On Saturday and Sunday, May 20 and 21, Alex Damevski and Kirby Fredendall will host their annual Spring Open Studio, at 1448 Street Road, New Hope.
During the weekend the couple will be in their studios from noon until 5 p.m. to share their work and talk about their process. They will host an evening event from 6 to 9 p.m. May 20.
Fredendall grew up in Carversville, has lived in Bucks County from childhood, and has been working as an artist for over 30 years. She has been showing her work in a three-person landscape exhibit at Sarah Gormley Gallery in Columbus, Ohio, and is represented by Candita Clayton Gallery in New Hampshire and Rhode Island and locally by LAA Art Collective in New Hope.
Fredendall has shown her work all over the country; it is collected widely by private collectors and she has work in the permanent collection of the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, where she had a solo show.
In her work, elements of the landscape are pulled apart and selectively reconfigured. The viewer is gently led away from a directly observed image to one where a balance is struck between the known and the felt. The surface is organized into separate areas where one can then experience the landscape as a vista across a body of water, as the transparency of light and objects seen beneath the water, and the combinations of light and color that play together among all of these views. The viewer can be drawn deep into the visual space or skate along the surface.
Damevski was born in 1960 in the former Yugoslavia. Damevski and his family immigrated to the United States in 1968. As a child, he recalls his father taking photos with his 35-mm camera as well as reels and reels of 8-mm movies. He gravitated toward his 35mm camera especially and loved to pretend to take pictures just like his dad. He still has his camera in addition to many more – a collection that includes everything from a c. 1940s Graflex press camera to a miniature c. 1947 Japanese camera.
Damevski’s interest in photography was sparked in high school when he enrolled in an intro to photo class. The whole experience from pressing the shutter to developing the film and finally the magic of a photo appearing on the paper fascinated him. Damevski has also created a diverse body of sculptural work that has been exhibited at the New Hope Arts Works on Wood show numerous times.
His photographs have also been included in numerous group exhibitions.
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