Elisa Contemporary Art and transFORM Gallery Celebrate Earth Day with Art Workshop for Kids

Elisa Contemporary Art and transFORM Gallery present Re-Imagining Past Possessions, Works of Recycled Materials. The exhibit will run through June 1, 2013. This Earth Day tribute focuses on how discarded materials are transformed into Artwork. The international roster of artists use recycled and discarded materials including newspaper and magazines, screws, nuts, door knobs and corrugated metal siding, tools, mail and fabrics including ties and worn-out clothing.

The featured artists include:

• Chilean artist, Rodolfo Edwards
• New York sculptor, Carole Eisner
• Korean-Irish Mixed Media artist, Lisa Mee Doherty
• Multi-media Canadian artist, Aurora Robson
• Uruguayan Dimensional artist, Adriana Rostovsky

Chilean mixed media artist, Rodolfo Edwards incorporates artifacts, modified pictures, photographs and papers from fashion magazines and other sources to create his architectural urban spaces. Sculptor Carole Eisner works with the leftover materials of our civilization including fragments of ancient buildings, bridges, and scrap metal. Irish-Korean artist, Lisa Mee Doherty uses discarded ties, shirts and scarves, plus found papers to create her bouquets and mixed media paintings. Uruguayan artist, Adriana Rostovsky collects objects that others throw out including gum wrappers to bus tickets, empty toy boxes. Canadian born Aurora Robson, best known for transforming plastic bottles and debris into light filled sculptures is be sharing a junk mail collage.

According to Rostovsky: "Every single piece I work on is composed of many forgotten treasures... I now understand why I see flowers in garbage piles on city streets."

Earth Day Art Workshops for Kids
"Transformation into Treasure," artist-led art workshops for kids will be held on Saturday, April 20th from 11 am to 2 pm. Each workshop will guide participants from using recycled materials to creating a piece of artwork. The first session will be led by Lisa Mee Doherty for children 5-8 years old from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm. The second session from 1:00-2:00pm will be led by Adriana Rostovsky for children 9 years old and older.

The workshops are free, but space is limited. To sign up, email Lisa(at)ElisaArt(dot)com or events(at)transformgallery(dot)com. Email should include parent name, email, child's name, age and # of attendees.

What: Re-Imagining Past Possessions. Works of Recycled Materials. A co-curated exhibit by Elisa Contemporary Art and TransFORM gallery
Artists: Lisa Mee Doherty, Rodolfo Edwards, Carole Eisner, Aurora Robson, Adriana Rostovsky
When: Now through June 1, 2013

Special Event:
o Earth Day Children's Art Workshops - Transformation into Treasure on Saturday, April 20th from 11:00 am -2:00pm

Where: TransFORM Gallery, 20 Jones Street, New Rochelle, NY, 10801.
Hours: Monday-Friday 9AM-6PM and Saturday 10AM-4PM

Meet the Artists:
About Canadian artist, Aurora Robson
Aurora Robson is a multi-media artist known predominantly for her transformative work interrupting the waste stream using plastic debris, excess packaging and junk mail.

A Canadian, Robson was born in Toronto in 1972 and has lived and worked in New York City for the past 21 years. Robson grew up in Maui, Hawaii. Her work has been featured in Art in America, Art & Antiques and recently the cover of Green Building + Design magazine. She is a recipient of the Pollock Krasner Grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in sculpture and numerous other grants and awards.

A "subtle yet determined environmental activist", Robson has exhibited internationally in museums, galleries and public spaces. She earned an B.A. in visual arts and art history at Columbia University, and was the ElizaBeth Kirkpatrick Doenges Scholar/Artist in 2012. As an advocate for plastic pollution awareness, Robson is the founding artist of Project Vortex, an international collective of artists, designers and architects who also work with plastic debris.

About Carole Eisner
A painter and a sculptor, Eisner has worked with scrap and recycled metal for 40 years, creating elegant, abstract forms welded in steel. The artist's twisted and curved sculptures reflect the surprising malleability she finds with metal. Eisner's larger-than-life works and small scale sculptures are ideal for public exhibition, and, indeed, have been exhibited in dozens of public parks, corporate plazas, cultural centers, museums and waterfronts all along the northeast corridor in Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Florida, as well as in Belgium and France.

