Yearly Archives: 2017

Winter 2017-18 News

Because of my upcoming exhibit at the Museo Italo Americano, San Francisco, I thought I’d initiate you about my background and Italian heritage. First, a little family tree history because my last name (provided by my German-derived Father) has perhaps led you astray. I was born in Newark, NJ and grew up in the neighboring East Orange. My mother, Marietta Roma Napoliello (her mother was a Fiore) was a first generation American and I am thus a second generation thoroughly Italian-American girl.

My great grandmother Fiore

For those of you not in-the-know let me explain if your mother had an Italian family you were subsumed into that family totally, wholly regardless of your father’s ancestry.

Museo Italo Americano, San Francisco

So now that we’ve cleared that up we can move on to my relationship with the Museo Italo Americano in San Francisco because as an Italian American I am eligible to exhibit my art there. I have a great fondness for this institution as it helps me assert my Italian-ness to which I attribute a lot of things, and which balances my Germanic-ness which keeps me very organized.

The Museo www.museoitaloamericano.org established in 1978, is a touchstone for me. I started my dialogue with them in 1984. The first time I walked into the Museo in Fort Mason was in the early 90s when I met the then director, Robert Whyte.

Since that time I have admired their mission, the programs they offer, their community outreach and their support of Italian and Italian American artists.

Mostra ’94

Whyte asked me to exhibit first in 1994 for the Mostra ’94 or six artists he wanted to introduce to the Museo audience. He curated 5 paintings from my Illumination series into that beautiful exhibition.

In 1998 Whyte again contacted me because he was curating with Valentina Fogher an exhibit entitled Artists Who Look Back: Spirituality in Modern and Contemporary Art, and thought my new work inspired by Venice of the 1600s would enhance the exhibit nicely. This was a large and extravagant exhibit with a wonderful catalog.

Moonless Balm, oil/wood, 24 sq.

In 2007 I met with the Museo’s esteemed Director, Paola Bagnatori and Committee of Art Chair, Professor Angela Little to discuss an exhibition for 2008. It was decided that it would be a dual exhibition with a wonderful abstract San Francisco painter, Paulette Long. The Museo’s expansive gallery held more than 30 of my minimalist paintings largely from my Blue Series of sea and sky. This was another good experience artistically, but beyond that there is a pride of my Italian roots that the Museo honors.

Shard 20, inspired by Dante’s Inferno

During 2007 and before the 2008 exhibit Professor Angela Little contacted me to participate in an exhibit of paintings at the Museo that would be based on Dante’s Inferno. I created a painting, Igniting Despair, that I paired with Dante’s Inferno passage, “Through me the way into the suffering city…..”

This trajectory of diverse exhibitions that I participated in at the Museo shows that the Museo provides a selective and varied platform of exhibit experiences for its audience.


Vacuities, archival print on metal, to be exhibited at Perspectives

Now we jump another decade to 2017, and Mary Servanti Steiner, the art curator at the Museo. After some dialogue and a committee meeting I was once again selected to exhibit. This time it would be a 3-person exhibition for 2018. Besides myself there would be 2 artists from San Francisco, Gianluca Franzese and Giuseppe Palumba. Planning went on during 2017 and the exhibit crystallized to become Perspectives. Which opens January 18th with a reception from 5:30-7:30. The exhibit closes on April 29th.

Bifurcation, acrylic/wood, inspired by my residency in Iceland
Infernos 1-6, rubber/linen/Styrofoam, inspired by my residency in Iceland

 

 


Currently a very exciting new development in my relationship to the Museo has evolved, as they are adding 5 of my paintings from my Marietta Robusti Tintoretto Series (1994-6) to their permanent collection. Some of these will be shown in November 2018 in an exhibition of their permanent collection.

This is a perfect home for this work, as it tells the story of an incredible Italian woman artist of the 16th Century. As the daughter of a Venetian master, her work had been subsumed into her father’s and her brother’s oeuvre. However, my research and resulting exhibition has, in the words of Lucy Lippard, made her visible again. The exhibition toured for several years under the funding of the ED Foundation (the research is held in the archival library of Seton Hall University, NJ). It is so fitting that the remaining pieces of that body of work be at the Museo and I know that Robusti Tintoretto’s story and my work will have an audience there for years to come.

Bocca Di Leone, Tintoretto series
Court of the Cord, Tintoretto series
Golden Century Tour, Tintoretto series

So this is my little story and homage to the Museo Italo Americano. Perhaps you will see Perspectives in 2018 or the Robusti Tintoretto Story in the fall of 2018. I’d love for you to become acquainted with this wonderful institution that holds a very dear place in my personal and artistic life.

