Past Exhibits
Punto in Aria: A Repairing Mend
October 7 - November 13, 2022
Patricia Miranda
Patricia Miranda's work explores the labor of care by women through mending, remembering, collecting, and preserving, in repurposed textile installations created with donated lace from The Lace Archive, an historical community archive of lace and family histories.
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Keeping Track of Time
August 5 - October 2, 2022
Philip Brou
Philip Brou is an artist and amateur runner. Running every other day for much of his life has served as both exercise and a meditative practice. During 2021 he brought his studio practice and running together; making a drawing to document each time he went running, for a total of 197 drawings. The metronomic rhythm of running one day and drawing the next stitched together a time that felt otherwise fractured. The artist views the project as a type of clock that processes days by both running and slowing down; creating a very specific way of keeping track of time.
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Hall of Portraits from The History of Machines
June 3 - July 31, 2022
Sue Johnson
"Mining the archive is like building a time machine; I look at the material culture of the past as a way of understanding what has come into being in our contemporary times." – Sue Johnson
Exhibit Statement:
All spaces hold art in different ways. With Sue Johnson's exhibit, 3S Artspace is not only exhibiting Sue Johnson's first solo show in New England— 3S is also providing the first opportunity for the artist to exhibit nine monumental works in a single space. Each of Sue's works is extraordinary and thought-provoking on its own, but shown together, they create a singular and timely experience for artist and viewer, enveloping us in a surreal interpretation of the role of women in the home and in society.
Artist Statement:
Sue Johnson’s Hall of Portraits from The History of Machines constructs a disquieting satire that proposes an alternative pictorial history in which two objects of desire become one — the household convenience object and the emergent female form.
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Dispatches From the Border
MAY 6 - 29, 2022
Patrick Patterson and Anastasiia Zazuliak
Dispatches From the Border offers photographic narratives on the war in Ukraine from the perspectives of Anastasiia Zazuliak, a Ukrainian photographer living in Poland, and New Hampshire Seacoast resident, Patrick Patterson.
"How can I help?" is a question we've collectively asked one another since late February when the war began. By exhibiting this work, 3S Artspace seeks to emphasize our support of democracy and freedom of expression. The arts can play a critical role at a time when we need them the most.
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Universality of the Human Experience
FEBRUARY 2 - MARCH 31, 2022 (Lobby Gallery)
Richard Haynes
Artist Statement:
"I offer you my current exhibit against a backdrop of world crises in health and education, in climate and environmental destruction, in poverty, in immigration. I am concerned that world leaders are in a state of moral decline. They neglect to listen to what their quiet inner spirit would guide them to do: make the world just for every human being. I believe that only through a significant shift in values, only through a spiritual transformation, that "a change gonna come." Will that change have finally come? What will future generations learn about our world when they look at these drawings decades from now?" —Richard Haynes
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Where Everybody is Somebody
JANUARY 7 - MARCH 20, 2022
Henry Horenstein
Artist Statement:
"Over the years I’ve photographed many different types of subjects, even animals and the human form. But I’ve always returned to my roots as a documentary photographer. More than anything, I like a good story. And I try to tell one in a direct way, with humor and a punch line, if possible." —Henry Horenstein
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Vision and Visibility
NOVEMBER 19, 2021 - JANUARY 2, 2022
Leslie Anne Condon / Laura Di Piazza / L'Merchie Frazier / Hai-Wen Lin / Julia Marden / Jasmine Milton / Ashley Page / Yasamin Safarzadeh / Aina Sullivan / Cynthia Velásquez-Owen / Evelyn Wong
Exhibit Statement:
Work by emerging, New England-based BIPOC visual artists offers unique insight into perspective, perception, and the personal, as well as cultural identity. Presented by 3S Artspace and Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire in an effort to make visible the work of contemporary BIPOC artists.
A Quiet Reach
NOVEMBER 19, 2021 - JANUARY 2, 2022
Daniel Minter
Exhibit Statement:
Painter, sculptor, and assemblage artist Daniel Minter explores common echoes in visual languages of the Afro-Atlantic diaspora. A Quiet Reach focuses on Maine’s Malaga Island and the forced removal of its interracial community in 1912. Presented by Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire and 3S Artspace.
