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Sarah Brayer (submitted photo)
Sarah Brayer (submitted photo)

Reception for 'Between Two Worlds: Poured Paperworks' by Sarah Brayer

by jmaloni

Submitted

Thu, Oct 9th 2014 05:20 pm

At the Castellani Art Museum July 20

The Castellani Art Museum of Niagara University, in partnership with the Japan Culture Center of Western New York, cordially invites readers to a reception for the exhibition "Between Two Worlds: Poured Paperworks by Sarah Brayer" Sunday, Oct. 26, at the Castellani Art Museum. As part of a weeklong celebration of cultural connections between Japan and Western New York in October, Brayer will make a special visit to Buffalo from her home in Kyoto, Japan. The reception will give visitors a chance to meet the artist in person and listen to her talk about her work.

A Rochester-born artist, Brayer has been making large-scale, handmade paperworks as the only Westerner working in the 800-year-old papermaking village of Echizen, Japan, since the 1980s. Her new large-scale, handmade paperworks incorporate both traditional methods and luminescent pigments and imagery.

The wall panels, screens and scrolls she produces by strategically pouring paper pulp evoke themes common to traditional Japanese arts: abstracted visions of landscape, ocean and celestial scenes. Lately, Brayer has incorporated photo-luminescent pigments that glow in fading light. By combining her training in both Eastern and Western artistic styles, Brayer said her task "is to find new ways of expression in an age-old tradition" known in Japan as "washi."

"Between Two Worlds: Poured Paperworks by Sarah Brayer" is on view through Dec. 21 at the Castellani Art Museum.

Split between two galleries - mirror images of each other - the exhibition explores Brayer's geographic and artistic journey between two cultural worlds. One gallery, the "daylight" gallery, introduces visitors to her personal style and its relationship to Japanese aesthetic and technical traditions, while the other - the "night" gallery - invites visitors to enter a meditative space enhanced by music and lighting that transitions slowly from bright to dark. As the light fades and rises again, luminous pigments within the artworks will reveal new dimensions before visitors' eyes.

For more information, contact Valerie Walawender, interim curator of folk arts, at [email protected] or call 716-286-8200.

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