April, 2010 Exhibit

Puneeta Mittal : Of The Earth

Internal Space I

Highwire Gallery is pleased to present "Puneeta Mittal: Of the Earth" from
Wednesday, March 31 - Sunday, May 2, 2010. The exhibition will take place at Highwire Gallery, 2040 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia, PA. An Opening Reception will be held on Friday, April 2, 3:00pm - 9:00pm. The public is cordially invited to attend.

"Of the Earth" is one of 95 exhibitions that are part of INDEPENDENCE: The 44th Annual National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) conference taking place in Philadelphia from March 31 – April 3, 2010. The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA is serving as the onsite liaison and organizing body of the exhibitions program. List of exhibitions is available here.

"Of the Earth", at the Highwire Gallery represents work of Puneeta Mittal, an accomplished ceramic artist from New York. This work is an adventure into a world of creative energy, introspective meditation and physical stimulation. Notably, her insights into nature’s cycles and its relationship to life promises to invoke intriguing experiences in the viewer. Using the clay as her 3D media and accidental applications of alkyd resin paint as her 2D media, Puneeta weaves a web portraying complex relationships between nature and the natural sciences. Whether it be a fortunate, unexpected accident in the kiln or an incidental, gravity influenced flow of one glaze of paint into another, each offers potential to observe, react and respond through intuition. With her knowledge and sense of the complexity of nature’s phenomena, Ms. Mittal searches for that universal harmony and balance.

Like so many artists and creative thinkers throughout history, Puneeta Mittal is fascinated with the nature of the media and its importance in her life and the living universe. She deals with "microscopic" and "subatomic imagery" and illusion on a large scale and "galactic" space on a small scale - nature and the nature of the media are her inspiration. "One thinks of the scientific and artistic works of Leonardo Da Vinci, the biomorphic abstractions of Archile Gorky and the inspiration from vast space to microscopic cells for the domes and black holes of Andy Goldsworthy when viewing the organic compositions, inspired by visions through the lens of an inverted fluorescent microscopic world are of this earth and life as seen by Puneeta Mittal" says Richard Vaux, Professor Emeritus, Adelphi University, NY.

"Of the Earth", is one of four different groups of exhibitions developed for the conference, titled From the Community (the other groups being NCECA exhibitions, The Clay Studio exhibitions, and Concurrent Independent Exhibitions.) From the Community is a group of exhibitions developed in support of the 44th NCECA Conference by individual artists, groups of artists, commercial galleries, non-profit and alternative spaces, colleges and universities. The exhibitions celebrate the work of professionals, aspiring professionals, and students.

NCECA bus tours take the Northern Liberties/Fishtown, Stop# 4 for, Highwire Gallery. The hours are Thursday:12:00 - 4:00pm; Friday: 3:00pm - 7:00pm; Saturday & Sunday: 12:00 noon - 5:00pm. For further information and high-resolution images, contact - Puneeta Mittal at puneetaart@gmail.com or 516-655-7798. Visit - www.puneetaart.com