Brenda Zlamany: Golden Years By David Ebony
Life is a journey. The places it takes us are unpredictable—sometimes disheartening but occasionally thrilling. Art is also a journey. The artist leads us—at least, those who pay attention—to places we have never been before, to realms of the imagination we have never encountered, and to paths toward truth we have never tried.
Portraits of My Parents by Alan Zweibel
It extends beyond the likeness of the features. Well beyond whether the portraits accurately replicate noses, ears, chins and hairstyles. This art is not about exactitude. Or even approximation. The triumph here is about capturing the spirit of the subjects. How, with a few watercolored strokes of a brush, the ageless essences of what lies within are brought to light.
The Itinerant Portraitist: Painting by Number By Cynthia Rockwell
Brenda Zlamany, an artist whose oil portraits are held in prestigious collections—at World Bank and Yale University, to name a few— also has an ongoing watercolor project, the Itinerant Portraitist. While she might lavish a year on each of her oils, she has a different agenda for the watercolors.
Brenda Zlamany: 100/100 Featured This Fall at Laurie M. Tisch Gallery at Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan
In this project, Zlamany embraces the collaborative nature of the portrait process, borrowing strategies from traditional art making (portraiture, watercolor), conceptual art (production according to predetermined schedules and quotas), and performance art (emphasizing process and the engagement between artist and subject). She painted six or more sitters each day from direct observation using a camera lucida, a device for drawing that dates back to the Renaissance and promotes a two-way exchange between artist and subject.
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Brenda Zlamany: "100/100"
100/100 honors overlooked members of society, involving them in an artistic process that upholds their value while making visible the beauty and wisdom that come with age. Zlamany explains, “With '100/100,' I am interested in aging. What is important at the end of life? In the face of loss (loss of loved ones, mobility, taste, hearing, sight), can there still be joy? What is the role of memory? How do past experiences fuel happiness in the present?”
The Itinerant Portraitist: Brenda Zlamany Discusses her Hebrew Home Project With Leslie Wayne
In late November I went with Brenda Zlamany to the Derfner Judaica Museum in the Bronx to see her exhibition 100/100, the latest in her ongoing “Itinerant Portraitist” project in which she travels near and far in order to paint her subjects. In this case, the 100th anniversary of the Hebrew Home for the aged, which houses the Museum, gave rise to the invitation to paint 100 of its residents.
100 Watercolor Portraits, 100 Stories With Them by Tiffany Moustakas
Zlamany called the experience of talking to residents about their personal lives — some sharing intimate details about being Holocaust survivors or losing loved ones — as “emotionally challenging.” Although she reciprocated with details from her own life, it was still a combination of a cathartic and a learning experience.
Brenda Zlamany at the Derfner Judaica Museum, Bronx by David Cohen
Hot on the heels of her recent, year-long project in which she painted a watercolor portrait of an acquaintance every day, most of whom happen to be luminaries of the New York art scene, and in the spirit of an earlier project, 888: Creating a Portrait of Taiwanese Aboriginals, Brenda Zlamany has extended her penchant for the rigors of numerically-conceived grand projects to the residents of the fabled Hebrew Home in the Bronx.
Brenda Zlamany: 100/100 10 Sep 2017 – 7 Jan 2018
Given the unique setting for this project, the collaborations led to intimate, surprising and often inspiring revelations from the sitters.
