/THE TWENTIETH ARTSWORCESTER BIENNIAL
A Juried Members' Exhibition
ArtsWorcester Main Galleries
May 4 - July 9, 2023
The year 2023 marks the twentieth ArtsWorcester Biennial, an exhibition that has included the region's best visual art since 1985. This year's Biennial is juried by Conor Moynihan, Assistant Curator, Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the RISD Museum.
What is the ArtsWorcester Biennial?
When the organization now known as ArtsWorcester was founded, a top priority was to establish a juried exhibition of visual art, intended to showcase the highest quality and newest practices in the region. An artist and educator named Sally Bishop drove an all-volunteer committee to create a prestigious opportunity for artists. The first Biennial, fulfilling that intention, took place in 1985 at the Worcester County Horticultural Society at 30 Elm Street (now the Worcester Historical Museum). Nearly four decades later, it now takes place in our permanent home, but there the differences end.
The Biennial is the most competitive of ArtsWorcester’s offerings. An external juror—usually a curator at a regional museum, and different for every Biennial—is invited to select exhibited artwork and award prizes. The jurors look at a growing number of artists submitting work and a steady increase in the quality of that work, bringing to their selection process their own opinions and preferences. As one artist put it, the Biennial is a rite of passage, but not one guaranteed from one exhibition to the next.
Selectivity inevitably leads to controversy, and the Biennial has always been ArtsWorcester’s most controversial exhibition. Art critic Leon Nigrosh described red paint being thrown over the entrance of Horticultural Hall at the very first Biennial, protesting the juror’s choices. It is a tradition to celebrate the Biennial, and to criticize it.
The Biennial partnership with the Worcester Art Museum to exhibit the Sally Bishop Prize winner began in 2017. To date, James Dye, Susan Swinand, and Kat O’Connor have been featured. WAM, however, has been part of the Biennial almost from the beginning, sponsoring prizes through its Hoche-Scofield Prize and Scholarship Fund and, in very early years, hosting the exhibition in the Higgins Educational Wing. Additional major prizes include the Evelyn Claywell Absher Award for Abstract Art, and, for the first time, the Ruth Susan Westheimer Prize for Fine Craft.
This particular Biennial is the most competitive yet. Out of a record-breaking 530 submissions, this Biennial’s juror, Conor Moynihan of the RISD Museum, selected only 57. His statement helps explain the artistic, aesthetic, and thematic reasons behind his choices, for the works included and for those given prizes.
/ABOUT THE JUROR
Conor Moynihan
Conor Moynihan is the Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the RISD Museum. He is interested in performativity and identity-based issues, especially related to sexuality, gender, and disability. His exhibitions include Drama Queer: Seducing Social Change in 2016 (Vancouver, BC), Ill at Ease: Dis-ease in Art in 2017 (Buffalo, NY), Three Acts, Three Scenes: My Care, Your Care, Careful Care in 2018 (Brooklyn, NY), and Variance: Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Disability (Providence, RI). His forthcoming exhibition, The Performative Self-Portrait, at the RISD Museum in spring 2023 looks at photographers who turn the lens back on themselves, whether to enact an alternative identity or to engage with history or something else.
Juror's Statement
"In making selections for the 20th ArtWorcester Biennial, I wanted to let the submissions guide me in finding a theme through which to select works. I was struck by the number of works that suggested states of flux, transformation, and transmutation, be it through material experimentation and abstraction to figuration and narrative. This became my prior criteria used to evaluate the works, though I wanted to keep that frame as wide open as possible to allow as many forms of flux, transformation, and transmutation to emerge, whether it appeared that way at first or not. From engagements in the natural world to responding to lived experiences of difference, I tried to bring together works that were exemplars of their mediums but also suggested change and different ways of seeing."
/EXHIBITED WORKS
Joan Ryan
Chicken Little, The Sky Is Falling
oil
45″ x 42″
2022
As a visual artist, I use painting and drawing as a critical language to explore contemporary society, politics and concepts of identity in our modern world. In my most recent works I incorporate a wide variety of images into active layers of color, intensity, and value. These visual elements are combined with historical imagery, cartoons, childhood fairy tales and political iconography. Using visual iconography along with images of everyday life confronts the viewer at an intersection with a broad range of cultural moments.