Eisner's longevity as an artist - she has had over 20 solo shows and 20 group shows - is a testament to the mass appeal of her work and the natural marriage between her sculptures and the climate of public spaces. Eisner is represented in private, public and corporate collections, including the Guggenheim, and has been written up in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Who's Who in American Art, Vogue and New York Newsday.

She was born and raised in the Bronx, and received a BFA from Syracuse University. Eisner is a life-long New Yorker, who splits her time between New York City and Weston, Connecticut.

About Rodolfo Edwards
Rodolfo Edwards (b. 1981) is a Chilean artist and architect renowned for his architecture and urban landscape paintings. He uses existing space and transforms and recreates it in novel ideas and designs. Edwards' works include artifacts, modified pictures and paintings, all of which constitute an artistic corpus with its own identity and incisive view.

In early 2001, he studied architecture and urbanism in the Pontificia Universidad Catolica of Valparaiso, where he laid a strong foundation in architectural design, while being influenced by its beautiful ambience.

He currently lives and works in New York. He has been exhibiting since 2006 in solo and group exhibits worldwide including New York, Chile and China.

About Lisa Mee Doherty
Irish-Korean artist Lisa Mee Doherty looks to the natural work for her sources and inspirations. She is captivated by the rhythms and colors found in nature from the complex layering of a color-saturated sunset or the light-filled reflections from bodies of water.

Doherty collects papers, fabrics and metals. These are integrated into her paintings by careful sorting, cutting and assembling and then mixed with layers of pigment, wax and acrylic to enliven the composition.

According to Doherty, "These artworks illustrate my commitment to express environmental concerns about the fragile ecological state of our planet by demonstrating how to reuse and recycle in a creative way. This is my way of making a difference. At the same time I hope to share a positive message about beauty that can simply be from the experience of appreciating art." Her work is found in numerous private collections in the US, France and Spain.

About Adriana Rostovsky
Born in Uruguay, Adriana Rostovsky trained as an architect. Her art is informed and driven by a European history of conservation. This childhood penchant for collecting "unusable items" evolved into an adult passion for treasuring day to day objects and giving them new life in the form of combined media in relief.

As a visual artist, Rostovsky is drawn to transforming into art discarded materials that bring extensive history with them. She has been engaged on an international basis in many interdisciplinary projects, with focus on sustainability, in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Holland and Portugal. Her artwork has been in group and solo exhibitions in Uruguay, Holland, Connecticut, and New York.

About TransFORM Gallery
TransFORM Gallery, founded in 2009, is the unique combination of a traditional showroom for transFORM's custom designed storage systems, and a contemporary art gallery hosting many diverse exhibitions a year. The 3,000-square-foot former industrial space contains furnished room settings that help visitors reimagine their home. The art adds sophistication to home offices, becomes the centerpieces for conference and coffee tables and embellishes closets and entertainment centers. transFORM Art Curator, Kara O'Neill, "There are so many talented and creative people out there that really add to what we do. When artwork is combined with our custom cabinetry, there's a whole synergistic effect that's created."

Since it's opening, transFORM Gallery has collaborated with local artists and community arts organizations to support the advancement of the arts. Gallery owner, Andreas Mesis, "This is a wonderful opportunity for us. We have a space that supports imagination and innovation, and through that, the community at large."

transFORM Gallery invites you to a new experience of art and interior design. For more information, visit transformgallery.com, call 800.450.1455, email info(at)transformgallery(dot)com, or visit us at 20 Jones St New Rochelle, NY 10801, Monday-Friday 9AM-6PM and Saturday 10AM-4PM.

About Elisa Contemporary Art
Elisa Contemporary Art represents a portfolio of both emerging and established contemporary artists, many of whom have work in the Permanent Collections of major museums and corporations.

Founded in 2007 by Lisa Cooper, Elisa Contemporary Art is dedicated to promoting the appreciation and collection of art as a way to enrich and heal our lives, our communities, and the world. The gallery opened in September 2008. Elisa Contemporary Art has participated in international art fairs in New York, Miami and the Hamptons, and curated over 12 public art exhibits in the Tri-State area. A portion of every gallery sale is donated to charities helping underserved children heal through art. The gallery supports Free Arts NYC and Arts to Grow.

Elisa Contemporary Art has been featured in a number of publications including Ocean Home Magazine, Hamptons Cottages & Gardens, New York Spaces and The New York Times. For more information, visit the website at http://www.ElisaContemporaryArt.com. The Riverdale Gallery is located at 5622 Mosholu Avenue, Riverdale NY 10471.

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