On January 18, Kenise Barnes Fine Art will open a new exhibition of artwork that is, in a word: Sublime. The exhibition features the work of three contemporary artists whose art will transform the gallery space and promises to delight audiences: blue, green, and clear glass chain maille will cascade down the gallery walls and puddle on the floor; a deeply black tar paper sculpture will loop and meander overhead and across the white walls in an immense, high-contrast three-dimensional drawing; on another wall pristine white paper surrounds and focuses the viewer’s gaze on small craters of paint surrounded by thousands of gleaming, miniature glass shards. The work in this exhibition represent the best of what Kenise Barnes Fine Art has built a reputation on for almost two decades.

David Licata works with a gas torch to melt glass rods, once in a molten state, the glass can be bent and looped in complex ways. Licata bends and joins fine borosilicate glass into links ranging from half and inch to three inches that become large curtains of chain maille, a textile pattern that has fascinated the artist for a decade. Each glass sculpture in the show is made a different stitch as the patterns of chain maille vary by country and family. The delicacy of glass belies ideas of protection and strength inherent in traditional chain maille that is for armor.

Licata earned a MFA from Cranbrook Academy in Michigan and a BA from SUNY New Paltz. The artist lives and works in Westchester County. He is an educator and is nationally known for his glass torch work sculptures, jewelry and workshops.

Jessica McCambly describes her process as being a somewhat surgical. The artist meticulously builds her paintings by combining tiny dots of paint, no bigger than a pinhead, with mica and shards of glass. The elements are individually placed on the surface using an X-acto knife and a toothpick to manipulate them into a complex yet minimal composition.

Originally from Massachusetts, McCambly lives and works in San Diego, CA. She earned a MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of North Texas, College of Visual Arts and Design. Her work has been exhibited in The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA, The Children's Museum in San Diego, CA, The Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA, The Dallas Museum of Art, TX, and The Dallas Contemporary, TX.

Installation artist Suzan Shutan has created a painstakingly handcrafted, large, and meandering sculpture for the exhibit. Using an unlikely industrial material, Shutan achieves a complex matrix of forms. With roofing tarpaper the artist cuts, loops, and glues the densely black material to create a delicate looking network of shapes that evoke a drawn line in space. Paper chains arch over the viewer’s head, creating a lacy environment, climb down the wall, and culminate on the floor in patterns of light and shadows.

Shutan earned a BFA in Painting and Drawing from California Institute of the Arts and a MFA in Installation from Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts, NJ. She has lived and worked in Germany, France, and New York City. Shutan has taught at Rhode Island School of Design, Quinnipiac University, CT, and University of Omaha, NE and currently teaches Sculpture at Housatonic Community College, Hartford, CT. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions including Bank of America Headquarters, NC and internationally in Germany, France, Sweden, Poland, Argentina, Russia, Canada and Columbia.