Hera Gallery

This article is from the current issue of Rhode Island Monthly Magazine. It was written by Hera Gallery artist, John Kotula. For twenty-five years, the painting sat forgotten in a basement. Today, it is a world treasure. But this isn’t the first time Danza Afro-Cubana has set off fireworks. BY JOHN KOTULA In the summer of 1970, when artist Roberto Julio Bessin was sixteen, his grandfather gave him a painting. The two were spending the summer fishing on Long Island Sound, and the gift was a gesture to encourage the teenager’s dreams of becoming an artist. Thirty-seven years later, the painting was auctioned for $2.6 million last May. It is hard for anyone who doesn’t see art as a commodity to think that a painting could cost as much as putting twenty students through four years of a private college, supporting 125 families of four above the poverty line for a year or buying pretty good season tickets to the Patriots for yourself and more than 2,000 of your best friends. Yet, if any painti...

This article was recently published in the New York Times, and addresses the impact of the current financial down turn on nonprofit organizations. Be sure to visit the NY Times website to read the comments left about the article, it is all very interesting. By STEPHANIE STROM Published: November 10, 2008 SO what’s the fallout for philanthropy? Given the financial tremors that have obliterated wealth and driven the economy deep into the doldrums, will charitable giving, which reached record levels in the United States over the past decade, show sharp declines? Will foundations, faced with shrunken endowments, scale back their grant-making? Will individual charities, squeezed by reductions in both private and public money, be forced to cut programs? In short: was philanthropy, like the housing and financial markets, riding a bubble that has finally burst? So far, few fund-raising experts or nonprofit leaders are predicting an implosion in giving, a long fall from the more than $300 bill...

This article if from Chicago's Herald Bulletin Local abstract artist Caroline Pyle Jr. will show her work at the Effe Leven Gallery in Chicago’s River North Art District. Pyle is a self-taught artist who found her artistic voice more than three years ago after a near fatal car accident. Pyle says painting became her passion. “My mother gave me a paint set and suggested I use art as a form of therapy. Though creative by nature, I had only had only taken a couple of informal painting classes. Painting became therapeutic, helping me endure long, painful days during my recovery. Later a friend viewed my work and encouraged me to share my work with the broader community — it was astounding to see that people were moved by my work!” Pyle has since exhibited her work in Rhode Island and Cincinnati, where retailers carry her work. Her patrons include those from Indiana, Ohio, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Michigan, as well as a corporate client in Kentucky. Islay Taylor, director of Hera Ga...