About

James May Gallery presents: Passionate Realities: featuring new work by J Myszka Lewis (WI), Lydia Dildilian (AR), Lorna Ritz (MA), Mark Bowers (IL) 2201 N Farwell Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53202 J Myszka Lewis is a visual artist that uses print media, embroidery, and painting to consider a variety of concepts that stem out of considerations of pattern and repetition. Combining imagery sourced from 17th-century Dutch still-life paintings with aesthetic and conceptual concerns of the Pattern and Decoration movement, which emerged in the mid-1970s, Lewis creates floral patterns through systematic methods of image construction that include scanning, duplicating, and stenciling. The resulting drawings, paintings, and prints depict exploding Rorschach-like symmetrical abstractions or fragmented still-lifes. Lewis received her BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. J Myszka Lewis is based in Madison, Wisconsin, and she is also a curator at Tandem Press. Lydia Dildilian’s work seeks to explore unknown geographies of the future through highly complex, saturated landscape paintings and abstract drawings. By collapsing, colliding, and converging focal points between blurred and sharpened features, Dildilian translates layered landscapes found and captured from photographs, video games, and appropriated images into recursive and experimental spaces. Dildilian received her BFA in painting and drawing with a minor in classical literature from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in 2012, and her MFA from the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL in 2016. She is currently Assistant Professor of Painting at Arkansas State University. Lorna Ritz studied with Lennart Anderson in the 60’s at the Art Students League, NYC. She received a BFA from Pratt Institute, changing the course of her painting life into pure abstraction, under the instruction of Gahagan (a student of Hans Hofman), who was a very important teacher for her at Pratt. Ritz received an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1971, in both painting and sculpture. Ritz’s paintings are directly informed by the Impressionists and Abstract Expressionists. Compositional concepts absorbed decades ago are continually evolving within to this day. She best expresses her most Passionate Realities (the stories beneath ordinary everyday life), producing on canvas a religious experience. Mark Bowers, born in St. Joseph, MI in 1977, is an artist whose passion for making started early in his childhood. Graduating from Michigan State University in 2000 and earning a Master's Degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2003, he now inspires as an art educator at New Trier High School in Winnetka, IL. Mark's work, celebrated for its depth and emotional resonance, has been included in numerous gallery exhibitions and international art fairs. His artistry bridges imagination, reality, form, and perception. Bowers work is an exploration of rainbow poplar wood through hand shaped constructions. Each piece is a vessel for storytelling, weaving personal narratives with broader themes like equity and biases. He aims to engage viewers not just visually, but also through touch, inviting them to contemplate the complexities of human experiences. The process of transforming wood, embracing its textures, hues, and inherent diversity, into pieces infused with symbolism exudes a captivating allure. Exhibition runs 1-3-24 to 2-24-24