‘Big Works’ at BAFFA Art Gallery

There’s something BIG at the BAFFA Art Gallery in Sayville this month. The South Bay Art Association is hosting its annual members’ exhibition “Big Works,” featuring pieces that are over 20x20 inches, now through Sunday, Oct. 25.

Paintings, mixed-media, and photographs that catch the eye in their grandiosity fill the gallery space, with each artist expressing themselves in unique ways.

“It’s one of our biggest shows,” said photographer and South Bay Art Association committee member Whitney Bell, who added that BAFFA’s gallery walls allowed for wider possibilities. “There was no specific theme other than we wanted people to go big.”

Featured artists like Jessica Avidor, who is showing with the South Bay Art Association for the first time, created ginormous pieces. Avidor’s 4-by-6-foot acrylic on unstretched canvas piece “Time Warp” is the largest physical piece of them all.

The painting immediately pops out at viewers with its bright pinkish-red backdrop giving way to an array of yellow, blue, and green strokes that swarm a wormhole-like structure on the top right that appears to transport viewers into a futuristic utopia.

“This is a very futuristic, happy apocalypse!” Avidor said. “I love being big. I feel like I could express myself more with the bigger brushes.”

Big pieces also help artists like Avidor express big emotions, with the “Time Warp” painter saying she creates her work in sudden creative bursts.

Other abstract pieces at the show include painter Lisa Stanko’s acrylic painting “Layers of Emotion,” which features green and brown hues that are given transparent glosses through different brush strokes that reveal layers of color underneath.

Another attention-grabbing piece is the intricately detailed oil painting, “When the Light Enters,” by Helena Weber, named after the poem by Sufi poet Rumi, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” A red-haired woman, who appeared in Weber’s mind one day, gazes to her left, in the direction of a cross, while apprehensively putting her left hand out in a sort of airy state.

Some featured photographers used their large spaces to display scenes of nature, like P. Tallon, who shot “Sunflower,” Whitney Bell who shot “Golden Fern,” and Anthony Graziano, who captured “Going Home,” which features a lake house in autumn reflecting off the water alongside brightly colored leaves.

Other painters also used the space to exhibit floral and nature pieces in larger forms. Maria Boylan piece “Dad’s Stargazers” captures bright flowers, and Nora Franzese’s painting “Susan’s Ode to Joy” shows a close-up of freshly watered flowers. Still depicting nature, but in a more abstract way, is Pamela Brewer, whose acrylic piece “Rooted in Light” impressively shows bare trees shining through rays of sunlight in a fashion similar to stained glass.

Whether it be paintings or photographs of the natural world, or an outlet to express one’s emotions more freely, the pieces featured at the South Bay Art Association’s “Big Works” exhibit are sure to leave an impression on visitors.

For more information, visit southbayart.org.