Always Be An Emerging Artist: Emerge: An Exhibition I Curated in Manhattan

Grace Knowlton

One of the great benefits of writing this blog is the opportunity it affords to meet other artists. For that reason alone it's worth posting blogs weekly. So back in August I began curating a group exhibition of some of my favorite artists whose work I was lucky enough to blog about this past year. The title of this exhibition is "Emerge" and it just opened at Indian Road Cafe in Inwood in Upper Manhattan.

I chose the title "Emerge" for two reasons. 1) I met almost all of these artists through my blog "Always Be An Emerging Artist"... hence "Emerge". 2) all of the work in this show exhibits a kind of quality of emerging... emerging in the sense of form and shape surfacing to the viewer's attention, on abstract shapes and textures gradually revealing themselves, and on recognizable places and things, like a hand, a landscape, or a microorganism, appearing out of abstraction or vice versa.

Other common characteristics of pieces in this show are texture, layering, modest size, banal subject matter, minimal composition, contemplative form, and simplified shape. There is no ego in these works, no assertion of the character of the artist. These paintings, drawings, weaving, sculptures, and ready-made exist on their own, asserting their unique curiosity upon the viewer and inviting the viewer to "fill in the blanks" and participate in their process of becoming or creation.

"Emerge" will be on view at Indian Road Cafe at 600 West 218th Street from now until January 15th. Thank you to all the artists participating in this exhibition.

*note: most of the photographed images below were not photographed at the exhibition