The Art of Howard Skrill
Washington Square Arch
Asia Customs House
Grandfather Daughter Watson
Soldier on Tomb
Four Angels
Brooklyn War Memorial
Flute Player
Joan of Arc
Washington
ABOUT
The Anna Pierrepont Series, my drawings of public statuary in NYC, is plein air appropriation. Plein air drawings come into being through visual encounters with the constant changes of light and color in things ideally encountered out of doors. I roll a blue whole foods cart behind me, jammed with a folding chair, pencils, oil and chalk pastels, oil sticks and a pad of paper. I encounter a statue I wish to draw, unfold my chair, lay out my materials and struggle to represent the object emerging from the light and shadows of its surroundings onto a sheet of paper. The drawings are appropriation because the subjects I invariably select are public monuments created by other artists. In 2014, I began to augment the drawings with pictorial essays that enable me to explore beyond the plein air limitations of sight. The essays enable me to explore how the monuments came into being, their connection with their surroundings and their fate after installation. I have named the entire project after Anna Marie Pierrepont, a grand dame of 19th century Brooklyn interred in one of the most magnificent tombs in Greenwood Cemetery. I named the work in her honor as a comment on the gap between my silent and anonymous wanderings and her exulted self presentation.
A central theme of the Anna Pierrepont Series is the utilization of public figurative monuments in the creation and perpetuation of collective ‘American’ identity among a diverse population whose cultural and national identities typically originate elsewhere. In order to create this identity, other identities need to be subsumed and rendered invisible. Statues installed in public spaces act as soil to be churned and tilled in order to transform identities thro
EXPERIENCE
St. Francis College, Brooklyn Heights NY, 2001 – Principal Instructor in Studio Practice
Essex County College, Newark, NJ – 2001 – Senior Lecturer in sculpture and drawing
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2015 – “HMS Jersey” at the Callahan Center Gallery/St. Francis College and online
[http://howardskrill.blogspot.com/], youtube video of reception
[www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TsThl0aC5I ]
2011 – “Anna Pierrepont Series” at the Callahan Center Gallery at St. Francis
2006 – “Thru Rain” at Chashama Gallery, New York, NY
2006 – “Thru” at Safe-T Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2001 – CUNY – Queens College, “Thru”, Thesis Exhibition
2000 – Liquitex Corp. – “Artist of the Month”, www.liquitex.com/aotm/howard/home.cfm
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2006-13 – “Faculty Exhibition”, CUNY – Bronx Community College
2005 – Dumbo ‘Under the Bridge Festival” at Safe-T Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2005 -‘Color Mix’, Studio/Gallery 64, Brooklyn, NY
2004 – ‘Friends’, Studio Gallery 64, Brooklyn, NY
2002 – “Site Lines”, St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NY
2002 – Object Image Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2000 – Queens Museum of Art, Flushing, NY -Intervention/Tiffany Permanent Collection
2000 – “Altered Realities”, Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY
1997 – “Urban Landscape”, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Mass.
ONLINE PRESENCE
HowardSkrill.blogspot.com – 2011
Kickstarter.com – “Anna Pierrepont Series on the Road”
Electric Gallery – “egallery.com” [Abstract Realism] 2003-
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Green-Wood Blog by Historian Jeff Richman, Fall 2015, [https://www.green-wood.com/2015/another-artist-inspired-by-green-wood/]
Kyso Flash, ‘Works from 1990s’, Fall 2015, [http://www.kysoflash.com/SkrillFivePaintings.aspx]
Red Savina Review, Cover of the Fall 2015 Issue [http://www.redsavinareview.org/]
Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts and Letters of St. Francis College, ‘Civic Virtue’
Columbia Journal [from Columbia University], ‘Liminal’, Summer 2015, [http://columbiajournal.org/the-anna-pierrepont-series-by-howard-skrill/]
Newfound:An Inquiry of Place, ‘Erasure’ [newfoundjournal.org/archives/volume-6/issue…/nonfiction-howard-skrill]
3Elements Review, Issue 5, Fall 2014, plate/http://3elementsreview.com/past-journals,
Doppelgänger, Bludgeon, Dirge] ‘Brooklyn Dirge on pg. 50, 51 and back’
Slag Magazine, Issue 2, Fall 2014/http://issuu.com/jonhenry5/docs/slagmagissue2fina ”Return’ on pg 11′
EDUCATION
Queens College – CUNY, 1999-2001, MFA in Studio Arts, June 2001
State University of New York, College at Purchase, BFA with Honors,1985 – Faculty Award in Painting and Drawing
