A welcome response to the winter blues, Blue Door Gallery owner and curator Janice Santini is presenting “Euphony,” an exhibition of collage art by Connecticut artist R. Douglass Rice that opens with a reception on January 24.
“It’s a musical term where different notes combine to make something pleasing to the ear, the opposite of cacophony,” said Rice, explaining the show’s title. “Collage is an art form which combines shapes to make something pleasing to the eye and provoke thought.”
Santini said that she chose Rice’s sculptures and collage works, “because they have sophisticated play, invite a viewer with bold colors and provoke intuitive and imaginative narrative.”
With titles that include “Our Tribeca Loft 1989,” “Continuing the Chaos” and “Do you Wanna Dance,” Rice’s works imply extended storylines and include imaginary soundtracks. Each one could be a page torn from a lengthy salty saga.
This writer visited Rice in his Stonington, Connecticut home and studio. “Stoney Town” was named in the 1600s for the glacial till and enormous erratic granite boulders prevalent in the landscape. It is a fitting surrounding for this multimedia artist. He is as prolific with oeuvre as the glacier was with rocks. His former dairy farm home lawn is covered with his sculptures, and the former cow shed, now studio, is packed to the brim with works from years of collage series, paintings, sculpture models and assemblages.