The Chazan Gallery @ Wheeler is presenting Elusive Geometries: recent works by artists Amy Cohen and Cynthia Swanson from October 18 to November 5, 2007. There will be a reception for the artists on Gallery Night Thursday, October 18 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. The public is invited.

Amy Cohen's work which consists mostly of watercolor on paper, oil on panel and embroideries explore the mystery and beauty of reflected light, diurnal and nocturnal cycles, celestial geometry, spiritual connotations of light and the subtleties of visual perception. Ashen light, a term originating in astronomy, refers to the reflected light from the earth that illuminates the dark side of the moon, bathing it in a soft faint light. The term ashen light, Cohen explains, is also used to refer to the faint glow occasionally observed on the dark side of Venus, a mysterious visual phenomenon that is not yet completely understood. The geometric forms in Cohen's paintings seem to emerge from a misty blanket of subtle light, recalling the work of Agnes Martin whose minimalist use of neutral colors complement forms that have been reduced to mere impressions of geometric shapes. Similarly, Cohen's interpretations of ashen light poetically embrace the mysterious and ethereal phenomenon while simultaneously sifts through the gentle cyclical motions of light and the geometries of celestial forms. Cohen received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and has also studied at the Massachusetts College of Art, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and the State University of New York. Currently, Cohen is an art instructor at The Gordon School in East Providence and the Director of the Summit Avenue School of Art in Providence. She has twice sat as a Fellowship Juror for the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and has exhibited widely in New England and across the US including solo shows at Providence's Sol Koffler Gallery and at AS220 where she lived as an artist-in-residence for ten years.

Exploring the different avenues used to understand the world around us, Cynthia Swanson observes how individual perspective and philosophic epistemology work to reshape the information we receive from our immediate senses. Her use of wire, screen, paper and glassine as sculptural media metaphorically explores the difference between what we see and how we interpret what we see. Drawing inspiration from the term 'tabula rasa,' or blank slate, a 17th century metaphor for mind, Swanson manipulates flexible yet rigid materials to represent the mind as a blank slate and to give form to the order we impose on our interactions with the world. She plays with the tensions between her chosen sculptural materials as a metaphor for the incessant tensions between order and disorder that never completely resolve themselves yet continue to adapt and influence each other. Swanson received her MFA in Sculpture from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia and has also studied at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. She is currently adjunct faculty at both Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island and Quinebaug Valley Community College in Danielson, Connecticut where she is also Gallery Director. Swanson's work has been exhibited in galleries and art spaces throughout the US including the Fuller Museum of Art in Massachusetts, Bath House Cultural and Performing Arts Center in Dallas, Texas and most recently at the Windham Art Center in Connecticut.