14 artists, one Community College gallery
Faculty show their work plus invite 7 guests; the result is eclectic, and electric
When Nathalie Ferrier, director of the Higgins Art Gallery at Cape Cod Community College, curates a group show, usually she has a concept of whose work would co-exist well, a cohesion she hopes viewers will sense. But the show that opened on November 16 came together differently:
“Our arts faculty each invited a guest artist,” she says. “Seven faculty, seven guests.”
A show concocted that way might appear helter skelter, but that hasn’t happened. For all the variety of styles, materials, and themes, the intimate gallery on the college campus looks great. Eclectic does not equal scattered, variety need not present as lack of focus. There is great energy in the Tilden space, a refreshing, surrounding vibration.
The reason is that the work of each artist is ambitious and heartfelt.
Formidable Anne Flash has offered a long painting with extended, coiling, intertwining tendrils that captures the idea of “roiling seas,” as the piece is called. She invited Suzanne Archibald, who offers what seem like expansive, far-reaching terrains even though they are created within small rectangles; Bonsai landscapes?
Scott Anderson uses wire, nails, and LED lights to illuminate a darkened area with graphic abstraction, a high-tech mandala. His guest Joe Navas shows a deepening figurative mastery of the photographic portrait.
Marie Lourdes Canaves set up a table to display Tarot card interpretations, in front of her guest Susan Porter’s “small museum of protective spells,” an accordioned display with informative incantations involving the likes of knots, feathers, and keys.
Mellissa Morris, a Cape Cod native, has created multiple abstractions, part of a series that celebrates her grandmother, joining at the invitation of Brooke Mullins Doherty, whose ink on paper express her fascination with trees as “landscapes become mindscapes.”
Vicky Tomayko, much-accomplished artist and teacher, added colorful silkscreens, their rhythms an inspiration for former student Antonia DaSilva’s humorous small figures peeking through a gardenscape.
Nathalie’s work is mixed media, her fascination with fiber and fabric always evolving. She links well with her guest Susie Nielsen, whose photographs become abstract, even more so when stitched with short lines of red thread that don’t divide the images, more tattoo them.
Andrew Ringler created an electronic rectangle. Shifting points and blocks of primary colors, sensor and computer at work behind the surface, pixelate passing visitors in staccato bursts. Sara Ringler’s sophisticated, painterly, seaweed-inspired impressions grace a nearby wall. He is her guest (and son), proof that techniques and mediums range far in one family.
Does this sound confusing, a mish mash? That’s only because words, plunked in adjoining paragraphs like pictures tacked on walls, can’t inspire the intended visceral, visual response – otherwise artists would be writing, eh?
Also not translated is the way each artist creates a momentary oasis when you pause long enough to absorb; time slows down, impressions and associations deepen, surrounding space falls away or at least slips out of focus. Each experience is whole. There’s nothing convoluted about it.
This can happen when creative spirits gather. Each is worth a visit. Taken together they create a deeper gift, and there’s time to appreciate; the show is up into the first week of February. While the college closes for Christmas break, people are welcome to contact Nathalie on the gallery's website to arrange for a viewing during the holidays.
Haven’t subscribed yet? With all due respect, why not? Make it possible to see a Voice (a cool trick) — support good reporting, strong perspectives, unique Cape Cod takes every week. All that for far less than a cup of coffee. Please subscribe, it’s easy:
Wonderful article! Thanks for describing your feelings while discovering the show and for describing the works so clearly.
Thanks for this review, hope to see for myself!