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Westchester County Business Journal • ARTSWNEWS


CERAMIC ARTISTS RAISE A CALL TO ARMS By Kathleen Reckling


Mickleson. Site-specific sculptures force the viewer to stop and ask, “Is that really clay?”


Artists are often hailed as proph- ets. Their art is the early warning system that alerts a culture to an im- pending crisis. The ceramic artists in ArtsWestchester’s fall exhibition, eARTh, are more than prophets. Their work, astutely selected by curator Leigh Taylor Mickleson, amounts to a resounding call to arms. The exhibition makes the point that man’s relationship with the natural world teeter-totters on a precipice, and it is our collective ef- fort that will ensure a symbiotic future.


At once fragile and enduring, clay sym- bolizes humankind’s connection to the earth. “This simple material, excavated from our earth and made permanent by fire and heat, is a powerful medium of expression,” promises Ms. Taylor


Indeed, eARTh showcases the diversity of contemporary ceramic art as it raises important questions about our impact on the environ- ment and man's endangerment of the ecosystem. In contrast, The Community Table- top, a celebratory installation featuring the handmade place settings of 34 artists, highlights traditional forms of the medium.


"This simple medium... can be a powerful vehicle of expression."


"Dinner with King Midas" draws viewers to a cave-like recess. A feast of inedible ceramic food, laced with biohazards, lays before a King transforming him from human to a grotesque hybrid of the chemically-altered meal he consumes. The installation is a collaborative effort between artists Nidhi Jalan and Shar- bani Das Gupta. The work makes the point that “we are condemning our own


children and the health of the world in a search for more and more profit.” Ms. Jalan and Ms. Das Gupta invite visitors to take a chair and join the King at his meal. The piece resonates with a clear message: we sit at the table of earth’s bounty, but ultimately, it is mankind who shapes the quality of the harvest.


The sometimes d e s t r u c t i v e , sometimes har-


monious collision between the man- made and the natural is a common thread throughout the exhibition. Linda Huey’s Four Rebar Flowers emerging from the ground with fragments of rust, fossilized trash, and e-waste embed- ded in their stems and blooms. Stand- ing as the visual opposite to Ms. Huey’s work is Kathy Ruttenberg’s Overgrown. A female figure floats against the wall, in one hand she holds a flower, on her wrist rests a bird and leafy branches ex- tend from her head in place of hair.


The exhibition envisions a hopeful not bleak future. It reminds us that just as we are an agent of earth’s destruction, so are we the agent of its rehabilitation.


On view: 10.6-11.23.2011 Opening reception: 10.5.11, 5:30- 8pm


ArtsWestchester 31 Mamaroneck Ave., White Plains www.artsw.org/earth


OCTOBER 2011


Specimens from the Mississippi River Valley, Brooke Noble


GETTING TO KNOW NATASHA CAPUTO By Skyler Srivastava


Quick, fearless, a problem solver – that’s the sense one gets when speaking to Natasha Caputo. She seems to thrive on challenge. Caputo was recently appointed Westchester County Director of Tourism and Film and County Executive Rob Astorino says he may just have found the human replacement for the lithium battery.


Pushing full steam ahead from sun up to late into the night, she is optimistic about her new assignment. Just four weeks into her new schedule, she was off promoting Westchester to an International Women’s Group called the Red Hatters Society in New Orleans. Prior to this, she held meetings with county hotel managers with a message. “Westchester is ideal for business – team building, conferences, corporate meetings. All of this goes hand-in- hand with repeat business and we need to capitalize on that.” She’s also pitching to business and government associations, promoting the arts community, working on getting more films shot here on location, updating the website, and basically anything else she can fit into her day. Phew!


A Westchester resident, Caputo left Iona College armed with a zest for life and a communication degree. Her


first job in public television taught her how crucial funding was. “I dealt first- hand with cuts to programming, and collaborated with other regions for strategies to decrease those gaps.” Several years later, when her boss moved to NYC 100, she took Caputo along. From there it was quick hop to NYC & Company, where she built up signature tourism marketing campaigns like Restaurant Week and Paint the Town, and spearheaded marketing partnerships with American Express, Coca-Cola, Target and Time Warner. While there, she won two Adrian Awards and was honored as one of Promo Magazine’s Marketers of the Year. Several years later, she launched her own consulting practice with such clients as Madison Square Garden, City Harvest and many more.


Caputo gives credit to her parents, who moved here more than four decades


ago from the Dominican Republic. Now, with two small children of her own, she says the family keeps her grounded, but multi-tasking has taken on a whole new meaning. So, it’s no surprise that after all the kudos, it’s still the love of home that has led her to the job at hand. “We have the best here already – arts, dining, recreation, world class institutions, all just steps away from NYC, but here’s the thing… we’re affordable.”


Caputo is clearly a go-getter, with boundless energy and a magnetic personality that entices others to follow her lead. The question remains will the economy and people here respond?


She laughs, "Wouldn't it be great if we could have a Westchester Film Festival?"


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