Musketaquid Art Ramble 2017 Artists
Mary Baum is a multidisciplinary artist from Oregon. She earned her BFA from Brigham Young University in Utah and just completed her MFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her work deals with themes of belief and mysticism; the connection between the natural and spiritual worlds; and the relationship between magic and miracle. Mary-baum.com
Project Title: Point of Entry
Artist Statement:
“The world is not the world as manifest to humans; to think a reality beyond our thinking is not nonsense, but obligatory.” -- Graham Harman
In my piece Point of Entry, the rock covered in mirror becomes an entry point to a slightly different reality than the one you perceive as existing and around you. It exists as a liminal object, one that touches two worlds and acts as the passageway between. It allows the viewer to consider that there is more to our existence than what meets the eye.
Maryanne Benns is a multi-faceted artist particularly drawn to the versatility of clay. She is most recognized for her sculptural works infused with a jocular ambiguity. “Sometimes art is stressful and the subject can be dark so I will try to create work that will tickle the imagination by adding a lightness for the viewer, although, it is mostly for myself.” Maryanne currently teaches ceramics at the Holyoke Senior Center and occasionally offers workshops at her studio in Holyoke. maryannebenns.com
Project Title: pulchritudinem robustam cimex (strong and beautiful bug)
Artist Statement: To recharge my creative energy, I head to nature. A walk in the wood or along the shore is vital to my physical and artistic health. I start by taking in big elements, the terrain and sky. As my body and mind relaxes the focus shifts to sounds and light. Some small thing catches my eye, my attention zooms in, nature folds around me and I’m gone. A one hour jaunt has now become a three-hour micro-hike as nature is enjoyed at a miniscule level.The downy texture of leaf scales, the shape of delicate bones, the pattern of lacy seed pods, a myriad of nature’s tiny treasures to be mused over creating questions and inspirations - the fuel for my imagination.
The pulchritudinem robustam cimex (strong and beautiful bug) was influenced by the story of the strong and beautiful bug that came out of an old table in the conclusion of Walden. By making the sculptures somewhat life size it will compel the viewer to look closely creating a more intimate connection with their natural surroundings.
Madge Evers cultivates mushrooms and has re-imagined the mushroom spore print – used as a way to surely identify and type mushrooms – as art. Using the variety Stropharia rugoso-annulata, Madge’s work depends on their seasonal fruiting in late spring and early fall. Her work has been included in juried shows at the Cape Cod Museum, Gallery 263 in Cambridge, the ArtsWorcester Biennial, and Mass Audubon. When not making spore prints, Madge can be found teaching high school English or somewhere in the garden. www.sporeplay.com
Project Title: Sporeplay
Artist Statement: Mushroom spores printed on wood, slate or glass and "planted" in the forest will be exposed to the elements giving these images a life of their own, separate from spores released in their natural habitat or those printed on paper.
Liz Fletcher is a clay sculptor and exhibiting member of NH Art Association and League of NH Craftsmen. Her work has been shown around the Northeast and well as Georgia, Texas, and the state of Washington, winning awards in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Living in the woods, she became concerned about human impacts on the land. After getting a Master of Science degree at Antioch New England, Liz assisted the Nashua River Watershed Association with open space planning, coordinating their Greenway program to protect the rivers of the region. Now her environmental work is local with the Mason Conservation Commission. www.liz-fletcher-sculpture.com
Project Title: Lovers of Life
Artist Statement: Lovers of Life is an outdoor portrait gallery. Embedded within knotholes are images of people from various eras and cultures who devoted their creative energies to studying and protecting the natural world, and encouraging people to live in harmony with it. Knotholes on trees show where branches once grew out from the trunk. Knotholes are fine frames for these naturalists and spiritual leaders whose ideas have branched out across the world.
