Marsha Goldberg: Smoke Rises

Press Release

New Jersey-based artist Marsha Goldberg creates intaglio prints, graphite and colored pencil drawings, and oil paintings that investigate representations of war in the news media. This exhibition is on view at the University Galleries from April 11 through May 13, 2016. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sunday April 10, April 17 and May 1 from noon to 4 p.m. Admission is free. An opening reception for the exhibition will be held on Sunday, April 10 from 2 to 4 p.m. The artist will give a talk about her work on Wednesday, April 13 from 11:00 a.m. to noon in the South Gallery. 

Goldberg uses various media, including intaglio prints and graphite drawings, to delve into the imagery of smoke and explosions that, on the surface, may appear as something as benign as a cloudy sky. Her process begins with news photographs of explosions that are the source for her detailed graphite renderings of smoke. The large paintings, composed of overlapping lines in vivid colors,refer to details of digital photographs.The “zooming in” of this process actually results in the opposite of clarity. Goldberg constructs a responsive exhibition that highlights the devastation of war. “The meditative process of making the work opens a space to consider the real consequences of destructive acts of war and to question the ways we receive information,” she says. Goldberg responds to the abstract form of smoke by connecting it with expressions of nature and art. 

Goldberg was selected to receive this one-person exhibition as the grand prize winner of the exhibition, Ink, Press, Repeat 2014, which presented works by professional printmakers and book artists. Held in fall 2014 at the William Paterson University Galleries, the exhibition was juried by Susan Tallman, editor-in-chief of Art in Print. Tallman selected Goldberg’s work from more than 600 works submitted by 231 artists. 

Goldberg was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. She received a B.F.A. in painting from Boston University,, and an M.F.A. from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University.. Her work has been exhibited nationally at the Nancy Dryfoos Gallery, Kean University,; Dartmouth College;; San Francisco Center for the Book; ; Noyes Museum of Art, Oceanville, New Jersey; Mason Gross Gallery, Rutgers University, DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts; and the Newport Art Museum, Rhode Island, among others. She was the recipient of the 2013 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship for Works on Paper. She currently lives and works in Highland Park, New Jersey. 

The exhibition is one of three on view concurrently in the University Galleries. Living Together: Nurturing Nature in the Built Environment, on view in the Court Gallery,addresses our relationship to nature in urban spaces. Profiles of the Future—The Annual Student Art Association Exhibition, on view in the South Gallery, features work by William Paterson University art students in an exhibition co-organized by the University’s Department of Art and the Student Art Association. 

This exhibition is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts. The William Paterson University Galleries are wheelchair-accessible. Large-print handouts are available. For accessible parking or other additional information, please call the Galleries at William Paterson University at 973-720-2654.