Michelle A. Hegyi

Gardens of Love and Fire
Light into Object, Poetry into Number,
Thought into Landscape

(words by Daniel Libeskind)

Garden of Love and Fire, No. 9
pigment ink on rag paper
edition of 10
image size 15.125"h x 23"w (framed size 32"x32")
©2008
by Michelle A. Hegyi

June 24 - August 10, 2008

Opening Reception:

Friday, July 11, 7-10 pm

Also showing are all gallery member-artists and the following visiting artists:

Jane Coates
Pat Eriksen
Maria Ruggerio
Fran Wolok

Artist Statement:

The title for this show comes from the title of a work in the Netherlands by the architect Daniel Libeskind.    In his book The Space of Encounter he describes the work:  "The shape, function, mechanism, and character of the garden seek to reveal that we are surrounded by a world full of amazing and powerful signs, the laws of which are intimated but cannot be unraveled.  The meanings that reach us are those of an accidental encounter with fragments of our own awareness."

Inspired by what I see around me in my travels and in my everyday life, a grove of aspens in Santa Fe, sandpipers flitting along in a line along the water's edge in Pacific Grove,  a juxtaposition of color in the garden, or even in another work of art,  I convert my responses to formalisms in color and line.  Color and line are most important to me, and working in both traditional and digital media, I enjoy the tensions created using freehand vs ruled lines, or line over atmospheric painterliness, or the delicacy of japanese paper next to encaustic on wood.

For me the title Gardens of Love and Fire is a metaphor for these tensions -- and as Daniel Libeskind states, "for the invisible conversions of light into object, poetry into number, and thought into landscape..."

-- Michelle A. Hegyi

Artist's Bio:

Michelle A. Hegyi's abstractions of color and light have been described by one reviewer as "landscapes of the soul".  An award-winning artist who has exhibited in numerous juried shows, she is a co-owner of the artist-owned WSG Gallery in Ann Arbor, and is a member of Ann Arbor Women Artists, Ann Arbor's Art and Design Junto, and a founding member of the digital artists' collective The Art Alchemists of southeast Michigan.  She has also served on the jury of the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair.  Her solo show at WSG Gallery in 2004, "Spaces of Encounter", was selected by dialogue, a midwestern visual arts magazine, as "Best of the Midwest".  A painter and colorist, she uses the computer extensively in her studio, alone and in combination with a variety of other media, and currently enjoys the luminous qualities of encaustic

Garden of Love and Fire, No. 18
pigment ink on rag paper
edition of 10
image size 23"x23" (framed size 32"x32")
©2008
by Michelle A. Hegyi

Garden of Love and Fire, No. 19
pigment ink on rag paper
edition of 10
image size 23"x23" (framed size 32"x32")
©2008
by Michelle A. Hegyi

Garden of Love and Fire, No. 6
pigment ink on rag paper
edition of 10
image size 23"x23" (framed size 32"x32")
©2008
by Michelle A. Hegyi

Garden of Love and Fire, No. 22
pigment ink on rag paper
edition of 10
image size 23"x23" (framed size 32"x32")
©2008
by Michelle A. Hegyi

Garden of Love and Fire, No. 5
pigment ink on rag paper
edition of 10
image size 23"x23" (framed size 32"x32")
©2008
by Michelle A. Hegyi

Garden of Love and Fire, No. 4
encaustic on wood panel, pigment ink and acrylic on kozo
image size 8"h x 27"w x 1"d
kozo is mounted with magnets on plexiglas strip
©2008
by Michelle A. Hegyi