(NEWARK, NJ) -- Gallery Aferro launches a 2017-18 quartet of solo shows by multiple generations of women artists of color, beginning with an extensive retrospective of ceramic sculptures by Dolores Stewart. The exhibit, curated by Evonne M. Davis, runs from April 28 through May 26, 2017.
Born in 1932, Stewart’s work reflects life. She uses her recollections of her children’s youth, and those of her own happy childhood to create moving sculptures that evoke the African-American family experience. Her observations of people derive from her own family members, but also from history, mythology, and the changing social conditions of the world around her. With several distinctive styles in use, her visualization of her pieces allows her to approach each one with fresh insight into the story that she is telling.
A 1952 graduate of Newark’s Arts High School, the first magnet arts school in the nation, Stewart continued her study of art at iconic institutions: The New School as well as the DuCret Art School, the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts, the Arts Student League, and most recently, with an ongoing engagement with the Visual Arts Center of NJ.
She has exhibited throughout the region, winning prizes frequently at the Plainfield Outdoor Show, the Parkway Festival of Art, Art in the Atrium, and at galleries in Atlantic City, Westfield and Summit, NJ. Her work is in significant collections throughout the northeast, and has been exhibited at the Newark Museum, the Montclair Art Museum, and the Morris Museum. She is a past member of the Tweed Gallery in Plainfield, NJ, and has been featured in multiple television stories, including the Steve Adubato Show on Channel 13, NJTV, and NBC Nightly News, and is included in two books on women sculptors. Most recently, she was included in a multiple location project by Women in Media, “Women in the World: a Visual Perspective", curated by Adrienne Wheeler and Gladys Barker-Grauer at Rutgers University-Newark’s Paul Robeson Art Galleries.
She states that “My sculptures are a true dramatization of the American culture. More specifically, my technique lends itself to capturing the soulful nature of the human spirit.” Now an octogenarian, Stewart resides in Plainfield, New Jersey and is the mother of two sons, and grandmother to three grandchildren.
There will be an opening reception for the exhibit on Friday, April 28 from 5:00pm-9:00pm.
Gallery Aferro is located at 73 Market Street in Newark, NJ.
