Geraldine Wojno Kiefer - Artist and Art Historian

Personal Exhibitions

Note that all images are copyright Geraldine W. Kiefer.
All rights reserved

Art Resume

Mind, Body, Spirit: Celebrating Regional Women Artists, University of Maryland University College, Adelphi, MD, 18 January-14 March 2010
Announcement (Kiefer work is no. 22)

Geraldine Kiefer: Overlays of Panama, O'Brien Art Gallery, Roane State Community College, Harriman, TN, 16 October-27 November 2009

Taller Portobelo Norte Accepted Artists, 2009 Summer Art Colony

Geraldine Wojno Kiefer
Artist’s statement

DRAWINGS

My drawings are nature based and culturally centered. Strongly influenced by the paintings of the Hudson River School, along with spiritual and travel writings from the nineteenth century to the present, I work within and among interstices between wilderness and pastoral landscape. Furthermore, I believe that the sublime and the pastoral are not antithetical; rather, I aver their complementary and mutually energizing forces. Attracted to mountainous and hilly terrain—specifically but not exclusively, the Ridge and Valley counties of western Virginia--I draw landscapes that appear wild and even scoured, with little or no suggestions of habitation. I use multiple striations and lines to suggest cut or crystalline forms. During the drawing process, however, I “domesticate” them. I flood the paper with washes. I lay curvilinear lines among the angular ones, then color in the entire network with colored pencils in variegated shades of green (for mountain landscapes), or sepia, gray and umber (for bark and rocks). Green and growing things intimate for me that, albeit rocky, this metaphorical landscape is watered and thus fertile. Likewise, bark--a skin—and rock—a body---intimate the resilience, toughness and surface beauty of age.

My landscapes and “barkscapes” take on lives of their own. Trees and treelike forms emerge from pivotal “points,” areas in the compositions that I deem most important and riveting. As the works develop further, connections are made above and below these pivotal points or axes. The completed works draw all of the elements together into a kind of network, one I often liken to a web of life, a tree of life or traces of a sacred dance.

MIXED-MEDIA, PHOTOGRAPHIC-BASED WORKS

I utilize historic photographs, my own photographs, and photographs taken by my late husband, art photographer Bruce Kiefer, as bases for photographic drawings (pencil and colored-pencil drawings overlaid onto digital images printed on watercolor paper), photocollages (two-dimensional works made from two or more photographs literally overlaid and interleaved), and photographic texture (“bits” of nature collaged together to make new structures). I develop the works as a series and title them for their location or for their inspiration.

As a particular series develops and expands to 4, 8, 10, 12 or more pieces, individual works as well as internal sub-groupings take on lives of their own. Particularly when I perceive powerful, primal and transformative energies within and uniting them, I tap into and explore these recuperative natural powers. I interconnect shapes, forms and colors in order to “center” a scene and make it become what it is in embryo: a visionary experience. I unite the various elements and spaces across and within the composition. I envision and place compositions in various groupings so that energies can “spring forth” from work to work and into real space. Having completed the drawings and/or collages of a particular series, I border, mat and back them with strips and layers of handmade papers to set them apart as special spaces. I may add one or more natural elements (seed pods or pebbles) to the mats. I frame them in deep frames or shadow boxes to suggest traveling or roadside shrines.

Existing in an intimate relationship with actual places, the works I create are both imaginative and real. Tapping into associative, aesthetic, historical, and spiritual explorations that are centuries old and culturally rich, they coax focus, context and mystery into the everyday domain.

Nelson Gallery 10th Annual Juried Show, "Light Play," August 2009
Nelson Gallery exhibition announcement with first Kiefer image
Nelson Gallery exhibition announcement with second Kiefer image

Van, Angevine, and Kiefer, 12 12 Gallery, Richmond, Virginia, 17 May-21 June 2009
12 12 Gallery exhibition announcement

Geraldine Kiefer, The Nimrod Hall Series, Richmond Public Library, Richmond, Virginia, 6 March-1 April 2009

Richmond Public Library Art Exhibitions Page
Exhibition description

Mnemonic Sextet, 2008 (left); Mnemonic Keys II, 2008 (right), both colored pencil over photograph

Panama Overlays 2007-2008: Recent Works by Geraldine Kiefer, Hunt Gallery, Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, Virginia, 16 February-13 March 2009
2008-09 Schedule for Hunt Gallery
"Artist Is Blown Away by the Beauty of Nature in Panama," local article on Panama Overlays

Works on Paper by Geraldine Kiefer/Sculpture by Michael Hough, The Arts Centre, Martinsburg, West Virginia, 8-29 August 2008
Exhibition announcement

Ninth Annual Juried Show, Nelson Gallery, Lexington, Virginia, 1-30 August 2008
Exhibition announcement
Nelson Fine Arts Gallery Ninth Annual Juried Show
(Mnemonic Keys II, recipient of the Clara Erdman Weaver Memorial Award, reproduced at lower right)

Tints, Tones and Overtones: Selections from the Nimrod Hall Series, The Loudoun Street Gallery, Winchester Virginia, 7-29 March 2008
Local article

