Last year, my painter friend Darlene Charneco kindly introduced my work to
people at Art Sites, a gallery in Riverhead, NY.  They actually liked the work
enough to do a show.  And it’s coming up!

The town of Riverhead is located at the northern part of eastern Long Island,
NY. It’s a rather big town for the area with its set of county buildings.  It can
also be beautiful with the river going nearby and it’s got an aquarium
(Atlantis Marine World) where I take my kids. The town is not fancy at all like
some of the summer spots in the Hamptons.  It’s sort of rustic, can be seedy,
sort of reminds me of towns I’ve seen in Weird NJ.  OK, it’s sort of weird and
it’s been making me want to find out more about its curious nature. It’s an
intriguing place where I would want to walk around with my camera.  In short,
I like the town.

The gallery is run by an architect couple, Glynis Berry and Hideaki Ariizumi,
who converted a Jeep dealer building, basically with their bare hands into
three gallery rooms and their architect office.  The ground also includes a
park-like outdoor exhibition area facing the river.  It’s very nice.  In addition
to their regular gallery schedules, they’ve been opening the space for various
community activities, and this year they had their 2nd annual Peconic River
Festival.  And this is not their first gallery space. They have a quite followings
since their Greenport gallery era (Their first gallery space was located in the town
of Greenport where they still reside). They’ve been known in the area to put up
solid shows.  It’s really generous of Glynis and Hideaki to let me be part of their
programing.  Thank you so much.

Art Site Gallery Plan

I’ve been looking forward to seeing how my work will interact with their rooms
(101, 101 and 102A).  Also, I’m excited to show three new works which I’ve been
working on for the past years.  One of them (#63) appears in the announcement
above.  More images of #63 along with images of #56 and #69 will be added shortly
to the main part of the site.  The show will likely include over 10 pieces and I will
post details as we get closer to the opening.

Here is an excerpt from Art Sites’ press release:

Hiroyuki Hamada’s works are monumental in impact, but built with delicacy.
They are filled with an unknown spirit. There is no direct reference, but one can
read the mysteries of the ancients or the mapping of a digital age in their rich
surfaces. The forms hold space, rather than make it. Tension pervades, as each
mark and tone tell a story of perfection, balance and upset. Hamada spends up
to three years creating the sculptures, as he applies plaster over burlap and
wooden forms. He then shapes and stains them with wax, resin, and paint.

Hamada, at 18, moved from Tokyo to West Virginia, due to his father’s
involvement with the steel industry.  Culture shock, language challenges,
and minority status were exacerbated by the parallel shift from an urban
to a rural lifestyle.  In college, after starting in psychology, Hamada
became more enamored of art, especially after being exposed to the work
of Karl Jacobson. With a M.F.A. from the University of Maryland,
Hamada’s art transitioned from emotionally generated art, to a
fascination with the abstract, especially the interaction between
lines, colors, tones, and shapes in three dimensions.

Hiroyuki Hamada has developed his work with the support of the
Pollock-Krasner Foundation, residencies at the Fine Arts Works
Center, the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for creative
Artists, and the Edward Albee Foundation, and more recently, a
grant from the New York Foundation of the Arts.