IN DEEP WATER
May 25 through July 2, 2017
"Tidal Shift" Workshop Sunday June 25th 3-5pm
Flatrocks Gallery opens their fifth season May 25th with ‘In Deep Water’ - A group show meant to inspire people to action. With grace, beauty and humor these artists use their gifts to raise consciousness about climate change, sea level rise, and ocean pollution.
Karen Ristuben- created this piece to show the effect of ocean acidification on shellfish, portrayed with an analogous object made of similar chemical structure: an eggshell. The eggshells were soaked in vinegar to reveal what acidification does to calcium carbonate shells, thus representing ocean acidification to the viewer. In this work, the effect of ocean acidification on shellfish shows an oceanic food chain put at great risk by the carbon footprint of the human race.
Mia Cross- as the 2016 Goetemann Artist in Residence she spent her early mornings walking the beaches of Gloucester. There she found “scavenging for objects and repurposing them exciting, especially when the objects have carelessly been tossed and deemed invaluable.“ From the debris emerged a guardian angel of the waters. Cross offers her cleverly created physical manifestation to bear witness to our throwaway society.
Adin Murray- an extraordinary painter from West Gloucester, offers pieces from his most recent series "Horizon". "The space where the sky and water meet is powerful, profound, and humbling and speaks to the universal truth of constant change." These paintings represent in the context of the show, that which we revere and take for granted.
Michelle Lougee-is an environmental artist, sculptor, ceramist, Illustrator and teacher from Cambridge. Lougee focuses on the delicate balance between nature and human society and technology. Her signature material, post-consumer plastic bags, is transformed into yarn and then crocheted into interpretations of sea life resulting in playful vibrant sculptures. The details are delightful yet jarring, in respect to the infestation of plastics in our ocean.
Resa Blatman- brings us her commitment to nature in all its power and vulnerability with work that is at once haunting and lovely. Her artistic process is filled with intention; creating layered paintings and installations using a dynamic mixture of materials. In combining paint, assemblage pieces, and intricately laser-cut mylar forms, she affects deep space and pulls the viewer in. Blatman “seeks to remind us of the precarious nature of our habitat.” Her work is complex and beautifully rendered, reminiscent of the allegorical and precise painting of the Dutch masters, and inspired by the Baroque, Romanticism, and Victorian decorative art.
Nina Samoiloff-is an artist from Rockport who works solely with discarded materials. By arranging her collection into pleasing mosaics, she documents our excess and disrespect with a quiet grace.