Culture Keepers, Culture Makers: Student Exhibit
NOVEMBER 19, 2021 - JANUARY 2, 2022 (Lobby Gallery)
MHB / Lisa Burk-McCoy / Alizah Coraccio / Jiff Cornwell / Beth Falconer / Jan Fonseka / Nihco Gallo / Mark Giuliucci / Amanda Howerton / Kiyoshi Imai / Arul Mahadevan / Nancy Vanbenschoten / William Wright / Gabriela Yeshua
Exhibit Statement:
In the fall of 2021, 3S Artspace welcomed selected students to participate in free art workshops led by artist Richard Haynes. The art workshops represented the next phase in the series which began at 3S in the spring of 2021 with weekly public conversations on culture’s influence on race and equity.
The Lady of The Woods
OCTOBER 29 - NOVEMBER 9, 2021
Kim Massaro
Artist Statement:
The Lady of the Woods series in charcoal brings to mind gravestone rubbings, while the dark but heroic themes, limited palette, and her free style nod to comic books, graphic novels, and fantasy art. An unfamiliar character, the Lady is an embodiment of death, like her brother, the Grim Reaper. While the Grim Reaper's domain is open space, she, instead, presides over the woods.
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Telling Stories
SEPTEMBER 3 - OCTOBER 24, 2021
Lynne Barr
Exhibit Statement:
Exterior shapes and interior spaces • At first glance, artist Lynne Barr’s arresting geometric sculptures feel complete. It is not until you step closer and engage with them that they begin to tell their stories. Why are some things hidden? How do ideas and beliefs become mainstream? Who are the storytellers of today? Is it possible to hold onto a belief and still make room for others?
Artist Statement:
"Telling Stories is a show which puts atheism on an equal footing, in a public space, with theism.
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Becoming Grey
SEPTEMBER 3 - OCTOBER 24, 2021 (Lobby Gallery)
Nancy Grace Horton
Exhibit Statement:
Becoming Grey is a celebration of women’s hair, identity, desire, and power.
Through audio interviews, video, and still photographs, Becoming Grey portrays women who defy stereotypical notions of greying and gender beauty. Photographer Nancy Grace Horton coaxes women to flaunt their grey hair and explore the feelings and motivations behind the search for identity in hair color. Designed to confront expectations and provoke conversation, the Becoming Grey installation embraces every woman’s journey, and advocates for realistic representations of female identity.
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Transitions and Meditations
JULY 2 - AUGUST 22, 2021
MJ Benson / Shanna Fliegel / Lana Vogestad
Exhibit Statement:
The artists’ work featured in Transitions and Meditations offers both a literal invitation to meditation as well as an opportunity to reflect on nature as nurture and the power of creative expression to help us process events and emotions.
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Life is Drag: More is Better and Never Too Much
MAY 7 - JUNE 27, 2021
Rachel Rampleman
Artist Statement:
Rachel Rampleman creates bodies of work that explore subjects like gender, artifice, and spectacle. She showcases exuberantly bold and irrepressible personalities who revel in challenging common clichés associated with masculinity and femininity.
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Off-Color
MARCH 5 - APRIL 25, 2021
Cody Mack
Artist Statement:
Cody Mack works with a material called Pennsylvania Bluestone, creating objects, color schemes and abstractions referring to its own materiality. Using both predetermined and subjective aesthetics in his paintings, prints, and sculpture, Mack presents his own paradox exploring language, composition, line and color.
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Ordinary, Elusive
MARCH 5 - APRIL 25, 2021
Steve Novick
Artist Statement:
Have you ever become fixated on a word (“rooster”, say, or “barrel”) and repeated it in your head, over and over, until its sounds became alien—practically divorced from language? That sort of game, between sense and its absence, also may play out in a visual arena. Steve Novick's sculptures attempt to take advantage of that possibility, though that is not the exclusive aim.
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Every Other Line
MARCH 5 - APRIL 25, 2021
Jim Zingarelli
Artist Statement:
With influences ranging from jazz improvisation to color theories, from Vermeer to Albers, from Dostoevsky to Emmanuel Levinas, Jim Zingarelli's new body of paintings rhythmically improvises its way through the diverse issues where “the face of the other” becomes the means by which individual works (and we as individuals) find identity.
