The Chazan Gallery at Wheeler is presenting works by painter Mary Hutchins and sculptor Jeff Hesser from March 31 - April 20, 2006. There will be a closing reception for the artists on Friday, March 31, from 5 - 7 p.m. The public is invited.

In her recent work Mary Hutchins employs brush marks made with minimal materials and maximum time and concentration in response to the millions of spoken and printed words in “explaining” horrendous world events. The “Writings” are loosely, calligraphic non-specific symbols, some resembling a macrocosm of an unknown nature – part of a body of work that has been developing for over a year. Hutchins received her BFA in Painting at Rhode Island School of Design in 1969. She has been the recipient of MacDowell Colony Residency awards for a consecutive two years, an Artist’s Fellowship Grant, RI State Council on the Arts, and the Margaret Nerone Prize at the Bristol Art Museum. Hutchins has shown her work extensively, including exhibitions at Christiane Neinaber Contemporary Arts in New York, the New England Arts Congress in Vermont, New England/ New Talent at the Fitchburg Art Museum in Fitchburg, MA, and By Virtue of Excellence at the Newport Art Museum in Newport, RI.

As a sculptor Jeff Hesser is interested in giving form to the fluid and complex connections of the present and the past. His sculptures hover between representations of people who are fully present in the viewer’s world and ghosts that seem more distant and absent. In this show, all sculptures are modeled in clay and cast in ceramic or hydrocal. The scale ranges from under life-size figures to life-size children to monumental heads of babies. Following a degree in Humanities from the University of Chicago, Hesser received his MFA in Sculpture at Suny Buffalo in Buffalo, NY. He also received an MFA in Figurative Studies at the New York Academy of Art in New York, NY, and attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, PA. Hesser is currently on the faculty at Rhode Island School of Design in the Foundation Studies and Illustration Departments, as well as a Professor of Drawing at Rhode Island College. As part of the faculty at New York Academy of Art he does graduate-level instruction in anatomy and contemporary theories in art. A recipient of a number of awards, Hesser was nominated for John R. Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching at Rhode Island School of Design. He’s also received the New York Academy of Art Alumni Award, the Sentz Scholarship of SUNY at Buffalo, the Walker Hancock Prize, and the Dahesh Museum Award.