Press Release: East to West

Natalia Wróbel, Hum, 2024. Signed on verso. Oil on canvas. 31.5 x 31.5 in.

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery | Los Angeles

1923 S. Santa Fe Avenue, Los Angeles, CA

Opening Reception: April 6, 6:00 - 8:30 PM PST
April 6 – May 11, 2024

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery Los Angeles presents East to West, featuring seven artists from our Boston gallery program. The exhibition will debut new works from our East Coast artists in a range of media, bringing the tight-knit Boston art scene to LA.

Teddy Benfield is a Boston based painter and sculptor originally from Southeast Connecticut. He is a graduate of Union College (BFA) and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (MFA). Teddy’s work is rooted in the genre of still life but mixes interior and exterior spaces with mark making, Americana and a unique perspective of push and pull through the grotesque by using a multitude of textures and painted objects. Teddy’s work creates a balance between uniform objects and painterly manipulations of commonly seen still life objects and motifs of both New England and Europe through different perceptions of space.

Pelle Cass is a photographer from Brookline, Massachusetts. His work is in the collections of the Fogg Art Museum, the deCordova Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the MFA Houston. His photographs have appeared in publications such as Beaux Arts Magazine, McSweeney’s, GQ, The New York Times, Die Zeit, The Atlantic, The Economist, and many others. New York Magazine commissioned Cass for the cover of its celebrated end of year 2022 “Reasons to Love New York” issue. He has received fellowships from Yaddo, the Polaroid Collection, and the Artist’s Resource Trust. He’s published the monograph “Pelle Cass” (Just an Idea), and contributed to the books Photoviz (Gestalten), Deleuze and the City (Edinburgh University Press), Langford’s Basic Photography (Focal Press), and The Beautiful Sparkle: Ptical Illusions in Art (Prestel), ICP Concerned: Global Images for Global Crisis (G Editions).

Donna Dodson is an American sculptor who has exhibited her artwork around the world. Dodson has completed successful residencies in Verbier Switzerland, Cusco Peru, Keelung Taiwan and Ringkoebing Denmark. Donna is currently a Resident Scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center and a Visual Art Fellow at the St Botolph Club in Boston. Dodson’s recent show, “Sheroes” at the Boston Sculptors Gallery was met with critical acclaim. Donna was a 2022 Fulbright US Scholar at Q21/MuseumsQuartier in Vienna Austria working as an artist in residence with her host institution Tricky Women/Tricky Realities, the world’s only animation festival for women. Dodson has won grants from the Puffin Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New Hampshire Guild of Woodworkers and the George Sugarman Foundation. Her work is in the permanent collection of the World Chess Hall of Fame in St. Louis, Missouri, the Provincetown Art Museum, the Art Complex Museum and the Fuller Craft Museum in Massachusetts, the Noyes Art Museum in New Jersey and the Davistown Museum in Maine. Donna's work has been reviewed in the Boston Globe, Sculpture Magazine, The Daily Beast, Hyperallergic and Artnet. She was a member of the Boston Sculptors Gallery, the nation’s only sculpture cooperative that maintains its own gallery space, for 15 years. Dodson is a graduate of Wellesley College. She enjoys public speaking, and has been a guest speaker at conferences throughout North America. Donna is a freelance writer whose articles in newspapers, magazines and blogs demonstrate the economic impact and global reach of the arts sector. Her recent paper, “What do we call courageous women” was presented at the Society for Classical Studies annual meeting in 2022 and was recently published in a special issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies, “Queering the Amazons.”

Alison Croney Moses creates wooden objects that reach out to your senses—the smell of cedar, the color of honey or the deep blue sea, the round form that signifies safety and warmth, the gentle curve that beckons to be touched. Her work is in the collections at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She is a recipient of the 2022 USA Fellowship in Craft and has been featured in American Craft Magazine, and a 2024 Finalist for the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize. She has worked over the past 15 years in alternative education settings to build out education programs that center the communities in which they take place. She is currently the Associate Director at the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts where she founded the Teen Bridge and Artist in Residence programs to help cultivate the current and next generation of artists and leaders in art and craft. She holds an MA in Sustainable Business & Communities from Goddard College, and a BFA in Furniture Design from Rhode Island School of Design.

Elspeth Schulze (b. 1985, Grand Coteau, LA) is a visual artist from Southern Lousiana, a place where land and water meet. Recent work explores the idea of a porous place, a passage between one thing and another. Schulze holds an MFA in Ceramics from the University of Colorado Boulder, a BA in Literature from Loyola University New Orleans, and an AAS in Fashion Design from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She is currently an artist in residence at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Haley Wood is a fiber artist living in Allston, Massachusetts. She has shown her work at the Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Boston, the 2023 MassArt Auction, and the 2021 SPRING/BREAK Art Fair in NYC. Wood holds a BFA in Fibers from Massachusetts College of Art & Design. She has received the MassArt Milestone Grant, Marilyn Pappas Award, and the Barbara L. Kuhlman Award.

Natalia Wróbel is a Polish-American artist from La Jolla, CA. Her recent paintings are about life cycles, the mystery of life, and the spaces in between. They are inspired by transformation and regeneration in the natural world. She received her BFA in Studio Art and Art History from Dartmouth College followed by an Independent Atelier at the New York Studio School (NYSS). In 2017, Wrobel completed a painting residency at the Berlin Art Institute. Her work has been featured at art fairs including Volta Basel: Switzerland with Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Art Basel: Miami, Texas Contemporary, and Art Southampton and has been an official selection at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and MassArt Auction. Her paintings have been featured in publications in the US and Europe ranging from spiritual texts, literary theory, scientific journals and poetry, as well as in computer science coursework at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and are included in public and private collections around the world. She currently lives and works in San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain.

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is a contemporary art gallery with locations in Boston and Los Angeles. We exhibit contemporary art with a heavy emphasis on concept-driven artwork by emerging to mid-career artists located across the country and internationally. The gallery primarily focuses on paintings but also exhibits a range of other media including photography, sculpture, mixed media, digital prints, drawings, and much more. Owner Abigail Ogilvy Ryan founded the Boston gallery in 2015, and in Fall 2023 the gallery program expanded to a second location in Los Angeles. The gallery is committed to exhibiting the strongest work from both local and international artists.

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery's new Los Angeles gallery will provide a platform for new perspectives and education through independent curation and artist partnerships. The collaborative approach upends the traditional gallery model and aims to enhance the careers of artists, curators, collectors, and other art world professionals, both emerging and established. The gallery program primarily features guest curators in order to share diverse perspectives and voices with the Los Angeles area and the greater art market. AOG x LA is now open to the public.