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Phantasmagoria
JANUARY 8 - FEBRUARY 28, 2021
Mia Rollins
Artist Statement:
Mia Rollins' work in Phantasmagoria explores the murky divide between memory and imagination, science and magic, and posits that all good moments in time are never lost- they merely turn into a kind of dormant magic, waiting to be conjured up whenever and wherever we need joy most.
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Cluster
JANUARY 8 - FEBRUARY 28, 2021
Craig Hill
Artist Statement:
In combining his Surrealists interest in the unconscious with a postmodern sensibility, Craig Hill creates evocative paintings and collages that are distinctively psychically charged.
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woven female landscape
NOVEMBER 20 - JANUARY 3, 2021
Linda Pagani
Artist Statement:
woven female landscape addresses the complex relationship between female and feminine identity. The work draws attention to the questions contemporary women face in constructing a present-day definition of ‘womanhood.’ A series of sculptures and installations portray tradition, domesticity, and sensuality of the female form through cloth, paper, and porcelain.
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Dysfunction of Aesthetic Forms and Their Opposites
AUGUST 7, 2020 - JANUARY 3, 2021 (Lobby Gallery)
Eric Katzman
Artist Statement:
We know that memory is very plastic and easily deformed. This idea is the seed that gives form to the internal dialogue that shapes how I paint. My visual vocabulary, through impressions and memories, is grown and developed. Like gardening, I prune branching ideas and images, discarding elements while emphasizing others. My mark making is the gentle unfolding of surface, interplay of form, undulating lines and hard geometric shapes. These works, which were painted in the past eighteen months, create nonfunctional visual narratives of memory.
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Your Leader Could be a Tyrant, How to Tell
SEPTEMBER 11 - NOVEMBER 1, 2020
Tatana Kellner
Artist Statement:
"My work is rooted in social issues...I feel compelled to create and present work in order to engender conversation and dialogue...I find the rise of ultra-nationalism, protectionism and the worldwide threat to the democratic principles very troubling...This exhibit features paintings highlighting contemporary tyrants and their odd habits." - Tatana Kellner
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50 Views of the Piscataqua
JULY 24 - SEPTEMBER 6, 2020
Rachel Burgess
Exhibit Statement:
Using drawing and monotype, I create iconic landscapes of Maine and Massachusetts that explore the connection between memory and storytelling. I’m fascinated by the discrepancy between what we see and how we remember it. By editing, abstracting, printing and reversing my landscapes, I give physical form to the process we perform internally when we convert an experience into a memory. The results are images of places as seen through my mind’s eye, fabricated versions of real scenes.
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Abstraction
JULY 24 - SEPTEMBER 6, 2020
MJ Blanchette, Rebecca Klementovich, Kathleen Robbins
Exhibit Statement:
Walking the line between figuration and abstraction, this exhibit explores the non-objective role abstract art plays in our culture, perception, and psyche. Using diverse subject matter, three painters created work reflecting their personal experiences. Not surprisingly, the experience of painting during a global pandemic found its way into the visual language of interpreting the world around them.
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Life is Drag: Virtual Edition (virtual exhibit)
MAY 1 - JUNE 21, 2020
Rachel Rampleman
Exhibit Statement:
Brooklyn-based multimedia artist Rachel Rampleman creates bodies of work that explore subjects like gender, artifice, and spectacle. Utilizing processes ranging from directorial to curatorial to anthropological, she showcases exuberantly bold and irrepressible personalities who revel in challenging common clichés associated with masculinity and femininity.
During her residency, Rachel met with 21 New England-based drag artists, and captured compelling interviews, stunning photographs, and transcendent performances that have become a part of her growing Life is Drag archive. This was her first opportunity to create a large number of video portraits as part of a residency, and she found herself in awe of the wide range of talent she encountered at 3S, the unbridled creativity, confidence, boldness, and power of the performers, and the exuberant and liberating energy and feelings they inspired.
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mirror IV
FEBRUARY 7 - MARCH 2020
Amy Stacey Curtis
Artist Statement:
My focus is interactive installation. My works physically exist as art only while installed and activated by audience. Participants literally complete this imagery, invited to perpetuate and resolve the installations in specific ways. Once dismantled, each work exists and continues only through documentation and the memory of its participants. My installations have never really been my own. Participants are collaborators, part of the work and event as a whole. Without audience, my installations are static and unfinished. Each installation includes instructions, as much an element of this work as the audience. Participants use this guidance to influence, alter, maintain, progress, and distinguish, becoming part of each work.
