“Adapt or Die: Dancing Between Art and Coexisting on Earth,” on view through this Sunday, September 28 at the Piano Craft Gallery in Boston, features artworks by members of the National Association of Women Artists, Massachusetts Chapter (NAWAMA). The show was juried by Althea Bennett (BFA Parsons School of Design and MAT Massachusetts College of Art) and artist Rebecca Rose Greene, curated by Piano Craft Director Kamal Ahmad and installed by Erik Grau.
NAWAMA President Jean Okumura’s painting “Adapt or Die” is the clarion call for the entire selection. She courage gallery visitors to “Waltz around cultural barriers, be nowhere and everywhere, express boundaries and beliefs through form and energy” in her artist statement, laying the seeds for all the works in the exhibit.
When you enter the gallery, you pass by Erica Joy Sloan’s photograph“Alpine Solitude,” which like Ansel Adam’s grand landscapes, reminds us of our minute existence in the grandeur of Nature. Her other work, “Wings Over Light,” reminds us of the patience a photographer needs to wait for and spot a timeless image.
Marianne Moore’s intricate hand-stitched screen and linen thread “Weaving Triangles and Squares” greets visitors at the entry, forcing a turn left or right while you see through. Moore’s statement is as short as her work is long and large: “Process Heals My Soul.” Whether hung or laying on the cement floor, her pieces are like shadows of many epochs and eras of art, from Roman tile floors to mid-century abstracts created mid-century at Black Mountain College. Like the revered Navajo mythological being Spider Woman, she weaves a gorgeous inviting narrative using pet screen, colored patches and stiches in linen thread to remind us of the best moments in art history. I remembered the moment when Wendy sewed Peter Pan’s rebellious shadow back to his feet. Moore produces shadows for all of us.
Artist Carol Baum’s two works, “Run 4” and “Run 9,” combine two narratives that each reply to the exhibit theme. They are 36-inch square paintings, that share a stenciled background, the topography of her three-mile run in bright green and orange. She has ran this course three times per week for the last 45 years. Baum dedicates her runs to her daughter who has a form of muscular dystrophy and can’t join her. The stenciled letters CTG are the 19th chromosome components that cause the condition and repeat 196 times on the gene and in each painting.
The second narrative composed of upper-case stenciled lettering is taken directly from the journals of Sam and Dhieu, two South Sudanese refugees who moved into a home at the start of Baum’s run. The bright backgrounds of these paintings support the telling of an anguishing story. The square format requires words to split and finish in the next line, misspellings missing letters and ESL wording provides the drama for the two narrators recalling their flight. The word “suitcase” is spelled “suicase” where the missing letter becomes a poetic indication of escape, where the meaning is not lost and possessions were limited.
I recommend that visitors take the time to read through each journal quote in the two “Ru”n works, imagine the moments when written, and extoll the use of clear stenciled painted lettering and topographical art to deliver these unadulterated stories to us, with the artist’s devoted running for her daughter the reason she encountered it all.
A deeply stirring visual feast awaits in the small gallery left of the entrance. Paola Bidinelli’s “Blood River,” a long narrow horizonal painting, is perfectly hung alone on a wall. Her writer’s statement tells us that Bidinelli grew up in Teate degli Abruzzi, Italy, between sea and mountains, the land of shepherds. She collected from nature and discarded objects, claiming these materials speak to her. The rusty bent spikes attached to this painting of a turbulent flowing red and white river are exquisite and tender metaphors for bodies being swept away, by water, weather or history. She sees the metal objects as impermanence and resilience.
Other exceptional works that respond well to the theme are “Dark Fugue” by Linda Pearlman Karlsberg, an oil painting of a stormy opalescent sky, providing a big impact delivered from a modest size canvas. It reminded me of the late Beacon Hill artist Doffie Arnold.
Paula Borsetti’s “The Evolution of Grief” is an indescribable number of painterly marks all aligned and conforming to a wordless intricate narrative. It is like a stained-glass window to relentless emotional states. Gorgeous painterly work, color and design finesse.
“When the Sky Betrays” by Sepi Golestani is a glowing ink, acrylic and collage series of painterly birds, with claws out. It resides between the two stenciled Run paintings by Baum, a colorful cacophony between the withdrawn colorful stenciled sagas.
Wonderful installation alignments occur on every wall of this exhibit, a masterly result of thoughtful pictorial combinations that support relationships and individual integrity for each work.
Christine Palamidessi’s papier mâché close bodied headless armless figures titled Vessels, Ready to Dance are spellbinding, appear to dwell in the granite pillared and stone walled space, and though no legs defined could dance. They charm the room with their presence and enlivened titles.
Susan Rostan’s two works, “Earth Feminine” and “Greenscape,” are dimensional puckering cloth paintings, like fungi or lichen they grow out of the wall, bookending a sympathetic set of other works like guardians. They are light emitting and seemingly alive, one with tree bark added on. Like all the works in this exhibit each artist has a unique, highly evolved way to speak her truth in her art, co-existing with their very particular now and the times we all share.
(Adapt or Die: Dancing Between Art and Coexisting on Earth” remains on view through Sunday, September 28, at the Piano Craft Gallery, 793 Tremont St. Boston, Massachusetts. The gallery is open Friday from 6-8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from noon-5 p.m. For more information, visit pianocraftgallery.com.)