 

Marietta Patricia Leis

Yearly Archives: 2017

Looking Back and Forth

2018: A Preview of Coming Events:
Summer is zipping by lending itself to my reflections of what has happened this year and what we can look forward to in 2018. Please watch for my winter NEWS when I will be announcing more about the exciting exhibitions and events coming up. A sampling includes:

  • January- Visible Poetry Connecting the World- An international group art exhibit at the Hanam Culture and Art Center in Hanam-si, South Korea. I have been fortunate for several years to participate in many international art organization exhibits that foster global peace and sustainable environments.
  • January 18-April 29- Museo ItaloAmericano, San Francisco. A return to this wonderful venue and to my Italian roots in a 3-person exhibit. Many of my current works will be exhibited at the wonderful Fort Mason complex.
  • May 8-June 17- Dairy Arts Center, Boulder is a solo exhibition. The large lobby galleries offer an opportunity to show my larger scale installations in this wonderfully active community gallery.

 

New Art in the Works: Here is a sneak preview (right) of my new work in progress that pays homage to the world’s trees—those that have been, those that are still with us and those that are hopefully yet to be.


2017: Highlights of Events Past:

Winter Blues and Seasonal Hues, Lincoln Art Center, Fort Collins, CO. Curated, Jeanne Shoaff.

This was a holiday season extravaganza. Three wonderful artists sharing a beautifully-installed exhibit with a community ready to celebrate the joy of Christmas and into the New Year. A wonderful opportunity for the inaugural exhibit of my paintings, Ascensions inspired by Iceland’s Northern Lights.
 


Pausing: A Book of Reflections in Art and Poetry

What fun this was: the first reading of my book. I didn’t know how it would be received, but my 15-minute allocation spread to 2 hours with poems and discussion. Everyone was eager to talk about about pausing in today’s chaotic environment. It was also nice to have a couple of the original artworks from the book there for people to see in person.
Please visit Amazon.com if you would like to purchase a copy of Pausing.


Lost and Found in Iceland, Michael Warren Contemporary, Denver, CO.
The premiere of my Iceland paintings was perfect in this beautiful gallery where they showed dramatically. The curved birch wood formats painted and burnished with graphite looked just as I remembered Iceland’s landscape. With no trees to obstruct the views the volcanic island shone for miles all the way to the curvature of Earth.


Illuminexus, April Price Projects Gallery, Albuquerque, NM
April Price and I conjured up the idea to invite Santa Fe artists to participate in an exhibit with me in Albuquerque. It worked out beautifully with installations and paintings intertwined in one gallery space and another gallery room showed my Ascension paintings. The coupling was very successful and was attested to by a terrific review: click here to read it!



Landscapes of Life and Death: Photography, 516 Arts, Albuquerque, NM.
516 Arts is the premiere showcase in Albuquerque. Between a museum and gallery, it shows some of the most exciting art globally, so it is a great privilege to exhibit my art there. This exhibit, part of the NM photography month had Mary Anne Redding, a superb curator, selecting my series of 8 photos on glass, Heartspace. These were taken looking out of my cabin window at a storm raging in the Drake passage and a sound piece of that storm accompanies the photos.


Spectrum, bG Gallery, Santa Monica, CA.

Such fun to revisit my old stomping grounds. Having lived in Los Angeles for 20 years, I can appreciate how vast the art scene has become. This invitational group exhibit was in the infamous Bergmont Station group of galleries. The art was hung salon-style in groupings of hues, creating a dynamic spectrum of color. Oh, and being there for July 4th enabled me to see a local parade and look over the Santa Monica pier at fireworks.
    



Our Fukushima, Home of Culture, Kavadarci, Republic of Macedonia

Always pleased to exhibit to a new audience and this group show of international artists was certainly that. But more then that it brought attention to the continuing plight of Japan’s suffering Fukushima.


Now I am looking forward to my fall events, which I have posted in my MailChimp. You can sign up for my MailChimp announcements on my Contact page. If you have any questions regarding these upcoming happenings, please don’t hesitate to email me and I will be happy to send you more information. Hoping to see you at one or more of these upcoming events!

Yearly Archives: 2017

Lost and Found in Iceland

NOTE: My previous NEWS post about my Iceland adventure described my unforgettable time at the wonderful Gullistan Residency. The post below tells of the work that evolved afterwards inspired by Iceland in my home studio, which is going to debut at Michael Warren Contemporary, Denver from April 18 – May 27

Rehash: Why an Iceland Artist Residency in winter?

  1. I wanted to continue my exploration of darkness and its associated fear: “Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”— Sarah Williams, from “The Old Astronomer to His Pupil” in Best Loved Poems of the American People
  2. Someone in Finland’s Arctic Circle told me that 24-hour winter darkness made the world appear upside down. Dark in the sky, light on the ground.
  3. Same someone told me that there was time in that darkness when just enough light glimmered to turn sky and ground a seamless monochromatic navy blue.
  4. To give myself the opportunity to experience that which is greater than…as in AWE.
  5. A longing to dip into Isolation—void—quiet.
  6. To experience what can be seen in the dark.
  7. A black and white world!
  8. Wanting to ‘see’ the climate change impact in the far North.