For each installation, I have a desired vision, progression, and result which I initiate. But, by relinquishing the concept over to the audience, my work sometimes proceeds in ways I could never anticipate. This aspect, also, is a crucial part of the work. As each participant effects each work in his or her own way, I try to convey we are part of a whole, part of the all. We affect everyone and everything, while everyone and everything affects us, no matter how small or fleeting the impact.
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Patio Life
FEBRUARY 7 - MARCH 2020 (Lobby Gallery)
James Collins
Artist Statement:
The camera provides an up-close peek at my fellow patio dwellers whose respective behaviors pique my curiosity and intrigue me. All subjects seen were photographed outdoors in my backyard or front porch; none were harmed. Whether planting a single flower or large garden—you won’t have to travel far to find interesting neighbors if you look close enough.
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Laurentidian
JANUARY 10 - FEBRUARY 2, 2020
Ciara Wright
Artist Statement:
No longer can we be sedate in our relationship to place. The Western world has seen its colonization and consumption of the Land as an exercise of eminent domain, unaware, or insensate to the fact that the impacted Land has a reciprocal effect upon its inhabitants. In 2020, we can no longer ignore the effect the changing environment has upon us. As this major cultural transition envelops us, we must redefine and reevaluate our relationship to Land, not only as fuel for the raw engine of capitalism, but in its capacity as a cultural reliquary for memory and narrative.
Through installations, sculptures and drawings that focus on the psychology of Land, Ciara Wright’s work humorously interferes with preconceptions of our relationship to place. With the use of sound and other interactive components, Wright toys with the possibility of manifesting Land’s agency, giving it a ‘voice’ in the contemporary examination of our complicity in a deteriorating natural world.
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Room for Memory
NOVEMBER 22, 2019 - JANUARY 4, 2020
Heather Morgan
Artist Statement:
Heather Morgan’s oil paintings depict figures (mostly women) that are performing their identities. It is a tense and fevered display, aching with self-consciousness. The possibilities for self-creation are illustrated in a succession of vivid characters based on the artist and her acquaintances.
Vivid and theatrical as these images are, the viewer is thrust into discomfiting intimacy with these defiant characters. These works invite the viewer to look and to covet, presenting an alluring world that is also potent and seething. Beauty quivers with pain and flaw in the distorted, luminous subjects that populate Morgan's paintings. These unflinching yet vulnerable pastel heroines become all the more unknowable, as they reveal themselves in their fractured splendor.
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devolve
OCTOBER 4 - NOVEMBER 11, 2019
Andy Mauery
Artist Statement:
devolve is my ode to the non-human species that we can’t seem to stop ourselves from destroying; and a sideways look at how we humans keep ourselves at the center of this equation. To devolve is to pass on rights, responsibilities, and/or powers, from one person or entity to another. As a verb, it also suggests degeneration, possibly an entropic unmaking. devolve consists of objects and small installations, most created in the last 3 years. I work primarily with hair because it is deeply personal, and at the same time a shared mammalian attribute. Its central role here feels a bit obsessive, and fetishistic, and right. Many of the works, most obviously the “orifice” pieces, are similar to mandalas in composition and in the ritual sense: they represent the effort to reunify the self. The self, in this instance, has to be a self that is not separate from its natural, biological world.
I focus mainly on species endangered in New England, or have some type of protected or rare status recognized by government entities. The fiber works show the species without using highly realistic or photographic images: they are filtered through our knowing them, our fairytales, our self-importance. I’ve also included some projects that focus on invisible entities that we interact with on a daily basis. The works featuring diatom drawings, the Petri dishes and dominoes, are simple configurations whose arrangements guarantee their fragility. Diatoms are photosynthesizing algae found in almost every aquatic environment, and they are responsible for one-fifth of photosynthesis on Earth; they are the base of the marine food web, and help to shape the carbon cycle. Their complex relationships with other microbes, including marine bacteria, shape huge relationships that determine the health of a staggering number of diverse species. devolve is a curation of personal concerns, visual representations that explore protection and loss. There are attempts at logical rationale, allusions to longhaired princesses in towers, and it all has the feeling of being generated from a singular, redheaded point of view.
