Dana Clancy                                                                      Ben Schwab
 
“Inside/Outside” presents two painters who examine our spatial relationships with the built world, interior and exterior architecture, and how these spaces affect us.  Dana Clancy’s peopled interior spaces are usually of contemporary museum architecture, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where we observe those observing art. Ben Schwab’s urban landscapes shimmer with energy as exploding grid lines suggest forces of change, growth and expansion.  Both artists create a tension between realism and abstraction with compositions of unusual perspectives, and manipulated color and scale.
          Dana Clancy says of her recent work: “… a series of current work depicts museum audiences congregating along balconies and passing through modern exhibition spaces.  By elevating the point of view and juxtaposing near and far space in the painting, I call attention to the viewer's position as a spectator whose observation mirrors the subject of the paintings. As with my portraits, the museum paintings contrast closeness and distance, form and flatness, and what is seen and what is hidden as a way to explore the act of looking.”  Dana Clancy received her M.F.A. in Painting from Boston University and a B.A. from Vassar College.  Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Boston University, the Danforth Museum of Art, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, and Laconia Gallery in Boston's South End.  She has been included in group exhibitions nationally, including the New Image Art Gallery, Los Angeles, Delta Axis at Marshall Arts, Memphis, and Bowery Gallery, New York.  In New England, her work has also been shown at Green Street Gallery, Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts, FPAC Gallery, the South Shore Art Center, and ArtSPACE@16, and is in the permanent collection at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park.  Her awards include a grant from the Artists Resource Trust, a full-scholarship residency to the Vermont Studio Center. She currently works as an assistant professor at Boston University's School of Visual Arts, College of Fine Arts.
        Ben Schwab says of his recent work: “Through my urban landscapes, I am dealing with the fundamental creation and evolution of our cities, which become a direct manifestation of our society, compressed into an orthogonal grid or abstract linear configuration. I believe that our environments and surroundings reflect who we are and what we are motivated by as a civilization. My work expresses ideas of expansion and contraction related to construction in urban and suburban environments, often connected to overcrowding populations and existential dissociation.  Working with these ideas enables me to gain a better understanding of people, the environment and myself.”  Ben Schwab received his M.F.A. in 2005 from the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts at Indiana University and his B.F.A. from the Missouri State University. His work has been exhibited at the Chashama Gallery, University of Rochester, Siena College, Benoliel Gallery at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Joseph Gierek Gallery in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His awards include a Strategic Opportunity Stipend from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and in 2008 he received The Scholars and Artists Grant from The College of Saint Rose to study and research in Tokyo, Japan. He currently works as an assistant professor of art in Drawing & Painting at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York.

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