Artists show and tell

January 13, 2006

Ornella Ridone and Leigh Hyams present their graphic work in an up coming slideshow lectura event. This is the first event of the San Miguel PEN 2006 lecture series.

The recent work of Ornella Ridone features embroidery, a slow and intimate medium to which Ridone came after working witj weaving, miniatures and installation art. She shows and describes the process by which, in her plastic search, she began to substitute needle and thread for pencils and brushes.

Born in Italy, Ridone studied in the Academy of Art in Brera and with the artist Jolanta Owidzka in Poland. She also learned weaving on the horizontal loom in the Oaxaca sierra. Ridone taught at the Art School of Castello Sforzesco in Milán. She has exhibited her work at many Mexican museum and galleries, including Carrillo Gil, El Chopo, the Tamayo Museum and Museo San Carlos.

Ridone´s recent work is featured in a show in Museo de la Ciudad in Querétaro titled Hilvanes y Pespuntes (Basting and Backstitches). Her work i son display there through January 30.

Painter and renowne teacher Leigh Hyams shows slides and comments on her newest paintings, produced over the last year in her studio here in colonia Guadalupe. She also reads from her recent publication How Painting Make Artists. A life-long artist and onetime assistant to Philip Guston, Hyams is especially known for her use of color. Her most recent work features unstretched canvases, primarily with single blossom-like images, some of enormous scale.

Hyams´s work appears in distinguished North American collections such as the San José Museum of Art, the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco and the Oakland Museum of Art. Her exhibitions include a solo show at Paco Imperial in Rio de Janeiro. Featuring her most recent work, the show El Jardin de Redon opens in the Museo de la Ciudad in Querétaro on January 20.