The Chazan Gallery @ Wheeler is presenting recent works by painters Susan Heideman and Jason Travers from February 15 – March 7, 2007. There will be a reception for the artists on Thursday, February 15, from 5 - 7 p.m. The public is invited.

Susan Heideman’s paintings are about “in-betweens,” entities that live in the lines separating classifications of taxonomy, realm, and condition. Heideman attempts to convey an otherworldliness that is weird and familiar, “as full of pratfalls and belly flops as of wonder; it is something close to nature’s insides.” She describes her work: “Rubbery things dissolve into the diaphanous, while filmy substances penetrate thickly solid planes. Regardless of density, scale, or structure, these object/ beings swim, fly, hurl, creep, ooze, or ride geyser-like spouts through their plastic contexts. These beings come and go within a geography whose unpredictability challenges their mobility in an otherworldliness.” Heideman received her MFA from Indiana University and her BFA from Boston University School for the Arts. She has exhibited in New York and throughout New England. Selected exhibitions include Lake George Arts Project in NY, Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton, MA, Lenore Gray Gallery in Providence, RI, Bowery Gallery in New York, NY, and Alpha Gallery in Boston, MA. She has been a nominee for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Fellowship in Painting and a finalist for the Massachusetts Artists’ Foundation Fellowship. She is currently teaching painting at Smith College.

By referencing his body’s scale and proportion, Jason Travers’s paintings transfer a self-reflective experience from himself to the viewer. Travers works on shaped canvases to amplify sculptural form and to create a palpable physical presence in his work. In order that his paintings themselves become form, he suppresses pictorial space to pared down and fine-tuned shaped canvases. His work seeks to exert a gravitational tug on the body of the viewer. Travers received his MFA from the American University in Washington, DC and his BFA at the Art Institute of Boston in Boston, MA. Selected exhibitions include those at Wadleigh Gallery in Chester, NH, Hera Gallery in Wakefield, RI, New American Talent in Texas, and Watkins Gallery in Washington, DC. Travers is currently an instructor at Rhode Island College in Providence, RI.