April Art at Tillie's

April 2010 EventsTillie’s of Brooklyn 248 DeKalb Avenue Brooklyn NY 11205 718 783-6140 www.tilliesofbrooklyn.com

Special Silent Auction to benefit victims of the earthquake in Haiti Presented by Pratt Institute's Community Engagement Board One evening only: Monday, April 19th 6 – 8 p.m. All artwork is done by Pratt Institute faculty, alumni and students. Bidding will start at 6:00pm and will end at 8:00pm. Whoever bids the most by 8:00 p.m. will take their work of original art work home. Money raised will go towards relief efforts in Haiti through Unicef.

Cloud Paintings Lucy Sikes April 20 – May 22, 2010 Lucy Durand Sikes is known to many as “The Brownstone Artist” because of her many portraits of homes and landmark buildings in the neighborhood. Less known are her paintings of landscapes and clouds. She came to Brooklyn to study graphic art and illustration at Pratt Institute in the 1950s, when whole blocks of houses were abandoned and being torn down in the name of urban renewal. With her late husband, Bill Sikes, she became dedicated to brownstone preservation. Together they helped found the Brownstone Revival Committee, which started the Back to the City movement and worked with the Pratt Area Community Council, and later the Clinton Hill Society, to preserve the houses of the neighborhood. Though she created scores of brownstone portraits, Lucy Sikes never abandoned her love of landscape painting.

Her work has been featured in one-woman shows in the Kaymar Gallery, Valsamis Gallery, Atlantic Gallery, Grand Army Plaza Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, the Long Island University Gallery and the Town Hall Gallery in Johnsonburg, NY, as well as group shows in the Brooklyn Museum, the Broome Street Gallery, Cork Gallery at Lincoln Center and the Lever House Gallery. Over the years she participated in and helped organize many Clinton Hill Artists’ shows. She is a member of South of the Navy Yard Artists. Her art has appeared in Friends Journal, the New York Times, and The Phoenix newspaper. Artists’ Statement: “I am a realist and I suppose my art could be described as impressionist. I paint out in the fields and woods. Sitting on the ground with my paints spread out around me, I let myself become a conduit for the beauty in front of me. But I am always conscious of the underlying structure, which is defined by light: the mass of the hills and the volume of the trees. Clouds, although ephemeral, have every bit as much substance as the mountains and valleys. The movement of water is especially fascinating to me. Cumulus clouds as they move majestically across the sky are the subjects of my art. I feel their beginnings in moisture rising from earth, invisible until they reach a sharp line high above the ground -- a change from warm to cold air. Suddenly I see them billowing up. Ephemeral though they are, nonetheless they possess a beautiful structure in their brief solidity. The heart of my imagery is in western New York, with its long hills and valleys. I relish the colors of alternating woodlots and fields, and the subtle colors in the clouds. I return to the same farms and wooded waterfalls year after year. Always the same, yet always different, these images form a spiral as I grow in my understanding of their color.” Reception: Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 7-9 p.m.