A “Mad Mix” Is Coming To The White Room

“Mad Mix as an exhibit concept is a play off the informal definition of mad as in mad loaded or, in this case, very mixed work with 11 featured artists,” shared The White Room co-owners and directors Andrea McCafferty and Kat O’Neill.

The Bridgehampton-based gallery will celebrate its latest exhibition with an opening reception on Saturday, June 22 from 6 to 8 p.m. MADMIX will feature photography, Glitch art, mixed media, abstract and figurative paintings, installations, and sculptures. Let’s get to know the 11 talented featured individuals a bit better.

Seek One’s interest in art was sparked at the age of 15 with graffiti writing. His work represents a combination of photography and graffiti expressed in a mixed media style deriving influence from pop culture and street styles. He has described is work as “blurring the lines between urban culture and fine art”.

Oz Van Rosen studied art at the New York School of the Arts, but photography has always been her primary passion and a self-taught hobby. Van Rosen’s current work is part of the Glitch art movement; which is defined as randomly corrupting, bending, and degrading data in an image to create an unpredictable aesthetic. She describes her work as “Abstract Techspressionism”, a new form of image creation in the era of post-photography.

Susan Washington comes from a family of artists and by age 5, Susan was tutored in the art of origami and Sumi ink drawing by her Japanese godmother and spent her teens deconstructing dressmaking as a punk fashionista. After working 15 years in the NYC fashion industry, she decided to pursue her love of the arts and began working towards her degree in fine art. She has described her work as “in a constant state of evolution”. She states, “I create to bring my own visions into the physical world to share with others and for the challenges I face when doing so.”

Although now a native New Yorker, Dinesh Boaz was born in India with deep roots in Sri Lanka. Originally owning a recording studio in Soho, Boaz was drawn to the visualization of the music rather than purely the instrumentation. She started to visualize frequencies and harmonics as color palettes, and how each new frequency derived a unique visual tone. Boaz states, “I now seek out sound in my photos; I look to find those symbiotic patterns and fast changing colors that play together in rhythm, similar to the layers that make up a beat.”

Born and raised in New York City, Stephen Bezas attended the High School of Art and Design and then the School of Visual Arts. A neo-pointillist, Bezas has also been inspired by historically important pointillist artists such as Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Bezas sees himself as a contemporary artist rooted by his early pointillism and grids. He jokes about how his art has been influenced navigating the street grids of Manhattan to the grids of his designs.

Martha Macleer began sketching with a #2 pencil and lined paper in the first grade. It wasn’t until high school and one incredible art teacher that she really became inspired and challenged. Her award winning projects inspired her to make art her life’s work. Bezas “primarily on canvas with acrylic paint and plaster.” She explained, “I create paintings with lots of texture. I’m very drawn to a cool palate. I want to draw the viewer in for a moment with a curiosity as to what they are seeing.”

Kathy Buist’s work has won praise from The New York Times and has been shown in museums and galleries throughout the country, including the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, the National Woman’s Museum Archives in Washington, D.C., Andrews Museum in Andrews, NC and the Long Island Museum. She notes how her pieces “return the viewer to a seemingly lost time in which humans interrelated on more fundamental levels with nature.”

A surfer since he was five-years-old, Keith Ramsdell has always lived and worked in close proximity to the ocean which serves as his primary inspiration. Keith uses long-exposure photography to create minimal seascape washes. He relies on the essential aspects of minimalism—line, shape and texture—to form greyscale images that are affecting in their simplicity. Keith often waits weeks for the perfect combination of elements to come together in a shoot. Through his lens, violent tropical storms or massive winter waves crashing on the beach are transformed into quiet, introspective moments.

Alicia Gitilitz is a versatile painter working in a variety of styles including impressionism, traditional and abstract. Her paintings are inspired by her love and passion for travel and seeing the aesthetic beauty of nature throughout the world. Along with the media of paint, photography has been in the forefront of her work as well. Her love of nature shines through in both her painting and photography capturing the essence of the moment in place and time.

Originally from a small town in Texas, Lynn Savarese resided and traveled throughout the world before making New York City her home in the early 1980s following her graduation from Harvard Law School. After careers in corporate law and investment banking and a lengthy sabbatical to raise her family and pursue volunteer work for various human rights organizations, Lynn finally found her passion — photography — several years ago. Since then, her photography has appeared in numerous shows and publications worldwide and she’s won several international prizes and honors.

Ryan Schmidt’s ambitious intention is to create atmospheric, monumental sculpture that captures the everlasting properties of the sun, water, clouds, and the seasonal landscapes invoking the viewer’s imagination for inspiration of great healing and thoughtfulness. His sketches come to life in a three dimensional sculpture. The finish is highly polished to create brilliant and complex mirrored images of organic transformation in the surface of the form as contrast between existence and illusion. His main concept is the reflection of the outside world on the artwork.

Mad Mix will be on display June 18 to July 14.

The White Room is located at 2415 Main Street in Bridgehampton. For more information about the exhibition or the artists, please visit www.thewhiteroom.gallery/.