2017 Mohawk-Hudson Regional Invitational

From May 5 to June 9, 2017, Albany Center Gallery will present the 2017 Mohawk-Hudson Regional Invitational, which features the work of esteemed regional artists Pennie Brantley, Matt Crane, Tasha Depp, Andrew Dines, Jamie Rodriguez and Anne Roecklein. An artists’ reception will be held from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday, May 5, 2017, and the public is invited to attend.

Exhibit Sponsors: Carlsbury Gonzalez & Patricia Triller, NYSCA, and Wine & Dine for the Arts.

Each year, Albany Center Gallery highlights selected artists from the previous year’s Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region exhibit, a rotating juried exhibition that is always one of the area’s most prestigious and popular shows. This year, ACG Executive Director Tony Iadicicco selected Pennie Brantley, Matt Crane, Tasha Depp, Andrew Dines, Jamie Rodriguez and Anne Roecklein from more than 126 artists who were included in the 2016 Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region show at the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, curated by Michael Oatman. The gallery is honored to provide these six accomplished and distinguished artists with an opportunity to showcase their work in greater depth.

Pennie Brantley is an acclaimed and accomplished painter whose career has spanned decades, with her works exhibited in museums, art centers and galleries nationally and internationally. Brantley is also a passionate traveler who has lived in Buenos Aires, Toronto, St. Louis, and Boston. Her architecturally-based paintings reflect her global perspective and are connected to a deeper psychological and spiritual state. Brantley is a prominent member of the New York City-based National Association of Women Artists and was named the Who’s Who of American Women. Brantley has worked diligently in the art communities of Boston and St. Louis to improve conditions and opportunities for other artists. Boston’s ARTcetera ’98, a charity auction and exhibition of 362 artists, raised $600,000 for AIDS patients. Her own donated painting raised the record highest amount for the biannual event. She has served on the boards of Women’s Caucus for Art and the St. Louis Artists’ Guild, chairing executive committees and initiating programs. She now resides with her artist husband Bob Morgan in New York , where she maintains a home and studio.

Matt Crane is a self proclaimed observer, collector and builder who specializes in metal-based sculpture. Crane’s intuitively constructed pieces come together to create poetic moments in life experienced through physical space by the hulking of objects and resonating drawings. After relocating to Brooklyn in 1996 post graduation from the Kansas City Art Institute, where he earned his BFA in Sculpture, Crane opened a design/build custom architectural metal fabrication business to support his sculpture practice. Crane has traveled extensively, attending artist residencies and teaching metal casting workshops at art schools and universities both nationally and internationally. Simultaneously he developed what is now the Kohler Company Collection of Art in Kohler, WI. Crane is currently an MFA candidate at the University at Albany, and lives and works in Columbia County and Brooklyn, NY.

Tasha Depp is a provocative painter who uses highway litter and ocean debris as protagonists in her ongoing dialogue about priorities and order, accident and intention. Depp studied at the Cooper Union School of Art, which led to receiving her BFA and studying with the painters Stephen Posen, Martha Rosler, Vito Acconci and Hans Haacke. She did several artist-in-residencies in the 1990s, at the Kanoria Art Center in Ahmedabad, India and at the C-scape Dune Shack in Provincetown, RI. Depp has had exhibition opportunities in a variety of locations throughout New York State, including the Hyde Collection, The Samuel Dorsky Museum, Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, Bard College, Queens Theatre in the Park, Franklin Furnace, Vassar College, and a solo show at Greene County Council on the Arts. She received a Decentralization grant for painting free portraits for county residents on found objects, and recently curated a pop-up show in a mobile home, continuing her experimentation with the role of painting in our culture. Depp is a proud mother of four and currently resides in Catskill, NY.

Andrew Dines is a recent graduate from the University at Albany, where he earned his masters in Fine Arts. His work is of an industrial nature with imagery of aggressively overworked surfaces, represented through rust, aluminum, acrylic, ink and resin. Dines’ work dives into the industrial mark of mankind’s progress and culture in its battered and refined simplicity. Much of the work lacks a blatant dialogue which urges the viewer fill in the blanks, allowing for emergence in the work of decay. He has received several awards including the Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Exchange (ROCI) Road to Peace Emerging Artist Award from the Rauschenberg Foundation and the Creative Spirit Award from the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, NY.

Jamie Rodriguez is a painter, sculptor and installation artist who has received his BFA from the University at Albany and his MFA in Sculpture from the University at Albany. Rodriguez uses paintings and installations to create a narrative about political plights, social oppression and social injustice. Rodriguez uses landscape and nature’s beauty as a platform to expose the dark, mysterious and disturbing ills of society. He has attended art residencies, exhibited and lectured about his work nationally and internationally in New York, Finland, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Spain, Portugal and Germany.

Anne Roecklein is an artist who earned her a Bachelors of Arts from Carleton College, Masters of Professional Studies from Pratt Institute, and Masters in Fine Arts from Indiana University. Her installations range from 2D to 3D forms, and combine idealized imagery and found materials. Her works induce feelings of struggle associated with desire while still focusing on the relationships of polar opposite concepts such as the part and the whole, real and imaginary, desire and dissatisfaction. Roecklein evokes the exploration of the emotional battle betweens one's reality with relation to idealized utopian experiences that is represented through clean lines, light colors and nature. Roecklein has exhibited throughout the country and has received several Resident Artists awards nationally and internationally.

The 2017 Mohawk-Hudson Regional Invitational, on display at Albany Center Gallery from May 5 to June 6, will feature the work of six regional artists: Pennie Brantley, Matt Crane, Tasha Depp, Andrew Dines, Jamie Rodriguez and Anne Roecklein. The Invitational will kick off with an Opening Reception on 1st Friday, May 5 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. The reception and exhibit are free and open to the public.

Feel free to RSVP to our Facebook event!