Imagination & Innovation: Barbara E. Cohen, Rebecca Levitan and Mellissa Morris

Cross Rip Gallery is pleased to invite the unique and diverse talents of Barbara E. Cohen, Rebecca Levitan and Mellissa Morris as part of our season series “Come Together 2022”. Based respectively in Provincetown, New York and Hyannis, these three artists not only bring exciting techniques and concepts to our gallery, but they also bring new perspectives to our artistic community.  For more information about these three innovative artists please read below:
BARBARA E. COHEN – PAINTER, WRITER, SCULPTOR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok6wbwe7kaQ
Barbara Cohen received her B.F.A. from Tufts University and the School of Museum of Fine Arts in Boston with earlier studies in art history at Oxford University. She has received numerous grants including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Artists Foundation Mass Fellowship program, Polaroid Artist Support Program, Blanche E. Colman Award and grants from the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice, Italy and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Barbara has exhibited her paintings and sculptures in numerous galleries and museums across the country. She is traveling to Skopelos, Greece, for a residency this summer.
Barbara’s books to date, Our Provincetown , including 60 writers alongside her painted Polaroids of Provincetown, published by Provincetown Arts Press, 2021, Venezia: Essence, is a series of oil painted Polaroids of Venice, Italy, published in 2013 by the Italian editor, Damocle. She is the author of New York love Affair, 2010, a collection of painted Polaroids of New York City, and Dog in the Dunes Revisited, 2005, published by Fields Publishing. The original Dog in the Dunes, 1998, a series of painted photographs of her black Labrador, Gabe, set in the dunes of Cape Cod, was published by Andrews McMeel. Provincetown East West, a selection of her painted polaroid landscapes of this small seaside town was published in 2002 by University Press of New England. Additional books include Woman’s Best Friend: A Celebration of Dogs and their Women, was published in 1996 by Little Brown and Company, as well as Dogs and their Women, 1989, Cats and their Women, 1992, and Horses and their Women, 1993.

Barbara is currently working on a new book of painted photos of Yofi, her 3 1/2 pound year old Morkie, living an Upper West Side life in the famous French one hundred year old building, the Ansonia, in New York. She divides her time between Provincetown, MA and New York. She travels extensively, enhancing her work on the lives of displaced people. Her personal politics are projected throughout her abstract paintings and sculpture from her past and present surroundings.

REBECCA LEVITAN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El7qYYO6Il4&t=2s
Bio & About her Work
Rebecca Levitan is a painter who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She studied art and linguis- tics at Harvard and painting at RISD. After college, she lived, worked, and studied Arabic in the Middle East while on a yearlong travel grant. Her work has been shown at the NARS Foundation, Morgan Lehman Gallery, and Asya Geisberg Gallery among others. Recent activities include a residency at Triangle Arts Association in Brooklyn, and inclusion in the Northeast Issue of New American Paintings.
My work is attempt to distill the contemporary visual world—chaotic and contextless, over- whelming in its variety—and pass it through the low-tech, idiosyncratic filter of my hand, in order to make paintings about the big feelings in small moments. My paintings reference a wide spec- trum of ways of making, but instead of pulling from existing examples, I make the objects and images I depict, designing the deck of cards if I am making a painting that involves tarot, or build- ing a pop-up book if I want to paint one. One day, I may find myself using 3d modeling to create paper models of popular wedding registry items. The next, I am constructing maquettes, taking photos, or collaging. The final paintings themselves employ multiple modes of painting, drawing, and printmaking in a single piece. Together, my pieces form a body of work as disparate as the world that informs them, but linked by an interest in everyday moments and the vernacular image.

MELLISSA MORRIS – ARTIST STATEMENT/BIO
Currently I am the artist in residence at 46 Pearl St. Studio, located at The HyArts Campus in Hyannis. I am a mixed media artist with a focus in drawing and painting medium. I am inspired by nature, abstraction, and my own sensitive sometimes unbearable tumultuous emotions. Some of my earliest childhood memories include; me being mad and frustrated at the world, running off into the woods to climb up trees, and to stare off at the clouds…..not much has changed over the years.
    I was born on Cape Cod along with my 6 brothers and sisters; we are all a little wild, rough around the edges, passionate people. I have a daughter who constantly delights and challenges me and now I am a recent NEW grandmother. I never really liked cats growing up but coincidentally I ended up with my two babies, Nido and Leo, and they are my most favorite studio helpers/ best furry friends.
  I have a Masters Degree in Fine Arts Painting and Drawing from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. I do consider myself a life time learner/student and I am always taking new classes and learning new things.. I recently became certified in Somatic Movement therapies, Meditation, Yoga, Reiki, and I love to play and write songs on my Ukulele and Guitar.
   I am intrigued by the creative act as a form of spiritual and personal growth. I am as much a magician, mathematician, scientist, alchemist, and healer as a I am an Artist.