Rice Polak Gallery Presents first Exhibition of Summer 2026
The Rice Polak Gallery is excited to announce our first exhibition of the 2026 season. We will be presenting three one person exhibitions, featuring the work of Jennifer Goldfinger, Nicolas V. Sanchez & Steven Skollar
The show previews on – Thursday July 2th and runs through Wednesday July 15th. The Opening Reception is on Friday July 3th beginning at 7pm. We’d love to see you at the gallery.
JENNIFER GOLDFINGER “Kindred Spirits”
Jennifer Goldfinger is a painter as well as a children’s book author and illustrator. Her art and illustrations often inform and play off of each other. She works with wax, oil stick and photographs as well as other ingredients to juxtapose present and contemporary worlds with times and forms of the past. In the solitary figures Jennifer imagines the inner thoughts of the characters and pulls the story out with playful collage.
“I arrive in my studio with vague ideas floating around in my head about what I’ll do with my blank panel, but my paints, molten wax, photos, and other flotsam are what ultimately spark the muse . Memories and emotions start to wiggle out of dormancy, and are expressed on the surface. Each painting therefore feels like a part of me or a kindred spirit. What I find most intriguing is that when I have the pleasure of meeting someone who wants to have a conversation about one of the paintings, they often describe how the images that come from deep within me bring up their own lost memories and emotions.”
STEVEN SKOLLAR "Torque"
Painter and artist, Steven Skollar has steadily built an international reputation depicting the cast-off toys of the 20th century. Working with a technique that might be the envy of a 17th century Dutch master, Skollar takes his superb mastery of that rather somber style and uses it to make witty commentary on the human condition. His paintings are a reflection of our modern life served up with a with a mixture of nostalgia and rapier-sharp wit.
“Back in my New York City high school days, a few friends of mine were graffiti artists. They would paint their graffiti paintings, tags on walls and/or subway cars…whatever space presented itself. They described the practice as “getting up“. I always liked the term.
As a city boy who’s moved to the country and who likes to paint (among other things,) shiny objects, tractors have always drawn me. Their brand new, pristine, bright, shiny colors are designed to make their presence known in the landscape.
Those same colors stay ever interesting as they age. Holding their attraction through workworn dents and dings, the bleaching sunlight and dotted with liver spots of rust.
Shapes and sizes run the gamut too, in color and size. Many have round tubular shapes that undulate throughout their bodies. I suppose this metaphor could be aptly applied to human beings, but I’ll Leave that to the viewer. They conjure images of agrarian bliss & plenty via relentless toil. So here displayed are portraits of some of my favorite local characters from differing eras. Perfect for a city boy like me to, “Get UP”.
NICOLAS V. SANCHEZ “Lattices, Threads & Ripples”
Nicolas V. Sanchez presents a body of work exploring his family’s history rooted in his bi-cultural upbringing as a Mexican American. Sanchez utilizes a mosaic of mediums to convey the unique nuances and intricacies imbedded in the inheritance of culture and family history. Sanchez’s oil paintings depict traditional Mexican ballet folklórico dancers, emphasizing movement, cultural tradition, and family history through their embroidered dresses. The subject matter connects directly to his mother, a seamstress whose creativity and passion shaped his earliest sense of what it means to be an artist.
In his sophisticated small scale ballpoint pen drawings, Sanchez is depicting the landscapes, animals, and people of Mexico and the Midwest. The patient, deliberate nature of handling ink with a fine point creates a contemplative space that mirrors the sensation of longing for family, land, and place. “The past is hard to trust because each generation retells it through their own lens. It is filled with biases and gaps. It arrives fragmented, filtered by time and individual perspectives”. In his series of watercolor paintings, Sanchez depicts his nephews swimming, the water fractures their bodies, just as time fractures our memories. Each ripple blurs the line between who we are and who we were — a parallel to a dissolving and elusive family history inheritance.
The gallery is now open daily, Thursday, Friday & Saturday evenings, online and of course by appointment. And if you are in town this Friday please stop by the gallery and experience this wonderful show in person.
Marla
Please email or give me a call at 508-487-1052 with any questions or inquiries.