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Elvis Room: A Retrospective
OCTOBER 4 - 27, 2019
Photography, archival media, and journals from patrons, musicians, writers, and artists that were part of the Elvis Room community.
Provocative and uncensored, the Elvis Room journals are the most unique of time capsules, inviting visitors into the minds of the Portsmouth youth counter-culture and art scene in the 90s. In addition to displays of heartfelt artwork and poetry, the platform and anonymity of these journal entries draws striking parallels to modern social media: lust, love, heartbreak, bullying, rumors, violence-- it’s all there, beautifully handwritten in all its glory.
The archival photographs on display use the lens to show what the Elvis Room was like from the outside looking in. Black and white work by photojournalist Timothy Donovan, as well as color photography by Jayson Harrington, Jenene Bernstein, Barb Steinbach, and Dawn Marie Pierre capture the culture, raw energy, and madness of the Elvis Room in 35mm splendor.
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Talismans For Travelers
AUGUST 30 - SEPTEMBER 28, 2019
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Giant Watercolor World
JULY 19 - AUGUST 25, 2019
Robert Morgan
Artist Statement:
Robert Morgan's latest work is a series of large, densely hued paintings which are cut out and glued together to create various visual planes. The paintings are composed of a number of layers of watercolors mounted on other watercolors. The resulting enlarged images and moody atmospheres are an attempt to create an eerie, disquieting transcendence, drawing the viewer into an inner world of emotional and sensual conflict.
In this body of work, viewers are encouraged to participate in the paintings as an ‘absent presence.’ The large scale and sensuality of the medium invite entrance into each situation. Objects or people inhabit ambiguous spaces, reminiscent of stage settings where numerous symbolic levels are presented to the audience using backdrops. The viewer may experience an emotional potpourri, depending on the individual’s base associations with the symbols.
People and objects in modern society are often found out of context or alienated from predictable settings – life is complicated and so are the conflicting emotions we experience. The paintings are about these clashes and the necessity to produce one's own metaphysical symbols, one's own myths, one’s own spirituality. Yet the hope and peace in the paintings seem to lie beyond the barriers, abysses or ambiguity, hence the discord. The contrasts -- hard and soft, dark and light, warm and cold, peaceful and threatening -- are juxtaposed against each other, giving resonance to an outwardly simple painting.
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LEAPTWISTTURN
JUNE 7 - AUGUST 25, 2019
Adria Arch
Artist Statement:
Adria Arch creates "hybrid paintings" on lightweight plastic comprised of cut out abstract elements inhabiting space. Points of entry physically engage and suggest new ways of seeing. Suspended from the ceiling and walls, this work combines the formal concerns of painting while extending into space like sculpture, thus their hybrid nature. These installations question what makes a painting and how the viewer interacts with it.
Twist, turn, spin, leap – these words evoke the dance-like movements that inform the compositions. Expressing a physical experience of the world, they reach into the realm of both theater and child’s play. Referencing decorative elements and colors typical of mid-20th century women’s clothing, comic books, and street art, Arch uses pattern, shadows and bold colors with sharply defined edges that suggest self-assertion. The use of simple and often ephemeral materials (paper and lightweight plastic) unapologetically champions the handmade.
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Factory Made
JUNE 7 - JULY 14, 2019
Michael Hambouz
Artist Statement:
Multidisciplinary artist Michael Hambouz uses: multi-dimensional perspectives and forms as tools to capture profound life experiences and daily observations; the process of making, for positive self-healing and/or diversion from said experiences; and the finished work, as a vehicle to initiate connectivity and dialogue with others. His work ranges from light, humorous vignettes to heavier investigations embedded within symbolic, abstracted subtexts—approaching each piece with the same adaptive thoughtfulness as he approaches the ebbs and flows of daily life.
Hambouz’ ever-evolving processes involve constant experimentation with multiple mediums, techniques, and approaches, and diving into unfamiliar territories with technical problems to solve. He often keeps 3-5 simultaneous series in motion, and when completing one piece (in cut paper for example), he moves on to painting, drawing, printing, and animation (no specific order). With each passing of a cyclical cycle of mediums, he begins anew with heightened insight and skills—always moving forward.
