April 30 – June 5, 2021
Artists make things, sometimes the work matters, sometimes it doesn’t. The ideas that set the work into motion, that bring the materials into relation are what matters. They are the catalyst for a balancing act that sustains the mind, body and soul of each maker of things.
Shapes and spaces are the focus of two such artists, Irene Nelson and Sheila Ghidini. The easiest access into the work for the viewer might be the basic visual elements that initially confront them; line, shape, form, color, value and space. Layered within these are the ideas of the work. Irene Nelson, uses strong interrelated shapes to convey her ideas about being in the world, about facing fear, about being still in her act of self-discovery. The negative spaces take on the responsibility of holding the parts together, while the vibrant colors hold the viewer’s eye to the work.
The negative spaces that Ghidini focuses on are reassembled from their original forms into new arrangements that take shape as sculptures. Utilizing found domestic chairs, these arrangements are often times far from the original structures which were the catalyst for the process of disassembling and reassembling. Since the origin of each form was a chair (and a tree before that), the maker is aware that it served as a locator in space for someone who once inhabited the space of the chair or in the case of the tree, as a grounded form also integrally connected to place. She finds the space inside and around this mini architecture to be compelling and being charged with an energy of time and place.
