The White Room Gallery’s “Balancing Act” Kicking Off With Summer Solstice Summer Kick Off Party

The White Room Gallery’s latest exhibition, Balancing Act featuring Sally Breen, EJ Camp, John Mazlish, and Joan Konkel, will debut during a Summer Solstice Summer Kick Off Party co-hosted by the Ellen Hermanson Foundation. The opening soiree will take place on Saturday, June 23 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Breen, of Water Mill, draws inspiration from the reflection of water and the continual change of light. Her lyrical, contemporary paintings are a powerful metaphor for all that is beautiful, changing, and hard to contain in life. She received a BFA from Syracuse and studied at the New York Academy of Art, the Corcoran, Torpedo Factory, SUNY Purchase and NYU, and has had a varied career in computer graphics, printmaking, advertisement design, and cards.

Camp splits her time between New York City and Orient. Renowned for her photographic career, including celebrity portraits, magazine covers, movie posters and advertising campaigns, she has also created a collection of inspiring landscape images. The artist has photographed the sea and its shores, her favorite being the North and South Forks of Long Island. “Shooting the sea is not dissimilar from shooting a portrait. It may take some time, in an unforgivable environment and your subject may be cruel and uncooperative. But with patience and coaxing, its guard will be dropped and the soul of the subject will be revealed,” Camp relayed.

Mazlish is a Brooklyn based fine art photographer with extensive experience documenting everything from urban landscapes to backstage fashion, abstract nature to celebrities and musicians. An avid fan of the natural environment, he creates evocative images with an eye for turning the everyday into something extraordinary. “My artistic passion involves revealing the unique beauty found in the most simple moments and places. I often see in a painterly way, having inherited an acute awareness of color, shape, mood and light from my beloved mother, who was a renaissance woman of many talents…As a native Long Islander, I feel a special affinity for its unique light, water, beauty and seasonal changes. I’m a natural adventurer/explorer, and much of my recent work was shot in and around the Hamptons,” he shared.

Konkel works at the intersection of painting and sculpture to create abstract, low relief sculpture with woven mesh, aluminum sheet metal and paint on canvas. “Each work becomes a realm in which colors can change and optical illusions and physics can play with one’s perception,” said Konkel. “The aluminum metal has a soft finish that reflects and disperses light and serves as a counterpoint to the woven mesh that draws light into the work where light rays are able to refract and reflect from each colored strand and surface.”

A portion of the proceeds from the exhibition will benefit The Ellen Hermanson Foundation through The Ellen Hermanson Breast Centers at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital and satellite locations in Hampton Bays and East Hampton and Ellen’s Well, a free psychosocial support program. The Foundation is committed to ensuring that those who resident on the East End have access to state-of-the-art breast health care and empowering those impacted by cancer.

Balancing Act will be on display from Wednesday, June 20 through Sunday, July 8. Admission to the Summer Solstice Kick Off Party is free.

The White Room Gallery is located at 2415 Main Street in Bridgehampton. For more information visit www.thewhiteroom.gallery and ellenhermanson.org.