Editor’s note: This press release was provided by the Pelham Art Center.

Pelham Art Center has unveiled two new public art installations on its 3rd Street exterior wall. Revivival (2020) by Sara Jimenez and Jason Schwartz is on view through September 31st; a new public mural by Lance Johnson is on Pelham Art Center’s 3rd street doors.

In Revivival, Sara Jimenez and Jason Schwartz present three fabric triangular banners that drape over an exterior wall of Pelham Art Center. The banners are composed of manipulated photos taken of the nearby coastline of Pelham Bay. The layout and geometry of each triangle refer to the pitched gables of Tudor Revival architecture that pervade the Village of Pelham and surrounding suburbs. The inverted gables of the piece point downward, toward the earth.

In their explorations of the architecture and landscape of the region around Pelham, the duo has been drawn to locations where the material of human habitation interacts with natural processes, e.g. where remnants of old bricks, smooth sea glass, and ceramic fragments mix with shells and rocks on the coastline of Pelham Bay. This blurring of boundaries via the shared presence of remnants of natural phenomena and human histories is a core inspiration for the piece.

The duo has also been drawn to the stucco and stone facades, half-timbered framing, and pitched gables of Tudor Revival architecture. The style gestures to a quaint, imagined history of aristocratic country life, far from the industrialized bustle of modern America. It is a fiction imposed on the landscape, meant to entice homebuyers at early surges of the American suburbs.

Instead of the austere colors and plain faces of Tudor Revival gables, which are themselves purely decorative, the surfaces of these triangles are made up of abstracted images pulled from natural features of the landscape of Pelham Bay: rock faces, beach mud, meadows, and the bay itself. Jimenez and Schwartz are interested in interrogating and troubling constructed histories and reorienting the eye toward the land and the complex histories it holds.

Revivival Virtual Opening/Artist Talk – Thursday, December 10th, 5:00PM EST

Join Pelham Art Center with Sarah Jimenez and Jason Schwartz on Zoom to discuss their public art installation and learn more about the project. Free and open to all! – Zoom details are on Pelham Art Center’s website.

A new public mural by Lance Johnson is now on Pelham Art Center’s 3rd Street doors. The mural is a celebration of Pelham Art Center as a local community space for art and culture–featuring the Art Center’s signature red and orange colors along with spray-painted words including “elevate,” “inspiration,” and “hope.” Lance Johnson is an accomplished multimedia artist whose paintings, influenced by jazz, hip-hop, and Romare Bearden, have been exhibited at many galleries in New York City and around the country. “I want my creativity to inspire young people to always reach for their dreams. My work is a celebration of the beauty and complexity of urban life…I want my work to be a source of aspiration throughout the world.”

Works by Sarah Jimenez and Jason Schwartz and by Lance Johnson are currently for sale in the Pelham Art Center Art Boutique, which offers affordable art and artisan items through December 23rd.