A Revolving Art Exhibit Right In Your Community
NOTICE: Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the monthly Art in the City receptions at our City Center Branch are now held virtually. Check in periodically for updates.
We’re excited to partner with The Compass Atelier on a program that allows Master Artist Program students to showcase their paintings inside Signal Financial’s flagship branch at City Center, located in the heart of Washington, DC. Each month, the City Center branch morphs into a revolving art exhibit, giving the students a platform to display their visual artwork and be recognized among the community. New artists are highlighted each month, with an opening reception on the first Thursday of every month. Come by and enjoy music, light refreshments and complimentary beverages as we acknowledge and celebrate the artists of our very own community. Check back monthly to see which artist we’ll be featuring next.
Virtual art exhibit featuring Ellen Yahuda and Sara Maddox
For our most recent exhibit, Signal is proud to showcase the lively and vibrant artwork of Ellen Yahuda and Sara Maddox.
A virtual showcase of both artist’s work will premiere Thursday, September 3rd across Signal’s social media platforms and website.
Ellen Yahuda began her life in the creative arts when she was three years old taking contemporary dance classes. To this day she continues to take dance classes at the Kintz Mejia Academy of Ballet and Joy of Motion Dance Center. At age eight she took painting classes at Temple University.
She moved to England in 1969 after graduating from Villanova University School of Law and practiced criminal law there for thirty years. As a criminal lawyer she was always engaged with outsiders with whom she felt a strong connection.
She moved to the States in 2003 and in 2006 she began to take mixed media art courses at American University Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
In March 2020, she graduated from the Master Arts Program at Compass Atelier taught by Glen Kessler. She has studied in workshops taught by Tina Garrett, Alyssa Monks, Steven Assael, Duane Kaiser and Roberto Osti.
Artist Statement
“My work explores the power and delicacy of industrial manufacturing equipment. I am drawn to this subject both as a metaphor of my personality but also because of my family connections to a niche industry which produces products my family has patented. The machines I paint are in a factory which my father started in 1961 and which has flowed down though a generation to my son.
To me, these machines embody the inventiveness, creativity and ingenuity of my family. I feel strength and power whilst watching these immense machines in use. I am impressed by how each machine produces a different part of the finished product. Diaphanous nylon threads are spun by one machine and another machine produces nylon backing. There is a machine that produces glue and another that ties the different parts together. The product is made into rolls then packaged and sent all over the world. I paint the moving parts of the machines to show strength and spirit in my paintings.
I see different colors and shapes and abstract composition in the machinery. I am fascinated by the concept present in this landscape of machinery. It is here that the natural entropy of machines such as rust corrosion, fading and wear from use, take the scenes into opposite directions. Silvery spiderwebs of lime, elegant scoring of metal, unexpected cracks all add character to these otherwise cold metal behemoths. These facades almost hide the true value and spirit encased within. Frailty in the facades hide the strength and power within.”- Ellen Yahuda
*Contact the artist directly if you are interested in purchasing a print or the original painting.
Ellen’s contact: ejyahuda@gmail.com
Ellen’s website: www.ejy-artist.com
Ellen’s YouTube Link, click here.
Sara Maddox is a Maryland-based artist who works mainly in oils. She is a graduate of the Compass Atelier Master Artist Program and a Resident Artist at Artists & Makers Studios in Rockville, Maryland. She began painting after a 25-year career as a health and science writer and editor in the Washington, DC area. Much of Sara’s painting involves working from processed images from media, as well as the “real” world, to capture on canvas moments that are severed from the usual or expected context of movement, action, and/or narrative and to re-frame the images isolated in time.
Artist Statement
“I am a graduate of the Compass Atelier Master Artist Program and a Resident Artist at Artists & Makers Studios. My art is big on color, but it really focuses a lot on concept. I’m primarily interested in how the constant presence of media images affects us, and I explore this by isolating moments on television from the accompanying narrative and painting them in a way that shows what remains when the narrative is removed. My process involves photographing images from television, manipulating the images in an image editing program, and then painting from the printed image. Having grown up with television all around me, I find that I am frequently seduced by these screen images—which is one reason I paint them. But even though the seductive “glow” of the images at least in part remains in my paintings, it becomes apparent that the objects shown have been pulled back to a more simplistic state that is disconnected from their original meaning and narrative. The ubiquity and dominance of these images and how we experience and process them is at the heart of our culture as I see it and my interests as a painter. I also use this approach to paint images taken from the “real” world.”- Sara Maddox
*Contact the artist directly if you are interested in purchasing a print or the original painting.
Sara’s contact: saradm16@gmail.com
Sara’s website: saramaddoxart.com
Sara’s YouTube Link, click here.