Current Show

On Friday, November 6, from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m., the Jonathan Frost Gallery in Rockland will host an opening reception for a show entitled “Jonathan Frost:  Old and New.”  This will be Frost’s first solo show since he opened the gallery two and a half years ago.  Pianist Steve Lindsay will play at the reception.

The work will include drawings, etchings, oil paintings, and artist’s books.

Most of the etchings are large black-and-white scenes of dogs, boats, bridges, and buildings along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.  While living in Brooklyn and doing graduate work at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, Frost became well acquainted with two small packs of dogs living on an abandoned industrial lot next to a concrete plant.  One of the packs became the subject of his children’s book Gowanus Dogs.

Oil paintings on display include landscapes, still lifes, flower paintings, portraits, figure paintings, and narrative works.  Some of the narrative pieces are based on Greek mythology and the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles.

Frost has begun what will become an extensive series based on the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s.  One work, The Death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, consists of nineteen small canvases in a linear, narrative sequence.  The story begins with a night march in Marion, Alabama, in 1965, protesting the jailing of a local civil rights leader.  The march was brutally broken up by state troopers, two of whom pursued an old protestor into a café.  After a scuffle involving the protestor, his daughter, and his twenty-two-year-old grandson Jimmie Lee, one of the troopers fatally shot the unarmed young man.  Jackson’s death prompted activists in nearby Selma, including Martin Luther King, to initiate the Selma-to-Montgomery march.  More work in this series can be seen on  his personal art site, www.jonathanfrost.com .

The show will remain on view through December 5.  Gallery hours are 9:00 to 5:00, Monday through Saturday.  The Jonathan Frost Gallery and Frame Shop is located at 21 Winter Street in Rockland.  The telephone number is 596-0800.