Bottom row, left to right: Rodell Warner, “Artificial Archive SCRYING INTIMACIES, View from the Portal IV,” 2024, giclee print on Hahnemuhle paper, 8” x 8”. Ariana Gomez, “Where There Was Clay,” 2024, C=cyanotypes on silk Organza dim, variable sizes. Phoebe Shuman-Goodier, “Fallen,” 2022, archival ink jet print, 20” x 24”. Alexandre Pepin, Sunset in Bed, 2024, oil and sand on canvas, 30” x 40”.
On a well-traveled street in Williamstown, Massachusetts is an apex of contemporary art in the area, the North Loop Gallery. Co-founded by Izzy Lee and Laurel Brown, both with ties to Williams College, the gallery was named for the Austin, Texas neighborhood where both lived while pursuing graduate degrees in art history at the University of Texas. The gallery has hosted many well-curated exhibitions in the few years that it has been open, and for the current shows, that will be open for Labor Day Weekend viewing on Saturday and Sunday and continue through September 15, invited two guest curators.
Rina Goldfield’s own work, both visual and research, centers around the act of reading. She is currently the Interim Co-chair of MFA Painting at Boston University. Maggie Mitts is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, researching the works and lives of sisters Rosemary and Bernadette Mayer, the archiving of everyday life, and feminist, queer, and trans* theories.
“Perpetual Seam,” curated by Rina Goldfield, is influenced by the Emily Dickenson poem of the same name:
“A Word dropped careless on a Page
May stimulate an eye
When folded in perpetual seam
The Wrinkled Maker lie”
Setting the backdrop for her show, Goldfield writes, “The seam is a metaphor but also a physical suture, implying that meaning emerges from material and from joining…”
Gaby Collins-Fernandez’s “The Change Fell Out of Your Eye” exemplifies this “seamless seam” aspect, a plethora of materials combining, ensuring that unexpected juxtapositions and explorations of the surface are “perpetual” and endless. It is the inconsistencies of the fabric and accompanying materials that come to one’s vision, as if the eyes must take a certain amount of time to focus — the work appears to be preparing to burst out of its own confines.
Gabrielle D’Angelo’s “Up and Out” is gentle piling of materials, almost minimal, each textural boundary and foundation defined by the materials. A combination of traditional elements such as acrylic paint, join with found cardboard and plastic tubing. The colors are rich, shapes transcending the definition of what they are made of.
Carlos Enrique Martinez Ramos builds up the surface in layers of thick holographic film and acrylic amongst other materials in “Flaming Blue Heart Thawing the Petrified.” Preceding layers are visible under the surface, tactile and shiny. It is its own lifeform, almost sentient, breathing and undulating.
Belongings is a compact union of works that drill deeply into the varying dimensions of home and being in a space of personal sustainability. Curated by Maggie Mitts, these works protect the personal settlements of that which resides within and, consequently, on the surface. Rodell Warner’s “Artificial Archive SCRYING INTIMACIES, View from the portal IV”, like others of the series, focuses on the poignancy of relationship, tenderness at once fleeting and eternal. A peephole in a saturated black background, it is a peek into the most personal of chambers, where connection beyond this world resides.
Phoebe Shuman-Goodier’s “Fallen” is a richly textured photograph depicting a man sprawled out on an old, rusted car in the middle of the woods. This is a dream sequence, a place where the man is poised for an additional mishap. The momentum is spiraling, like the anticipation of the next storm in a personal timeless Odyssey.
Ariana Gomez hangs cyanotype flag-like soft silk organza panels in “Where There Was Clay.” The panels depict the San Marcos River, fleeting and fleeing, as it makes its way in and out of city and surroundings; the materials and ethereal, floating nature of the panels reflect impermanence in the outer world, but testify to the ever present of inner dwelling.
Finally, in Alexandre Pépin’s “Sunset in Bed,” the image of lovers is captured in their only-ness, the light playing with the color in the piece, the viewer tricked into voyeurism. Layers build and reveal belonging on an infinite scale of intimacy.
The North Loop Gallery is a relatively small space, but an expansive one. These exhibitions are rhythmic, the works magnetic, and the two shows are complimentary. A stop here on the way to The Clark would be the catalyst and the beginning of a fruitful afternoon.
(“Perpetual Seam,” curated by Rina Goldfield, and “Belongings,” curated by Maggie Mitts, continues through September 15 at the North Loop Gallery, 112 Water St., Williamstown, Massachusetts. Gallery hours are Saturday and Sunday from noon-5 p.m. and by appointment. For more details, visit northloop.art.)