On the Land, In the Sea
Andrea Bartine Caldarise
She/Her
Bio
Andrea Bartine Caldarise is a painter exploring the psychological connection between landscape and people. She received a BFA (Painting/Art History) from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, studying at Temple Rome Campus and receiving the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship at Yale University. She holds a Masters in Arts Administration from the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to her painting practice, Caldarise has collaborated with dance company, RealLivePeople (2010-2013) creating artworks centered on first-person accounts to engage audiences through memory exercises and dance. From 2014-2019, Caldarise collaborated with Exquisite Corpse Company, building environments for immersive plays engaging with a variety of themes from manifesting memories around ideas of home to grappling with climate change. Caldarise worked at the New Museum of Contemporary Art as the Manager of Public Programs (2017-2022), producing public programs.
A lover of cities and wilderness alike, her early paintings feature city parks as community hubs of everyday life, and her recent artwork draws inspiration from research trips to national parks, including Olympic, Death Valley, Joshua Tree, Big Sur, Petrified Forest, and Yosemite, among others. These artworks begin at iconic vistas, charting the emotions, histories, and secrets of these distinctive environments. Caldarise has participated in residencies at ChaNorth, Pine Plains, NY (2024), Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2018) and Post Contemporary, Troy, NY (2010; 2013) and received the FST Studio Projects Fund grant (2019). Andrea Bartine Caldarise has exhibited in New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington D.C. and Rome, Italy.
Statement
Andrea Bartine Caldarise is a landscape painter investigating the psychological connection between people and the environment. While wandering about a landscape, Caldarise seeks with the mind’s eye, noting first impressions to in the studio as source material. As she develops the painting themes, Caldarise researches plants, folklore, and geological histories to locate through-lines with her first impressions. With this process, she aspires to weave a lived experience with artist-created source material and research. Her artwork is situated in transitional moments, examining ephemeral qualities of a landscape to craft an experience of discovery for the viewer. Each space seems like something, or someone has just arrived at the scene. Caldarise’s paintings position environments as entry points for open-ended narratives drawing on the collective consciousness. Her paintings evolve over time, possessing a mutable yet distinct character — akin to the changing impressions one gets when revisiting a favorite book. The experience alters with each encounter, enriched by previous engagements. By investigating various viewpoints: historical, personal, and imagined, we can create empathy within our ever-changing world. These paintings are derived from experiences within the social and physical environments around us. Using the language of landscape, her art explores the tension between real and surreal
Kathleen Greco
She/Her
Bio
Kathleen Greco is a visual artist living in Bucks County Pennsylvania. She is a core reef contributor to the Crochet Coral Reef worldwide project directed and produced by Margaret and Christine Wertheim from the Institute of Figuring, Los Angeles, California. Her coral Jelly Yarn sculpture was included in the Wertheim's collaborative Coral Reef Pod World's installation in the Central Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2019, Venice, Italy.
Kathleen Greco's art has been exhibited in museums and galleries including the Museum of Art and Design New York, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C., Hayward Gallery, England UK, Woodmere Art Museum, Pennsylvania, Elisabet Ney Museum, Texas, Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, Germany, and Schlossmuseum, Linz, Austria. Her work has been featured in Artillery, Hyperallergic, and the the Washington Post.
Statement
I grew up in Springfield, New Jersey where many summers were spent at the Jersey shore. I have always been fascinated with seashells and corals washing up from the ocean waves on the shoreline. I collect the specimens whenever I am on a beach marking each piece with the date, year, and location. I started crocheting coral and sea life with the development of my waterproof translucent Jelly Yarn, conceptualizing the organic shapes into colorful sculptures. Some corals grow in a hyperbolic geometry structure. To mimic their form, I crocheted the collection using hyperbolic plane pattern techniques increasing the stitches exponentially. Similar to changes we experience in life, my art investigates themes of fragility, resilience, and transition, suggesting a bigger materiality lies underneath and within the surfaces.
