Naima Rauam at 146 Beekman Street - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

When Naima Rauam was a pupil at the Art Students League she was urg by the agency of John Groth, one of her instructors, to make drawings picturing the city's life. That was more than 30 years ago. Since that time she has concentrated upon New York's construction site bridges, railroads, funnels airports and, since 1983, the activities around Fulton Fish Market. To display her work Rauam opened her be in possession of gallery at 146 Beekman public way - a block away from the southern Street Seaport. She calls it "Art in the Afternoon (fish in the morning)" because she share her space with the Meyer Thompson Fish Co whose employee work there until 11 A.M. She transmutes the space into a gallery at other times.

My attention was drawn to Rauam through the high quality of her art. single of her watercolors is a night exhibition showing the workers of the Carter Fish Company beneath the arc lights while in the far distance one can make on the outside the outline of the Brooklyn Bridge looming like a spirit in the darkness. Even more striking is a small ink drawing in which the celestial expanse the bridge and the buildings unite as a large black form that contrasts with the whites of the workers' aprons and the arc lights. Her pencil drawings of related controls have the delicate precision of silverpoint.

Rauam dedicated a novel show to the Corvette automobile, made in limited quantities by the agency of Chevrolet since 1953, when it was introduced as a challenger to European sports cars. The Corvette is an all-American car with unusual design and engineering features. Its possessors - including the artist - make up the of recent origin York City Corvette Club, who congregated upon June 11, 1995, to display their vintage and contemporary Corvettes along Beekman way and the north side of Pier 17

Rauam's November display ran concurrently with the exhibition "When codfish Was King" at the southerly Street Seaport Museum, organized in collaboration with the Romsdalsmuseet in Norway. Although her works have been reproduc in Smithsonian Institution publications, in newspapers and magazines, and upon the cover of The Official Fulton Fish Market Cookbook it is as examples of pictorial art that they merit to be singled out and cherished.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

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