Tria Gallery presents its “Summer Cocktail” from June 26 through August 1, 2008. On display to help viewers escape the heat will be a cool mix of artwork, including mixed media sculpture by Monica Banks and Howard Kalish, prints and woodcuts by Karen Kunc, and paintings by Jenny Nelson, Annamaria Suppa and Joanne Topol.

The works in Tria Summer Cocktail vary in terms of medium and style, but are united in their undeniably playful quality. Each presents the viewer with its own type of innocent joy; some conjuring up childhood memories of trips to the beach, or the feeling of a hot summer day with grass underfoot, others the simple and almost innocent thrill of viscerally connecting to a vibrant color or compelling arrangement of geometric shapes. In the dog days of summer, this “Summer Cocktail” is intended to provide viewers with some respite and to impart a cool, colorful and joyful experience – a visual popsicle, if you will.

Monica Banks

Monica Banks is probably best known for her permanent installation “Faces: Times Square”, a sculptural work that runs 166 feet along the fence on the traffic median between Seventh Avenue and Broadway in Times Square, New York City. In addition to numerous site-specific installations such as this, Banks is also known for her marvelously creative studio work, including a series of curtains in which abstract and non-objective shapes connected by a web of thin wire hang from a rod, where their “relationships with each other and with the shadows they cast add up to a screen of beatitude.” She has also been hard at work on some three-dimensional pieces, including “Nestology,” which she describes as “a cloud of moments – a frenzy of beads, wire, jewels, letters, sequins, found objects, and little constructions comprising the thousands of little decisions that go into a work of art, and life.”

Banks lives and works in East Hampton, New York with husband Philip Schultz, recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and their children. She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the northeast.