Carolyn Benedict Fraser is a large format photographer from Nashville, Tennessee and currently lives in Ithaca, New York. She holds an MFA in Studio Art from Cornell University and a BA in Psychology and Photography from Mills College in Oakland, California. Her work utilizes the constraints of the camera, the frame, and vision to address the ways in which we bridge the gaps, cope with, and transcend moments that seem beyond our scope. She was the recipient of the Charles Baskerville Award in 2016 and the Herringer Prize for Excellence in Studio Art in 2012. www.carolynbenedict.com
Project Title: Selfie Stick
Artist Statement: Selfie Stick is a site-specific, interactive installation that explores the use of technology in regard to human experience and self-reflection. In an era where expediency and ease are prioritized, the making of, and interaction with Selfie Stick represents both the quest for self-sufficiency and the desire for an experience to survive. The sculpture is based on Fraser’s photographic series of the same name, where she presses the shutter of her 4x5 field camera with sticks attached with wire.
Lindsey Glover is an artist based in Trumansburg, NY. Out of an inquisitiveness of the natural world, her work includes forms of video, photography, print media and installation. She holds an MFA from Cornell University, School of Architecture, Art, and Planning, where she currently works as a media specialist, and a BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, School of Art and Design. She has shown her works on paper and projection installations in Philadelphia, Providence, R.I., Portland, Ore., Jackson Hole, Wyo., and internationally in Germany and Cardiff. www.lindseyglover.com
Project Title: Drift
Artist Statement: Drift is a reflection on human desires to organize the landscape and a visible record of nature pushing back. From found plant material collected on the forest floor, Glover relocates and arranges the randomly dispersed matter into a pattern of repeating circular piles. The pressures of wind and rain will eradicate the work, leaving only the photographic documentation of the site as it once existed, offering a place for viewers to contemplate the passage of time and the forces of nature. Her multi-media works often use digital technology to frame her reconfigurations and reflections of the natural environment.
Dena Haden is a visual artist that lives and works out of her studio in Berkley, Massachusetts. She was born and raised in Cape Cod, MA and earned her BFA in Painting from UMass Dartmouth in 2004 and her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2008. Her artwork has been included in exhibitions nationally and internationally and is part of numerous private collections and public installations. Most recently, her work has been on view at the Automat Gallery in Philadelphia and at the Colo Colo Gallery in New Bedford, MA. Her recent work explores the natural cycle of something coming into form, living, ever-changing and malleable, and the residue it leaves in passing. www.hadendena.com
Project Title: “The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake.” Thoreau
Artist Statement: ”The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star." — Thoreau. When I have the opportunity to create site specific installations, I find it to be a challenging yet humbling experience for all of its simplicity and complexity. One that involves a slow meditative process that requires observing, slowing down to the rhythmic nature of our own bodies and our relationship to environment. Nature calls me to be still and navigate as a beginner with the utmost curiosity. It will be an immersive experience where I will put to use my awareness and abilities to create a natural installation based upon my sense of place, history and the natural components/materials that are imbedded in the Concord Hapgood-Wright Town Forest. I often find a resolution by creating patterns and reinventing found objects in a means to resurrect older fallen limbs or disposed of natural materials to highlight the process of growth and decay and the cycle of nature.
Andrew Joslin is an artist, naturalist and arborist based in Carlisle Mass. Andrew studied sculpture and painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. More recently Andrew illustrated The Wild Trees by Richard Preston and Nature's Temples, The Complex World of Old-Growth Forest by Joan Maloof. Andrew is deeply interested in natural history and the problem of human separation from nature. Besides being a working arborist Andrew is an avid technical tree climber, teaches tree climbing and has climbed in old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest and in other locations throughout North America.
Project Title: What the Grandmother Pine sees
Artist Statement: The viewer will be invited to discover and observe the land and natural history of Concord through the eyes of the Grandmother Pine, a very large old White Pine in the Hapgood Wright land. Thoreau was very interested in trees and in particular considered the White Pine, Pinus strobus to be an exemplary species in the local forest. The installation will include photos taken from the upper crown of the Grandmother Pine and photos of natural history subjects from the local area. The photographs will be integrated into the site in a harmonious way that will not disturb the habitat. The Grandmother Pine was named by contemporary Concord naturalist and educator Cherrie Corey and was likely standing during the time of Emerson and Thoreau.
