SELECTS 2025
Jan 09 - Jan 24 2025
FIRST STREET GALLERY is pleased to present the SELECTS 2025 juried exhibition, curated by Artist and Curator Jill Sarver Rossi. SELECTS 2025 draws together the outstanding work of nine artists, ranging in media, techniques, and creative perspectives. The exhibition opens on Thursday, January 9 with the Reception at 6 pm, and runs through Friday, January 24, 2025.
The participating artists offered insights to their development of small bodies of work:
Eric Chiang’s oil paintings offer a bold and uniquely expressive interpretation of our natural world. The artist likens his execution of this series to poetry analysis, envisioning wave and mountain textures as rhythmic, moving words. Chiang’s artmaking practice ‘explores the meaning of existence,’ in an expression of empathy for ‘panhuman desperation, love, connection, and hope.’
Janet Gorzegno ’makes paintings about the spiritual dimension of the human experience,’ with the intention to uncover the quiet intimations of the soul, left unnoticed by a complex and fast-paced world. Her gouache works on paper ‘embody subtle and soul-centered themes, with compositions alluding to inner states, liminality, transformation, and the space of dreams.’
Randy Klinger ‘aims to create presence, significance and beauty: presence in the sense of creating a real living person, one that can see, feel, and even smell.’ His graphite portraits depict figures living in their own worlds, disengaged from the viewer, yet demanding of our attention.
Tai Lipan’s organic and expressive paintings on carved, layered wood ‘explore the duality of humanity's relationship with the environment. [...] These works reveal the tension between human efforts to safeguard nature and the unintended transformations they impose, balancing serenity and the latent power of the natural world.’
Lynne Miller Jones ‘explores the boundaries between realism and abstraction in images of the natural world. From afar, her paintings appear realistic, sometimes photographic, but close up they become more about the texture of oil paint, gesture and process. Miller Jones’ work is about focusing on nature and paying attention to the subtle interplay of light, color and pattern.’
Sean Sauer paints evolving moments of light and space, sourcing unexpected subject matter, whether a ray of light on the floor or a reflective glass door. The artist ‘watches changes take place, incorporating them into his paintings.’ This series of reflections ‘explores patterns of light and shadow, in an attempt to reveal a given place’s spirit or character.’
Robert Solomon ‘takes the viewer on an observational experience of his environment outside the studio’ with his abstract, mixed-media, paintings. ‘The closer the artist observes a scene, the more abstract the painting becomes and truer his recollection of the event.’ Harbinger of Spring and Stream with landscape demonstrate Solomon’s ‘primary interest in color and a process of layering transparency to create density.’
Caleb Stoltzfus creates painted sculptures from cardboard and gouache, ‘finding comfort in a casual and familiar medium.’ To Stoltzfus, who is formally trained in drawing and painting, working with cardboard ‘lowers the stakes and creates space to explore expansive themes of contemplation, serenity, vulnerability, power, and bloodlust.’
Stephanie Suter paints self-portraits, not with the aim of flattery or likeness, but to feel more grounded as life changes and as she roams without a fixed address. “I wonder what I look like because I can’t really tell. I can’t directly see my face. I paint looking into a mirror, watching how emotion, light and time alter what I’m seeing. I’m interested in dismantling my concept of how I appear so I can just see the moment with all its beauty and uncertainty.”
