Ariel Kotker & Mollie Zanoni: Work from Home

Top: Zanoni; Below: Kotker

The two artists describe their work this way: Without much said between us, we share a certain scrappy inventiveness and sense of the absurd. We use what is around, what is found, shared, gleaned, rejected by one and retrieved by the other. We both enjoy a commitment to detailed craftsmanship and a refined but handmade aesthetic. We work in a patient, old fashioned way, focusing on the unique object rather than mass production. It is a hell of a lot of fun and we are very glad to have the chance to show our work together.

Ariel Kotker is an award winning artist working on "His Room As He Left It," which is an alternate world in sculpture that tells the coming of age story of Drey Fank, a 21-year old boy from a science-fictional town in Pennsylvania. When finished, it will be a walk-in novella where everything is handmade, including stuffed birds, beer cans, a bass guitar, a birding gun, old sneakers and a personal diary. "Like so many before me, I like to glorify ordinary objects by making fakes, but I've no interest in "fooling" anyone. My main aim is to use these things to tell a story. It’s not so much a piece of artwork as it is a reflection of a life."

Mollie Zanoni is a self-taught artist who has been making drawings and small sculptures out of diverse materials since 2006. Her work has been shown here in Northampton, New York City, and Hudson, New York.
"Typically I begin making a 3-D piece by finding an object or seeing a shape that inspires me. It may be a seedpod or a piece of metal I spot while out walking. I use simple techniques and materials and work away from those basic beginnings, my intention being to infuse the form with expression and personality while keeping things pretty funny...The figures are weirdo hybrids, neither human nor animal. At their best, I want them to be beautiful and stupid."  

MZ:
"From the first moment I saw Ariel's work, I felt an instant affinity for her aesthetic. Jaunty and sweet, beautifully executed and leavened with a completely original sense of gentle cornball humor, well, it was love at first sight. There is an inscrutable hilarity to all she comes up with and its simplicity belies a rich, serious wackiness."

AK:
"Mollie is the expert Re-animator of the most hopeless object. She reveals its real purpose, furnishing it devotedly with pattern or toes. From her studio, a cast of characters quietly wends: folks you might glimpse through the portal under the porch, or haunting your dreams... here is a teetering bowling-pin-bodied Mummy, drawing the reins on its jaw sled. And there, the bead-eyed clog pair, mouths agape!"

Visit Kotker's Web site
Visit Zanoni's Web site

The artists' reception for this exhibition is Sunday, November 9, 5 to 7 p.m.