Y Gallery is pleased to present Fell from the Same Tree a two person exhibition by New York City natives Janelle and Lisa Iglesias. This is the first time Janelle and Lisa are displaying their individual projects side by side.

Janelle and Lisa explore the urban environment as a forest terrain full of unwritten paths; equally, they perceive the materiality and imagery of the woods as an open field for conceptual resources. As in ‘cut from the same cloth’, Fell from the Same Tree connotes both a familial connection as well as a similarity in essential characteristics. There is a range of sculpture, collage, graphite drawings and video, all of which cohere around wood. Influenced by current events, Janelle’s ‘whatever they sing is better than to know’ is a mixed media installation made from a grouping of familiar objects and East River driftwood. Last year, Janelle amassed a collection of wood during her daily walks to her studio near Wall Street. Anchored vertically in concrete, the installation calls to mind an abstracted forest or assembly of people, replete with tiny details that imbue each element with distinct personalities.

Comprised of fifty-nine graphite drawings that follow the rhythmic back and forth of a two-person saw, Lisa uses what is traditionally called a “misery whip” as metaphor for the creative process and collaborative relationship. “Felling a Horizon” is a single channel drawing animation of the artists sawing back and forth while variations in drawing patterns, shapes and objects appear and disappear. While the projects in Fell from the Same Tree fall within their individual studio practices, the artists employ various strategies through which to respond to each other. In “Plank,” Janelle creates a sculpture in chorus to Lisa’s paper and graphite construction of a plank of wood, participating in a call-and-response tradition toward making.

Inspired by synchronicities and parallels between their studios, and embracing their shared autobiography, the works on view are generous in their variety of technique and material, whether they be found, recycled or created anew. Janelle and Lisa Iglesias present a diverse grouping of new works that playfully weave together wood paneled memories, analytical propositions, and material transformations.

Accompanying the exhibition is a limited edition newspaper poster cataloging cultural, mythological and art historical references mingled with an image collection of wooden objects sourced from their childhood home in Queens. A series of footnotes relay historical and anecdotal information that create a porous narrative of the artists’ influences and curiosities that ultimately inform the work.

Janelle Iglesias lives and works between New York City and Cape Cod. She received her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2006 and attended the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in 2009. Most recently, Janelle was awarded a Jerome Travel Grant to take a birding expedition in Papua as well as a NYFA Fellowship in Sculpture.

Lisa Iglesias lives and works in New York City. She received her MFA from the University of Florida in 2006 and served as the Philip C. Curtis Visiting Artist at Albion College in 2011. She is a recent NYFA fellow in Printmaking /Drawing/Book Arts.