Sparta - “Interior Spaces” at The Drue Chryst Gallery will present works by sculptors Ailene Fields and Gina Novendstern, and printmaker/painter, Penny Dell. All are residents of New Jersey. The show will open at 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 20, with a “meet the artists“ reception, and will continue through June 11. The theme is interior space, as it relates to two- and three-dimensional art. Dell’s images of empty rooms allow the viewer to fill the space or appreciate its void. Fields’ “sacred spaces” give entry to a place of quiet contemplation, while Novendstern’s bronze figures emphasize the universal interplay and tension between interior and exterior space. Fields, of NYC and Andover, works primarily in alabaster and bronze. Her works are collected by major galleries, museums and celebrities, and she has permanent exhibitions at the CFM gallery in Soho in NYC and the Sherry French Gallery in Chelsea. A graduate of Lehman College in NYC, she began her sculpting career in the early 1970’s as a ceramacist. After achieving prominence as both a potter and a teacher of ceramics, she began formal training in classical sculpture at the New School in NYC. She has taught stone-carving at the Compleat Sculptor in NYC since 1997. Fields says her “Sacred Spaces” were inspired by a desire to offer others the sense of solitude and peace she experiences in Andover. Novendstern has received recognition for her work in bronze and resin. Born in New Jersey, she divides her time between NYC and Longwood Lake. In the early 1970’s she studied at the University of Mexico in Mexico City, and moved there in 1986 for two years to work with sculptor Alejo Jacobo. Upon returning to the U.S. in 1988, Novendstern began exhibiting in galleries throughout the northeast, as well as in Mexico, where she was recently invited to the 2007 biennial at the Macay Museum of Contemporary Art. Novendstern works mostly in bronze, and her work utilizes the human form, in groups or individually. She shares a studio with Fields in New York. Dell was born in Mexico, and studied art at both the Old Church Cultural Center in Demarest, and the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi, India. A painter, printmaker, teacher and curator, she is currently president of the National Association of Women Artists. She has taught printmaking and image transfer process and cartooning throughout New Jersey and New York. She has won numerous awards, including a 2003 fellowship to the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, N.Y., and a 2004 residency to the Vermont Studio Workshop in Johnson, Vt. Her current media are woodcuts, etchings, copper plate etchings, Polaroid emulsion transfers and laser transfers. The Drue Chryst Gallery is located at 21 White Deer Plaza, Lake Mohawk, Sparta. For information, call 973-729-0609.