Artists
Take a Sharper Look at Rhode Island…
Rhode
Island Perspectives
Juried
by Pamela Marks
Featuring Alexandra Broches, Iris
Falck Donnelly, Melissa Meredith,
Gail Porter, Howard
Schulman, Kirk Snow,
Troy West, Dan
Wood
July 13 through August 17, 2002
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 13, 5-7 PM
Eight
artists contribute photos, drawings, traditional prints and
digital prints to Hera Gallery's upcoming exhibition, Rhode
Island Perspectives, July 13-August 17. This exhibition
explores varied perspectives of the state of Rhode Island
seen through the viewfinder of local artists. Artworks in
the show reveal views of the state that are descriptive, geographical,
environmental, historical, industrial, urban, rural, or sociological
in a variety of media.
The
juror for this exhibition is Professor
Pamela Marks of Connecticut College,
New London, CT. Marks is a painter/printmaker who teaches
studio art as well as serving as the Director of the college's
Cummings Art Center.
Participating
artists are: Alexandra Broches
(gelatin silver photographic prints), Iris
Falck Donnelly (photography), Melissa
Meredith (intaglio printmaking), Gail
Porter (gelatin silver photographic prints), Howard
Schulman (color photography), Kirk
Snow (digital photographic prints), Troy
West (drawing), and Dan Wood
(offset lithography and letterpress printmaking).
 Many
of the participating artists' works portray the landscape,
representing both urban and rural settings. Made during in
the past few years, Alexandra Broches'
gelatin silver photographs are a series of diptychs juxtaposing
local landscape imagery. These photos are not picturesque
landscape snapshots, but rather reflections upon the local
culture-especially upon contrasts and unexpected juxtapostions.
For example, one photo shows a view of a Civil War statue
looming overhead, heroically facing skywards. The accompanying
image appears to have been snapped surreptitiously from a
moving car, and shows billboards along Rt. 195-like the statue
and the driver of the car, viewers also have our attention
directed upwards and outwards.
 Presenting
a somewhat historical perspective as well as a figurative
one, Iris Falck
Donnelly presents a series of black and white
photographs originally printed about ten years ago as part
of an investigation of both participants at the Rhode Island
Special Olympics in Kingstown and of schoolchildren. Donnelly's
works are the most figurative in this exhibition, and show
the interactions of children. These photos appear spontaneous
and documentary in nature. However, instead of portraying
the main action of a Special Olympics event as a journalist
would, Falck Donnelly focuses on the sidelines, showing interactions
between people and personalities. Even in the posed portraits
in this series, the sitters appear unselfconscious and natural.
In contrast to this improvisational style, the photos themselves
appear carefully developed, with a high degree of control
over composition and photographic technique.
 Also
working in black and white photos, Gail
Porter presents a series of silver gelatin prints
that feature the landscape mostly in reference to its formal
pictorial elements. Taken in the early 1980s, Porter's spare,
elegantly composed landscapes uncover perceptual tricks that
are thought provoking if not downright disorienting. One photo
taken aboard the Block Island Ferry portrays a door inexplicably
swinging open from the side of the cabin, while an indefinable
boat part protrudes into the foreground on the other side
of the photo. Cut by a central horizon line, the calm water
seems somehow out of place, as if we should be looking at
a picture of a building, not a moving boat.
 While
both working in media requiring high degrees of technical
skill and precision, printmakers Melissa
Meredith and Dan Wood provide altogether different
perspectives on the Rhode Island landscape. Meredith's meticulously
rendered landscapes depict Green Hill Pond and other coastal
settings, and reveal a harmonious, almost reverent view of
Rhode Island's natural setting. Her salt ponds show intricacy
and find variety in what could at first glance appear bucolic,
uniform, and concordant. No jagged rocks or unsightly environmental
blemishes mar these idylls, yet subtle gradations, shifts
and changes appear upon close inspection.
Back
to Top
continue
to next page...
|
