wonder + wild
Scott ackerman / steve Carver / ronald gonzalez / craig mains / satre stuelke / sylvia taylor
opening reception sunday, aug 30, 2-4 pm
on view at trade design build through september 27
SCOTT ACKERMAN
Scott Michael Ackerman is a self-taught artist from upstate New York. Working at times within the traditions of Folk and Outsider art, Ackerman frequently utilizes unorthodox materials and found objects in his practice. As a self-taught artist he considers his approach as primitive and unconventional, rejecting the boundaries of traditional culture. He explains his process is driven by intuition and instinct, using acrylic, pencil and spray paint for their immediacy: “When I sit down to work, I typically don’t know what I’m going to paint. I use mediums that dry quickly in order for me to get as much down on the surface while it’s still fresh in my head”. Titles are carefully chosen and he uses text within the works to point towards a “telling” of the story as he imagined it. The viewer is presented with a starting point for their own interpretation. The influence of Folk art can be seen in Ackerman’s expressive mark making, the use of varied and bright colors, repetitive patterns, and symbolic imagery. His style can be decorative at times, especially his rendition of natural elements.
Scott Michael Ackerman lives and works in his studio in Margaretville, NY, where he resides with his wife, daughter, and son.
Scott Ackerman, Hyena, 18.5” x 15", acrylic on wood, 2023
Steve carver
STATEMENT
As a graphic designer for many years, I was a storyteller, but the stories I told were not entirely my own, and there was the necessity of making the message clear and unambiguous. With my paintings, I’m still telling a story but the person viewing the picture is an equal partner in the telling.
Word play, like that utilized in the Surrealist parlor game “Exquisite Corpse”, is an important aspect in arriving at a visual solution, whether in one of my typographic paintings or my more pictorial work. This is not painting to a pre-established title, but a way to expand and identify elements I want to use in a particular piece. Steve Carver was born and raised in Oklahoma; his English/German/Native American family included firefighters, circus performers, prison guards and shopkeepers. He inherited his love of drawing from his father, an amateur cartoonist. His earlier career was spent as a graphic designer and that discipline continues to inform his work.
BIOGRAPHY
Steve Carver’s paintings have been shown at Fowler-Mills Galleries, Santa Monica, CA; Anthony Brunelli Fine Art, Binghamton, NY; Herbert Williams Gallery, CFAC, Syracuse, NY; Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY; State of the Art Gallery, Ithaca, NY; Corners Gallery, Ithaca, NY; Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University and The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
In 2014 his painting Last Creek was the inspiration for 2 one-act plays (Need a Ride by Will Carter and The Postcard by Arthur Wayne Glowka,) commissioned by the Know Theatre, where they were performed later that year.
Steve Carver is represented by Anthony Brunelli Fine Arts in Binghamton, NY.
Steve Carver, Mr. Mary Presents, 8" x 10", acrylic & alkyd on wood panel, 2020
rONALD GONZALEZ
STATEMENT
The magic of objects lives in me through memory and imagination. The aesthetics of finding brings the tangible and poetic together in recognition of the tragic vulnerable thing, the crude material given shape that speaks of life and the art of relation to objects. My work is an expression of a found reality where disparate parts exist in a domain populated by the use to be things from yesterday’s decay transformed by time and mortality. Things and humans live in a parallel space between birth and destruction. The found object being replete in its forms is a survivor and remnant cast out among us serves as a metaphor of an inevitable end. I am drawn to a sculptural vocabulary that communicates through the energies of growth and dissolution animated by intuition and chance. It is a quest for innumerable creations that emerge between the boundaries of life and death, using what I find to form a world devoted to things that describe their beauty and fate.
BIOGRAPHY
Ronald Mario Gonzalez is a sculptor and installation artist known for transforming timeworn objects and abject materials into haunting serial forms. Since the mid-1970s, Gonzalez has developed a distinctive visual language through reimagining discarded fragments as vessels of memory, identity, and mortality. His practice privileges process and improvisation through material invention and object investigations given human presence and psychological weight to evocative heads, figures, and assemblages. Gonzalez constructs an unsettling, yet deeply resonant sculptural universe memorializing and animating the passage of time and existential complexities of the human condition.
