January 5 - 30, 2022

Opening Reception: Friday, January 7, 6-8 pm

SOLO 2022 Competiton Winners

Virginia Mahoney: “Shielded State”

Anne Birutė Harris: “PEAK”

Virginia Mahoney: “Shielded State”

Virginia Mahoney’s sculptural relief forms reference the body, reflecting upon sensation, reaction, and thought with intricately rendered fabrications. The objects play with language ambiguity, using text as a device to clarify or confound, to captivate with stories that are personal, yet communal. Her complex assembly of commonplace processes invokes both familiarity and wonder. An unorthodox approach toward physical material qualities bypasses convention and embraces possibility.

The works in Shielded State were originally inspired by images of protective gear worn by medical personnel, law enforcement, protesters, and others since the pandemic hit in 2020. As the series evolved, the narrative has included both past and current practices and situations in our lives. The forms mark a shift in Mahoney’s work from fully three-dimensional to wall relief, emphasizing the shield-like nature of the barriers and façades we invent. They allude to the multiplicity of ways we create or experience separation from one another.

The form of each work begins with small sketches and iterations, the process of building often tweaking the original idea. The process involves bending and soldering gauge 6 copper wire into a framework, according to a pattern drawn from the original sketches and refined as actual construction takes place. The choice of reclaimed and remnant fabrics, threads, and food net begins with searching through stacks and bins of materials, seeking to realize and hone the original vision of the work to discover appropriate textures and colors. The embroidered text components of the work begin with the undercurrent of Mahoney’s thoughts and evolve as the making progresses. Her research on the synonym app Word Hippo helps clarify and hone the language used in each work, as does the process of handwriting lists of words. These contemplative and thought-provoking acts often lead to a path that redefines her ideas and even the work itself.  ­

BIO

Virginia Mahoney earned an MFA in Ceramics at Cranbrook Academy of Art (MI) and a BA in Art at the University of Florida. She was Core Fellow at Penland School of Craft (NC). Mahoney has shown in juried and invitational exhibits both regionally and nationally, most recently “8 Visions 2021” at the Attleboro Arts Museum, “Blue” at the Cambridge Art Association, and “Material Witness,” a two-person show at Fountain Street Gallery. Mahoney has been published in Artscope Magazine and Hyperallergic, Boston Voyager and WBURArtery online magazines. Her work is in the collection of the Lancaster Art Museum (PA). She is a Core Member of Fountain Street Gallery, and works from her home studio in Brockton, MA.

Anne Birutė Harris: “PEAK”

My interdisciplinary practice visualizes my relationship with the more-than-human world. From the time I was a small child, I always felt that there was something more in the woods than what I could see with my eyes. When I am present in the landscape, I experience something invisible and atmospheric. Painting, performance, photography and video installation represent my felt experiences and a lifelong relationship with the woods. For the last seven years, I have been involved in a collaboration with Mount Greylock, the tallest mountain in Massachusetts.

When I am on Mount Greylock, I paint my large, raw canvas directly on the ground. I feel the ground’s natural bumps, the striations of hard rocks and changing textures of the earth. My canvas sinks into the powder and fluff from fresh winter snowfall, my paint turns into ice on the surface. My crampons grip into the stiffness of ice crusted snow in early spring while I move around my canvas, painting while standing or crouching right on the mountain’s edge. I am not looking directly at the view, but painting my response to the mountain. My brushstrokes and hikes are guided by each day’s weather, light and atmosphere: wind, snow, wind chills and freezing temperatures; hot and humid heat advisory days where I sweat my bodily weight in water or get sunburnt from losing track of time under the sun, my skin becoming a temporary treat for horse flies and mosquitoes. I respond to symphonies of crickets at sunrise and at sunset to the barred owls hooting back and forth to each other on the left most mountain. I paint in rolling mountain fog, raw rains, warm downpours and one time in tropical storm remnants. 

I hide under these canvases. My senses guide my actions as I move beneath my unstretched paintings. I wear these paintings as camouflage to absorb the spirit of the mountain, to become the mountain, to express the mountain. And when I am camouflaged, I turn into something more than myself. As this mountain spirit, ghost and animal-like creature, I repeatedly visit the same trails to experience seasonal changes and weather conditions.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BIO

Anne Harris (b. 1990) is an interdisciplinary artist from Worcester, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Harris practices place-based art making; working mainly outdoors in nature using painting, performance, video, installation and photography. Harris received her B.A. in Studio Art from Assumption University in 2012 and was a recipient of the Honors Convocation Studio Art Award. Anne was selected to attend Columbia University's Advanced Summer Painting Intensive in 2016. In 2021, Harris received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. In May, her artwork was featured in the Sunday Arts Edition of the Boston Globe, in the article “5 art-school grads to watch for 2021” written by Cate McQuaid. Today, Anne lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts. She is a Post Graduate Teaching Fellow at The SMFA at Tufts.