Drawing 

Mildred Beltre - Rana Khoury - Rebecca Smith

on view: February 7 – March 15, 2009 
Opening reception: Saturday, February 7, 5–7pm

The work of these three artists shows the remarkable inclusiveness of drawing. 

Rebecca Smith will create a tape drawing installation on the 35 ft. wall of the gallery. Her drawing tools are colored tape. She juxtaposes the physical texture of the tape with the graphic quality of the line: curved lines wrinkle and bunch, their three-dimensional presence longs to leave the drawing they are confined in. The movements of the tape has much in common with the movement of calligraphy; although for the artist the awkward moments produced by trying to make a curving line with a wide duct tape, and the pleasure of the precise culicues made possible with thin drafting tapes, are their own rewards. Solo exhibition have been at Jeannie Freilich Fine Art, Florence Lynch, LedisFlam and Mary Delahoyd galleries in New York and at the Tarrawarra Museum in Victoria, Australia in 2005. 

Mildred Beltre, a native of the Dominican Republique, shows work from her latest series, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral.  She started the series in 2007 as a visual investigation into growth and self-organizing.  Her drawings, solid graphite marks, start with a basic form, a cell, letting it evolve and move on the paper. The drawing then develops a kind of rhythm that lets a narrative evolve. The strokes of the graphite give the forms their constraint, but the swirls of the patterns they form hint at endless growth. Mildred Beltre has shown her work at the NY Studio Gallery, International Print Center, Rush Arts Gallery, Williamsburg Music Center and Lower East Side Print Ship in New York. 

Rana Khoury, a calligrapher who lives in Lebanon, has made a career that blends her passion for art and literature, both prose and poetry, with a strong commitment to community and culture. She designs wall mural in Arabic Calligraphy, integrating Arabic letters and literature with architecture and landscape. Her passionate interest in calligraphy let her to the traditional technique of “drawing in words”. This technique works the calligraphy used in the writing of a poem into a painting with colors and shapes. Four drawings will be on view at FiveMyles.  Her work is not often exhibited. In Rana’s words “the political instability has deterred the art domain in Lebanon from progressing.” 

DIRECTIONS:

Take 2, 3, or 4 trains to Franklin Avenue. Walk two blocks against the traffic on Franklin. Walk ¾ block to 558 St. Johns Place. FiveMyles is within easy walking distance from the Brooklyn Museum.

acknowledgments:

This exhibition is supported by the Jerome Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Greenwall Foundation.