ARTIST INFORMATION:
LYNN
SMALL - I
am an art honors graduate of The High School of Music and Art, NYC - the first
school in the nation (1936) to provide a free, publicly funded program for
students gifted in the arts. It has been replicated in most major cities and
has earned an international reputation for excellence. As a Dean's List student
at New York University, majoring in painting with a minor in film theory,
I studied with such renowned painters as Milton Resnick, Esteban Vicente,
Hale Woodruff, John Opper, and Robert Kaupelis, as well as the legendary art
historian, Irving Sandler and film critic and theorist, Andrew Sarris and
John Gassner respectively.
In the early 1970s, while living and working in Spain, I began work on the
Earth Stains series and had a two-person exhibition—the Spanish
Series—with my artist husband, Dennis Paul at the USIA Cultural Center,
American Embassy, Madrid. This has been an ongoing body of work that has evolved
into the collaborative multimedia installations—Earth Elegies.
In the mid 1970s, I began a series of anthropological, God-like imagery while
Dennis and I lived in Cuernavaca, Mexico. This major body of work would later
inspire my current Southwest Spirit Guides series some twenty years
later. My Earth Stains paintings and works on paper have evolved into
the series—Golden Light and Shimmering Light—part
of the individual and collaborative California Coastal UpLift series
and in the fall of 2003 while a residency fellow at Yaddo—Autumn
Light, Yaddo. In 2004 I was a Finalist for the Gottlieb Foundation
Grant and again in 2011, 2013 and 2015. Within the last few years I have begun
work on a series of monoprints, which are handpainted and inspired by places
of recent travels to California's Sonoma County, the Berkeley/Bay area and
Topanga Canyon.
DENNIS PAUL - While I was pursuing graduate studies in psychology at The City University of New York, I began to work at the Pratt Graphic Arts Center in Manhattan. During this period I began to utilize both still and early video cameras in my study of nonverbal communications, group process and the intergenerational transmission of body language. These tools quickly became my brushes—no doubt influenced in part by my many years of watching the women of the Small family create objects of beauty and wonder.
My photographic and video background infused my early teaching career in the South Bronx for the NYC Board of Education. It was then that I created innovative pilot programs for Hispanic children that encompassed art and technology obtaining the necessary support through federal ESEA Title III funds and a material grant from the Polaroid Corporation. Utilizing a 1-inch, closed-circuit television station and art and photographic processes, my nascent program, Language Arts Through Visual Arts, became the seed that the urban educator, Dr. Edythe Gaines utilized to birth the national models now known as RITA—Reading Improvement Through the Arts and AGE—Art in General Education.
In
addition to my artistic endeavors, I have worked as an educator, arts administrator
and continue to do so as an organizational development consultant in the nonprofit
and private sectors. In the late 1970s, I established the Development Office
at the NYC Department of Cultural
Affairs under Commissioner Henry Geldzahler. In 1980, I also created the
Development and Fundraising curriculum for the Post-Graduate
Program of Museum Studies at New York University teaching until 1985.
At present I am involved in a number of projects, both individual and collaborative:
the regeneration of two series from the 1970s—Love Canal and
the Cosmic Mass; the multimedia projects: Voice of the Landscape
and Coastal Uplift; as well as a world-wide environmental confessional
project StrangeLove, Earthly Sins.
In
the mid-1970s, as Fashion Metamorphosis, Lynn and I were involved
in the NYC fashion industry on Seventh Avenue where we incorporated various
art techniques into the design of women's apparel. This undertaking represented
the earliest of our collaborations and carried over into the creation of a
third artist, which we birthed during our 1978 joint-residency fellowships
in painting and photography at Yaddo, a creative community in Saratoga Springs,
NY. This third artist, which we exhibit under the moniker, CoLabART
- Lynn Small + Dennis Paul [D. PAUL/SMALL] represents a fusion of painting,
photography, mixed and new media that incorporates digital processes. In the
fall of 2003, we again received joint-residency fellowships to Yaddo in painting,
photography and multimedia.
We have lived and exhibited in New York, Europe, Mexico, San Francisco, and
Los Angeles. The art has been shown in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions.
We have lectured at the Museum of the City of Mexico, the Art Institute of
Chicago and the Brooks Institute of Photography, Santa Barbara, California
among others and have received various grants, awards and commissions. Our
work is represented in public and private collections both in the United States
and abroad.
Current
Works-In-Progress
A Strange Kind of Love
Voice of the Landscape
WEB SECTIONS
Lynn Small
CoLabART
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
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C o L a b A R T
1978 — PRESENT
Everything is two things that converge.
This range of convergence is really the great area of speculation.
—Robert Smithson
©1993-2023 CoLabART • D. Paul/Small - Lynn Small + Dennis Paul
All rights reserved.