Ronald Gonzalez’s work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D C. De Cordova Museum & Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA. Savanna College of Art & Design, Savannah, GA. The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS. Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, MI. Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY. Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, NY. Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, LA. Allan Stone Gallery, NY. Salina Art Center, KS. Jonathan Levine Projects, Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ. Intar Gallery, NY. Anthony Brunelli Gallery, Binghamton, NY, The Hudson Walker Gallery of Art, Provincetown, MA. Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva NY, SOFA Art Fair, Navy Pier, Chicago, Illinois, Hartwick College, Oneonta, NY, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY. Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Spoleto Festival, Charleston, SC. Snite Museum of Art, Notre Dame, IN. Atlanta College of Art, GA. Gallery 24, Berlin, Cavin Morris Gallery, NY, Alternative Museum, NY. V23 Gallery, London UK, Institute Cultural Peruano Norte Americano, Lima, Peru. Capro Nason Gallery, Santa Monica, California, Art Omi, Ghent, N.Y. Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI. Toon Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Muse De Arte Modern, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Galerie Protégé, NY Galerija SULUJ, Belgrade, Serbia, Menier Gallery, London UK, Czong Institute of Contemporary Art, Gimpo-Si, Gyeonggi- do, South Korea, Art Basel Scope, Miami, Fl., Space Millepiani, Rome, Italy, Littlepedia, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angles, Ca. Art in Embassies, Benin, Africa, Guerrilla Zoo, Newspeak House, London UK, George Billis Gallery, NY. Sculpture Fields of Nova’s Art. Bridgehampton, NY. Superchief Gallery, NY. Ovalo Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico. Primo Piano Special Projects, Palmieri Foundation, Lecce, Italy, Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata, India, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, Denise Bibro Fine Art, New York, Ethan Cohen Fine Arts Kunsthalle, Beacon, New York.
Ronald Gonzalez, Found Figure, 9" x 4" x 3", mixed media
craig mains
STATEMENT
In the attempt to create awesome splendor to mark important dates, some celebrations can lead to destruction. Gender reveal parties have sent pipe bombs into grandmas, caused numerous small fires, two major forest fires, and at least 3 plane crashes. The manufacture of fireworks is dangerous and workplace slip-ups can level entire city blocks. Seeing the incredible force and beauty of these sparkling explosions creates a dissidence between horror, awe and delight.
My prints often explore things going wrong, usually through natural forces, human miscalculation, or both. I’m fascinated by the vulnerability of the structures we build and the moral dissidence of finding humor in their failure. Most images here come from a series themed celebration folly.
BIOGRAPHY
Craig is a photographer, printmaker, and designer living in Ithaca, New York. He studied photography, drawing, and video at the Cleveland Institute of Art and later studied printmaking at Cornell. Craig has been designing and curating exhibits and displays for The Ink Shop Printmaking Center and until recently the Cornell Library. Currently, he is the director of the Ink Shop Printmaking Center.
Craig Mains, San Pablito Market Explosion IV, 18" x 24", monotype
satre stuelke
STATEMENT
instrumentum domus fictum
Humans seek easy solutions. We are besieged with ads for products that promise shortcuts to eliminate our problems and fulfill our desires. Contemporary culture transmits and nurtures within us these desires on a subliminal level. Some desires created by contemporary culture simply cannot be satisfied through everyday logic. Something must disrupt our understanding of what's possible. This is where my art is born.
Within every real-world appliance there is an unseen realm that can be activated to fulfill our desire: a finely toasted piece of bread, a clean carpet, a wrinkle-free shirt. My Fictional Household Appliances are portals to a parallel unseen realm from which springs the power to increase your charisma, measure your status, foresee your future, or ensure your safety.
Through the assembly of simple curves and primitive shapes that spring from the nostalgia of Googie and deco, each piece is purposely designed to lend itself to anthropomorphization. This gives a natural invitation to the viewer to engage with imagination, uncertainty, and experimentation. At first glance, each appliance seems to have purpose but is ambiguous. Yet the viewer feels welcomed to investigate, and the function reveals itself.
BIOGRAPHY
Satre Stuelke MD, MFA lives in Ithaca, New York, USA. His work has been sold through Sotheby's ArtLink and featured throughout the world from art galleries in the USA, Europe, and the Middle East, to major institutions including the USA's National Institutes of Health. Stuelke has appeared on NBC's Today Show, and had his work featured in Gizmodo, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, ABC News, and many others.
Stuelke has a unique background straddling Art and Science with a Master of Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MD from Cornell University.
Websites: satrestuelke.com, satre.org, SATResearch.com, and radiologyart.com.
Satre Stuelke, Portrait of EMF Vortex, 9" x 7", graphite and chalk on paper, 2026