A•ONE, Silvermine's signature exhibition, opens at Silvermine Galleries

A•ONE, Silvermine’s signature exhibition, presents artists “rising to the challenges of a difficult world”

The 72nd A•ONE, now open at Silvermine Galleries, celebrates a wide spectrum of forms and ideas as well as innovation in composition and materials. A•ONE, which began in 1949, is known equally for compelling works of art and for the luminaries who have served as jurors. As Silvermine Arts Center marks its 100-year anniversary, A•ONE is a testament to Silvermine’s enduring presence in the quicksilver world of contemporary art. The exhibition runs from Sept. 3 through Oct. 20.

Sharon Butler—painter, writer, and founder of “Two Coats of Paint”—served as juror for this year’s A•ONE. Butler was drawn especially to “meaningful threads” running through an artist’s work. “Such a thread might be a particular point of view, a preoccupation with process, a focus on a specific material, or the unfolding of a certain kind of content,” she wrote. “I also seized on work that revealed a subtle knowingness and sense of humor about the history of art, the nature of perception, and the human condition.”

Butler was “heartened to see so many artists rising to the challenges of a difficult world.” She commented on the abundance of fine work, including Jason Lipow’s “loose and evocative materiality,” Loren Eiferman’s wide range of influences and “delicate sense of irony,” and Carmen DeCristo’s portraits of fellow trans community members—"photographs that are deeply engaged in the details of context and framing.” Among the more unconventional pieces is Weina Li’s telescope that looks back at the viewer. Sharon Butler described Board Chair Grand Prize Award winner Elizabeth Gilfilen as a painter whose recent pieces “traffic in a kind of turbulent chaos, like a single tumbleweed on a prairie, but tempered by elegant line, assured brushwork, and subtle color combinations.” The Board Chair Grand Prize—awarded to Gilfilen for Elastic Cleft, her large-scale oil painting—includes a future solo exhibition in the Silvermine Galleries.

Loren Eiferman of Katonah, NY, was the recipient of the Carole Eisner Sculpture Award. The Mollie + Albert Jacobson Sculpture Award went to Jason Lipow of Glenmoore, PA. Andrew McKay of Vancouver, B.C., Canada, received the Patricia Warfield Jinishian Figurative Award. Todd Arsenault of Carlisle, PA, and Meghan Cox of Philadelphia, PA, received Jerry’s Artarama of Norwalk Awards. Winners of Silvermine’s Awards of Excellence included Jeanne Ciravolo of Hamden, CT; Tielin Ding of New York, NY; Jane Ehrlich of Hudson, NY; Laurel Marx of New York, NY; and Carol Paik of New York, NY. For a complete list of artists selected for this year’s A•ONE, please visit https://www.silvermineart.org/online-exhibition/72nd-a-one-exhibition.

Sharon Butler has served as lecturer and/or Visiting Artist/Critic at many notable art programs and organizations, including Brown University, Cornell University, Vermont Studio Center, Penn State, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hoffberger School of Painting (MICA), School of Visual Arts, and Parsons School of Design. She currently teaches in the MFA programs at the New York Academy of Art and the University of Connecticut. Butler’s own paintings explore the tension between the digital and handmade, and her solo exhibitions in 2016, 2018, and 2021 have been written about in Hyperallergic, artcritical, The New Criterion, The James Kalm Report, Time Out New York, and New York Magazine.

Throughout its history, A•ONE has featured the work of many prominent artists including Louise Nevelson, Elaine de Kooning, and Milton Avery, and jurors have included major critics, curators, and directors from influential art institutions. A•ONE was established in 1949 as the New England Exhibition. Known recently as Art of the Northeast, it now draws artists from all over the U.S. and the world.

The A•ONE exhibition will be open to visitors during the School of Art Community Open House on Sept. 10.

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Submitted by New Canaan, CT

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