La Galleria: Gretchen Green & Peggy Shaw
Gretchen Green and Peggy Shaw, long time La MaMa babies, reunite at La Galleria. Gretchen opened the gallery with Ellen Stewart back in the 80s and ran the program for 10 years. Her last position before she retired and started making art full time was as La MaMa’s Managing Director. Gretchen is currently a partner in a gallery in Fort Pierce Florida called “Seriously Mixed Media.” Peggy Shaw is a performer, writer, producer and teacher of writing and performance. She co-founded Split Britches and has performed at La MaMa for almost 40 years. Gretchen creates colorful animal portraits from tin cans and other media and Peggy’s visual art practice, unlike her performance work, is much more introverted. She paints very personal portraits and familiar landscapes often only shared with her close community of friends, colleagues and family. Both artist have helped shaped the identity of La MaMa as well as the East Village artist community and La Galleria is honored to host an exhibition of their work to close to our 35th season.
La MaMa Galleria
Founded in 1984, La Galleria is a nonprofit gallery committed to nurturing experimentation in the visual arts. La Galleria encourages an active dialogue between new media, performance, the plastic and visual arts, curatorial projects, and educational initiatives. It serves the East Village community by offering diverse programming to an inter-generational audience, and expanding the parameters of a traditional gallery space. As a non-profit, La Galleria is able to provide artists and curators with unique exhibition opportunities that are largely out of reach in a commercial gallery setting.