Panama Overlays/Portobelo Tempesta/Pangaea Portobelo, 2007, installation for Arteferia 2007, Portobelo, Panama, June 23, 2007
Taller Portobelo Norte artists page

Local article for Panama Overlays, Miller Gallery, Bridgewater College, November 12-December 14, 2007

Tints, Tones and Overtones: Selections from the Nimrod Hall Series, Loudoun Street Gallery, Winchester, Virginia, 7-29 March 2008
Local article

Nimrod Venerable Tree Series, Messengers in the Tree I and II, exhibited in Manchester National Juried Fine Art Exhibition, Richmond, VA, 6 April- 4 May 2008

Nimrod Venerable Tree Series, Artspace Gallery, Richmond, VA, July 27-August 20, 2007

Nimrod Venerable Tree Series VIII and IX, 2007, charcoal, graphite, pastel pencil and pencil

Divine Inspiration: Religion; Meaning and Morals in the Modern World, Gallery RFD, Swainsboro, GA, June 8-July 7, 2007

Nelson Fine Arts Gallery 8th Annual Juried Show: Interior Spaces II, Lexington, VA, 3-31 August 2007

VMRC 4th Annual Juried Exhibition Catalog
VMRC 4th Annual Juried Art Exhibition, Harrisonburg, VA, 10 June-1 July, 2007

Artspace Members' Gallery Online
Ice House Gallery Co-op Artists Page

Between Two Spirits: Valleys of Virginia, Gallery 324, Cleveland, Ohio, April 14-28, 2007

'Twixt Two States: Landscapes by Bruce and Geraldine Kiefer, Gallery 732, Akron, Ohio, January 3-31, 2007

Smith Family Meditations Series, 2006, mixed media

My drawings, collages, and assemblages are created on a variety of textured and tinted surfaces and in numbered or named series. The series structure, initiated in 1999, gives a sense of order and closure to work that, in effect, is really all about chaos and openness. Based on nature and my ongoing response to it as a vessel of power, intensity and release, the works are exhibited as nature installations, or more accurately, nature shrines. Entitled "altars," "shrines," "sanctuaries," "precincts," "caves," and most recently, "pastoral landscapes," these installations honor the presence and power of nature by posing and composing places of retreat and meditation, wherein the visitor may record emotions, memories, sensations and observations.

Bruce Kiefer, Gerry at Nimrod, Bath County, Virginia, 2005

Bruce Kiefer, "Study" for a Drawing, Blandy Experimental Farm, Clarke County, Virginia, 2005

"Between Wilderness and Pastoral," Artist's statement

Rocks, Branches, Falls I, 2004, mixed media, awarded First Place, Blue Ridge Arts Council Member Exhibition, Summer 2006

Corroding Constellated Tool, 2005, mixed media, Nelson Fine Arts Gallery 7th Annual Juried Exhibition: Interior Spaces, August 2006, Norwood Properties, LLC Purchase Award

Soaring Setback Siding, 2005, mixed media, Nelson Fine Arts Gallery 7th Annual Juried Exhibition: Interior Spaces, August 2006, Norwood Properties, LLC Purchase Award

From Banks's Fort, A Wreath on the Path, 2004, mixed media, Peninsula Fine Arts Center Biennial 2006

Local article

Twixt Two: Landscapes by Bruce and Geraldine Kiefer, November-December 2005, December 2005-January 2006
SAC Press release - Announcement - Local article 1 - Local article 2 - Lord Fairfax Community College Press release - Local article 3

Nimrod Hall Reveries: Drawing and Mixed Media Works from the "Pastoral Landscapes" Series, Dancing Fire Gallery, Winchester, VA, Nov. 4 - 30, 2005
Announcement

Interlacings 1, 2005, colored pencil over altered digital photograph, handmade paper mount

Interlacings 2, 2005, colored pencil over altered digital photograph, handmade paper mount

Slideshows will require Quicktime 6 browser plugin. Click the words below to open the slides. Thanks for your patience while the slides download. Get Quicktime

Pastoral Landscapes Series 2005: Pasture Lands, Woodlands, and Waterways of Bath County, Virginia, 2nd floor gallery, Alson Smith Library, Shenandoah University, September 20-October 31, 2005
Reflections Slideshow - Interlacings Slideshow - Scrapbook Slideshow - Exhibition listing

Warm Springs Mountain Series, 2005, colored pencil, pastel, gouache and watercolor

Warm Springs Mountain Series, 2005, colored pencil, pastel, gouache and watercolor

Pastoral Landscapes, Alson Smith Library, Shenandoah University, 2005

Traces and Tracings: Landscapes of Mind and Memory, Blandy Farm Art Gallery, Rt. 50, Clarke County, VA, January 9 - February 28, 2005
Press release - Artist's biography - Slideshow - Blandy Farm Arboreteum website - Local article

Blandy Farm exhibition announcement

Alabama Woods 2, Young Leaves, 2004, Prismacolor pencil and mixed-media assemblage, over photograph, approx. 5” x 8”
Collection Dr. Edward Peterson, Middleburg, VA