@jryan789
Pamella Saffer
Harriet Tubman— Ashanti Warrior
raffia, corn husks, ecdysis (naturally shed snake skin), plant materials
14″ x 12″ x 22″
2023
Fearless, humble, physically powerful, Harriet Tubman possessed extraordinary clarity, an iron will and unshakable faith. Every aspect of her life exemplified the attributes of her ancestors. She possessed a profound spiritual connection with nature. She used plants for food and medicine. Her family was paramount, and her family extended beyond her biological relatives to all enslaved. She established life long relationships with all who opposed slavery, from generals to white abolitionists. Her entire life, she worked for freedom and equality for all people, including women’s right to vote. She was a formidable Ashanti warrior.
Brittany Severance
Puzzle Piece
archival inkjet print
16″ x 21.5″
2019
As someone who is legally blind, it has been challenging to work around my visual impairment in the traditional world of photography and video. My camera allows me to communicate as a fully sighted individual and erase boundaries created by my limited vision. Its flexibility as an adjustable focusing mechanism can also allow me to simulate my low vision. My hypersensitivity to the visual elements of contrast and color counter the lack of clarity from my limited depth perception; this is reflected in my work and demonstrates how my impairment has played a critical role in my creative process.
@brittanyseveranceartist
Suzanne Stumpf
Rock My Galaxy
sculpture (porcelain)
18″ x 4.5″ x 14″
2022
Rock My Galaxy is a multi-component sculpture that was inspired by constellations in the Milky Way. The components can be rearranged to create many “constellations” found in our galaxy, but also to evoke new ones.
@suzannestumpf
Pamela Tarbell
Re-Routed #2
oil on canvas
30″ x 40″ x 1.5″
2022
Exploring layers in a nonobjective design, creating alternative spaces, and visual depth.
Derrick Te Paske
Deep Blue: Star Field
lathe-turned elm, 2544 brass escutcheon pins
19″ x 12″ x 12″
2018
This piece is consistent with my long-standing interest in crafting classical forms, but with various surface treatments (pins, woodburning, modeling paste, etc.). The title refers to the famous IBM computer and “starfield” images of the Hubble telescope. It invokes the presumed precision of the computer but spoofs this obsessively ordered display as compared with the transcendent irregularity of the night sky.
@tepaske.derrick
Jillian Vaccaro
Forget Me Not
handmade paper, dried flowers, acrylic, monotypes, graphite, pastel on canvas
30×58 inches
2023
My art is an exploration of my long-term memory with a focus on familial relationships. Each work functions as an emotional response to my past, fabricated to depict the fragility and loss that permeates the act of recollecting. Before I begin a new work, I situate my mind in a previous time. I bring myself to this place through writing, reminiscing with loved ones, navigating through souvenirs and familial archives, and revisiting significant environments from childhood and my adult life. When I arrive in the past mentally, I respond with my materials and personal souvenirs intuitively.
@jillianvaccaroartist
Sylvia Vander Sluis
Resting Head
red rosin paper, acrylic
16″ x 26″ x 20″
2020
Resting Head is a raw, emotional construction that emerged during the pandemic. A metaphor for the dualities of life, the dynamic folds of rosin paper are contrasted with the weariness reflected in the eyes and the reclining position of the head.
@sylviavsart
Steve Wage
RV Series: RV 999
acrylic and interference media on canvas
24” x 36”
2018
Last piece in the RV Series timeline. (RV= “Remote Viewing” – designation describing the cognitive process source of the content).
Mary Pat Wager
Cascade
deconstructed tank, cast stainless steel, farm implement, steel
22 1/4″ x 14″ x 8″
2021
Constantly changing technology has made most traditional farm implements obsolete. These continuous changes have greatly influenced agrarian life. The sculpture, CASCADE exhibits that ever-changing cycle of movement and change.
@mpatwager
Bekka Teerlink
Day for Night
acrylic on canvas
18″ x 24″ x 1.5″
2022
“Day for Night” is about holding onto that hope that flowers will bloom again. The title was inspired by a filmmaking technique where scenes would be shot during the day and manipulated to appear dark as if was night time. In the winter, I find I have to think about plants and my garden in warmer seasons to get through the cold times.
