July
7 - July 30
Opening:
Friday, July 7, 2006 5-8 pm
Stuart
Copans |
Cary
Nelson |
Cia Devan |
Camilla Roberts |
Ralph Deanna |
Melissa Sheid Frantz |
Cathy Gatto-Gurney |
Linda Striedieck |
Judy Hawkins |
Susan Wadsworth |
Linda Mahoney |
Lauren Watrous |
Carolyn Nelson |
|
Windham
Art Gallery is pleased to present
Beyond Our Borders, an exhibition featuring the work of eleven
gallery artists. The exhibit includes work in various media
and reflects each artist’s interpretation
of a “border,” whether it is physical, spiritual,
environmental or perceptual. Participating artists are: Stuart
Copans, Ralph DeAnna, Kathie Gatto-Gurney, Judy Hawkins, Linda
Mahoney, Cary Nelson, Camilla Roberts, Melissa Scheid- Frantz,
Linda Striedieck, Susan Wadsworth, and Lauren Watrous. The
exhibition will run from Friday, July 7th through Sunday, July
30th with an opening reception on Friday July 7th from 5-8
PM.
Ralph DeAnna recently has been garnering attention for his
paintings of people in cars at night. For this exhibition,
DeAnna will include multiple self-portraits--the subject is
seen not only in the car, but reflected in one or both car
mirrors as well. DeAnna captures the enigmatic faces of drivers
and passengers as seen inside cars in the fleeting moment when
glimpsed by someone on the outside looking in. In so doing,
he engages the viewer to question conceptual borders: what
is the relationship of the viewer to the people inside the
car, and what is the difference in how each of them experiences,
or perceives, time, motion, and travel?
There is integration, or dissolving, of borders between the
natural world and the humans who inhabit it in the work of
Camilla Roberts. In her recent paintings, the outline of figures
are seen in rural landscapes and these human forms are literally
filled with that which surrounds them: in Water Lily Canoe,
the outline of a female figure canoes through lily pads in
a cattail marsh and her form literally reflects, and is filled
with, water, round pads and reeds. The blurry perceptual border
between the fantastic, surreal world of the imagination and
the world people are consciously aware of, is the subject of
Stuart Copans' work. The four small works for this exhibit
are part of a larger series of images Copans has created that
has been influenced by the writings of H.P Lovecraft, which
has engaged Copans since the 1960s (particularly his poetry
book, What Fungi Grow in Yuggoth). These watercolor illustrations
feature some of the strange and mythical creatures for which
Lovecraft is well-known. In one such piece, a creature resembling
a strange, dark mollusk or the skeleton of a skate, is drawn
with such attention and detail, the drawing seems have been
taken from the notebook of a natural scientist working in an
alien field.
The borders between ourselves and our children, and how those
borders bend, fluctuate, move and change over time is the subject
of Susan Wadsworth’s paintings. In the style characteristic
of Wadsworth’s work, children, painted in bright pastels,
are depicted as rounded, almost animated figures, playing on
a beach in Small Point, Maine. The universal iconography of
folk and religious art, as well as the spiritual symmetry of
forms found in nature, inspire the paintings of Lauren Watrous.
Bright, biomorphic forms swirl across the oil pastel on clayboard
paintings of Watrous, who says, “ I am interested the
hidden reservoir of cultural and spiritual experiences, and
use paint to explore the barriers between the undefined boundary
between internal and external knowledge.”
Whether shadows cast from low, mud houses onto the narrow,
white streets of a sun-washed village, or bright blue boats
lined up on a canal outside a city’s wall, beyond which,
undulating, hills roll off into the distance, it is the border
crossing of a traveler, both literal and metaphorical, which
concerns Melissa Scheid Frantz, who captures the mystical,
exotic landscape of Morocco in her recent paintings. Experiences
living in Nuernberg and Berlin, Germany, and the bold impact
of German Expressionism, have influenced Linda Striedieck’s
watercolor and oil pastel paintings. Striedieck’s work
conveys both the shapes and rhythms of the world immediately
around her, as well as the world summoned from her memory.
It is this unspoken bridge between worlds and between organic
forms themselves that inform her paintings: “A premise
of the work,” Striedieck explains, “is that shapes,
by their relationship to one another, can speak although the
language is silent.”
Windham Art Gallery, a non-profit program of the Arts Council
of Windham County, is located at 69 Main Street in Brattleboro,
Vermont. Gallery hours are Thursday through Sunday from 12:00-5:00
PM and other times by appointment.
For
more information call: 802-257-1881.
Melissa Sheid Frantz
"Morroccan Street"
Camilla Roberts
"Water Lily Canoe"
Stuart Copans
"Emerging"
