Art-O-Mat Gallery

HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS: THE ART OF JANET NOLAN AND PAUL VILLINSKI is an exhibition by two installation artists who create intensely lyrical works with found objects grounded in the natural environment of the city. Paul Villinski has lived and worked in Hunters Point since 1982 while Janet Nolan maintains a studio in Tribeca.

These artists share a universal language of commonplace objects recovered from the city streets which transform themselves into soulful and often evocative sculptural installations. Discarded gloves picked up are the basis for both Villinski's Lament and Nolan's Glove-winged Blackbirds, which inhabit two different gallery spaces but are still in communion with one another. As Villinski states, "Most days when walking down the street, I spend more time looking down than up." Lament (2001) is a lyrical and moving piece comprised of a pair of somber-toned dark wings fashioned out of found work gloves stitched together with subtle blood red threads. Fourteen feet in length, the wings are attached to a metal backpack frame in the center; its straps hang empty yet still evoking a sense of flight and weightlessness. The powerful absence of a human presence is reinforced by steel sewing needles still attached to the red threads which hang down, creating tiny points of light which delicately glimmer throughout the piece.

"Lost gloves? The city is full of them. Having read this, you will see them everywhere...So I bring them into the studio and into pieces and give them homes, with the others...In attempting to repair and transform they are interwoven and become new objects. Wings (fingers become feathers): for the struggle against gravity, for ascendancy and flight in all senses...Some of the pieces are constructed from found work gloves only. These have a patina of the work performed while worn. They are freighted with untold hours of labor. To this I add my own labor...The pieces are obsessively handmade. Entwined. Hand stitched. They are about handwork and restoration and connectedness. Once they lie melancholic, now they are hopeful." Paul Villinski

Glove-winged Blackbirds (2001-2004) is part of a body of work by Nolan of discarded black gloves found on the streets and cunningly fashioned into a rusty flock of hovering, cheeky and humorous birds with the intelligent gleam in a crow's dark eye. This group animates the space and communicates with Villinski's in a mute dialogue. Other pieces from this series are Glove Vine (not included in the exhibition) where found gloves are painted green and travel up the walls like ivy, like a flock of birds gathered at a prime feasting tree, or for chattering conversation at dawn or dusk. One gets the feeling that Nolan spends much time in nature, examining the habits of birds, and musing on their fragile diminutive bodies and complex life cycles.

"When I see objects repeatedly discarded, I begin collecting them - such as hundreds of broken umbrellas and lost gloves. I have no preconceived sculpture in mind when I gather these objects rather the nature of the object suggests to me content and form." Janet Nolan

Other work in the exhibition includes a new installation of a black flock of Villinski's beer can butterflies. In a laboriously painstaking process, each is individually crafted from discarded beer cans into flocks of realistically crafted butterflies mounted on the wall in random compositions suggesting movement and flight. Cut from metal by hand and blackened to create a sooty surface, they float on thin wires, moved only by the currents of the air in the space. Lyrical and spare, the shadows and light in each piece weaves another layer into the visceral sense of experiencing these compositions for the viewer.

Nolan's two touching glass domed reliquaries, Rescue Glove Reliquary (2002) and Rescue Respirator Reliquary (2002), are collections from her visits to her studio located four blocks from the World Trade Center after 9/11 where she and other tenants were allowed brief visits to their homes and studios for a few minutes each day. Nolan gathered and meticulously stored these discarded remnants of the rescue workers' operations on each trip. It wasn't until a year later that she was able to come to terms with the sorrowful aspects of these personal items in a sympathetic celebration of their inherent preciousness.

A native of Alabama, Janet Nolan studied art at Auburn University and Georgia State University focusing on painting and drawing. When she moved to New York City in 1976, Nolan shifted from two-dimensional to three-dimensional work as she began collecting and using large quantities of everyday objects she found discarded in the city transforming them into sculpture through serial methods of construction. In 1996, Nolan created a commissioned installation, Nightingale, for the Harvard School of Public Health and is currently working on another for the Harvard University Operations Services which utilizes "green" technologies throughout the building. Her commissioned installation follows this "recycle/reuse" sensibility as it incorporates clear plastic storage tubes from fluorescent lamps used in the building into a sculpture with 27 foot long segments installed by cables in the central circular stairwell. Nolan's work is also in the collections of Auburn University, Georgia State University, PS 58 in Brooklyn, The Museum of Modern Art and the Franklin Furnace Artist's Book Collection.

Paul Villinski has lived and worked in New York City since 1982. His work has been included in more than seventy exhibitions, including recent shows at the Islip Art Museum; the Ogunquit Museum of American Art; Carnegie Mellon University; the University of Wyoming Art Museum; and Morgan Lehman Gallery. Villinski's work is included in numerous private and corporate collections, including major works created by commission. He has been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and has been an Artist-in-Residence at the MIllay Colony in New York; the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming; the Djerassi Foundation and the Villa Montalvo Arts Center, both in California. He taught as an Adjunct Lecturer in Art History at the CUNY LaGuardia Community College. Recent commissions include a site-specific installation, Drift, created for the master bedroom of actors Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams' Brooklyn brownstone of 33 butterflies made from found beer cans. Villinski is represented by the Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York.