@bekkateerlink
Mark Zieff
Washed Out, Washed Up
colored pencil on Canson papaer
24″ x 18″
2022
“Washed out, washed up”, is part of a continuing series of drawings that explores the lasting social and environmental impact of fast fashion clothing. Though low cost, these garments come with a very heavy price tag. Fashion clothing accounts for 10% of all greenhouse gases. It also consumes one tenth of all the water used to run and clean factories – it takes 1800 gallons of water to make one pair of jeans. And, many of the chemicals used to make these garments can not be treated and are left to accumulate in open pools in countries without strict environmental regulations.
@markzieffart
Jill Pottle
Four or more of ME
oil painting on canvas
22″ x 28″
2022
I explore the humor, emotion, and relationships, (emulating humans), between still-life objects. “Surprise and revelation” is what Martin Dohrn’s “My Garden of a 1000 Bees” is all about. It is about looking in your own space, finding beauty and complexities. You don’t have to travel to find inspiration. Thru the years I have searched for meaning in my art and have come up with concepts, that, at times were contrived. Through direct observation of my immediate world, I find more meaning than I could invent. Just in the ordinary, by observing it, I find stories, emotion and life force itself.
@jillpottle
Danielle Ray
Attics of our Lives
found metal, wood, wallpaper, tomatillo husks, Queen’s Anne’s lace, iron oxide, wood ash, spray paint
38″ x 14 ½” x 5″
2022
“Attics of Our Lives” is a flux between the past and present and our human grappling with loss and hope for the future.
@danielleraystudios
Michele LeMaitre
Resilience
original 2D interactive sculptural mixed media on premier gallery profile cradled wood panel
36″ x 36″ x 1.5″
2021
This newly invented process / style of 2D Interactive Sculptural Mixed Media artwork represents chunks of water, which have seemingly been scooped out of the Ocean and splashed onto the walls in a controlled but fluid form. Representing the surface of bodies of water, the bold COLORS CHANGE with the movement of the viewer’s body, inviting the viewer to “swim” around the works, as if being immersed in water and to be more consciously aware how one’s body interacts with and feels, on a cellular level, when being in any form of water and by the artwork itself.
@the_water_artist
Jennifer Levatino
Hirsute Queen Flaxen
synthetic hair, swaledale sheep horn, cement plinth
34” x 6” x 6”
2022
Through the Keratin Series, I am creating my own species- that has evolved by paring down visual information to get to essential visual and symbolic connections between animal and human forms. My sculptures spawned from various influences including the theories and discovery associated with Symbiogenesis, the hairstyles donned by women represented through Roman portrait sculpture and the animal remains I have collected over a lifetime on various excursions through the Yorkshire Moors and across the bogs of Connemara. These surrealistic configurations elevate the common elements that bind us and the fact that we are all made of the same gore.
@jlev26
Alyssa Lewanowicz
Hidden
plaster, molding paste, mylar, resin and gloss gel
10″ x 8″ x 1/2″
2022
My piece “Hidden” was created to explore the relationship between both light and dark, how different materials can be perceived under different circumstances and how that changes them. Under overhead lighting the Mylar material seems to glow a yellow green hue, but when you hold up a direct light source like a phone flashlight-you are able to see the deep colors hidden beneath. Inside lies more of a pink/purple/blue undertone waiting to be found. Hidden in the monotonous white, textured landscape hidden gems lie waiting to be found. It just takes a certain light for the right colors to shine.
@Lewan_art
Edward Lilley
Colorama
deformed paper, angled spray paint
18″ x 24″
2022
I have been making deep textured, three-dimensional paintings — my own innovation — that appear almost elemental in form. This is accomplished by a mix of painting and the deformation of the paper. Typically the painted paper will finish up one inch deep. The colors vary with the viewing angle.
Madeleine Lord
Exile II
welded found steel
42″ x 21″ x 27″
2022
I created a series of figures in Exile, where all they own is memories.
