abstract Expressionism as well as the Buddhist practice of the beginner’s mind, Ms. Ting regularly approached her canvases without any preconceived ideas, preferring to allow the direct application of paint and the subconscious gesture to dictate her compositions. She often worked thematically and in series.
Mimi Chen Ting received her BA and MA from Cal State San Jose (1969, 1976) and studied dance and performance with Anna Halprin, Sherwood Chen, and Hiroko Tamano. Solo exhibitions include the forthcoming retrospective at Sonoma State University, Sonoma (2023); Norte Maar, Brooklyn (2022); Art Beatus, Hong Kong (2018, 2011) Vedder Price, San Francisco (2018); The Harwood Museum of Art, Tao (2005); Taos Fine Art Gallery, Taos (1993); Stanford University Center for Integrated Studies, Palo Alto (1991); Oakland Museum Collectors Gallery, Oakland (1986); Cal State University, San Jose (1979); Lucien Labaudt Gallery, San Francisco (1970). Group Exhibitions include “Work by Women,” Harwood Museum of Art, Taos (2018); “Face to Face,” Corrales Bosque Gallery, Corrales (2005); “Landscape and Memory,” Sedona Art Center Gallery, Sedona (2002); “Different Voices,” Santa Barbara Women's Center, Santa Barbara (1992); “75th Anniversary Exhibition,” San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose (1987). Public collections include Harwood Museum, Taos, University of Phoenix, Phoenix, among others.
Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022) “Loves Notes,” 2016, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 54 in (121.9 x 137.2 cm)
Joan Witek (b.1943) “P-162,” 2013, oil stick and graphite on canvas, 74 x 45 x 2 in (188 x 114.3 x 5 cm)
Joan Witek (b. 1943) has used the color black for much of her life as an artist. While appearing to be straightforward, there is a persistent language of proportion and meaning in her abstraction. “The breadth of this color from primitive to sophisticated, powerful to delicate, has left a wide area to explore,” she wrote, “The beauty of black still needs to be revealed, and I hope to continue to help that discovery along.”
In 1976, Witek set up a studio on Duane Street in Lower Manhattan where her next door neighbor was the sculptor, Richard Serra. There she began working in earnest and mostly in seclusion for some years.
During the early 1980s, she began developing composition based on the ‘mark’ of a single stroke. Her chosen medium then and now was oil stick which she applied onto the canvas nailed to her studio wall—the canvas being sized using rabbit skin glue. Blue snap lines delineated the space based on preparatory drawings. Uncomfortable with the stark contrast of the mark on raw canvas, Witek used graphite power to subdue the surface. Only after the composition was complete would the work be transferred to a stretcher.
Rising from the decades dominated by the likes of Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, and Richard Serra, Witek, has adopted her own processes borrowed from a minimalistic language. By making the visual distinction between her compositional elements slight, through the course of her career Witek has produced works that deliberately avoid the formal and coloristic drama associated with much of Postwar American art.
Witek studied at the Art Students League during the 1960s. She received a BA from Hofstra University, Hempstead (1965). Major monographic exhibitions include “Joan Witek: a survey,” Museum Wilhelm Morgner, Soest, Germany (2021); “Joan Witek: Paintings from the 1980s,” Minus Space, Brooklyn (2022); “Joan Witek: Black to Black,” Gallery Niklas von Bartha, London (2002); “Joan Witek: Drawings,” Wynn Kramarsky, New York (1997); “Joan Witek: Paintings and Drawings 1970’s-1990’s,” Kendall Campus Art Gallery, Miami-Dade Community College, Miami (1993); “Joan Witek: Paintings 1980-1983, Drawings 1976-1984,” Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh (1984). Group exhibitions include Massey Klein Gallery, New York (2020); “Crossroads: Carnegie Museum of Art’s Collection, 1945 to Now,” Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2018); The Painting Center, New York (2016); "Between a Place and Candy: new works in pattern, repetition and motif," 1285 Avenue of the Americas Art Gallery, New York (2015); Jason McCoy Gallery, New York (2014); “Visible Places: Works on Paper by Women,” San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego (2008); Kouros Gallery, New York (2002, 2006)); “Planes of Color,” Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle (1999); “Drawing Is Another Kind of Language,” Harvard University Museum, Cambridge (1997); "Paper Under Pressure," Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill (1994); “Slow Art: Painting in New York Now,” PS1, Long Island City (1992); John David Gallery, New York (1986, 1987); Rosa Esman Gallery (1984, 1985); “Women Artists from New York,” (curated by Lawrence Alloway) Art Gallery, Fine Arts Building, SUNY at Stony Brook (1978). Public collection include Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, University Art Museum, UCLA, Santa Barbara, and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, among others.
“P-149,” 2009, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 in (61 x 61 cm)
“P-156,” 2011, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 in (61 x 61 cm)
