Nature’s Persistence: Recent Work by Shelley Haven

Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection at Hebrew Home at Riverdale is pleased to announce our upcoming exhibition, Nature’s Persistence: Recent Work by Shelley Haven, which will be on view from March 2 through June 29, 2025. A reception and artist’s talk will be held on Sunday, May 4, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. The Museum is located at 5901 Palisade Avenue in the Riverdale neighborhood of The Bronx, and is free and open to the public. R.S.V.P. for the May 4 reception at 718.581.1596 or art@riverspring.org. Photo I.D. required for admission.

Nature’s Persistence: Recent Work by Shelley Haven features twenty-three paintings, pastels, and drawings that map the geologic history of rocks, cliffs, canyons, and ravines with layers of line, form, color, and tone. Haven, who lives in the Bronx and works on location and in her studio in Yonkers, finds the complexity of rock formations a compelling inspiration that expresses nature’s resilient response to the challenges of time. As she states: “I am drawn to places that speak to me of creative transformation and survival; and I am fascinated by the fragile beauty and awesome power of nature.”

Nature’s places of creative transformation and survival have been the focus of Haven’s studio practice for thirty years. She inspires others to be present and engaged in nature, to be healed and strengthened, and to advocate for its preservation. This exhibition presents works from several series focusing on sites from the New Jersey Palisades to New England. Spanning the years 2016 to 2024, they show the evolution of her compositions, beginning with a panorama of the Palisades’ “majestic wall” and culminating in later works where the artist maps the eroded volcanic rocks’ largest forms and intricate facets that are at once intimate and perilous.

Other series are titled after Umpachene Falls Park in New Marlborough, Massachusetts; Bash Bish Falls in Mount Washington, Massachusetts; Larchmont Manor Park on Long Island Sound in Westchester; Untermyer Gardens on the Hudson in Yonkers, and East Poultney, Vermont. Each composition explores the crags and fractures of the rocks, sometimes with cascading waters, rendered in brilliant color combinations and contrasts, with rich hues and tones, strikingly lit and deeply shadowed.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an online catalogue that includes an interview with the artist.

About the artist

Shelley Haven was born on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1951. Her parents were both first-generation Americans. On her mother’s side her grandparents emigrated from Odessa, then part of the Russian Empire (now Ukraine), to the Boston, Massachusetts, area; her paternal grandparents came to the Lower East Side of New York City from a Galician shtetl, in what today is western Ukraine.

Haven received a BA in studio arts from Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York, and MA and MFA degrees from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa. Since the 1970s, she has exhibited her work and taught art in community and academic settings, including the Cooper Union and School of Visual Arts, both in New York City. Haven’s artworks are inspired by nature and motivated by environmental concerns. Her studio practice includes painting, drawing, and printmaking mediums, as well as video and print collaborations.

Haven has had solo exhibitions at Wave Hill, Bronx, New York; Art in the Windows, New York Public Library Mid-Manhattan, New York Public Library Tompkins Square Gallery, and Pfizer World Headquarters, all in New York, New York; Elsie B. Rosefsky Memorial Art Gallery, Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York; Edward Williams Gallery, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Hackensack, New Jersey, and the Media Loft Gallery, New Rochelle, New York, among others.

Recent group exhibitions include Tandon School of Engineering, New York University, Federal Reserve, Human Impact Institute, and the Lesley Heller, Jason McCoy, and Central Booking galleries, in New York, New York; Hudson River Museum, Blue Door Art Center, Riverfront Gallery, and Yonkers Arts Project Space, in Yonkers, New York; Pelham Art Center, Pelham, New York; Blue Hill Art & Cultural Center, Pearl River, New York; Drawing Rooms, Jersey City, New Jersey, and Meeting House Gallery, New Marlborough, Massachusetts. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States and abroad in India, England, Poland, Hungary, and Ukraine.

Haven has received grants from Bronx Council on the Arts, Puffin Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, City Artists Corps, and Manhattan Community Arts Fund with Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, among others. She was the 2017 Hudson River Museum Teaching-Artist-in-Residence, and has received studio fellowships through the New York Public Library and Manhattan Graphic Center and residency fellowships across the United States and abroad.

Her work is in the collections of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Modern Art PAD/D and Franklin Furnace Archives, the New York City Public Library Rare Books Collection, Prints Collection, and Periodicals Archive, New York University, Pfizer Inc., Brookfield Properties, and AIG Inc., all in New York, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; University of Iowa Library Rare Books Collection, Iowa City, Iowa, and in private collections.

As an extension of her studio practice, Haven has worked collaboratively for over thirty years as the founding designer and ongoing cover artist of And Then, a literary-arts publication. Her artworks have been published as cover art for small press books, including Manhattan Song, Health Proxy, and Clouds Like Horses. International video collaborations with composer Hendrik van Oordt, a pianist, and writers can be viewed on YouTube.

Haven lives in the Bronx and works on location and in her Yonkers studio. For more about Haven, visit her website at www.shelleyhaven.com.

Museum hours: Sunday–Thursday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Photo I.D. is required for all visitors to the Hebrew Home campus. Call 718.581.1596 or email art@riverspring.org to schedule in-person group visits or virtual tours, or for holiday hours. For further information, visit our website at www.derfner.org.