Exhibitions: Past

Begun in 2009, the All Media Juried Exhibition has evolved into a biennial event and showcases the works of regional art makers and craftspeople from the New England area. In 2010, David B. Boyce, writer and independent curator and consultant, was our juror. We had 93 submissions that year, and from those, he chose 44 works for the 2nd All Media Juried Exhibition. He also chose the artists Joan Luce Allen, Kathrine Lovell, and Hayley Perry for the Juror’s Prize – an exhibition in our gallery. The show is called 3 from June.

The women in this exhibition are in very different places in their careers, each with differing methods of image making, and that would somehow seem to separate them, but instead their works speak about making connections.

Joan Luce Allen
Joan Luce Allen has written very little about her work but what she has committed to paper speaks volumes about the essence of what it means to create something. Her drawings are made using acid free colored markers and pens and she has said that each drawing starts with a mark, and that mark leads to another and another. She may work on one drawing for a long time, putting it aside for a while before coming back to it. Her works are richly textured, colorful, and narrative – but dreamy and other worldly. It’s as though she’s able to step through a portal at a moment’s notice and bring something wonderful back to share with all of us.

Allen says, simply, “In general, the drawings suggest to me a story, or situation leading to a result. The best thing about using marking pens is that they are ready at a moment’s notice allowing for a good deal of spontaneity.”

Boyce stated last year that, “Allen’s works employ a terrific technique – these drawings would make inventive children’s book images. They have a nice sense of caricature.”

Kathrine Lovell
Kathrine Lovell has written of her work, “In the past I would make a painting with lots of interlocking circles and pattern built on pattern, in the same way that I was building up the surface with glazes and solid paint.”

Of Lovell’s work, Boyce wrote, “Her work is beautifully executed, balanced, and thought through.”

“When I started the group of paintings for this show,” she says, “I was thinking about some very straightforward painting ideas. I wanted to work on ways to represent light without being rigid and traditional about it.”

Her decision to strip away the familiar layers we know and enjoy in her work was brave, and her struggle, it seems was to accept the validity of what lies there underneath the veneer.

“My old standby patterns shook off their fancy clothes and became plain circles on squares. Discs of color were representing light and how light moves through trees, or grass, or atmosphere. So what I thought were paintings of weather were really paintings about love and its shadow, loss.”

Hayley Perry
Hayley Perry rounds out this extraordinary trio. Boyce said last year, “Perry’s works have a very nice blending of Schwitters along with a painter’s sensibility. Good sense of color and texture and mark making.”

Those layers are an invitation to explore, to connect in a sensory way but also act as markers for ideas about Place.

She writes, “I present the viewer with formal visual elements, such as color, light, and texture to reinforce this idea of how humans experience Place. These elements are not transformed to depict an image, rather, they are ordered and arranged to have an emotional and physical effect on the viewer.”

Each of us everyday builds and creates the world around us, anew. Each day we add to the things we already know, more things, textures, experiences. These are the notions that enrich us and provide the context for the encounters we experience. Or, conversely, we shed that which we no longer need. Additionally, sometimes what we feel to be most certain about can change with time. For example, I long ago let go of my own rigid views of what it means to be an artist, what it means to make art, and most importantly what it means live a creative life. And in doing so, I sometimes have access to other kinds of portals – not unlike the ones each of the artists allude to through their work. Along with them I can peer into and participate in vast and richly textured places – where connections are everywhere and meaning is what you make it to be.

Joan Luce Allen
Joan Luce Allen received a BFA in Ceramics and a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island. Recent Exhibitions include 2nd All Media Juried Exhibition, Juror’s Award, Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery, Bristol Community College, Fall River, MA ,2010; Hope Gallery, Winner 1st Place Award, Bristol RI, 2010; and Providence Art Club, Winner, Marjorie Curit Award Providence, Rhode Island, 2005

Kathrine Lovell
Kathrine Lovell holds a BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design, and has participated in several painting and finishes workshops such as the Edgar A. Whitney Watercolor Workshops, Lyndon Andrews Faux Painting Workshops, and Don Gray Faux Painting Workshops. Selected Exhibitions include Faculty Exhibit, Newport Art Museum , Newport, RI, 2010; Birds of a Feather, Invitational Group Exhibit Barrington RI, 2010; 2nd All Media Juried Exhibition, Recipient of the Juror’s Distinction Award, Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery, Fall River MA, 2010; and Group Show at YES Gallery+Studio, Warren, RI, 2009; and Open Studio Show, Artful Home Portfolio, Madison, WI, 2008.

Hayley Perry
Hayley Perry recently received her MFA in Fine Arts from University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and holds a BFA in Fine Arts from Montserrat College of Art, 2006. Recent exhibitions include 2011 Spring Student Show Juried Exhibition, Judith Klein Gallery, New Bedford, MA; Hayley Perry @ the Narrows Solo Show, Cafe Gallery, Narrows Art Center, Fall River, MA; and M.F.A. but no J.O.B., Cloyde Snook Gallery at Adams State University, Alamosa, Colorado 2011.