@madeleinelordmadimetal
Rebecca McGee Tuck
Ode to Joy
reused canvas, single use plastic, recycled textiles, wool and other bits of material
30″ x 28″ x 1″
2022
Found objects, debris, trash, discarded materials– It doesn’t matter what you call it because ultimately it becomes landfill or it is lost at sea. For the past five years I have made it my mission primarily to use these types of materials as the medium for my work. “Ode to Joy” is created with single use plastic food packaging, reused clothing, textiles and fibers. This collage is made up of the very materials that have haunted and inspired me. With this piece I have created a self portrait that holds me accountable for what I use in this throwaway society.
@rebeccabombshellart
Christopher Nicholson
Head No. 6
acrylic on fiberglass
11″ x 8″ x 6″
2022
This is one of a series of pieces memorializing friends who died during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980’s in Provincetown.
@cnicholsonart1
Carrie Nixon
Uncertain Future
from life; oil on mylar + decorative papers (and grommets for hanging).
24” x 24”
2023
This young man is a bright and successful local College student who faces the typical challenges of a soon-to-be-graduate. In addition, his future will involve navigating and harmonizing both his South Asian and his American identities. I took advantage of the translucency of the mylar to insert angled sheets of colored paper hinting at possible future collisions.
@carriepainter1518
Tatiana Flis
A Satellite’s View
acrylic monoprints on panel
48″ x 36″
2021
The work focuses on dissecting moments in which hold value and yet pass without a second glance or abandon. As we stare out of our windows, what are we trying to reach for, and, or discover? It lingers on the tips of our fingers: that moment, object, or feeling that we can’t quite seem to grasp. Windows have become portals into uncertainty and uncharted territory. Our views are abstracted by the curtains, revealing shadows in constant flux. We wait. The world has become abstracted, yet recognizable. Time has continued while we’ve been wondering, and longing, in isolation.
@tatianaflisstudio
Karen Nunley
In Bethlehem
mixed media
12″ x 12″
2022
“In Bethlehem” is a mixed media piece that pays homage to the Palestinian city surrounded by the country of Israel. To enter the city, coming from Jerusalem, one must present papers and pass through checkpoints with armed guards. The celebrated site of Jesus’ birth is in a grotto under the Church of the Nativity. I expected the scene to be serene, but it bustled with tourists and shops. My choice of clashing colors and confusion around an image of Madonna and child are meant to show the city within a hostile land, as well as activity around the holy site.
@kmcnun
Linda Ford
Self-Discipline #23
charcoal on onion skin paper
27″ x 28.5″ x 1″
2018
Visiting the Worcester State Hospital (where my father worked during my childhood), as well as my family history of mental illness, has had lasting affects on my preoccupation with bodies that transgress. While working as a video editor for a gay bondage website, I began to conceptually connect the practice of bondage with “swaddling” – which is used to calm and ease anxiety. The self-portraits reference the body’s internalization of trauma. The family portrait collages, juxtapose photographs of my great-grandmothers with hand-rendered self-portraiture elements, creating “Composite Portraits”. I am interested in how intergenerational trauma creates cycles of dis-ease.
@lindafordworks
Kat O’Connor
All A Life
watercolor
22″ x 22″
2023
In the organization of day-to-day life, things alter, slip, and change. The medium of watercolor is much the same. I set up a grid for structure, then aim to make circular forms with no drawn guides. I choose pigments that separate naturally and mix them with other pigments that do the same. Occasionally, my hand slips and one color bleeds into another. The pattern of that bleed changes based on the amount of pigment vs. water. The pattern of the overall image changes with the accumulation of those alterations.
Alana Garrigues
Precedented II
mixed media: acrylic ink, ink, chalk pastel on reclaimed plywood
23.25″ x 24″
Nov. 2021 – Jan. 2022
Precedented II is a tongue-in-cheek title and piece, inspired by a small work of art I created in 2020, the year of ‘unprecedented.’ In both, I was reflecting on the cyclical nature of history, and all of the pandemics, political unrest, civil rights movements and more that the trees have witnessed and we humans are prone to forget. Each ring of a tree reflects a year of life, and in that ring entire histories of air quality, water, soil, heat, and more are written. What else do the trees remember as precedented that we treat as brand new?
