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Member Statements for "Transforming the Landscape":
"Mending the Fence" is about mending the relationship between two people or on a broader basis mending the relationship between two countries. Every step in our lives we have the choice to send the energy for peace and reconciliation or to create conflict. This installation is about “the choice of creating peace and reconciliation”. Materials: A fence created out of hardware cloth, rods, screening and iridescent blue and green fabric. Muriel Angelil is an installation and performance artist. She has an M.F.A. from VermontCollege in Montpelier, Vt. She has created installations at LarzAndersonPark, TopsfieldState Park, the Franklin Park Zoo, the MuddyRiver, The ArtComplexMuseum, NewburyCollege and with the Reclamation artists. She is a professor in the Fashion Department of Newbury College. Brookline, MA. mmangelil@yahoo.com
"Immigration" “Covering” My goal in the environmental work that I make is to change the way we look at our surroundings. I try to insert materials or structures that alter the space they are placed in. I feel that we rush along, plugged in, tuned out and don’t take the time to enjoy and explore the natural spaces that we see every day. Hopefully, by changing one or two aspects of what we assume should be there, the viewer will pause long enough to enjoy the setting. Janet Kawada received her BFA from MassachusettsCollege of Art and MFA from VermontCollege. She is on the faculty of Massart and New EnglandSchool of Design in Boston. She is past director of the Kingston Gallery in Boston and also shows at the Nauossa Gallery in the Berkshires. Her work can be found in the collections of CornellUniversitySchool of Agriculture and Simmons Janet can be reached at jkawada@usa.net.
"TOMTES" TOMTES: a Swedish troll archetype tale in a corner of a tidy barn. Wendy Soneson ( formerly Hoo) is exploring her Swedish Heritage and it's role in her mid life upheaval. Tomtes are creatures about three feet tall, industrious helpers who do not want to be seen or acknowledged, but welcome the occasional gift of clothing or milk. Just as we can approach our dark little inner trolls that carry our sadness, pain and fears by embracing compassion and gratitude, we must only visit the helpful little tomtes with respect and understanding, or they will run away. Tomtes like order and live in barns or houses. They help with the farm chores or whatever is needed. They are our like little guardian spirits, but we must know their ways to keep them around. They are usually about three feet high, have grey clothes, long beards and a red hat. Wendy Hoo received her M Ed in the Arts and Human Development at Lesley University. She is currently teaching at Intercity Schools including Upham’s Corner Charter School. Both her art and teaching evolve around social reform through education. In her own personal work, Wendy primarily paints watercolors. Wendy can be contacted at lennon@rcn.com. “Poppy” The process of working with clay and found materials is at once mesmerizing, playful, and obsessive. I find myself lost in the process; time becomes irrelevant; my world becomes my studio, which is filled with a curious assortment of raw materials, finished sculpture and mosaics, works in progress, notebooks of drawings, clippings, books and photos of places, and objects which fascinate and inspire me. A sculpture or mosaic may be finished in one week or six, come together serendipitously or arduously, worked over and over, only to be dismantled and reworked. I enjoy combining disparate elements into new forms of harmony. In many pieces, my narrative sculptures embody my own mythology which explores well-being, womanhood, and passages through the use of irony, humor and metaphor to create the unexpected. Bette Ann Libby, has worked in clay since 1972 and has been inspired by her sojourn in Samoa, South Asia, India and the Mid-east. She is the founding mother of Studios Without Walls wrote the collaborative’s first four grants that won funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Brookline Council for the Arts and Humanities. Bette Ann’s work is widely shown. She has won regional prizes including a 1997 award from the Cambridge Art Association, juried by Maud Morgan and the 1995 winter juried exhibition at the DuxburyArtComplexMuseum. Last year she received first prize in the MassachusettsState of Clay Exhibition, juried by Peter Beeseaker, for her mosaic sculpture "Gargoyle with Butterfly Wings." She will be showing shard mosaic sculptures.