For the Factory Made series, he hand-cut paper stock from independently-owned, family-run French Paper Company to create vibrant, abstracted scenes of the very factory where the paper is produced. The series provides a glimpse into the operations of the 140-year-old American paper mill by showcasing the production process and machinery—from pulp to the final paper product—in intricately layered collage format.
The subject matter is of particular resonance to the artist, growing up within a mile of the mill, and investigating it as a means to reconnect with his hometown of Niles, Michigan following the unexpected passing of his mother in 2012. Hambouz found artistic inspiration in the factory and its paper—providing an adventurous new direction in his work and practice to come. The resulting series celebrates small manufacturing and a geographical sense of home.
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High-Water Mark
APRIL 19 - MAY 26, 2019
Yu-Wen Wu
Artist Statement:
High-Water Mark is a multimedia, regionally specific installation by Boston-based artist Yu-Wen Wu, curated by Kristina Durocher, Director, Museum of Art of the University of New Hampshire.
Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Wu’s family immigrated to the United States soon after the enactment of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Her experiences as an immigrant have shaped the themes of her work: examining issues of displacement, movement, assimilation, culture and identity. High-Water Mark focuses on rising sea levels, storm surge flooding, and the projected displacement of people who live in the New Hampshire and Maine sea coast region. The exhibition video and a large-scale wall drawing represent the wanderings of someone new to the region, a visitor surveying the landscape, city, and its surroundings with fresh eyes – Wu is the proverbial migrant, making connections between natural and built environments, cultural systems, and seeing relationships between past and present that will help us navigate an unfamiliar ecosystem and an environment in flux.
While relying on hard data and scientific research practices, Wu’s visualization of data—video, maps, and graphs—is a metaphorical reading of a changing environment, incorporating filmed scenes of the tidal waters of the Piscataqua River, sites along the North and South Mill Ponds, coastal wetlands, and sky, emphasizing the aesthetic experience over narrative characteristics. Viewers will come away with an impression and awareness of the impact of rising sea levels on the Portsmouth region.
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Chromatic
MARCH 1 - APRIL 7, 2019
Linda Behar
Artist Statement:
I’m an artist whose interest in shapes manifests itself through a variety of media. I seek to bring forward the contradictions between the expectations of society and an individual’s sense of self. My focus is on women and the stark standards that have been established for a woman’s appearance. After finding a study made by the U.S. government in 1940 to standardize the woman body, I created a geometrical shape using the measurements generated by the study and presented it in drawings and three-dimensional figures.
The exploration of shape goes deeper through my work with the study of body language. The pose is shapes, and shape is both a noun and a verb-- to understand the human behavior is imperative to see it as a whole. Body language gives a visual form to identity and enhances the visual aesthetics of communication. You are what you create, as much as you are what you perform. My goal is to create images that echo the past, confront the present, and embrace the future.
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Punk is Alive
MARCH 1 - 17, 2019
JJ Gonson and Kim Maroon’s photography capture the raw energy and aliveness of punk, past and present. From basements, to barricades, to festivals, they present performance photography at its finest, capturing the real faces, fun, and fury of punk. Punk is ALIVE and still wielding ideas at the world loud and clear!
About JJ Gonson:
Photographer. Localvore. Music-lover. JJ Gonson has had a camera in her hand for most of her waking hours and most of her life, a large amount of her work is of punk/hardcore bands taken in the dank clubs of the Boston area between 1985-1991. Unafraid to climb stacks of amps and speakers or bang around in the pits with beer and sweat to get the best shots, JJ captures the living, in-your-face passion and power of punk rock in the 80s and early 90s.
About Kimberly Maroon:
Kimberly Maroon's interest in photography ignited in 2003 when she brought her 35mm Minolta camera to a campus show at the University of Delaware. Through music, she learned how to be a photographer and how to connect with people. Kim quickly became part of the punk and hardcore music scenes, mesmerized by the wild energy and chaos at shows, and the community that accompanied it. From 2003 - 2011, she traveled between Delaware, New Jersey, New York City, and Philadelphia documenting bands and crowds from basements, bars, and theaters to arenas, festivals, and even a bowling alley. Regardless of the venue, she finds the connection of the community and subculture built around this music to be unwavering and she continues to keep an intimate record through her photographs.
