Four Artists/Four Voices, curated by sculptor Chris Duncan, the May I. Baker Professor of Visual Arts, showcases the work of a quartet of American and German artists who share an interest in the transformation of familiar content.
The exhibit, in the Crowell and West galleries in the Feigenbaum Center for Visual Arts, opens Sept. 23 with a reception from 4:30-6 p.m. In keeping with the College’s COVID-19 protocols, all visitors must wear masks while indoors on campus, regardless of vaccination status.
The four featured artists are Anne Carnein, Felicia Glidden, Richelle Soper and Kristen Tordella-Williams.
They know each other through Salem2Salem, an annual summer residency program that brings together 10 American and 10 German artists – musicians, sculptors, painters, writers – for three weeks. The residency alternates between Salem Art Works in Salem, N.Y., and Schloss Salem in Germany’s Bodensee region.
“It’s an energizing and stimulating experience that leads to creative breakthroughs as well as enduring friendships,” says Duncan.
Carnein, working in the Allgäu region of southern Germany, makes sculpture based on plants, flowers, fungi and other organic forms. Her primary material is fabric, and her layered imagery alludes to interconnected human and natural relationships.
Glidden, a Minneapolis native who lives and works in Friedrichshafen, Germany, creates work from everyday disposables, such as newspapers, film transparencies and plastic bags. They become the basis for statements that are simultaneously elegant and disturbing, personal and political.
Soper, of Syracuse, N.Y., transforms recognizable forms into installations that are both comic and unsettling. Elements connected by mysterious tubes and wires have an animated and anthropomorphic quality.
Tordella-Williams is an interdisciplinary artist and arts educator based in Auburn, Alabama. In materials raging from hand-made paper to cast iron, she explores the intersections between nature and culture, process and product.
Four Artists/Four Voices runs through Nov. 19.