The Miniature Holiday Exhibition

Y:ART Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of its 16th exhibition, a winter holiday special featuring miniature works from an assortment of local artists and sundry mediums. The opening reception will be held on Saturday, November 25, 2017 from 6pm - 9pm.

Re affirming Y:ART's mission to support and promote local talent, the Miniature Holiday Exhibition brings together an ensemble of Baltimore-based artists who pack immense emotions and themes into small-scale works. With a majority of the artwork measuring under 8 x 11 inches, the collection is great for the gift-giving season. The collection will not be static, as new artwork will be introduced throughout the season. Featured artists include:

Craig Haupt
Diana Sanlorenzo Campbell

Justin Wiest
Ken Karlic
Lois Borgenicht
Mary Bickford
Nieves Saah
Ricardo Hoegg
Roland Phillips
Sally Hopkins
Susan McCurdy Yonkers

About the Artists

Though Craig Haupt earned an Art Education degree in 1999 (at 50 years old), though is mostly a self-taught painter. He spent the early and latter part of his professional career doing mechanical drawing/drafting. From childhood to present, he has been surrounded by doodles and countless stick figures that continue to be stay with him. Over time, they all have been unintentionally blending to create a menagerie of different subjects. The images on display represent a sampling of some of the artwork he has created.

Diana Sanlorenzo Campbell was born in Barcelona in 1971. She spent many years in the United Kingdom and went on to study at the Academia de Arte Da Vinci in Barcelona. She studied drawing, ceramics and painting. While living in Italy she began illustrating using watercolors and developed a mixed media technique using acrylics, ink and origami paper. She spent a year in South Africa where she studied decorative ceramic painting. Her style is colorful and whimsical and focuses on color and texture. She works in jewelry, ceramics and painting getting inspiration from her travels, nature, life experiences and the great expressionist painters. Her work has been shown at the Bromo Seltzer tower in Baltimore and many other venues around Maryland.

Justin Wiest was raised in Baltimore and it now based in Connecticut. He graduated from the Schuler School of Fine Art in Baltimore before receiving a Masters from The New York Academy of Art in 2001. Wiest’s work has been exhibited in various art galleries and institutions in Baltimore, New York, Connecticut and Italy. Classically trained as a painter, the artist has said that at this point in his career he’s “enjoying the freedom to experiment and search for the limits of painting by scrubbing at the film of familiarity .”

Ken Karlic describes his watercolors as being “controlled chaos” — an accurate drawing gives way to a spontaneous painting to create a beautiful mess. He finds himself creating work with a sense of calculated urgency, capturing the essence of how something feels rather than how it looks, allowing the sheer physicality of his subject to be expressed with paint. Karlic allows the materiality of the paint to inform his creative decisions, by inviting marks, scratches, drips and splatters into the picture plane. Karlic studied architecture, painting, and graphic design at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, where he received a BFA in graphic design in 1986. He is a founding partner of the Baltimore firm Splice Design Group, an instructor at Chesapeake Fine Art Studio, a member of the Mid-Atlantic Plein-Air Painters Association (MAPAPA), and a Signature Artist Member of the Baltimore Watercolor Society.

Lois Borgenicht was born in New York City and attended The School of Art in Fontainebleau, France, the Boston University School of Fine Arts, and the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture before settling in Baltimore in 1989. A lover of 20th Century French painting, Borgenicht “enjoys painting dense, colorful works to create a world saturated with visual pleasure.”

Mary Bickford, graduating from MICA in 1972, is one of the obscure yet precious artists here in the Baltimore area having shown in many galleries. Her work offers an intimate and honest vision of her life. Her subjects are often her home, neighborhood, travels, family, and friends with which she captures the old and the new. “Good painting brings order and not chaos to the lives of a hectic world.”

Nieves Saah, hailing from the Basque Country region of Spain, and graduating from The Maryland Institute College of Art in 1982, is a master of color. Using almost exclusively palette knives and spatulas, her richly hued and layered paintings envelope the viewer in an atmosphere that is imaginative yet reflective of Saah’s life and travels around the world. One can discover endless elements and stories strewn throughout her compositions. Beings, objects and sites emerge in surprising ways; forcing the viewer to experience a brilliant and adventurous macrocosm.

Ricardo Hoegg is a painter born in Guatemala. He got his BFA from University of Texas at Austin and his MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. His works are symbolic self portraits about the fragility of memory, autobiographical with few recurring themes and no narrative.

Roland Phillips graduated in 1969 with a degree in sculpture and fine arts. He opened a metal restoration business in 1975 and quickly developed an interest in the decorative arts and antiques. His great appreciation for the fine skills exhibited by latter day artisans led him to become an avid collector of tea caddies and small boxes. He was inspired to create his own using the same processes and time honored methods. Not an early adapter to technology, Phillips muse is in the evidence of the hand: learning, creating and just having fun.

Sally Hopkins has been an artist for most of her life. She was born in New Zealand, but her parents moved to Canada when she was a teenager. She then came to the U.S. to complete her art education at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), where she studied printmaking.

Susan McCurdy Yonkers has been studying painting at Maryland Institute College of Art since first grade. Continuing on as an undergraduate at MICA, she really learned to "see" as an artist and to love color from people like Abbie Sangiamo, Sharon Yates, Reba Stewart, and Sam Gilliam. After graduating, getting married and raising her children, she was mostly using her artistic talents to create gardens which took her on garden tours throughout England where she was inspired to once again paint her first love -- people. The last few years she has been mainly painting people in various un-posed situations, capturing the seemingly average subjects. As a result, her work draws the viewer's attention to things that may have otherwise been overlooked. In 2011, she won the People’s Choice award at A Celebration of Art at Cylburn. In 2012 she won both the Cylburn Arboretum Association Board Award and the Graul’s Award for her paintings in A Celebration of Art at Cylburn.