in water
“In Water” Opens at Beyond Benign’s Experimental Gallery
Part of The Revolving Museum’s Tales from a Test Tube Exhibition Series
Wilmington, Massachusetts—Beyond Benign, an educational and advocacy organization devoted to green chemistry and a sustainable future, will host an exhibit of art about water in its many permutations. The exhibit will open with a reception on June 25 from 2-5pm and will run through October 25.
The exhibit is cosponsored with The Revolving Museum, a longstanding artist activist organization in the Boston area. TRM uses a nomadic nonprofit model to create public art, educational programs and meaningful dialogue between artists, students and the community.
“In Water” includes works that are highly diverse in form and intention, ranging from the abstract and subjective to the political and ecological. The wide range of work expands the collective reverence, respect and awe for the role water plays in the planet’s ecosystem. Artists participating in the exhibit include Deborah Barlow, Kay Canavino, Rachael Eastman, Barbara Gagel, Susan Quateman and George Wingate.
“Water, like the atmosphere of the earth, is ubiquitous and essential to the ecosystem of our planet,” said Jerry Beck, The Revolving Museum’s founder. “Every day, every human on the planet has a personal encounter with water. It is also an element that has a high capacity to transform. It can flow, freeze, vaporize, dropletize, bubble, flood, evaporate, absorb, eviscerate. With so many variations and forms, it inspires creative expression.”
About the Artists
Each artist will explore their own personal connection with water. Deborah Barlow was raised in the western deserts of the United States, a landscape where the effect of water can be observed in desert settings. She incorporates many nontraditional materials such as powder, dust, soil, sand, minerals, pulverized seashells, bio matter, water and other fluids to emulate those natural processes. The work included in this show demonstrates both water’s effect on the earth as well as the beauty of its fluid form. “While I am working I am in awe of the physical laws that govern the universe, evident in the microscopic as well as the macro forms found in the universe,” she said. Deborah has had over 50 solo exhibits in the US and abroad, in galleries and museums. Her studio is in South Boston.
Ever since Kay Canavino received a snorkel and facemask for a birthday present many years ago, she has been seduced by the beauty of the light found just under the surface of water–a beguiling light, but also a bit frightening, with dark and murky areas just beyond the illumination. In her photographic series included in this show, there are no fish or shells to give a sense of an underwater world. A reed stems can look like a tree trunk, and pebbles appear as moon boulders. This unusual vantage point can be disorienting, and the viewer questions what is seen, which is when the imagination starts to come up with its own answers. Canavino is a well known photographer now living in Western Massachusetts.
Rachael Eastman first felt her operating theories collide when she sought the works of J. M. W. Turner in Europe. Years later, her Zen nature was forced to reconcile with her own innate romanticism, and she fell in love with the light at ocean’s edge and began to steep herself in first hand experiential knowledge of Maine’s coast line. “In the summers of 2014 and 2015, I arose before 4 a.m. every morning and went to the beach to experience one hundred and thirty consecutive dawns, establishing a sensory memory of sunrise amid the ocean’s movements and the change of weather, light, and tide,” she said. The scale of her body against the enormity of the ocean inspired her to make tiny works, an echo of her feel for proportion with the sea. A graduate of Maine College of Art who shows her work throughout New England, Rachael now lives in Biddeford, Maine.
Barbara Gagel’s art has been about finding the hidden and the mysterious. It is a journey into meaning and connecting to a deeper truth. She has explored the translucent imagery of encaustic painting and printmaking, creating endless possibilities in symbology and meaning. A graduate of Massachusetts College of Art, Barbara has also done graduate work at the University of Hawaii in painting and printmaking. Workshops with established artists in Italy and the Southwest have honed her skills and direction. Many years of teaching students in public schools, DeCordova Museum and the private sector has enabled her to connect to a childlike awareness. A recipient of the Originals 2007 New Mexico Women Artists Award, she has shown at Zane Bennett Gallery, The Encaustic Institute, Evos Gallery (Santa Fe), Conrad Wilde Gallery (Tucson), Kobalt Gallery (Provincetown) and The Brush Gallery (Lowell). She works out of a studio in Lowell.
Three years ago Susan Quateman decided to weave together the various strands of her professional/artistic life and focus on bridging the scientific understandings, or misunderstandings, of climate change and its effects on the earth through silk painting and photography. Her goal is to paint in silk interpretations of climate change vulnerability and adaptation. She wants the brilliant dyes and resists used in painting on silk to have an emotional appeal in a way that scientific reports rarely do. She has now shown climate change silk paintings and printed art work, often in collaboration with photographer Leslie Bartlett, at various exhibits organized by environmental non-profit organizations and local galleries, in Boston and the North Shore. Susan is a British-born urban and environmental planner with a Masters in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University and Certificate in Landscape Design from the Landscape Institute at Harvard University. She has been painting on silk at Ten Pound Studio in Gloucester, MA since 2010.
George Wingate has celebrated wildness and wilderness since his childhood in upstate New York. Following his studies in traditional and plein air painting with Frank Mason at the Art Students League in New York City, George has exhibited both representational and nonrepresentational work in the United States and Europe. Most recently he expanded his métier to include installations and landscape design, incorporating water and other natural elements. “What is more wild than water? Out of nothing can come something. From steam can come ice. As an artist and long time lover of the wild, I celebrate what is emergent, what can surprise.” George currently lives and works in Wenham alongside the Longham Reservoir.
About Beyond Benign Gallery
“In Water,” is on display the Beyond Benign gallery from June 25 through October 25. An artist reception will be held on June 25 from 2-5 PM.
The Beyond Benign Gallery is located at 100 Research Drive, Wilmington Massachusetts.
Gallery hours are every Thursdays from 1:00 PM. to 4:00 PM. or by appointment.
Please contact: Dr. Amy Cannon (978) 229-5400 or Jerry Beck (978) 590-3759
Beyond Benign gallery from June 25 through October 25. An artist reception will be held on June 25 from 2-5 PM. The Beyond Benign Gallery is located at 100 Research Drive, Wilmington Massachusetts.