Kim has lived in the Allston neighborhood of Boston since 2011 and received her MFA from the Dynamic Media Institute at MassArt. She is a self-taught photographer and filmmaker while also working as an experience designer. Kim creates visual content for a variety of active and lifestyle brands such as Red Bull, GoPro, Do617, and ICA Boston. She has exhibited her work in Portland, OR and throughout New England, and is currently exhibiting select photographs from The Race of Gentlemen (Pismo, CA and Wildwood, NJ - 2016-2018) at Mingo Gallery in Beverly, MA.
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Wayfaring Stranger, On the Way to Lost and Found
FEBRUARY 1 - 24, 2019
This exhibit provides work in multiple mediums by UNH art students and alumni. All work is informed by Rebecca Solnit’s collection of autobiographical essays entitled A Field Guide to Getting Lost. In this investigation into loss, losing and being lost, Solnit explores the challenges of living with uncertainty. A Field Guide to Getting Lost takes on subjects as eclectic as memory and mapmaking, Hitchcock movies, and renaissance painting. Beautifully written, the book combines memoir, history, and philosophy and sheds light on how we live today.
The work in this exhibition reflects Solnit's multitude of approaches to the theme of getting lost. UNH students and alumni responded to A Field Guide to Getting Lost by creating paintings, drawings, photographs, sculpture, animated GIFS, and furniture. Additionally, students from the English department will write pieces in response to the book as well as the exhibition. The artists' interpretations of this theme include exploring unknown territory, examining what is viewed as the familiar, reinterpreting art history, and focusing on the process of making art as an act of getting lost.
Wayfaring Stranger, On the Way to Lost and Found was coordinated at UNH by Sachiko Akiyama- sculptor, Portsmouth resident, and professor of art at UNH. She was also recently awarded the Artist Advancement Grant from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation. Support provided by the University of New Hampshire.
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Yoga Photogravures
JANUARY 4 - JANUARY 27, 2019
Jay Goldsmith
Artist Statement:
There is a certain quality in something made by hand. The presentation of an insight, which in the case of photography is the print, seems somehow different when it is a product of skilled craftsmanship rather than the press of a button. A darkroom photograph may not be as perfect as a digital print, but that may be its validity: neither is it as sterile.
For ten years I hand-made platinum/palladium portraits, a 19th century process that renders a very beautiful print of soft and delicate tones. Recently, however, and a bit of an about face, I switched to using very bold and dramatic black inks and the mechanical operation of producing a print by running a metal plate through a rotary press. This is still very much of a hand-made product with its learning curve full of decisions and expenses and frustrations, but just enough occasional breakthroughs.
This exhibit, then, is a series of intaglio prints--photogravures--of local yogis and yoga teachers. All the sittings were done in my Portsmouth studio and all the prints made on a large French press at Chase’s Garage in York, Maine.
I would just add that if making a good photogravure is more difficult than it sounds, the poses in this exhibit are much more difficult than they look!
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Wildlife Fashion Art Safari
JANUARY 4 - 27, 2019
Peter Morgan / Adam Hinterlang
Artist Statement:
Wildlife Fashion Art Safari began in the summer of 2005 as a collaboration between ceramicist Peter Morgan and new media artist Adam Hinterlang. The original principal was to take fashionable, trendy colors of the day and apply them to silhouetted images of animals in action poses. This project brought together both artists' interest in animals & color theory. Wildlife Fashion Art Safari was our get rich quick scheme that involved creating designs for purses, and T-shirts that we are still waiting to capitalize on.
The project has expanded from the early days of digital prints and theoretical handbags into large tile panels. This foray into ceramic tile focuses on the unique color, depth, and material phenomenology of the ceramic process exploring the optical and perceptive properties of different glaze combinations. The tile format gives us the opportunity to expand the scale of the work exponentially while creating unique compositions within the larger whole.
Though representational in nature, we think of Wildlife Fashion Art Safari as analogous to hard edge, color field painting, with a focus on the phenomenon of color perception. We are interested in the optical effects and illusions such as “after image” created from viewing these works. Of recent interest is the experience of viewing the works through 3D or Anaglyphic glasses. We stumbled upon these unique optical effects by accident, and it has become a design principle in many of our new tile works, prints, and videos.
