Exhibition - 'Mind’s Eye': Acey, Bendheim, Stock

Jo-Ann Acey, Fred Bendheim, and David Stock are sharing the Project Space in a show titled Mind’s Eye. We all have the ability to visualize images in our mind, and from that fertile ground, art can easily grow. Are these creations fragments from memories, moments of recognition that resonate with the artist, or perhaps mental pictures that start the creative process? In Mind’s Eye, Acey, Bendheim, and Stock make use of their visual imagination to create images beyond ordinary sight.

Jo-Ann Acey is showing work from her series The Journey Home. Created with Flashe paint and mixed media on paper or wood panel these pieces evoke movement and memory as indicated in their title. Acey states, “The works are created as visual diaries of remembered places.” The abstract images take form through the artist’s multifaceted visualization of a particular place - maybe real, maybe imagined. Through her use of color, movement, and a spontaneous process, Acey brings these complicated elements together, revealing the journey home.

For Fred Bendheim, inspiration comes from both the natural world and the human domain, be it from principles of nature or human culture. His painted shapes span the boundaries between painting and sculpture, figuration and abstraction, and personal expression and site-specific art. Bendheim’s work explores the relationship between forms and colors. It is a spiritual quest to express something larger than himself. Bendheim refers to his art as “a living tree with many branches”. He states, “My art is a creation-tree that I cultivate daily, and it also cultivates me and others.”

David Stock’s photographs are penetrating observations of the urban environment, yet they embody very personal thoughts and feelings. Stock and other photographers sometimes refer to this duality as “equivalence”. As photographer John Paul Caponigro explains, “Through equivalence the photographic object created becomes a reflection of both the external things it represents and the internal states of its creator. This reflective capacity is extended to the viewers, who re-experience this shared process in their own ways.” Stock remarks that his images of complex street scenes “grow out of my engagement with the city, and evoke for me a host of memories and associations”.