FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Please List
KIFFI DIAMOND
“FOUND INSPIRATION”
November 2- November 27, 2021
Opening reception: Thursday November 4th, 6-8pm
Closing reception: Saturday November 27, 4-6pm
Chelsea: Viridian Artists Inc. is pleased to present an exhibition of assemblages by Kiffi Diamond entitled “FOUND INSPIRATION”. The show opens November 2nd and continues through November 27th, 2021. You are invited to meet the artist and celebrate the opening on Thursday, November 4th, 6-8PM.
Kiffi Diamond has been collecting all her life. Her passion for ephemera from the past began when she was just 8 years old and was given an old Victorian scrapbook. Diamond’s assemblages exemplify her ongoing fascination with detritus and ephemera which she combines into both fascinating and at times somewhat frightening creatures and scenarios.
Many of Diamond’s works become visual narratives as she creates series that follow predators and symbolic ancestors through the adventures of her creative imagination. Both humor and cynicism play equal roles in her works, but the works in this exhibit have become more “painterly” than her earlier assemblages. Disasters, insects, guns de-volving, sunny days and secrets are all given equal representation by the artist who creates evocative stories from old objects, rusted and filled with their own history that she then translates into her own.
Sometimes she is surprised by the creatures that emerge from assembling of fragments that at first are unrelated but begin to take on new personas as she works with them. “Ancestral Reckonings” are pieces quiet in nature while other works are more disturbing, reflecting the panic and anxiety that has been created by the Pandemic. The environment is a real concern for Diamond and she feels she is expressing a love for the earth as she rescues a rusty bit of detritus from the trash and combines it with fragments from other trash creating an idiosyncratic artwork that hopefully will never be discarded.
Her works have been featured at museums and galleries across the country including Attleboro Museum, National Collage Society, Moorhead State University, Hiram Blauvelt Art Museum and The Katonah Museum of Art. Diamond was educated at Chouinard Art Institute in LA, the Rhode Island School of Design, School of Visual Arts, and The New York Botanical Garden.
In addition to a life-long pursuit of the creative arts, Diamond also nurtured robust careers early on in graphic design and, later, in landscape design. For a decade ending in the 1980s, she ran her own design studio, working for a variety of clients from book and music publishers, to Memorial Sloan Kettering Center. In the early 2000s, Diamond parlayed her love of gardening into a full-fledged landscape design business, maintaining her belief that “landscape is like a living collage.” Since 2015, Diamond has devoted her energy and spirit to creating collages and assemblages full-time.
Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday 12-6PM
For further information please contact Vernita Nemec, Gallery Director or at 212 414 4040 or viridianartistsinc@gmail.com
or view the gallery website: www.viridianartists.com or instagram @viridian artists