@alanaofloveandlight
Emmanuel Opoku
Portrait With Yaw Owusu
oil painting on canvas
52″ x 38″
2022
This work explores my friendship and the study of Yaw Owusu, a New York based contemporary artist who makes coins art. The bow tie suggests Yaw’s diligence and careful treatment of the coins he uses for his art. Yaw’s friendliness is expressed in his smiling teeth- a creative manipulation of coins ambitiously producing splendid artwork. In the painting, I stand next to Yaw with a leaf blower juxtaposed with a broccoli to implicate my status as an artist that takes smaller ideas and blows that into critical forms of art, and have consistency in creativity as Yaw Owusu.
@emmanuelmanuopokuart
Annaleah Gregoire
Lock Down
oil painting on canvas
12″ x 12″
2023
This piece depicts a memory of my experience in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was living in downtown Oakland, California at the time that the shelter-in-place and essential business mandates went into place. The street that my partner and I were riding our bikes down was entirely empty with the exception of ourselves and a trepidatious deer that had wandered in from the forest. Throughout all of the chaos of the pandemic, nature was given the chance to heal.
@annaleah.moon.studios
Victor Pacheco
Invertebrate #551
bronze
8” x 4” x 3”
2022
I observe reflect and evolve. My current work explores the ubiquity of plastic and current environmental concerns. In developing a studio practice that minimizes my plastic footprint, I am utilizing the remaining plastic materials in my practice to explore the interaction between nature and plastic. (Reflect) Live plants coated in plastic show rapid decay, the plastic suffocates the organic matter and replaces life with aesthetic value. (Evolve) Change of practice, bronze and aluminum prove to be a more efficient way to create work. Pieces are stable and my artist footprint in less toxic to our environment.
Timothy Johnson
Rest
photograph (archival inkjet print)
14 x 14 unframed, 20 1/4 x 20 1/4 framed
2019
Mica Knapp
Black and Green
slate, mixed media
9″ x 12″
2022
The initial impulse for “Black and Green” came from a desire to somehow put together old roofing slates and wool fiber that I’d spun. How would these two unlike media talk to one another? I was amazed to find what a wonderful surface slate was to work on. As I learned of its possibilities I was reminded of an artist friend who, when we were discussing how we chose media, said that in his experience favored media had to give back to the artist. For me, slate keeps giving and giving.
Gretchen Neff Lambert
A Group of People Partially Out of Frame
acrylic painting on canvas
36″ x 24″
2023
My work explores sentience, identity, gender performance, physical discomfort, and the complex but potentially fruitful relationship between human creativity and artificial intelligence. My process begins with a digital collage, combining imagery generated through artificial intelligence tools (DALL-E mini, ai text generators, etc.) and found imagery (movie and TV stills). I collect and curate this imagery as a way to examine a feeling or idea about the human experience, then use that result as a starting place for painting. From there I allow the physical qualities of the paint itself and my experience applying it to dictate the end result.
@gfnlambert
Michael Bourque
Red Stripe on Left
acrylic on canvas
30″ x 30″
2022
My paintings emanate from the intersection of art and design. Each painting involves a thought-provoking mixture of abstraction, repetition, and improvisation. Lines adhere to the rules of geometry: mathematically sensible angles, and shapes that work together perfectly. My use of color is layered and flashes of color are allowed to peek through the pattern to add the visual interest. Colors are made brighter by juxtaposition to unexpected colors and strong shapes are made stronger with the heavy application of paint. The effect is to invigorate the entire work, and to create rich surface textures.
@michaelhbourque
Chelsea Bradway
A Women’s Work- 3
black and white photo on fine art paper
24″ x 30″
2020
As a child in the 70s, I had terrible haircuts from the Dorthy Hamel to Sun IN disasters and a whole decade of Madonna hairstyles, I never knew or understood the work that went into taking care of hair. When I began my Women’s Empowerment shoot a friend wanted to show me how empowering it was to do both of her daughter’s hair. I observed the intensity, skill, and patience that went into styling her daughter’s hair. The rhythm and cadence were much like an unspoken dance between mother and daughter.
Blake Brasher
Across A Hundred Thousand Miles
pencil, ink, masking tape, collage, and acrylic on textured polypropylene
14″ x 11″
2023
My work is about challenging perspective and juxtaposing systems that may seem antagonistic to each other—e.g. straight grids and fluid pours—in ways that allow them to not just co-exist but also highlight their defining characteristics in a sort of fluid harmony. In this series I’ve been incorporating collaged elements; old business cards, ephemera from work, masking tape from the production of other pieces, etc.