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Rock/Paper/Scissors
November 23 - December 30, 2018
Gallery exhibit Rock/Paper/Scissors combines Universal Forest, a micro/macro environment by Juliet Karelsen complemented by the layered papercuttings of Dylan Metrano.
Universal Forest / Juliet Karelsen / Artist Statement:
In all its various forms and configurations, my work cross references painting, stitching, tapestry, rug making, embroidery, abstract art, fantasy, landscape, textile, miniature worlds, and even science - from botany to mycology to planetary and solar - touching on the micro and macro scales. Are we looking out into the vast universe? Down at an exotic petri dish or at the lichens and moss on the forest ground? Although not overtly political, sadly, nature has become a political issue.
In a world where daily interaction with plants and trees and moss and lichen (etc!) is increasingly rare, even disappearing, my work points to the importance of taking the time to slow down, notice and protect the jewels of the forest, the world and the universe. As Denise Levertov says in her poem “Sojourns in the Parallel World”: We live our lives […in] / A world / parallel to our own though overlapping. / We call it ‘Nature’; only reluctantly / admitting ourselves to be ‘Nature’ too.
Papercuttings / Dylan Metrano / Artist Statement:
This series of layered papercuttings show the subject range I like to work with: portraits, animals, and scenes from the unique landscape of my home, Monhegan Island. The works created for Rock/Paper/Scissors push beyond the sum of my body of work and into the strange and unexpected. Inspired by whimsy and abstraction, I allowed those elements to sneak into this new body of work.
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September 28 - November 12, 2018
Sammy Chong
Artist Statement:
Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “Everyone has the right to do a job, to a fair wage for their work.” The foundation of the American economy certainly relies on underrated jobs performed by unsung hero-workers. Although the fruit of their labor benefits the American lifestyle, society fails to see and value the individual employee; his or her existence is taken for granted as a cog in the machine. My paintings make visible those who are invisible by honoring them in their humble activities, instead of depicting them as victims or second-class citizens.
Unglamorous jobs are performed by members of the lower social class; immigrants are included in this by default. Tapping into surreal aesthetics, my work features spiritual and mythological entities taking human form in the bodies of hard-working individuals. Their heads represent powerful symbols from different cultures. Underneath each painting lies a collage of photos that could have been taken from each worker’s photo albums. These vignettes show the richness of each culture, and sources of pride: vintage family pictures, folk traditions, patriotic festivities, religious ceremonies, landmarks, traditional dress and dishes. This background signifies the very fabric of cultural identity and individual self-respect.
Delving deeper than just outward looks, we can discover that underrated workers are endowed with a cultural wealth that could be a source of enrichment for all. When social tension based on ignorance and prejudice is running amok, my goal is to bring forth a perspective that invites us to view them in a different light.
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Street Scene
Hans Gindlesberger / Jon Horvath
Artist Statement:
Continuing in the tradition of re-photographic projects, the Internet and immersive travel simulators, such as Google Street View and Bing Streetside, are used to virtually journey to sites where iconic images from the history of photography and cinema were created. Photography, cinema, and newer technologies like Street View share a relation as mediums that have been used as surrogates for travel and a way of augmenting our lived experience. While serving a similar impulse, each platform delivers its own unique perception of reality. In choreographing a mashup of content that offers varied perspectives of a place, the iconic image is overlaid with the virtual landscape and then, relying on the vernacular of the digital image, allow an intelligent computer process to determine how those two sets of information will interact and composite.
To further the dialogue between the camera’s witnessing of the physical landscape and the mediated experience of its virtual equivalent, the images are written back into by glitching them with information gathered while researching the locations of the photographs. Navigating the Internet to find these locations is an exercise in traversing a hyperlinked set of stories, dead ends, data sets, news accounts, and testimonies. These signposts are presented below the image in an arrangement that produces a dialogue between the physical world and the datastream, past and present, banality and spectacle, filmic narratives and anonymous landscapes, amongst many other unanticipated relations. The works seek to leverage these complex layers of mediation in creating a new form of image that asks questions about our experience or non-experience of places through the proxy of the electronic image.