Human Nature | September 19 - October 24, 2015
Bear Kirkpatrick, Ruari (Euchroma Gigantica)
Opening Artist Reception
Saturday, September 19th, 5-8pm
Closing Reception
Saturday, October 24th, 4-7pm
Bear Kirkpatrick
Amy Gross
Christopher Gowell
IN THE LOFT: Paintings by Kent Maxwell
Internationally recognized photographer Bear Kirkpatrick‘s “Human Diorama,” is an unprecedented installation-rich selection of images and ephemera from his series ‘Hierophanies’ and ‘The Old Ones’. Kirkpatrick’s images takeover the main gallery, providing the viewer with a provocative experience that looks for evidence in the modern world of the scholar Mircea Eliade's evocation of the Hierophany, the name he coined for a tear in the fabric of the profane world that showed a glimpse of the sacred world behind it.
To Eliade, “all that lives and breathes, dies, is part of a cycle of life and death, is a natural part of the profane world. The sacred world exists as a memory of a place before death.”
In Kirkpatrick’s wallportraits of ‘The Old Ones’, he asks the viewer, “If we carry inherited physical and behavioral traits, wouldn’t we also carry inherited traits of consciousness? We are all a learned thing—an ever-gathering and ever-adjusting animal.” It is those traits that he uses his camera to find, if only for 1/200th of a second. They are the ghosts of presence and memory, the vestigial elements we carry within and about us as invisibly as spirits.
Amy Gross’s embroidered and beaded fiber sculptures merge the natural world with her own inner life. They mimic the visible and the invisible, the observed and imagined. Their symbiosis suggests not only what can be seen, but also what cannot: the early alterations of time, the first suggestions of disintegration.
“I have always been attracted and frightened by the poignancy of things that are on the edge of spoiling, or straining to support the excess of their blooms. So my growths’ elements cluster, tangle, cling and climb. They are collaborations of the observed and the engineered, and completely unnatural.”
Gross uses no found objects, nothing that used to be alive are used - all are made from craft store yarns and beads and paper. They’re still and silent imitation, fictions frozen in the midst of their imagined transformation. The attempt to control the changes made by time is a purely human conceit.
“My organisms will not die. I know that my making these objects will not stop the clock, but I still need to hold things still, assert my will. In a time when I am acutely aware of the limits and contradictions of my presence here, the urge to pause feels paramount.”
Christopher Gowell is a figure sculptor whose work is concerned with the beauty and challenge of sculpting the vulnerable nude. Gowell’s pieces range from simple figures and portraits, to work that is detailed and eclectic, drawing on medieval, classical, and baroque traditions to integrate fantasy, narrative, and symbolic mythology.
“My personal artistic quest is to become the best figure sculptor in terms of technical expertise and anatomical knowledge, and to imbue my work with mystery, passion, and magic. As a symbolist, I desire the exterior form to convey something more than the intrinsic beauty of the sculpted nude -- perhaps creating a psychological and archetypal imagery. When I was a child I was sure I’d grow up to write and illustrate fairy tales. Now, like a goddess, I wish to create my own mysterious ‘magic realist’ world, peopled with alchemic creatures.”
Working directly in clay, casting in bronze or cement, enhancing form with color patinas, Gowell’s pieces range in scale from life size to miniature -- from free-standing three-dimensional forms to reliefs. Christopher Gowell is the director of Sanctuary Arts, an artists’ residential and studio community with a “skill-based” art school and Green Foundry, a bronze, iron and aluminum casting and teaching foundry in Eliot, Maine.
In The Loft Gallery, Kent Maxwell’s paintings are an immediate impression from the images in his mind, like a still from a movie reel; a fleeting moment meant to remind the viewer of a place they may have actually visited or have dreamed about. The processes and methods Maxwell employs while creating art are experimental. Building textured layers and a low relief onto the two-dimensional canvas, he thrives in unconventional styles and mediums that infuse the grittiness and immediacy of real life into his work. By making each piece with a variety of textures, layers and a specifically chosen pallet, he provides an overview of a scene, allowing the viewer to inject the context.
The exhibition, ‘Human Nature’ runs September 19th – October 24th, 2015. It is free and open to the public. All works are available for purchase.