The Reality and the Ensuing Art

Having been to the Alaskan and Scandinavian Arctic Circle and the Antarctic the next logical place for me to experience ‘The Great Alone’ was the far North Island of Iceland. The previous 3 travels were done in their summer light so I felt the winter extremes calling me. It wasn’t the cold, which I would have gladly forfeited, but the 24 hour darkness that both appalled and appealed to me. The idea of darkness in a little populated place far away at the end of the Earth called to me.
Darkness is a place of my long-held childhood fears and also a magnet for my wanting to know what mysteries and beauty it holds. I was fortunate because Iceland being a volcanic Island held blackness in its land mass and its winter skies and seas.

I woke in darkness, went to my studio in darkness and returned home in darkness. It was seamless, monochromatic and after a while knowing and soothing. The clear nights with overhead stars and eventually Northern Lights gave me a deep appreciation of cosmic beauty that is unseen in lit skies of city life.

Seeing and hearing people and especially children in the small village where I resided go about their ordinary days in the dark gave me a perspective of the cycle’s normalcy. It is always important to note that I experienced my immersion in Iceland as an outsider not from the perspective of the people who live that landscape from generational knowledge and deep, fond attachment. The Edenesk shadowed by the menacing perspective that I have is that of someone finding themselves in unknown territory without the intuited preparation.

After a few days of vast landscape views it occurred to me that being able to experience that vastness was because there were no trees obstructing the land’s lines. This never failed to astound me in a profound way. I could actually sometimes see the curvature of the Earth that made me feel astronaut-like.

The phenomena of volcanic bumps and fissures and the North American and European plates slippage causing the Island to separate and subsequently fill-in gave my graphite acrylic and wood paintings their vocabulary reflected in their structure and titles.

There are many layers of primer and paint on these pieces and they are sanded and burnished many times with a slow zen-like sensibility. This makes me feel like I am participating in the process of creating and refining a millennium of nature and weather. When completed they are as smooth as nature’s river rocks resonating the depth of maturity, timelessness and ancientness of the land.

The seeming redundancy of the repeated dark forms of my pieces is how the endless Iceland landscape revealed itself to me. It goes on and on and on opening to more variations of patterns but consistent, restrained and heart-wrenchingly beautiful absolutely owning AWE.

Of course in Iceland there was always ice under foot and tires—the dichotomy of glistening beauty and lurking danger. Blizzards of whiteout graced us with sky and earth becoming one. The various shades and nuances of the white defied the myth of white not being a color.

Slowly but surely the whiteness would yield sparingly to the underlying black volcanic rock armature as white and black married into a compatible marble cake co-existence. Thus my dark landscape paintings called out for their counterpart and my white acrylic paintings complied while letting the black show through enough out of deference. These were done with a squeegee in an improvised calligraphy.

I am hoping to seduce viewers with beautiful art reflecting my impressions of the land I experienced and the perhaps they will contemplate the planet’s wonders and want to preserve that. Further to think of the fragile future of our nether regions melting causing our oceans to swell and overtake our shores. Earth’s heartrending beauty could be changed and forever subsumed.

My intention in this work besides reflecting Iceland is to help us all understand our own role in halting the otherwise inevitable and preserving the exceptionalism of our planet for generations to come.(browse the artworks that were inspired by Iceland here.To purchase the catalog, click here)

Upside Down

My mornings are my afternoons and evenings now

As I live in the silence of my hermit white winter —mpl

 

Yearly Archives: 2017

PAUSING: A BOOK OF ART AND POETRY

Available at amazon.com

 

In the cold and rainy month of March 2011, I was an Artist in Residence at the Morris Graves Foundation: The Lake, in Northern California. It is a place of grace, peace and beauty that encouraged me to press my life’s pause button. Living and working in this setting inspired me to think in verse. These poems reflect my state of being or my observations as I passed through my days painting there in tranquility. The simple passing of my days resulted in this work. I hope you sense the simplicity in this volume.        —MPL

Pausing is quite remarkable and beautiful. Some poems tug at me as works of art. What is evident in these pages are poems that are fun, moving and insightful. Engaging poems that feel right at home with the quality and brilliance of Marietta’s visual art.
Dale Biron, author, Why We Do Our Daily Practices

Elegant in its simplicity, Pausing is a collection of art and poetry that responds to experience in a deeply aesthetic way.  Leis gives us the peace of how light strikes water, shades of color, the emergence of blue. It is an unusually beautiful book-we are fortunate to share its vision.
Miriam Sagan, author of Seven Places in America: A Poetic Sojourn

Marietta’s poems are full of quietness, stillness and the calmness of a lake. I love the book’s simplicity of words and art and am especially thankful for the poem Japan’s Havoc. Pausing is a treasure.
Taro Aizu, author of My Fukushima

READINGS:

Saturday, Feb. 25th from 1-3 pm
Weyrich Gallery
2935-D Louisiana NE
Albuquerque, NM 87110

Stay tuned for more readings!