Heather Kapplow is a self-trained conceptual artist based in the United States. She creates engagement experiences that elicit unexpected intimacies using objects, alternative interpretations of existing environments, installation, performance, writing, audio and video. Her work has received government and private grants and has been included in galleries, film and performance festivals in the US and internationally. www.heatherkapplow.com
Project Title: Forest for the Tree
Artist Statement: Forest for the Tree is a subtle intervention in the Concord Hapgood-Wright Town Forest that plays with the movement of consciousness or attention between the big picture and the more granular one (with its emphasis resting on the consciousness or attention of one particular tree.)
Lisa Link’s photo-based digital art focuses on political and social issues with an emphasis on integrating historic research. After earning her MFA in photography Lisa taught at Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, in Pittsburgh, PA for several years where she collaborated on public art projects that included billboards, community gardens, and transit bus posters. Her solo exhibit on women’s healthcare, Warnings toured nationally for over ten years. Lisa is a 2015/2016 New England Foundation for the Arts Creative City grantee. Lisa recently created a new series of public prints, WordWrap 2017: Historical Reflections on The Law of the Land for the exhibit Voices of Change on view in Alaska at the Sitka National Historical Park through November, 2017. A full-time web designer, parent of Boston public school graduates and licensed Zumba instructor, Lisa is passionate about art and design that engages people to be active producers and critics of media rather than passive consumers. http://wordwrapboston.wordpress.com/
Project Title: Pattern Recognition
Artist Statement: Pattern Recognition will be extreme close-up photographs that emphasize abstract patterns seen in plant and mineral life in the Concord Hapgood-Wright Town Forest. The photos will be printed on ceramic tiles and placed on the ground.
Tim Norris is a writer, poet, painter and multimedia artist. He has presented work at the Frederick Chopin Institute, Warsaw, Poland; The Performance Art Theory Conference, Tijuana, Mexico and many other locations. He teaches at LUCAD (Lesley University College of Art and Design) in their Art History and Critical Studies Program.
Project Title: Thoreau's Wildflowers
Artist Statement: Thoreau's Wildflowers is inspired by Thoreau's desire to record the wildflower habitat of Concord. Thoreau's wandering through the habitat are recorded in his Journal that depict a tension between science (Thoreau as botanist) and art (Thoreau as writer and poet). My work attempts to capture Thoreau's struggle by inviting the viewer into a space of ambivalence - that also invites us to consider the complex spaces between art and nature and nature and art - by locating, on the EmersonThoreau Amble, a discrete setting of blue and yellow "flowers" that are almost hidden to the viewer in the natural habitat.
Ahmed Ozsever is a interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago. He often works in installation and embraces architectural anomalies, as well as the hidden histories of a given location and exhibition space. His background in photography informs his recurring interest in the process, and limitations of a photographic way of looking. Ahmed explores a variety of subjects including; the articulation and perception of constructed temporalities, mediated experiences of land(scape), and the peculiar human traces inscribed in quotidian spaces. Ahmed earned his BFA in Photography from Herron School of Art in his hometown of Indianapolis, IN, and received his MFA from Cornell University in 2015. His work has been exhibited in various group shows in Chicago and throughout the US. Ahmed is a Lecturer in the department of Contemporary Practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Art at Carthage College. ahmedozsever.com
Project Title: Reference Point
Artist Statement: Reference Point is the study of the relationship between poetics and land surveying. The piece consist of replicas of surveying tools that Thoreau would have used as a land surveyor, paired with the cast shadow of a green screen hung in trees to modify the light below and intercept shadows and quantify the movement of light over the course of days throughout the exhibition. Marking the passage of time via colorcast is in reference to Thoreau’s essay Dark Ages, thereby conflates concepts of history with the traversal and measurement of land.
