TV Still-life Sculptures

This piece titled "Therapy Salon" is original artwork made from paper, inkjet print, enamel, wire, chain, aluminum tube, and pastel by Drew Leshko. This piece measures 8"h x .75"w x ...

This piece titled "Lucky Restaurant" is original artwork made from paper, inkjet print, enamel, wire, chain, aluminum tube, and pastel by Drew Leshko. This piece measures 10"h x 0.75...

This piece titled "Little Delicious Caribbean and American Restaurant" is original artwork made from paper, inkjet print, enamel, basswood, tube, and pastel by Drew Leshko. This piec...

This piece titled "Dragon City" is original artwork made from paper, inkjet print, enamel, wire, chain, aluminum tube, and pastel by Drew Leshko. This piece measures 10"h x 0.75"w x ...

This piece titled "Super Star Laundrymat" is original artwork made from paper, inkjet print, enamel, wire, chain, aluminum tube, and pastel by Drew Leshko. ...

In the mid 1990s Richard Klein started working with found glass objects, including bottles, drinking glasses, ashtrays, and eyeglasses. Initially, Klein rejected any object with commercial or advertising content, but in 2015 he became fascinated with the promotional content that was screen printed on ashtrays from the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. This period was before smoking was looked at as being primarily a negative habit, and iconic American businesses, including Howard Johnson’s, International House of Pancakes (iHop) and Holiday Inn, all produced promotional ashtrays printed with their graphic identity. By the time Klein became interested in these objects, the businesses had either ceased to exist, or had changed their logos, and many of their signature buildings, which where examples of classic, “Pop” roadside architecture, has been torn down or repurposed. The artist wanted to connect the glass objects with the business’s sites that were still recognizable and spoke of their history, so he began researching where original buildings still stood. Klein then embarked on a series of road trips to photograph these sites with the intention of combining the photographs with the promotional glass objects. This led him to as far south as Maryland and as far north as upstate New York from his home in Connecticut. In the case of Holiday Inn, it wasn’t their buildings, but their iconic illuminated sign that appeared on ashtrays, so he sought out a standing example of the sign he could photograph. As it turned out all had been removed years before from the hotels' properties and the only working example was indoors at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. He did, however, find out that there was one still standing, surprisingly, in Beruit, Lebanon. He found an image of it on the web and used it to make Holiday Inn (Beruit). In 1973 Holiday Inn changed their tagline from “The Nations Innkeeper” to “The World’s Innkeeper” as they expanded overseas, including the Mideast. For the hotel chain it was bad timing: the disastrous Lebanese civil war began in 1975. In the war, the different Lebanese militias involved in the conflict, including the Nasserites, Christian Phalangists, and the Lebanese National Movement engaged in what came to be called “The Battle of the Hotels” where they each occupied a major high-rise hotel in central Beruit. The Phalangists commanded the Holiday Inn, which they used to fire with both light arms and heavier weapons at the militias in neighboring hotels. Klein used the photo of the heavily damaged Holiday Inn sign as I thought it spoke in a curious, offhanded way about American cultural imperialism in juxtaposition with an ashtray that proclaimed Holiday Inn to be “The World’s Innkeeper.” In the work Holiday Inn (Nocturne) the artist utilized a found, 35mm slide of a Holiday Inn sign at night at an unknown location as the basis of the photograph in the work. Richard Klein is a Connecticut-based artist, independent curator and writer. As an artist, he has exhibited widely, including the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY Purchase; Caren Golden Fine Art, New York; the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; Hales Gallery, London; Gavlak Gallery, Palm Beach, FL; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA; James Barron Art, Kent, CT; The Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA), Portland, OR; Schoolhouse Gallery, Provincetown, MA; Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, NY; Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY; Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Brattleboro, VT; Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY; Exhibit by Alberson Tulsa, OK; Incident Report/Flow Chart Foundation, Hudson, NY; ICEHOUSE Project Space, Sharon, CT; Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent, CT and with ODETTA Gallery at the Equity Gallery in New York City.. Reviews of his work have appeared in Two Coats of Paint, Whitehot Magazine, The New York Times, Sculpture Magazine, Art in America, and The New Yorker. In the summer of 2024 he will be the first Artist-In-Residence at Peck Ledge Light...

Ben Young’s sculpture fluidly blends glass, concrete, bronze, steel, and light to depict romantic and pensive imagery highlighting the fragility of our climate and its most precious resource – water. Born in Australia and raised in New Zealand, Young is an avid surfer and environmentalist, inspired by a lifetime on and around oceans, bays, and reefs, with an intimate understanding of the challenges our precious ecosystems face. Young’s thought-provoking sculpture shows great range, portraying the beauty and solitude of life on the ocean, haunting depths of the deep sea, and stunning and relaxing upside of island life. Water is many things to many people, which Young encapsulates brilliantly in his work, encompassing themes of sustainability throughout. Using concrete to create mountains, crevasses, sand bars, and cliffs, Young’s innovative use of materials is transportative. With hand-carved glass as his guiding medium, Young amplifies light and its relationship with water – our most sacred element – to create a glowing unity that people from around the world connect with on a personal level, whether they are beachside or in the Desert. Ben Young’s exhibition Delicate Space at Chesterfield Gallery...