cut & paste

Rice Gallery

Curated by Janis Keane Dorgan

Cris Cristofaro

New York, NY

" I choose materials that are commonplace and familiar and therefore suggest their own preconceived content and context.  By using these materials in non-traditional ways, I force the viewer to transcend his accepted knowledge of what he is viewing and thereby question his notions of what art can be.  The work is honest, straightforward and readily reveals how the materials are fused together and how they interact."

Nancy Engel

Albany, NY

"These photographs were constructed over an extended period of time, one year to be exact.  They emerged from the many still-lifes that I created and photographed.  From those photographs, discrete pieces were chosen, cut, arranged and placed to form a new photograph...only to be shifted, modified, overlaid or replaced by newer fragments.

Walls were built, eliminated, rebuilt and finally broken through.  Some objects found their mooring while others faded or disappeared.  What I was trying to record was the process of my day to day bracketing, weaving and storing of the flow of phenomena before me..."

Marjorie White Williams

Altamont, NY

"I don't know why the only medium I've wanted to work with long enough to feel a sense of mastery, to demand and to stretch its potential, to be able to think in its language, to express and to see my thoughts and feelings...is common unrefined ubiquitous plywood.

The process of layering is important to me as a woman.  It connects me with other women and all industrious life since the beginning of time.  In the gradual procedure of stacking and adding units of material, these is solace of being in tune with the infinite."