Sponsored by Keller Williams Coastal Realty, Flowers by Leslie, Smuttynose Brewing Company, and Port City Makerspace.
Saturday, September 19th, 5-8pm
Closing Reception
Saturday, October 24th, 4-7pm
Bear Kirkpatrick
Amy Gross
Christopher Gowell
IN THE LOFT: Paintings by Kent Maxwell
Internationally recognized photographer Bear Kirkpatrick‘s “Human Diorama,” is an unprecedented installation-rich selection of images and ephemera from his series ‘Hierophanies’ and ‘The Old Ones’. Kirkpatrick’s images takeover the main gallery, providing the viewer with a provocative experience that looks for evidence in the modern world of the scholar Mircea Eliade's evocation of the Hierophany, the name he coined for a tear in the fabric of the profane world that showed a glimpse of the sacred world behind it.
To Eliade, “all that lives and breathes, dies, is part of a cycle of life and death, is a natural part of the profane world. The sacred world exists as a memory of a place before death.”
In Kirkpatrick’s wallportraits of ‘The Old Ones’, he asks the viewer, “If we carry inherited physical and behavioral traits, wouldn’t we also carry inherited traits of consciousness? We are all a learned thing—an ever-gathering and ever-adjusting animal.” It is those traits that he uses his camera to find, if only for 1/200th of a second. They are the ghosts of presence and memory, the vestigial elements we carry within and about us as invisibly as spirits.
Amy Gross’s embroidered and beaded fiber sculptures merge the natural world with her own inner life. They mimic the visible and the invisible, the observed and imagined. Their symbiosis suggests not only what can be seen, but also what cannot: the early alterations of time, the first suggestions of disintegration.
“I have always been attracted and frightened by the poignancy of things that are on the edge of spoiling, or straining to support the excess of their blooms. So my growths’ elements cluster, tangle, cling and climb. They are collaborations of the observed and the engineered, and completely unnatural.”
Gross uses no found objects, nothing that used to be alive are used - all are made from craft store yarns and beads and paper. They’re still and silent imitation, fictions frozen in the midst of their imagined transformation. The attempt to control the changes made by time is a purely human conceit.
“My organisms will not die. I know that my making these objects will not stop the clock, but I still need to hold things still, assert my will. In a time when I am acutely aware of the limits and contradictions of my presence here, the urge to pause feels paramount.”
Christopher Gowell is a figure sculptor whose work is concerned with the beauty and challenge of sculpting the vulnerable nude. Gowell’s pieces range from simple figures and portraits, to work that is detailed and eclectic, drawing on medieval, classical, and baroque traditions to integrate fantasy, narrative, and symbolic mythology.
“My personal artistic quest is to become the best figure sculptor in terms of technical expertise and anatomical knowledge, and to imbue my work with mystery, passion, and magic. As a symbolist, I desire the exterior form to convey something more than the intrinsic beauty of the sculpted nude -- perhaps creating a psychological and archetypal imagery. When I was a child I was sure I’d grow up to write and illustrate fairy tales. Now, like a goddess, I wish to create my own mysterious ‘magic realist’ world, peopled with alchemic creatures.”
Working directly in clay, casting in bronze or cement, enhancing form with color patinas, Gowell’s pieces range in scale from life size to miniature -- from free-standing three-dimensional forms to reliefs. Christopher Gowell is the director of Sanctuary Arts, an artists’ residential and studio community with a “skill-based” art school and Green Foundry, a bronze, iron and aluminum casting and teaching foundry in Eliot, Maine.
In The Loft Gallery, Kent Maxwell’s paintings are an immediate impression from the images in his mind, like a still from a movie reel; a fleeting moment meant to remind the viewer of a place they may have actually visited or have dreamed about. The processes and methods Maxwell employs while creating art are experimental. Building textured layers and a low relief onto the two-dimensional canvas, he thrives in unconventional styles and mediums that infuse the grittiness and immediacy of real life into his work. By making each piece with a variety of textures, layers and a specifically chosen pallet, he provides an overview of a scene, allowing the viewer to inject the context.
The exhibition, ‘Human Nature’ runs September 19th – October 24th, 2015. It is free and open to the public. All works are available for purchase.
Sponsored by Keller Williams Coastal Realty, Flowers by Leslie, Smuttynose Brewing Company, and Port City Makerspace.