@electroblake
Heather Cassano
Madness
multi-channel video, with sound
2022
MADNESS is a three-channel video installation featuring archival video, moving imagery from mental institution cemeteries, and text-on-screen detailing the number of graves present at each gravesite. The archival video is taken from a series of films produced in 1951 and 1952 featuring Dr. Heinz Lehmann describing eight forms of “mental symptoms” as they appear in the mentally ill. The cemeteries featured in MADNESS include gravesites in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York. Mental institution and state school cemeteries exist in every state in the contiguous United States.
@hcassano
Carrie Crane
Platonic Solids Deconstructed: Tetrahedron IV
acrylic and graphite on paper mounted on panel
5″ x 9″
2022
This is one of a series of paintings exploring the deformation of the exacting geometry of the 5 polygons known as the platonic solids.
@carrie_crane_art
Sarah Alexander
Late to the Party
watercolor and pen and ink
27″ x 34.5″ x 1.5″
2021
Using botanical images as symbols for people and emotions helps me to process what I’m trying to say when there are no words to say it. In this piece, I was overwhelmed with missing my family during the pandemic. I used blueberries to represent my daughter, and spiky seedpods to symbolize feeling stuck. Using a wonky neoclassical design that morphs and explodes like a fountain, I symbolized the love, grief, and longing I was experiencing. The Asters were also in abundance in my garden at the time. As my world felt smaller, my garden was my salvation.
@wanderingmindstudio
Joanne Evans
60th Self-Portrait
watercolor on Arches paper
22″ x 30″
2021
This self-portrait represents my connection to the seashore and the realization of my dreams.
@jroachevans
Taylor Apostol
House Clothes
hand built terra cotta, acrylic paint, flock
6″ x 18″ x 14″
2020
House Clothes is part of a recent series focusing on familiar household items such as waste bins, grocery lists, CVS coupons, piles of clothing and dishes and hair scrunchies. Removed from their usual place on the floor, a shelf or forgotten under a dresser, I give them a life of their own. Additionally, by reframing these industrially fabricated, functional items as handmade objects in terra cotta, I ask the viewer to reconsider them for their sculptural, aesthetic and narrative capabilities.
@taylorapostol
Jakob Fioole
Amerika
oil paint on linen
43″ x 63″
2020
Everyone’s a stranger here. In this place I’ve never been before but it feels so familiar. We have come from different locations to meet here briefly and continue onto diverse and unique destinations. Tomorrow there will be other travelers. It’s not only the people that come together, day in day out. My fascinations about the U.S. have gathered in this place as well. A country that is not anyone’s but has always felt familiar to so many. It’s fascinating, if you care to see it. I just like to be here, and watch.
@jakobfioole
Doug Ashby
Untitled (Waiting For Temperance)
pen and ink
8″ x 7″
2023
I believe my main purpose as an artist is to be a communicator that challenges the viewers beliefs about humanity’s place in the universe. By consciously looking to abstract nature my intention is to represent the reality that life is much more complex then the simple reductionist theories that have dominated for so long. I want to offer the individual experiencing my work consideration that not all we see and perceive is exactly as it appears on the surface and that becoming more aware of existence reveals deeper and more meaningful patterns.
@dashbyart @DougAshby
Casey Fisher
The World We Overlook
multi-plate etching
9″ x 12″ unframed, 16″ x 20″ framed
2022
This work demonstrates the nuanced afterlife of the world around us after industrial influence. An area once rich with life, stripped down for our own use, and then forgotten about. Highlighted colors of green and blue shine the light on the natural world fighting back and demonstrates the resilience and power of the land that we so quickly strip of beauty. A sense of hope and life brought back into each print by artist hand mends our relationship with the natural world and gives space of nature to breath.
@kc_james
Brooke Bailey
Pretty Obstructed
acrylic paint on matte and clear Dura-Lar film
24″ x 27″
2022
Through mixed media painting, I explore the idea of abstraction through the lens of color and form. Finding surfaces that retain variety in mark-making helps me to collaborate with the material by introducing the spontaneity and creativity from myself in conversation with the innate qualities of the medium. I investigate how utilizing the materiality of the work as a dominant factor in the composition can further my interest in developing a cohesive relationship between pigments and shapes.
