Live Palette made of colorful Birds will be an installation at the Clio Art Fair NYC March 2018

 

Press Release by Erik Eisele (will some hilarious detail)

BARTLETT, N.H. — Former East Villager and abstract artist Rebecca Klementovich returns to NYC next month for the Clio Art Fair, where her insights from living in a small town at the foot of New Hampshire’s White Mountains will be on display. Her pallet includes the orange and pinks of alpenglow, intertwined with the subtle blues, greys and whites of ice, snow and winter mountains. Clio is a curated with an eye towards independent artists, showcasing the work, careers and achievements of already affirmed creative minds. For Klementovich this will be a homecoming of sorts, a return to the “Bunker” neighborhood of William Boroughs and the city walls where Basquiat wrote Samo, which carries a special sweetness for her — she lived in the East Village and Sunnyside Queens for 20 years.

“I will never shake the inspiration spawned by living in the creative airs of the East Village during the 90s,” Klementovich said. “The question is: Can you ever leave the East Village? The pizza on St. Mark’s, the creative riots of people dressed as vegetables protesting the loss of neighborhood gardens, the wall-to-wall Polish restaurants and Spanish bodegas. These specialties swim in my subconscious.”

But she did leave, moving to the most anti-women, anti-abstract art area of New Hampshire: Bartlett, a small town in the shadow of the Mount Washington, the Northeast’s highest peak. There her East Village-ness came out in the painting partnership with another abstract artist, Kristen Pobatschnig. It was a duo born of the dark bathrooms of CBGBs and East to the Dark and then left to go feral in the mountains of the New Hampshire. Together they co-founded the Femme Fatales of the North.

“Kristen and I began making ridiculous iconic women painting pics of wearing long gowns while abstract painting off mountain cliffs,” Klementovich said. “We wanted to show off the rarified air of being a female painter in upstate New Hampshire. We let loose, painting among the walls of snow instead of the white walls of a gallery, expressing the uniqueness of being lone voices of female abstract painting creativity. Since there is only us, the sky is the limit.”

She missed the danger element of getting home at 4 a.m. in the gritty East Village days, missed seeing the pop up graffiti art galleries in Alphabet City tenement rooms. “The only danger I could equate was painting near cliffs in high heels or East Village platforms,” she said.

She compares her work to a northern version of the painter Richard Diebenkorn. But instead of Bay Area cement roads, Klementovich uses the diagonals of mountains and colorways of the early sunset and sunrise, the palate of alpenglow, to construct a contemporary take on the traditional mountain landscape. She hopes to capture the beauty of landscapes still untouched.

“What I really look forward to is representing the White Mountains’ over the top sense of color, scale and landscape,” she said. “This area is underrated in its beauty, and art is a wonderful way to show the land.”

Klementovich will be sending three large semi-abstract paintings of the Scenic Vista viewpoint in Intervale. “To up the ante,” she said, “part of my exhibition will have colorful live small birds in cages, representative of my color palette. I was surprised the gallery will allow live birds, but hey, it’s New York.”

Klementovich is also working to design a birdcage bracelet, with a live bird perched in the cage.

“We’ll see how far I can go with creativity at this fair,” she said.

See her work at the Clio Independent Art Fair on 35th street, March 8 to 11.

Spicy, who is part of the living palette concept enjoys time with the paintings at the show.

Spicy, who is part of the living palette concept enjoys time with the paintings at the show.

Alpenglow Installation

ballon dar2.jpg

How does an abstract painter can see fields of color? This room is filled with one color, which represents “the alpine glow on the mountains.” Here the viewer is saturated with red, as the viewer moves through red balloons filled to the ceiling; they are able to search the room for the abstract mountain paintings. Because of the moveable bits of red color (the balloons), the viewer will start to see wild compositions of red and art on the wall, or half of another viewers face amid the moveable bits of color. It is as if you are inside the color red, as you experience what it feels like to be next to a large mountain spread with the red alpine glow. Femme Fatales of the North, New Hampshire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9FZZdNau5w

Conway Daily Sun Article -April 28, 2017 (five page article) "FEMME FATALES OF THE NORTH: DANGER! WOMEN! ART"

Kristen Pobatschnig (left) and Rebecca Klementovich are the art collaborative "Femme Fatales of the North." (JAMIE GEMMITI PHOTO)CONWAY — Women, mountains, danger. Such were the images that abstract painters Kristen Pobatschnig and Rebecca Klementovich hoped to bring to mind by naming their collaboration, "Femme Fatales of the North."

The evocative title seemed to work, with their work being highlighted on WMUR's "New Hampshire Chronicle" and in the May issue of New Hampshire Magazine with a story called "Remarkable Women 2017: Artists to Watch."

The collaboration began shortly after Pobatschnig, 32, of Conway first visited Klementovich, 47, at her Bartlett home.

Illegal Visit to Hans Hofmann's Drawing School at the Cape

Hans Hofmann is considered by many critics to have been the greatest and most influential teacher of art in America in this century. Hans taught his Push and Pull theory in Providence, Mass at the Hawthorne school. Hofmann’s influence as an abstract teacher touched all artist who were part of the New York Expressionism movement.

 

In 1979 the barn was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is on Miller Hill Road, has an impressive view of town.The location of this relic  you didn’t hear from me, but is worth the visit. The property is now privately owned.

In Recognition to Hunter S Thompson

 

Many women are in love with Brad Pitt, Chris Hemsworth, or Christian Bale. But myself, I’m infatuated with Hunter S. Thompson and his nonfiction book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Hunter S. had his own brand of Gonzo journalism, wherein reporters become the main character of the stories they’re reporting–and often travel to what Hunter called The Edge. “There is no honest way to explain The Edge,” he once wrote, “because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”

In recognition of Hunter S Thompson’s imaginative genius, I dedicate this photo (yes, that’s me shooting an abstract painting) to those still waiting to go over The Edge. Come join us. You have nothing to lose but your remote control channel flickers.

When I was eight, our school went to a field trip to Strawbery Banke. I fell in love with it then, the gardens, the crowded turn of the century houses. It was such a beautiful escape. Now I live close by and I paint such an amazing part of Portsmouth.Strawbery Banke is the oldest neighborhood in New Hampshire to be settled by Europeans, and the earliest neighborhood remaining in the present-day city of Portsmouth. It features more than 37 restored buildings built between the 17th and 19th centuries in the Colonial, Georgian and Federal style architectures. The darkest colored house is the oldest house in the group. I have a group of historical areas that I am painting, or known as historical paintings. Look out for more!

#historicalpaintings