At the GREEN SPACE Gallery, an exhibit entitled RHYTHMIC VISIONS featuring works by China Blue, Hayley Morris and Ben Wohlberg is on display from May 14 through September 4, 2018. The GREEN SPACE Gallery is a partnership between the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the Rhode Island Airport Corporation, promoting outstanding work by artists living and working in Rhode Island.
RHYTHMIC VISIONS explores various ways in which movement, music and rhythm can be expressed visually. These questions are explored in the work of three artists; Ben Wohlberg, whose large, gestural canvases experiment with organic forms and texture to capture a quality of space and time; China Blue, whose graphic works depict movement and migration; and Hayley Morris, whose animation conveys the exuberance of music as well as the shifting realities of dementia.
A RISCA Fellowship recipient, China Blue has also been honored as an Artist-in-Resident with the Norman Prince Neurosciences Institute at the Rhode Island Hospital, has received three NASA/RI Space Grants, and is an adviser to Rhode Island Congressman Langevin’s Committee for Art & Culture and the state’s Art and Health Committee. Driven by her interested in how our world is built from our sensations and perceptions, the body of work shown in this exhibition focuses on visualizing acoustic propagation of sound in space. A resident of Warwick, she additionally is the Founder and Executive Director of the non-profit organization The Engine Institute
Hayley Morris is an artist and animation director based in Providence, R.I. She runs the studio Shape & Shadow creating animated commercials, short films, music videos, projection art and social media content. Morris uses traditional stop-motion and mixed media techniques to tell stories that unfold through layered textures, handcrafted details and inventive storytelling. Morris has directed commercials for Samsung, Hewlett Packard, Burt’s Bees, Kate Spade & The Detroit Zoo; commercials for Special K, McDonald’s, Toyota, The New York Times; and music videos for Iron and Wine, violinist Hilary Hahn, and pianist Hauschka. Her short film, Undone, won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Animated Short at Slamdance in 2009, and her sets, puppets and music videos were shown at La Gaité Lyrique’s Motion Factory Exhibition in Paris. Morris also teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Ben Wohlberg was born in 1927 on a farm in Montezuma, Kansas. His first “canvas” was the dirt, in which he began to draw at age 5. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he earned a B.F.A. in Illustration and Painting from Art Center School in Los Angeles, California. Moving to New York City in 1953, he supported himself and his family as an advertising illustrator first at Charles E. Cooper Studio, and later in his own commercial art studio. He retired in 2005 to pursue abstract painting, dividing his time between Harbour Island in the Bahamas and Block Island. Inspired by nature, Wohlberg’s paintings have been shown in galleries in New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island and can be found in corporate and private collections throughout Europe, the Bahamas, and the United States