REVIEWS

Clear-cut Logjam marks Satz’s political stance against deforestation and her concern about the impact of humans on the natural environment. This message within Satz’s body of work then provokes further thoughts and questions about the cityscapes, such as Bridges & Girders. The dominant architectural and industrial forms loom large, nearly blocking the view of the sky, which is hazy and perhaps even polluted. With the absence of nature in Satz’s cities, we are reminded of what was sacrificed to make room the built environment. . . . Taking the time to stop and look at Satz’s masterfully crafted and intricate collages may also encourage viewers to think more about their own surroundings—whether urban or natural.”

— Mindy A. Besaw, Art Reviewer, Curator, EREVIEW Publication

 
“Janet Satz gives us photographic cubism that compresses our myriad transient views of urban spaces into power-packed impressions. Unlike the more popular surrealist photo-collages, which offer dreamlike visions, Satz’s photo-works are at base realistic, even though their subjects could never appear in our everyday perception. In Satz’s most dynamic image, she creates a force field in which enormous girders buttressing the tracks on which an El train passes through a gray-pink fog tower over and cut into a block of skyscrapers; we are left with the feeling that this is what a metropolis is when we are free enough of care to extend our imagination just enough to put together sights that have been impinged on us in less than a minute.”

— Michael Weinstein, Art Reviewer, Chicago NEWCITY Publication

 
”Janet Satz, who contributes 14 graphite drawings, is an artist to be watched. Satz begins with a grid, then slashing, stippling and smudging on her carbon, produces anything from rectangles filled with smoke to illusions of windows in dark walls jarred by Cubists disjunctions. But when she adds squares of paper and massages the surfaces until they are nearly black, the effect is of steel. This is strong, seductive work.”

— Vivian Raynor, Art Critic, New York Times

 
”Satz’s collages play tricks on the eye. Swaths of color seep from behind fire escapes and overlay skyscrapers dwarfed by bridges and train tracks. Thin strips of colored tape emulate light and movement. The works, with their multiple layers, seem to vibrate on the wall.”

— Mindie Paget, Arts Editor, Lawrence Journal-World

 
“Satz believes in creating art that evokes play by encouraging the viewer to become involved directly with the spatial arrangement of her art. She does this by designing the components of in her ongoing modular series to be assembled in a number of ways. … To illustrate the concept of how the modular pieces can be arranged and moved around, through a grant received from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Kansas Arts Commission, Satz produced a six-minute film titled Animated Modularity, which won an award in the Annual Kansas Film Festival.”

— Review Publication, Kansas City

 
Satz New York Exhibit … The simple mathematics of the situation is that in New York City alone there are over 30,000 full time artists, and no matter how talented an artist is, and often regardless of his reputation, a first rate gallery showing remains an impossibility. Janet Satz has managed to overcome the distance and the odds with the opening this week of her first New York exhibition. The exhibit consists of 22 recent paintings and related constructions. … From an initial flat canvas, always charged with emotional imagery, Ms. Satz’ work progressed through competent use of collage. The paintings in this show are mostly abstract, yet somehow they clearly evoke the human condition. There is a vitality and glow from materials coupled with an intense personal imagery of pulsating interacting forms . . . leaving an impression of a life struggle in an ordered universe.”

— Burt Chernow, Art Reviewer, Westport News, Conn.

 
”The visitor to this exhibition is immediately drawn into the world of Ms. Satz—a world of poetic imagination, in which legends are restated and the human condition is commented upon in landscapes of limitless horizon and skies of everlasting night. Figures communicate with each other in an atmosphere of absolute stillness, waiting and wordless, with an inward strength and dignity that suggest to the viewer, a humanistic inspiration as the source and motivation of Ms. Satz’ work. . . . Spatial tension, restraint of color and form combined with a complete awareness of the substance and texture of her paint and materials has produced a distillation of art that is authoritative, professionally honest and exquisitely motivated.”

— Harry Carter, Art Critic, New York Times

 
“Janet Satz derives her mysticism from the orient. There is little trace of western influence, which differentiates her work from that of the lyrical abstractionists, who also delve into mysticism. The show is dignified and impressive, as if one were looking at ancient carvings from some rediscovered culture.”

— J. Burnham, Art Critic, Arts Magazine

 
“Monochrome drawings by Janet Satz are about transformation, as lines and areas of pencil shadings are built up over a geometric grid, creating various inner/outer atmospheres suggesting states of psychological calm and turbulence. Satz develops a compelling tension with her expressive strokes and layering over a rigid, formal gridwork.”

— Matt Damsker, Art Critic, The Hartford Courant, Conn.

 
Landlock, a watercolor and mixed media collage by Janet Satz, second prize winner in its category in Art of Northeast USA, has a beautiful color sensitivity and control in its range of mauves, grays, charcoals, slate blues, and whites that reflects the artist’s thoughtful attention both to abstract and other earlier painting, while the intriguing constructions in her landscape bespeak an acquaintance with cubism.”

— Jean Messsengale, Art Reviewer, Westport News, Conn.