STEWART GALLERY IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE OUR FORMAL ALLIANCE WITH MONTE AZUL CENTER FOR THE ARTS RESIDENCY PROGRAM (MACA).

Follow the link to Monte Azul residency program

Over the years, Stewart Gallery has collaborated with MACA in providing artists a personalized experience to nurture the artists creative process.

By harnessing the collective power of our complimentary diverse strengths and experiences with MACA, we provide collectors and artists alike with an innovative program designed to offer a deeper appreciation of the creative process and its sources of inspiration.

Located in the foothills of Mt. Chirripó in Costa Rica, the country's highest peak, MACA is a residency program located on the Monte Azul nature reserve. The private grounds cover almost 100 acres of rainforest with its exuberant flora and fauna, including over a 1/4 mile (1,200 mts) of riverfront along the majestic Río Chirripó Pacífico.

In addition to our alliance, MACA announces the expansion of the studio facilities in late 2023. The beautiful structures were designed by Monte Azul alumnus, sculptor, and partner at award-winning Cañas Arquitectos, Andrés Cañas Barahona

These facilities are designed by artists, for artists, and through the Patron Visitor program, we offer an opportunity for the clientele of Stewart Gallery to experience the breathtaking natural environment that has inspired many of the gallery’s artists in their practice.

Congratulations to Tara Thacker the recipient of the MACA Fellowship Award

Tara Thacker

At the heart of my artwork is a love of materiality and an ongoing fascination with the process of transformation. I am absorbed in a labor-intensive creative process, bordering on obsessive. Each individual part is unique and serves as an architectural component which I combine in various ways to discover how they behave visually. I want even more to make something of it, to transcend its initial existence, and create a new, unforeseen surface or landscape. Through abstraction I aim to draw a connection between observation and memory.

Clay is my material of choice not only for it’s for tactile beauty and malleability, but also for the technical and historical challenges that come with it. It is my intention to make works that you don’t immediately associate as being ceramic. The works often appear soft or to be made of fabric rather than the hard fired surface that they are.

My newest work takes inspiration from folklore of the avian world. These works include a series of wall sculptures made in a variety of materials such as porcelain, black clay, lead, and wood as well as a suite of collagraph prints. These works continue to use themes of repetition of form and material transformation to create layered, tactile works that lend reference to the shadows created by my sculptures, nocturnal landscapes, and the wing structures of Corvidae (the crow family) & Falconidae (falcons).

Tara Thacker May 2023

*Shadow Map # 5*
Collagraph / Monoprint full bleed prints on Rives BFK / Handwork
22” x 30”

TARA THACKER
Recipient of the MACA Fellowship Award
Follow Link at Monte Azul

HENRY JACKSON

EMANATION

Stewart Galleries collaboration in conjunction with Monte Azul

Emanation, a series of six works on paper by Henry Jackson in conjunction with the Artist residency program. This current series of six works on paper continues Jackson’s fascination in exploring and interpreting abstracted environments that depict a natural world in transformation and turmoil.

During a 2022 artist residency in the rain forests of Central America, Jackson responded to a particular week of extended rain and atmospheric happenings; allowing his art making to come from an internalized place rather than a depiction of a visual experience.

The end result is a body of work that displays a more spontaneous response of the environment’s mood and his emotional reaction to it. A reflection of the ever-changing elemental circumstances that surrounded him and his empathy for it.

Emanation series 2023 *
12” x 12” image
19” x 19” framed
ink and oil based mixed media monotypes / handwork/ collage on Arches paper
Available as a series of six, each museum mounted and framed

STEWART GALLERY WILL HOST A PRIVATE VIEWING

EMANATION

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 2nd - SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 9th