I am pleased to be part of the three person exhibition including myself, Nancy Hayes and Allison Paschke, curated by Kathleen Hancock at the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Gallery at Briston Community College in Fall River, MA. On view from Jan. 22 through February 20.
From the curator:
"The ability to create, and to assign meaning to, marks and shapes is a uniquely human trait. Image making, symbol writing, written language development are part of the impulse to assign meaning to and communicate information about things. Of necessity it requires a communal set of marks and shapes whose meaning is relatively constant. However, language and the marks cultures use to record objects and things are the same marks used to describe ideas, notions of things that live inside the mind.
Some shapes and marks seem to be universal, shared across cultures and time. They are a reflection of a common visual language or archetypal elements of expression. The artists in this exhibition use shape, color (or its absence), and complex spatial relationships to draw us into some of these ideas. What gives rise to meaning? What experiences are common to all of us? Are there associations that we can all delight in a shared sense of connection with?
Adria Arch uses an almost serendipitous approach to building images. She often works with doodles — the kinds of spontaneous marks and shapes found along the margins of notebooks.
Of her work Arch has written, "Doodles made in an unselfconscious state of reverie strike me as a way into our common humanity. For me, these symbols are a mysterious language that is both deeply personal and universal." Arch expands these shapes onto canvas and into sculpture, sometimes layering these shapes to create bold, richly textured works that invite us to think of them as both shape and narrative."
From the curator:
"The ability to create, and to assign meaning to, marks and shapes is a uniquely human trait. Image making, symbol writing, written language development are part of the impulse to assign meaning to and communicate information about things. Of necessity it requires a communal set of marks and shapes whose meaning is relatively constant. However, language and the marks cultures use to record objects and things are the same marks used to describe ideas, notions of things that live inside the mind.
Some shapes and marks seem to be universal, shared across cultures and time. They are a reflection of a common visual language or archetypal elements of expression. The artists in this exhibition use shape, color (or its absence), and complex spatial relationships to draw us into some of these ideas. What gives rise to meaning? What experiences are common to all of us? Are there associations that we can all delight in a shared sense of connection with?
Adria Arch uses an almost serendipitous approach to building images. She often works with doodles — the kinds of spontaneous marks and shapes found along the margins of notebooks.
Of her work Arch has written, "Doodles made in an unselfconscious state of reverie strike me as a way into our common humanity. For me, these symbols are a mysterious language that is both deeply personal and universal." Arch expands these shapes onto canvas and into sculpture, sometimes layering these shapes to create bold, richly textured works that invite us to think of them as both shape and narrative."