The Hebrew Home at Riverdale is pleased to announce its latest exhibition, Dear Andy: Postcards from Montauk, featuring the paintings of Brooklyn-based artist Mel Smothers. Smothers adopts the postcard format in his compositions, with each work personally addressed to Andy Warhol. Beginning “Dear Andy…,” and replete with postmarks rendered in paint, each piece incorporates Warholian images in order to establish a posthumous dialogue with the seminal pop artist.

Smothers integrates text into his paintings, following in the tradition of such artists as Vincent van Gogh and Charles Marion Russell, the 19th century landscape painter of the American West, both of whom combined drawings and text in their personal correspondence. Smothers juxtaposes word and image to express his connection to Warhol’s work. After Warhol’s estate in Montauk was sold in 2006, Smothers visited the sprawling 5.6-acre oceanfront property on the eastern tip of Long Island, in his words, “to get a sense of the place.” During that time, he was struck by the contrast between the natural environment and Warhol’s mass produced pop art images. In response, he began making postcard-style paintings to “report back” on the things he saw in Montauk.

The compositions feature some of Warhol’s most recognizable images, including portraits of celebrities such as Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, and Marilyn Monroe, and the unmistakable Campbell’s soup cans. Organic subjects which normally appear in a natural setting, such as jellyfish, bird life, and even inanimate objects that might be found washed up on the beach, dominate the faintly rendered pop art images. The result is a compelling body of work which juxtaposes two disparate subjects: the world of pop culture which Warhol embraced, and Smothers’s observations of the natural world. Thus, a dialogue is established.

A graduate of California State University and the University of Idaho, Smothers relocated from California to the East Coast in 1999 to pursue his career in New York City. His work has been included in both solo and group shows throughout the United States, as well as in public art and multi-media projects, and the performing arts.

Contemporary art exhibitions in the Elma and Milton A. Gilbert Pavilion Gallery of The Hebrew Home at Riverdale are open to the public free of charge and on view daily from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

As a member of the American Association of Museums, The Hebrew Home at Riverdale is committed to publicly exhibiting its renowned art collections throughout its 19-acre campus, and to providing educational and cultural programming that benefits both its residents and visitors from New York City and its surrounding suburbs. It also houses the Derfner Judaica Museum. The Home is a nonprofit, non-sectarian geriatric center serving more than 3,000 elderly persons through its resources and community service programs. For further information regarding the exhibition or the Hebrew Home’s art collection, please contact the Art Department at (718) 581-1596 or Public Relations Department at (718) 581-1225.

Emily O’Leary, Curator.