Colleen Fitzgerald
Land & Sea XVI (B)
pigment print
11″ x 14″
2020
Land & Sea XVI (B)’ uses experimental photography to reimagine cliché fall foliage landscapes. The work uses a unique physical process, including an in-camera technique of the artist’s creation. Unexposed sheets of film are cut and folded into 3D shapes before being exposed. The film is developed and then rephotographed on a lightbox. This piece exists in a series that showcases these same two pieces of film from other perspectives, providing multiple perspectives from single exposures. This process reconstructs reality and the material that records reality; It is not a direct representation of the world, but a negotiation of vision.
@colleen.fitz
Emma Ballachino
Compartment (4)
stoneware fired in cone 10 reduction
10″ x 6″ x 7″
2022
Each of my ceramic sculptures are created entirely by pinching from a single lump of clay. By simply compressing clay between my fingers, the resulting forms are organic and undulating constructs of pockets, holes, valleys, and canals. The formation of each compartment is completely dependent on the support of those surrounding it. Relating to the many intersectionalities within our lives, many small parts are linked, simultaneously independent and inextricably bonded.
ST Barry
How to Build a Throne
oil on canvas
48″ x 48″
2020
My work attempts to explore the relationship between my naïve childhood fantasies with the bleakness of late capitalism. I try to explore my relationship to a decaying world, that I wish to both fix and escape, through surreal, idealistic, and dystopian imagery informed by the history of portraiture, still-life, landscape, and abstraction.
@s_t_barry
Lisa Barthelson
aii form 3, art in isolation, family debris
family debris monoprints as sculpture: Rives BFK paper, printed collage and thread
28″ x 28″ x 24”
2022
During the Covid 19 ‘stay at home’ order, I worked small, using material that I had on hand, including family debris monoprints, created by layering inked plates with mundane family cast offs. The intimate scale offered meditative comfort in the making. After completing a series of ‘art in isolation’ mixed media prints, I moved on to larger quilt-like work created by piecing together monoprints & incorporating collage & stitching. And then 3D, using double sided prints for components, I built forms: folded paper vessels stitched together to create sculptures that continue to push the limits of paper, ink and thread.
@lisa_barthelson
Eugenie Lewalski Berg
Open Cubehead
concrete, woodblock prints (mokuhanga), graphite
11″ x 5″ x 4”
2022
I am process and material driven. I like getting my hands dirty, whether it be mixing concrete or carving woodblocks. This series satisfies that, and also combines my 2D and 3D work. I tell stories, but I also leave room for the materials to speak.
@elbstudio
Eugenie Lewalski Berg
Pointy Head
concrete, woodblock print (mokuhanga), graphite
13″ x 4″ x 5”
2022
I am process and material driven. I like getting my hands dirty, whether it be mixing concrete or carving woodblocks. This series satisfies that, and also combines my 2D and 3D work. I tell stories, but I also leave room for the materials to speak.
@elbstudio
Ray Bernoff
The Wound Will Not Heal
paper clay, spackle, acrylic paint, PVA glue, varnish, expired medication, and unicorn milk pearlescent topcoat on canvas
10″ x 10″ x 3″
2022
I’m sick and disabled. Everyday I take pills. At my worst, I was throwing back fifteen a day. I get so fed up I could scream. I am filled to bursting with anti-inflammatories and beta blockers and pain meds and antidepressants and vitamins, filled until I could tear open. This relief sculpture did not bring me ease, but did let me reveal for a moment what I normally hold back.
@rmhbernoff
Jenna Billian
All Bagged Up
foam, plastic bags, candy, paint chips, fake eyeballs, cocktail straws, gum, ribbon, glitter, tinsel
16″ x 6″ x 45″
2021
After getting sober, I transferred my addiction to sugar and collecting the items displayed in this sculpture. All pinned to a pepto-bismal pink blob of foam, this sculpture creates a bright yet grotesque image of child-like innocence colliding with adult reality.
@jennabillian
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This exhibition is produced in partnership with the Worcester Art Museum
SUPPORT COMES FROM
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