Works by
Catherine Curtis
Kathleen Finlay
Lisa Young

October 26 – December 8, 2006

This exhibition brings together the works of Catherine Curtis, Kathleen Finlay, and Lisa Young.  In singular ways these artists examine essential, accumulated, and transient moments that characterize us. For each of them this examination is critical to the definition of what makes us who we are and how we understand the world. Their works are based on cultural cues, the mechanics of how things are made, and how we identify and mark the passage of time. The moment may exist in perpetuity, but it is defined both by anticipation and memory.

Catherine Curtis relies on direct experience though the metaphor of pattern and makes work which reflects an insistence upon repetition and pattern as a way to assert that each moment is linked to, one with, the next. She has written that:

I've chosen an inert, familiar subject; the pattern in my linoleum floor. I've been playing with that pattern for some time now.  If the subject of my work is order, the process is about relinquishing it. I am interested in the way water, ink, and paper interact. I imagine I am a medium through which the nature of the material becomes evident.

Kathleen Finlay looks at the essential impulse of how we make the world work for us. Of her work she states that:

My pieces often demonstrate how something is made by visibly maintaining the steps of the process of its creation. Often I build a piece for each step, showing increments of growth, slow accretions, and revealing the accumulation of parts, shapes, particles or objects. The piece is the event. Some of the events I work with are environmental or psychological or metaphorical. More recently I am exploring mechanical events, where a psychological parallel may or may not also exist.

Lisa Young’s recent works explore culturally defined moments of transcendence from a temporally based perspective.

I use commonplace images culled from prime time TV, postcards, or found or made snapshots. I draw on diverse classes of imagery that bring to mind cultural ideals (sublime nature, tickertape parades, beloved objects, open highways, athletes in moments of triumph or tragedy). My work also focuses on transient moments or related images that mark the passage of time in order to explore the relationship between the temporal and the sublime.

Curtis Holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Vermont College and a BA in Middle Eastern Studies from Yale University. Her work is held in the collection of the Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design. She has taught at Brown Playschool and at Steere House, St Elizabeth’s Court, St Antoine Residence and Scandinavian Home for the Aged. She has also been an anchor and reporter for WBRU, Boston Public Radio. Recent exhibitions include a two-person exhibition at Lenore Gray Gallery, Providence, RI. Group exhibitions include Geometry, Hay Gallery, Portland, ME; Go to Print, Fredericksburg Center for the Creative Arts, Fredericksburg, VA and F.A.T. A Fusion of Art and Technology, Conley Gallery, California State University, Fresno, CA.

Finlay received an MFA in sculpture from the Milton Avery Graduate School, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. She also holds an MA in Painting from School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA and a BS in Education from Tufts University. She recently received an Individual Support Grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottleib Foundation, a grant from the Artist Resource Trust and a Finalist Award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Recent exhibitions include Play, Nave Gallery, Somerville, MA; Windows Art Project, September, 2004, Union Square, Somerville, MA; and Tufts First Annual Juried Summer Exhibition, Tufts Art Gallery, Medford, MA. She was resident at the Vermont Studio Center in 2005. 

Young received her MFA from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA and a BFA from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, IL. She recently received a Fellowship in Photography from the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts. Her works is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Harvard University Art Museums, and a number of other public and private institutions. Recent exhibitions include Test Site: Billboard at 6150 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA; Ecopoetics on Plasma, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, organized by Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY; and Works on Paper, Flux Factory Benefit, Lennon Weinberg Gallery, New York, NY.