“Creature” I see the environment as a canvas. I am most interested in inventing temporary experiences, which shift the viewer’s perception of a particular site or landscape. In my work, I like to build a world of opposites. I see my work as very abstract narratives. To me it is like building visual poetry. The process of artmaking is equally important to me as the product. I bring materials to my site which emphasize and contrast the elements, that are already present. I want the work to be playful and am interested in the fusion of accident and intention. As I am working I am often times photographing details and overviews of the work. This process of documenting the work forces me to focus on what I am looking for. It can be a very meditative process but also quite stressful at the same time. I have this strong desire to create something that truly involves every aspect of the environment. I consider each piece to be a large interactive drawing. This type of work is an opportunity to explore, discover and invent. In “Creature”, I am concentrating on the mass of rocks balanced with materials with give it a animated, lyrical appearance. The idea is to make the rocks come alive. Janna Longacre received her BFA from Rhode IslandSchool of Design and her MFA from the University of Michigan. She teaches Sculpture and Ceramics at MassachusettsCollege of Art where she is also very involved in the International Programs and Professional Development Courses. Janna’s work has been shown in numerous galleries and museums throughout the USA When working on indoor pieces, Janna creates installations that use light with reflection, transparent and translucent materials. These pieces, often constructed out of wood, use clean geometric forms as a site to build interior landscape- like environments. Contact Information:jlongacre@massart.edu. Video Through video I reflect on the social environments that condition my sensibility and sense of responsibility as an artist. In 2006 my subject is the culture shock of a visit to St. Petersburg, Russia—a world I approached with more information than understanding. Having only the barest capacity to read or speak the language, I found through my camera access to private thoughts, visions, and interpretations of the urban fabric and history that surrounded me. Only in later musings, however, can this jumble of images and events, hopeful, bizarre, and sometimes painful, fall Confronted by a society still confused by, if not outright hostile to creative thinking, a visiting artist can’t help but identify with the persecuted artists from its past. Is it, as the Marxists and Stalinists thought, luxury or even treason to cultivate my addiction to my inner and artistic process, or rather a moral responsibility to determine to express Contact Information: ezwordz@hotmail.com "No coming, No going" This piece was first installed between two stone gateposts – there was neither fence nor gate remaining. From the idea of the missing gate came the notion of coming and going, and from there it was a short jump to the Buddhist teaching that there is no real coming and going – that life and death are illusion. Instead, we can understand life and death as change. At Allandale Farm things grow, flower, produce fruit, and die, their nutrients becoming the compost to nourish new growth. Everything cycles and re-cycles. That being said, this human life is inexpressively precious, and war and oppression are a source of boundless suffering. I thought to bring the suffering to mind by writing the names of those who have died in Iraq – both US and Iraqi – on strips of cloth that would blow in the wind. An image related in part to Tibetan prayer flags. These strips bear witness to the suffering of war and send forth the energy of peace and compassion. The cloth they are made of is also reminiscent of bandages – and in a sense my intention is to bind the wounds of suffering – something akin to “tikkun olam” which translates from the Hebrew as “healing the world.” As I began writing names I found that the act of doing so became a meditative practice. As I wrote each name I became keenly aware that each name represents a very real person, someone who was once a precious newborn, a sweet child, someone’s child, perhaps someone’s mother or father, a dear sister or brother. I became very aware of the pain associated with the loss of each person. I invited friends to join me in this practice, and as they wrote names, they too experienced the reality of the profound suffering, and a blossoming of compassion in themselves. I am also aware that these names are only a tiny drop in the accumulated suffering on earth – everywhere, all the time, people are suffering and dying – of war, hunger, poverty, disease, of both human and natural disasters. This is a work-in-progress. There are about 4,000 names here. As of August 15 the Iraqi Body Count website (iraqbodycount.org) has a count of between 40,000 - 44,000 dead, and the Department of Defense (http://icasualties.org/oif/BY_DOD.aspx) has confirmed 2,604 US military dead — and the number grows every day. This will always be a work-in-progress. Joan’s work has been commissioned by the Boston and Milton Arts Lottery Commissions, the Cambridge Arts Council, and First Night Boston. She has exhibited with Studios Without Walls, Jamaica Plain Open Studios at Loring Greenough House, the Gallery at Innovative Moves, and at Lynn Arts. Her work includes quits, helium balloon-filled floating sculptures, painting, artbikes, and ceramic sculpture, as well as site-responsive installation. Joan co-founded the Loon & Heron Theatre for Children for which she designed masks, puppets, sets, and costumes for award-winning productions of fantasy and fable. She performed professionally with the dance companies of Kei Takei, Meredith Monk, Barbara Roan, and Frances Allenikoff. Joan's website is: studioswithoutwalls.org/joans “Picnic at the Farm” I like to bring out the humor in my artwork and I have a deep love for flowers. So, I mostly combine those two things. The materials are six chairs and a table covered with various items, turf grass in particular. The main emphasis here is on the interaction between texture and surface and the variety of colors I love. My energy flows from having fun creating a fantasy world that expresses myself and, at the same time, lets others enjoy it with me. You are all invited Barbara Vogelsang, is currently working as a free-lance artist and decorator in Brookline/Mass. After receiving a degree in fashion design from the Modeschule Düsseldorf (Germany) in 1965 she worked as a fashion designer in Heidelberg, Berlin, Porto Cervo/Italy and Hamburg. In 1971, she started working in art in Germany. She subsequently studied sculpture at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1978/79 and 1981/82, and took surface design at Boston University in 1983, followed in 1984 by papermaking with Bernie Toale in Allston/Mass. In recent years she has worked extensively in soft sculpture and in handmade paper. She has participated in group shows in Bonn, Heidelberg, Cambridge/Mass. (Mobilia, Van Buren), Portsmouth/N.H. (Gallery 33), Arlington/Mass. (Tufts University Paper Show), Lincoln/Mass. (Clark Gallery), Duxbury/Mass. (Duxbury Museum and Art Complex), Los Angeles (Art Expo), Boston (Northeastern University) and Santa Monica (Art Options). She has shown at Rugg Road Gallery in Allston/Mass., at Studio DuMont in Cologne, at Gruner & Jahr in Hamburg and at New England Institute of Art in Brookline. In recent years Barbara has created room-size environments in handmade paper for the March of Dimes (Mariott Hotel, Boston), for the SomervilleHistoricalMuseum, for the Starr Gallery (Newton) and for the DeCordovaMuseum. She did a permanent installation for the LakeFarmparkMuseum (Kirtland, Ohio). Articles about my work appeared in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, Kölner Stadtanzeiger, Express, and Ambiente. She was interviewed and portrayed by Studio 7, Channel 7, in Boston as well as Vox TV in Germany. Jim Wright has been a Fine Artist working primarily in sculpture, painting, and drawing for 34 years. Since graduating the Museum School in Boston in 1984, he has been employed fabricating sculpture for a designer and pursuing his sculpture work simultaneously. Jim Wright can be contacted at jawsculpt2@yahoo.com. |
Wendy Soneson (Hoo)
Janna Longacre
Joan Schwartz
