ANNE SHERWOOD PUNDYK 

PAINTER / visual artist/ WRITER

MARIEL ROBERTS

CELLIST / MULTIMEDIA INSTRUMENTALIST 

BIOGRAPHY

STRANGE AND WONDERFUL
Sounds of Images III
A Dialogue between
Music and the Arts
Curated by
Paolo Bartolani

Anne Sherwood Pundyk
painter / visual artist / writer
Mariel Roberts
cellist / multimedia instrumentalist 
 at 
EEA Gallery  
11 West Gallery at 11 W. Main St., Peconic Crossing building,
Riverhead, NY 11901 
Sunday, May 5th, 2024, at 5:00pm

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Program
The performance is an adaptation of Anne’s artist’s book: “The Garden.”

Improvised music pieces and original music works will take the place of the abstract visuals in “The Garden.”
As in the book, the performance will start with a music piece, followed by its partner story. The music and readings will alternate throughout the performance for the eleven short stories. A final music work will conclude the performance.  
The visuals use color and pattern to create a mood or feeling that shifts from story to story. The collective design of the visuals starts with an image of dark chaos. The images are completely symmetrical with one side mirroring the other. The concluding image presents a new, re-ordering of the elements in warm, bright colors.  (See below the "storyboard " image)

“The Garden” is a series of emotionally evocative abstract images with eleven semi-autobiographical single-page stories centering on themes of abandonment and loss. Stylistically reminiscent of children’s literature, Pundyk’s tales hint of secrets and truths, as they trace familial ties, tragedy, art, nature and a cathartic sense of sharing.

Performers 
Mariel Roberts, cellist, composer
Anne Sherwood Pundyk, visual artist, writer
Women’s chorus of readers led by Anne Sherwood Pundyk
Chorus of women readers includes:
Cynthia Cannell, Andrea Cote, Lucy Cutler, Vivian Garcia-Tunon, Laura Held, Dipti Salopak,
​Suzette Delia Reiss, Phoebe Pundyk, and Anne Sherwood Pundyk

Presentation

T H R I L L I N G  |  E N C H A N T I N G  |  I N T I M ATE
 
RITES OF SPRING MUSIC FESTIVAL | SOUNDS OF IMAGES offers an intimate art experience by listening to and experiencing music and visual art together. Conceived and curated by Artistic Director Paolo Bartolani with the goal of redefining boundaries, SOUNDS OF IMAGES is a live dialogue between the exhibiting artist and the soloist musician that take place during each of the performances.
Sixty-minute performances where live music and visual arts are merged to explore the deep connection between the arts. Participating in SOUNDS OF IMAGES is a unique experience for audiences and artists: an intense exchange between artists who will express their creative process in front of an audience welcomed into intimate spaces and who will have the opportunity to get to know and converse with the artists in an informal setting.

FORMAT of the PERFORMANCE
The performance takes place with two artists on the stage: Anne Sherwood Pundyk, painter, visual artists and writer and Mariel Roberts, cellist and multimedia instrumentalist.
It is a strange but compelling duet almost an encounter in the ring where both artists are in an unusual situation: the musician who must perform music with a visual artist as partner, while the visual artist presents their visual work, but finds themselves on the stage playing the role of a performer. We are not in the presence of a visual exhibition with musical accompaniment much less we are witnessing an oral presentation by the visual artist.
Instead, we witness the enchantment of two artists who confronted each other on the stage with their own means of expression, seeking where it is possible to make the two arts interact or create contrasts. The performance takes place in the presence of the master of ceremonies who directs the times and durations of each protagonist and the end of the performance. The audience sits with the two artists and actively participates in the pure energy of the performative act.
The performance must necessarily take place in spaces dedicated to the presentation of visual arts such as salons, the art galleries or in the intimate spaces of art studios.

This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by Huntington Arts Council.  This concert was made possible with public funding provided by Suffolk County, ​sponsored by Legislator Al Krupski and with the support of the Suffolk County Legislature.
In collaboration with East End Arts Council

This concert is presented by
Rites of Spring Music Festival
in collaboration with
East End Arts Council

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About East End Arts & Humanities Council
Since 1972, East End Arts & Humanities Council strives to cultivate and nurture a vibrant arts community on the East End of Long Island that enhances individual and professional artistic development, stimulates community enrichment, economic development, and cultural tourism while encouraging a wide range of creative and artistic expression through education, exhibition and performance, and collaboration across the community. 


Biographies
Anne Sherwood Pundyk, painter, visual artist and writer 
An artist and writer, Anne Sherwood Pundyk brings together the traditions of abstract art, textiles and storytelling. Activated by color, her unstretched paintings are constructed from stained, cropped and sewn sections of drop cloth canvas. Elements of her studio work link directly to her photographs, artist’s books, writing and performance pieces. Based in New York, Pundyk has engaged in her art making, exhibiting and art writing over the last 35 years. She relocated her studio to the North Fork ten years ago. Curator Helen A. Harrison observed, “…[Pundyk’s] work suggests that understanding requires another interpretive tool, or perhaps a
personal surrender to a deeper, less accessible, level of cognition.” The move has been the catalyst for a fundamental re-centering of her art around adapting everyday forms with an eye toward questioning convention.
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Mariel Roberts, cellist and multimedia artist 
American cellist, composer, and improviser Mariel Roberts is widely recognized not just for her virtuosic performances, but as a “fearless explorer” in her field (Chicago Reader). Her deep commitment to collaboration and experimentation as an interpreter, improvisor, and composer have helped create a body of work which bridges avant- garde, contemporary, classical, improvised, and traditional music. Roberts is widely
recognized for her “technical and interpretive mastery” (I care if you listen) and for performances which seethe with “excruciating intensity” (The Whole Note).