Please note, the Guild will be implementing its new pricing for members shows:
Pieces listed for sale will remain at $5 for 2 pieces, however, pieces listed NFS will be $25 for 2 pieces.
The March Theme for the Members show is “Fire and Ice”.
(Receiving art on 3/1 & 3/2)
Exhibits on view till April 25th.
Gallery 1 – Joan Sichel (Photo and Poetry)
“We live with god’s gifts every moment,
Every heartbeat
Every rising sun
Every setting moon
And it is good so good
And for this I rejoice.”
All of Joan Sichel’s photographs and inspirations were born from an inner spark ignited by meditation. “I have always had this deep-seated feeling that I could touch others through my work and help them cultivate deeper feelings of love, gratitude, peace, and stewardship of the Earth. Today, we are confronted with progressively worsening environmental challenges that our children will have to survive. Our positive actions are greatly needed now more than ever!”
Ms. Sichel has exhibited since 2002, her first show being “Seasons: Images of our Garden State” with Dow Jones Corporation, which was a direct response to the 9-11 events. Her work was also circulated through the N.Y. City Parks Department at that time.
Ms. Sichel has practiced meditation since the mid-seventies, and has taught workshops since the early 2000’s. As an environmental activist, Sichel has created and implemented Global Warming Action workshops since the late ‘90’s, which has since generated letters from students to four U.S. presidents while they were in office.
Her compositions on meditation have also appeared in publications: Sacred Journal, from the organization Fellowship in Prayer, and in Hope and Healing, Peaceful Parenting in an Uncertain World, by internationally renowned author Naomi Drew.
Other artists draw on Ms. Sichel’s work for inspiration, like painter Tony La Salle of La Salle Gallery in Asbury Park, who etched one of her single-line meditations into an original painting.
“Meditation Journal,” Joan’s blog, is the home of her photographs interwoven with her original writings at joanseashell.blogspot.com. She conducts a free monthly virtual-zoom meditation circle. (Anyone who’d like to participate can email joansichel@gmail.com.) and also has a three-day meditation challenge on YouTube.
Her newest exhibit will be on display featuring “Story of the Fallen Tree,” along with a photography-series paired with individual meditation-inspired vignettes.
Joan resides in Monmouth Junction, New Jersey and mother of 2 daughters, Rebecca and Hannah
Human: Nature
Informed by the flora and fauna of coastal New Jersey, Eileen Kennedy creates figurative paintings and drawings that strive to integrate humans with nature. The artist works in egg tempera and silverpoint, media that were in widest use during the early Renaissance.
Except for a brief flirtation with abstraction in the late 70s, Eileen has always worked to reconcile her two compulsions: drawing and telling stories. Within a few years of earning a BFA at Pratt Institute, she attended night classes at the Art Students League of NY to tighten up her drawing skills. During the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, she exhibited large, figurative paintings and drawings at galleries, museums, and alternative spaces throughout the mid-Atlantic region. In 1995, she was awarded an Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
In 2008, the artist began to explore egg tempera because it seemed to be much more attuned to her linear sensibility than oil paint. She soon gave up working in oil altogether. Tempera is very labor intensive so Kennedy focused on juried exhibitions. In 2019, eight of her paintings were included in a survey of egg tempera painters at the Attleboro Arts Museum in Massachusetts. These works have also been shown at the Salmagundi Club in NYC and the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art in WI to name a few. In 2022 the State of NJ awarded her another Artist Fellowship and two of her paintings were included in the Lunar Codex Project that will send art to the moon during 2023 and 2024. The artist lives and works in Berkeley Township, New Jersey.