Karen Marston and Carol Salmanson. Elements

About

Karen Marston and Carol Salmanson are Brooklyn based artists deeply exploring environmental sensation in a fashion similar to an archivist or scientist conducting research. Marston's and Salmanson's works clarify how light and nature vary and shift, considering the effects, both subtle and dramatic, that these experiences have on us. 

Karen Marston’s paintings examine the blurring line between natural and man-made disasters and how our influence on our climate has enlarged these phenomena beyond their natural proportions. Marston is fascinated by the power of these elemental threats, which have grown larger and more alarming than ever, amplified rather than tamed by modernity. 

Salmanson's sculpture, site-specific installations and public works explore singular spatial qualities to build whole worlds with color, shape and light that resonate with memory and experience. Salmanson’s background as a painter gives her the ability to create works with light that are aesthetically rich and exploratory while technology provides a way to integrate color, line and hue into the vocabulary of sculpture and architecture where nature and the corporeal reality which we experiences daily is more concentrated. 

Karen Marston is a painter living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been seen in several solo exhibitions in NYC including: "Storm Watch, New Paintings" at Storefront Bushwick (reviewed in Time Out magazine by Michael Wilson), "Breathing Room" at Dam Stuhltrager Gallery in Williamsburg; as well as group exhibitions such as: "Passing, Left" curated by The Dorado Project for the Buggy Factory and "Vapors and Squalls, or Mediums", at Centotto in Bushwick, and "Fluid" at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor Cultural Center. Marston also serves as the President of the Board of Trustees of NURTUREart Non-Profit. Originally from California, she earned her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and participated in the A.I.C.A. New York Studio Program. 

Carol Salmanson works with light and reflective materials to create installations, wall pieces, and sculpture. Her work has been seen in numerous solo and two-person shows, including Brian Morris Gallery, the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Storefront Bushwick, and Dam, Stuhltrager Gallery. Her sculpture "Tri-Quadular Cone" was recently placed outside the City Hall of Summit, NJ, and she has also created window installations for Time Equities' Art-in-Buildings program, OK Harris Works of Art, Smart Spaces at 254 Park Avenue South, and Mixed Greens Gallery. 

Salmanson received a B.S. in Biological Psychology from Carnegie-Mellon University and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. She went on to attend the Arts Students League; the School of Visual Arts, where she was a Public Art Resident; and the National Academy of Fine Arts, as an Abbey Mural Workshop Fellow.