To kick off the summer in South County, from June 2-23, 2001 Hera Gallery presents two exhibitions featuring the works of four artists. Chapman, Chapman & Chapman combines the paintings, prints and collages of Hera Gallery artist Nancy Chapman, her son Alex Chapman, and daughter Susannah Chapman. The other half of the gallery houses Navigations, featuring paintings and drawings by gallery director Katherine Veneman. Both exhibitions share a reception on Saturday, June 16, from 7-9 PM, to coordinate with Wakefield's annual River Day Block Party. Gallery hours are Wed- Fri. (1-5) and Sat (10-4).

The concept behind Chapman, Chapman & Chapman is to illustrate the developments of three artists within the Chapman family. In presenting these works together, the exhibition allows viewers to observe the interchange between artists working with different themes and processes within one family.

Inspired by the natural world, the prints of Susannah Chapman Slabinski evoke the textures found in the wilderness of New Hampshire, where she has lived most of her life. Currently residing in Park City, UT, Slabinski teaches art at the middle school level. Her manipulation of materials, both during and after the printing process, creates what Nancy Chapman describes as "a delicate balance between subject matter and materials. Her work both challenges and invites the viewer to look at the familiar, but with new eyes. The work stirs us to think deeply about the environment and our place in it.

Alex Chapman is a candidate for an MFA in visual arts from Vermont College, Norwich, VT. In his multimedia works, Chapman uses found wood as a painting surface. Initially, the surface of the wood dictates his marks and composition, while slowly figurative elements emerge. Nancy Chapman observes, "Alex possesses a unique trust and partnership with his materials. This relationship allows for a more malleable composition that suggests to us emotions which range from the sublime to the playful."

In her series of three oils entitled "Happy Run," Nancy Chapman, like Susan, is informed and inspired by the natural world. Thinking of her daily walks, in which her two dogs accompany her, Nancy began this series in relation to both Impressionism and Japanese calligraphy. She outlines her process as follows: "Starting with the well known New England genre paintings of fields, woods, stone walls, and sea with broad skies, I have added two Japanese characters that represent the words 'happy' and 'run.' The gesture of the characters superimposed into these scenes suggests the energy and abandon I feel watching and being with these animals."

In addition to organizing the Hera exhibition, Nancy Chapman is a Hera Board Member who chairs the gallery's membership committee. She holds an MFA from Vermont College and a BA from Goddard College. Currently she teaches at Rhode Island College.

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In conjunction with the Chapman exhibition, Providence artist Katherine Veneman will exhibit her recent large oil paintings and small ink drawings in a series entitled Navigations. Veneman is currently the gallery director at Hera. She holds a BA from Amherst College and an MFA from American University.

This series explores ways in which viewers navigate visual images, and then uses the theme of exploration, represented by the four voyages of Christopher Columbus, to serve as both a metaphor and a counterpoint for the way in which people navigate contemporary society.

The paintings and drawings in the first part of the exhibition portray abstract landscapes, in which semi-recognizable images such as clouds, spheres, and planets interact in disregard of gravity or conventionally defined pictorial space. Unable to define a hierarchy, the viewer's eye travels through the multi-layered atmospheres, which are suggestive of outer space.

The series changes tack, exploring not a modern or aesthetic sense of "navigation," but an historical one. Depicting aspects of Christopher Columbus' four voyages, Veneman takes on a highly familiar and culturally charged topic in Western history. Veneman's works portray Columbus' ships, and each image is inspired by one aspect of his journey. Four instance, Sailors' Song depicts a sail, under which is a semi-readable layer of text containing the lyrics to chants recited by sailors at various times of day. Veneman is interested not in providing a critique of Columbus' motives and methods per se, but in portraying Columbus' often misguided search for the ideals of his educated imagination.

"It interests me that a painting is never experienced in quite the same way upon repeated viewings. All of the paintings in Navigations represent journeys, on several levels," Veneman explains. Through creating complex, disorienting spaces filled with color, her paintings avoid presenting a unified easily readable whole. Instead, the works appear as multi-layered texts, to be read in different orders and over long periods of time.

Veneman concludes, "There is a sense of disorientation in my paintings which relates strongly to contemporary culture, with its daunting array of visual signs and emphasis on both snap decisions and individual choice. Like Columbus, we must form our own worldview to navigate and derive meaning from our culture. Hopefully my paintings allow people to slow down and look at something that can engage their attention and imagination."

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