Karen J. Waller, September Artist of the Month
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Gallery on Main's Artist of the Month series continues with “Black at Night and Read Allover,” an exhibition of acrylic paintings by Karen J. Waller from September 1 through 30. Admission is free, and the paintings are available for purchase.
Join us for the opening reception on Saturday, September 2, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm.
In this exhibition, Waller continues to hail the imaginative highway architecture, luminous signage, and notable sites that managed to survive a seemingly concerted effort by developers to make everything, everywhere all at once look pretty much the same. From New Jersey backyards to backroads, significantly historical or simply hysterical, these sites were initially captured in more than two decades of Waller’s personal photographs. The resulting paintings, says Waller, “may challenge our notion of the traditional landscape by their lack of natural breadth and beauty, but there is no denying that these are indeed the enchanted backdrops that spoke so persuasively to us in our youth and still whisper words of comfort and joy to us as we quietly age alongside of them.”
Waller has also included a painting entitled “Lost Vegas No. III,” featuring the graphic design and sign-making that embodied mid-twentieth-century America. This work is part of a series inspired by the giant roadside advertisements for casinos, hotels, restaurants, and other entertainment venues venerated in the sandy backlot of the Neon Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada in what is deemed “The Boneyard.” Based on pre-pandemic photographs from 2019, Waller appreciated the irony of the gaily colored signs resolute in the middle of the desert waiting for visitors to ponder the inevitability of evolution and obsolescence as well as the promise of resilience, reinvention, and recovery.
Karen Waller received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1978 from Montclair State College with a major in Fine Arts. After a hectic career in publication design and production as well as a stint as a muralist and decorative painter, she obtained her graduate degree in Studio Art from MSU studying with Peter Barnett and Amer Kobaslija. Recently retired from Bergen County Technical High School as an award-winning Visual & Graphic Design instructor, Waller is rediscovering her love of typography and acrylic landscape painting with an occasional dash of vintage found object collage work.
Waller was the recipient of a Governor’s Award in Arts Education in 2011 and an NEA Foundation Learning and Leadership grant in 2018. She counts among her painting highlights a large-scale, public mural donated to the Doo Wop Preservation League in Wildwood, New Jersey and her first one-woman show at the Belmar Arts Center entitled Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.