Thursday, March 20, 2025
Eric Dixon sees the world through “Godz-īz.” The Sea Cliff resident prepared for his upcoming exhibit at the Sea Cliff Arts Council. Foldout tables and floorboards were lined with framed photographs exploding with color. Dixon stood next to art council Producer at Large, Mark Sobel.
Founded in 1999, the arts council has been based at 86 Roslyn Ave. in Sea Cliff, for over two years. Sobel proudly said that in the very beginning the exhibition space has housed visual art, poetry readings and currently hosts local musician Nini Camp’s residency.
The village has changed over the years with new businesses opening and old performance spaces closing. Restaurants like the Oak Room converting into The Onion Tree “replaced their stage with a pizza oven,” Sobel said.
What once used to feel like a fraternity and sorority street party has turned into a more muted affair, leading to a sizeable opportunity for the Sea Cliff Arts Center to open up their own stage.
“We exist to lift artists, musicians, creators, makers, up in the community and give them a place to share their knowledge, share their art, share their expertise to the broader community,” said Chief Creative Officer Noelle Fiallo-Evans.
Dixon’s mandalas, not much larger than an Instagram picture, beckon the viewer to lean in. Each thick frame centers a vibrant image of treetops or cityscapes layered and mirrored over itself, invoking images of stained glass churches or an alien skyline. They are unique, no two photographs comprised of the same source photo, as Dixon said that each piece was made fresh for this exhibit. Magnifying glasses will be passed around for audience participation.
“Eric’s work is … thoughtful, and it takes typical scenes — like a landscape — and transforms them into something unworldly,” Fiallo-Evans said. “Being able to show people that, while you have something in front of you that may appear as it is, it can be something completely different. It forces people to look beyond what’s right in front of them.”
“What you start to get is this sense of infinity at the bottom of mandalas and fractals and kaleidoscopic visions,” Dixon noted. “That’s what I’ve stumbled into with regards to my sort of back door approach to finding these images and how they work.”
The found-objects sculptor and digital artist’s bashful resolve dissolved as he dove into his current inspirations: Egyptian deities, the pineal gland, and Nikola Tesla.
“I find that part of this project is finding these natural spirits that are around us all the time that we don’t have the wherewithal to slow down, to see,” Dixon said, “you might see it at the sunset, the angles just right, like, Oh, you feel connected to nature, for instance, or a starry sky, or a tree a certain way; but when you can capture it and manipulate it, and get a geometry out of it, it resonates deeper. I feel that the spirits that are in the natural world are always there, and this is a way to tap into it.”
“Godz-īz” opened at the Sea Cliff Arts Council on Jan. 31 at 6 p.m., at 86 Roslyn Ave., Sea Cliff. Reserve at SeaCliffArtscouncil.org
“I’m a part of this,” Dixon added. “I’m a conduit.”
