Housatonic Museum of Art Presents: Chuck Close and his Turnaround Arts Kids

Bridgeport, CT … The Housatonic Museum of Art
presents Chuck Close and his Turnaround Arts Kids that
will be on view in the Burt Chernow Galleries, 900 Lafayette Blvd., Bridgeport,
CT., from November 7 through
December 15, 2013 with a reception on November 7th from 7:30 – 8:30
pm. The Burt Chernow Galleries are free and open seven days a week.  Visit the website, www.HousatonicMuseum.org for
gallery hours.

The
exhibit will feature five (5) large-scale archival watercolor pigment prints
provided by the artist in association
with Magnolia Editions and Oakland, courtesy of Pace Gallery. Chuck
Close’s monumental portraits
explore the intersection of photography and painting, providing an arresting
experience.  To create his photo-based work, Close places a grid
on the photo and on the canvas, and working systematically, in incremental
units, he builds his images by applying small strokes of paint in
multiple colors. When viewed from afar, each cell is perceived as an average
hue creating a unified image, albeit in near
abstraction when viewed from a close distance.  The prints emphasize the cell structure
underlying the image which blurs into soft focus, affording an altered spin on
the traditional genre of portraiture. 

Manhattan-based visual artist Chuck Close recently
mentored 34 students in the sixth through eighth grades at Bridgeport's Roosevelt School, one of eight schools in the nation to participate in President
Barack Obama’s Turnaround Arts initiative which aims to improve low-performing schools by
increasing student "engagement" through the arts. The public-private
partnership was developed in cooperation with the U.S.
Department of Education and the White House Domestic Policy Council.
Close was one of the eight high-profile creative talents who volunteered for the program, working closely with the
selected school students, faculty and surrounding communities. 

Turnaround Arts tests the hypothesis
that high-quality and integrated arts education can be an effective tool to
strengthen school reform efforts-boosting academic achievement and increasing
student motivation in schools facing some of the toughest educational
challenges in the country.  Follow up
studies confirm the value of an arts rich education, especially for low
socio-economic status students, in academic achievement, completion of high
school and college, and becoming contributing members of their community. Yet
recent Department of Education Surveys indicate that students from low income
areas are being disproportionately short-changed on arts education
opportunities in their schools. Every child deserves a chance to feel special
and to excel in something, especially when they are not performing well in
other areas, (i.e. reading, writing and arithmetic).

 Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close was born in 1940 in Monroe, Washington. He received his
B.A. from the University of Washington, a
coveted scholarship to the Yale Summer School of Music and Art, and
his BFA and MFA from
Yale in 1964.  Close achieved early fame
as a painter through his large-scale painted portraits, mostly of
family and artist friends. Throughout his career, Chuck Close has expanded his
artistic contribution to portraiture through the mastery of varied drawing,
painting, printmaking, handmade paper collage, photography and Jacquard
tapestries. Although a catastrophic spinal artery collapse in 1988 left him
severely paralyzed and he relies on a wheelchair, Close has continued to work
with a brush strapped to his wrist.  His
work has since been the subject of more than 150 solo exhibitions including a
number of major museum retrospectives. Close's work is in the collections of
most of the great international museums of contemporary art, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in
Paris, the Tate
Modern in London, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and
the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He is represented by Pace Gallery
and Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, White Cube, London and Blum
& Poe, Los Angeles.

For further information contact Robbin
Zella, Director of the Housatonic Museum of Art at RZella@hcc.commnet.edu or (203) 332-5052.  Visit the HMA website: www.HousatonicMuseum.