REVIEW
ANNA VON MERTENS:
COLOR: A LOVE STORY
UNIVERSITY GALLERY AT UMASS LOWELL
MAHONEY HALL
870 BROADWAY STREET
LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS
JANUARY 22 THROUGH MARCH 3
by Greg Morell
There are two divergent roads of aesthetic departure for New Hampshire artist Anna Von Mertens. In one direction, we discover works of popular whimsy — a lighthearted exploration of the emoji. Fanciful, playful, vibrantly colorful and deliciously cute, it’s art candy you just want to eat.
However, the other path that Von Mertens explores is far different.
Both will on view in “Color: A Love Story,” an exhibition running from January 22 through March 3 in the University Gallery at UMass Lowell.
In the main gallery, Von Mertens will present two beds, side by side, in the open expanse of the gallery floor. It is not the beds themselves, but what is on the beds that is the point of the piece. Two hand-dyed, hand-sewn cotton quilts cover the beds, in what the artist perceives as conversation. It is basically a conversation of color, but how those colors got to where they are is the mystery in the stew.
This is hip-deep, highly intellectualized conceptual art. Each of these quilts is an exacting marathon of execution that includes hand-dyeing small squares of white cotton to the desired shade and the actual precise, mathematical construction of the quilt, in addition to the convoluted process of coming up with the motivation for the color, which boggles the limits of credibility.
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INTO THE THIRD DIMENSION: FIBER ART MOVES US IN LOWELL
GALLERY SPOTLIGHT
THE FABRICATION OF IMAGINATION 2017
ARTS LEAGUE OF LOWELL
307 MARKET STREET, LOWELL, MA
THROUGH OCTOBER 1
by Flavia Cigliano
Viewing “The Fabrication of Imagination 2017” at the Arts League of Lowell (ALL) Gallery on a mid-summer’s afternoon was very enjoyable indeed. Well-lit and attractive, the high-ceilinged space allowed the 3-D fiber works to be displayed to their best advantage. The exhibit is part of an on-going tradition in Lowell, Massachusetts during the summer months, with most of the city’s larger arts and cultural institutions participating in a collaborative celebration of quilts and fiber-related works.
The works at the ALL Gallery present a microcosm of a variety of the possible expressions of fiber art that have developed in the United States over the past 60 years. Starting in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, experimentation in all areas of art flourished in the U.S. Fiber artists working at the time took on a revolutionary fervor that ultimately contributed to the establishment of fiber as an accepted fine art medium. No longer seen as women’s craft, fiber art began to be represented in galleries and museums as an art form in its own right. It was particularly suited for experimentation, since its standards were not as restricted or as well-defined as in other mediums.