A. Reid is an artist, writer, and educator in Worcester, MA, operating under the idea that artmaking can be a rigorous way of learning and doing work - even if it doesn't look like it, even when it's fun. She runs the Harriet Hemenway Bird Report, an open-ended series of works that includes field guides, urban bird walks, a hotline to catalog sightings, and the embroidered records of her own birdwatching life list. harriethemenway.bandcamp.com
Project Title: Lusty Chanticleer
Artist Statement: Lusty Chanticleer is an artist-made field guide for the Hapgood-Wright Town Forest, designed to help visitors find plant and bird species mentioned in Walden while incorporating text from Civil Disobedience. Reports and reflections from visitors and the artist will be recorded and compiled through a larger ongoing project, the Harriet Hemenway Bird Report.
Tammy Rose is an award winning author of several full length and short plays. Her most recent works have revolved around the world of the Transcendentalists in Concord, and have been featured at the Thoreau Society Annual Gatherings as well as the Umbrella’s Arts Ramble. Thoreau V. Schultz, Sense and Transcendental Ghosts of Maryland Pond take their inspirations and foundations from quotes of the Transcendentalists (both modern and historical). Her work, The Three of Us, is the winner of the International Unchained Love Playwright Competition. Accidental Meeting was a Semi-Finalist in the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play, Festival. She is also an acclaimed visual artist and is a member of Java Studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. http://artofmousetraps.blogspot.com
Project Title: Marching and Sauntering; A Thoreau Inspired Ramble Through the Arts
Artist Statement: This is an Interactive performance piece which will use Henry David Thoreau's own words to discuss the political movements of today. The forest as theater will also provide a perfect setting to discuss his quotes about environmentalism and what exactly we are fighting for. Starting at the benches by Fairyland Pond, we will explore the Arts Ramble and head toward's Brister's Hill, the namesake of one of Concord's African American citizens.
Laurie Sheridan is an interdisciplinary artist working in the medium of cast resin. She takes nature as her focal point; she integrates organic elements with her glowing forms representing energetic unseen entities. She has exhibited extensively, and been granted many residencies, recently at SERDE in Latvia in 2016. Her work has won numerous awards, including recently for Wearable Art, Museum of Art Deland, Florida. Her sculptures, paintings and monoprints are in private collections nationally. She has participated in artistic collaborations in Vietnam, Finland and Latvia. She is a member of the New York Artists Circle, the IATSE Union of Theatrical Scenic Painters, and the international art group In-Between Collective. www.lauriesheridan.com
Project Title: spring of springs (Resurgence)
Artist Statement: Something is bursting forth from underground, winding its way to the surface; this is the idea behind “spring of springs”, a phrase from a quote by Thoreau.. This gnarled wood and lighted resin sculpture sits in the beauty of nature by a waterway, simulating the power of an energetic surge from underground, forcing its way to the surface. “Men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.”
Diane Szczepaniak was born in Detroit, MI, and is interested in how objects meaningfully acquire their own fullness of being. Initially focused on drawing and sculpting the figure, she worked through these media to her present understanding of the physicality of objects in space, which have remained with her throughout her career and brought her directly to abstraction. Color and Light, a solo exhibition of her paintings and sculptures just closed at the Gibbs Street Gallery, VisArts, Rockville, Maryland. She was a finalist for the Trawick Prize in Bethesda, Maryland in 2012 and awarded an Individual Artist Award in Visual Arts: Sculpture from the Maryland State Arts Council. She has presented annual workshops exploring line, color, perception, and space to the Dudley Fellows at Harvard University. Her work is in national and international private and public collections. www.dianeszczepaniak.com
Project Title: River of Sticks II
Artist Statement: An installation, in collaboration with nature, that draws a river through the landscape using found sticks as the drawing medium. Inspired by the quote by Thoreau, "Life in us is like water in a river,” the community and I will construct the river following the path of Emerson and Thoreau's Amble. Found sticks laid parallel to one another will point the way and guide the eye just as one's eyes follow a line in a drawing or the movement of a brush stroke through paint.
