Essay Published in Center for Humans & Nature Press
I’m honored to have been invited to contribute to the digital community at the Center for Humans & Nature Press. The Center is home to a press and farm that explore in-depth and diverse perspectives about what it means to be human in an interconnected world.
Click on this link to reach the essay The Nature of Time: One Year of Bird Migration
Circumstance of Air, a solo exhibition at Starr Suites
Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
February 10 – March 17, 2024
Opening reception Saturday, February 10, 6-8pm
Starr Suites is pleased to present ‘Circumstance of Air’, an exhibition of new and selected work by New York-based artist Debra Ramsay opening Saturday, February 10 and running through Sunday, March 17, 2024.
This exhibition presents selections from Ramsay’s ongoing, ‘Migration’ series, in which time is measured by documenting the plumage colors of birds encountered migrating through Central Park, NY. Rendered on translucent acrylic panels and displayed freestanding on laminated shelves, the works serve as altar-like objects of devotion- indexing and embodying temporal and spatial passage, perceptual shift and a personal experience of the natural world. Seen collectively, they map an abstracted tour through the artist’s immersive engagement in aviary lifestyles.
Debra Ramsay (b. Hudson, NY) is an artist living and working in New York City. She earned her BA from Brooklyn College, NY. Ramsay has exhibited her work internationally for over three decades, including in Denmark, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia. Solo exhibitions in the United States include the Hunterdon Museum of Art in Clinton, NJ, 2024, Starr Suites, Brooklyn, NY, Brattleboro Museum in Brattleboro, VT, 2017; Odetta Gallery, Brooklyn, and 57 W 57th Arts, NY, 2016. Additional recent exhibitions include Field Guide to Birds at the Garrison Art Center, Garrison, NY, 2024, Mere Reflection at Marquee Projects, Bellport, NY, 2022, in 2021: Yi Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, (de)coding at the Visual Arts Center of NJ and Embody at the Ely Center for Contemporary Art in New Haven. The Center for Humans and Nature Press will digitally publish Ramsay’s The Nature of Time, One Year of Bird Migrations in the spring, of 2024.
281 Starr St 1R, Brooklyn, NY
Fri-Sun, 12-6pm and by appt
310-895-5171
@starr.suites
Three Shelf Redder
“Three Shelf Redder” Exhibition Opens at Space 325/325, April 15, 7-9pm
Gallery Hours: Saturday & Sunday 4/16, 22, 23, 29, 30 1-4pmor by appointment with the artists.
This body of work is in keeping with my previous conceptually driven explorations of color yet offers a new strain of exploration, transposing words to color. The paintings are crude, on purpose, showing their failure, expressing time and adjustments.
from the press release:
Ridgewood, NY, April 9, 2017
Two women arrive at a party, are introduced to one another by the host who suggests a kinship between their work. Studio visits are arranged, the mutual intersection within the work is realized, an offer to exhibit comes forward.
The meaning of words, mountains, nature, memory, amplifying structures and colors are the crossover points between the work of Shen and Ramsay.
Debra Ramsay’s artwork is conceptually rigorous and process-oriented. The idea comes first; the search for materials, methods and procedures that will best support the idea follows. For “Three Shelf Redder” Ramsay is introducing a body of work created from obscure and off-beat definitions of color, sourced from The Dictionary of Colour, by Ian Paterson. “Redder,” for example, is the title of a painting based on the only palindromic color word in the English language. These monochromatic paintings work with color and light, as their translucent supports and layers of colors react with the ambient light. Ramsay is concerned with many of the principles the Light and Space artists of the 60’s as well as the humor that can be packed in conceptual art such as in the work of contemporary artist Spencer Finch.
Hilda Shen’s new sculptures are small, displayed in a way that emphasizes our physical reaction to scale. One leans in to focus and scrutinize the details, and there is an urge to touch these glazed ceramic pieces. There are two projects which are developed here: “Range of Mountains” reinterprets the tradition of Chinese scholar rocks as objects of contemplation; “Northwest” is inspired by Shen’s studies of Pacific Northwest forests, the transformation of energy from immense decaying nurse logs to young saplings. In “Three Shelf Redder” Shen continues her long-standing interest in landscape and the reciprocal influence of culture and nature.
