Local artists showcase work at Bell Gallery

Providence artists Yizhak Elyashiv, David Newton and Judyth van Amringe are showcased through July 7.

by Mary Jo Curtis

As the campus winds down from the bustle of Commencement, the David Winton Bell Gallery is offering a new exhibition showcasing the latest works of Providence artists Yizhak Elyashiv, David Newton and Judyth van Amringe through July 7. Although the three work in different mediums, their art shares a soothing, peaceful quality that echoes the quiet of summer at Brown.

Working primarily in porcelain, Van Amringe stirs memories of a walk on the beach in “Shell Mound,” “Coral” and “Moss Nest,” as well as in an untitled watercolor rendered in restful hues of blue and gray. In “Eggs and Bones,” she also draws from nature, arranging encrusted stoneware bones amid a large mound of broken porcelain eggs.

Van Amringe creates “a combination of burial ground and nest that speaks eloquently of the cycle of life and death,” said exhibition curator and Bell Gallery Director Jo-Ann Conklin. “Van Amringe’s ceramics are, more than anything else, evocative of objects excavated from the depths of the ocean or an ancient burial site. Some are otherworldly, others shamanistic.”

“Grove,” Newton’s main whimsical sculptural installation, consists of five hand-carved wooden figures, some worked from a cherry tree from the backyard of his Cranston home. Each figure consists of three parts – a foot-like base, a body and a head, with some roughly cut, others highly polished, in both natural and stained finishes.

“The use of color on some pieces gives a playful, cartoon-like quality, while the titles of individual works—such as ‘Grove’ and ‘Stand’ – bring us back to the origins of his materials,” said Conklin.

Elyashiv has contributed a selection of prints in drypoint and monotype. His centerpiece (left), shown for the first time at the Bell Gallery, is an untitled, 8-by-12-foot work comprised of 96 one-foot-square metal plates that create an underlying grid for a floating, random series of coordinates connected by lines marked by smears of brown, ochre and green. Part of a series that he began in 1994 titled “Handful of Grain Maps,” it illustrates his interest in systems of order and variation within set parameters.

“These three artists share a maturity of vision and a skilled use of materials,” Conklin observed.

Van Amringe contributes regularly to House and Garden. Elyashiv is a member of the Moses Brown School faculty and teaches at Rhode Island College and the Rhode Island School of Design. Newton has taught at RISD, Roger Williams University and the University of Connecticut.

The Bell Gallery is open Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m.