An Exhibition Curated by Catherine Carter

Works by
Deborah Barlow
John Borowicz
Catherine Carter
Michael Hecht
Keri Straka
Kathleen Volp

March 8 – April 6, 2018

Otherworldly, curated by Catherine Carter, was produced by the gallery as part of its ongoing Visiting Curator Series.

Catherine Carter is a painter, teacher, curator, and writer. A native of Massachusetts, she resides in New Bedford. She has been active in the arts community for many years and continues to teach in both college and arts museum settings. She currently writes "Behind the Counter," a bi-monthly column focused on small businesses in the SouthCoast of Massachusetts for the New Bedford Standard-Times.

Carter has exhibited her paintings in museums and galleries across the United States as well as internationally, including shows at the Chrysler Museum of Art, the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, and the U.S. Embassies in Oman and Cameroon. Her artwork is held in public, corporate, and private collections, and has been reviewed in the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and the Providence Journal. She is the recipient of artist grants from the St. Botolph Club Foundation and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

In addition to Otherworldly, her work as an independent curator includes Show of Hands: Gestural Works on Paper at the Fort Point Arts Community Gallery in Boston, Exponential: Four Artists Explore Infinity at Mount Ida College, and Inviting the Unknown: Six Abstract Artists at the New Bedford Art Museum.

Carter has an MFA in Painting from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, a BFA from Lesley University, and a Diploma from the School of Fashion Design in Boston. She studied for three full-time semesters at both the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the Art Institute of Boston (now Lesley University).

Kathleen Hancock
Director

Curator's Statement

Otherworldly features six Massachusetts artists whose work conjures an environment that is both familiar and fantastical. We are drawn in by a hazy sense of recognition, but closer contact reveals a realm of new and unexpected visions, emotions, ideas. Have we been here before? Maybe, in some dream or altered state. We are not sure, and yet some element of remembered experience calls to us from within the work.

In a wide range of materials and techniques, these artists define and explore six unique perspectives. Although the fantasy element of their paintings and sculpture is clear, their works share a trace of distant familiarity.There is some universal truth in their message that resonates with our experience and lingers in our imagination.

Deborah Barlow

Deborah Barlow's glowing surfaces hypnotize with their lush majesty. A heart-felt sensibility infuses the infinite space she pictures, an understanding beyond the need for words. Soft-edged forms sparkle and undulate, in jewel tones brushed with graveled texture. There is something both universal and intimate happening here, maybe a new galaxy being born, and we are privileged witnesses to its wonder and beauty.

Barlow studied at the University of Utah, Université de Grenoble (France), and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Since her first solo show in New York City at the age of 25, she has exhibited her work in galleries across the United States as well as in Italy, Belgium, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Recent solo exhibitions include the Morris Graves Museum, Morpeth Contemporary, and Woodbury Museum. She lives in Brookline and works in South Boston.

John Borowicz

John Borowicz's precise and intimate portraits are a window onto the inner world of his subjects. Every hair, every vein is carefully crafted, but it is the poses and accessories that animate these personalities. With quiet brushstrokes in neutral tones defining the atmosphere, his emphasis is completely on the figures. The spark of life in their eyes is so deftly rendered, we expect them to turn their gaze our way and speak to us.

Borowicz, who studied painting at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has presented solo shows at the Adam Baumgold Gallery in New York, where he is represented, and at the Dedee Shattuck Gallery in Westport. He has also shown at the National Portrait Gallery in London, Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, and Ogunquit Museum of American Art. His work has also been featured in the periodicals "New American Paintings" and "Tema Celeste." He lives and works in Dartmouth.

Catherine Carter

Catherine Carter aligns circles of multi-toned marks in relentless rows. Each element is cut from lengths of sheer white fabric painted with scribbled lines. Although placement and material don't vary, there is an infinite range from one sphere to the next. Her compositions identify the role of the individual in relation to society as a whole, suggesting that while we are all cut from the same cloth, everyone is a unique bundle of experiences, abilities, and interests.

Carter earned an MFA in painting from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She has exhibited her paintings at the United States Embassies in Cameroon and Oman, as well as in solo shows at the Genovese/Sullivan Gallery and Danforth Art Museum. Her artworks are held in multiple public and corporate collections including the Boston Public Library, Massasoit Community College, and the Four Seasons Hotel. She lives and works in New Bedford.

Michael Hecht

Michael Hecht illustrates the pain and wonder of a soul trapped in a human body. With excruciating honesty, he narrates the interior conflicts of a sensitive creature struggling to navigate and comprehend this earthly existence. Confusion, terror, lust, anguish, despair, all the difficult emotions find expression in his work, depicted as self-portraits alongside winged creatures or flowering plants. While there is always hope for enlightenment through transformation, it is a complex and challenging path to get there.

Hecht received an MFA in painting and printmaking from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He has exhibited his work in solo shows at Colo Colo Gallery in New Bedford and the Patty DeLuca Gallery in Provincetown, and in group shows at the Edinburgh College of Art, the Pleiades Gallery, and the New Bedford Art Museum. On the faculty at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, he lives and works in New Bedford.

Keri Straka

Keri Straka's minutely crafted ceramic forms seem to refer to both inner and outer worlds. Delicate carvings embellish the edges of her undulating surfaces, colored in blood red, sea green, regal gold, and soft cream. These intricate sculptures could be either as tiny as a cell or as vast as a universe, but either way, they convey both a quiet intensity and an expansive energy.

Straka earned a BFA from Western Washington University and an MFA in ceramics from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She has exhibited her work extensively, including shows at the Boston Sculptors Gallery, Fuller Art Museum, and the Worcester Center for Crafts. A professor in the Art and Music Department of Framingham State University, she lives and works in Framingham.

Kathleen Volp

Kathleen Volp's tiny sculptures combine broken segments of pre-Columbian relics with present-day found objects, creating hybrids that poke fun at who we think we are. Clay meets plastic when shard fragments are joined with such commonplace but unexpected detritus as Barbie accessories, baseball player figurines, and refrigerator magnets. Volp's witty mashups prompt questions about identity in our culture, and leave us wondering what future civilizations will make of the artifacts we leave behind.

Volp received her degree in art from SUNY Empire State in New York City. She has presented solo exhibitions at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Bromfield Gallery, and Christopher Brodian Gallery at the Groton School. She has also participated in group shows including the Rick/Polak Gallery, Fitchburg Art Museum, and Revolving Museum. She lives and works in Concord.