Sunday, December 17, 3-5pm
Free to CMCA members; others with admission
Join us for a talk with artists Stephanie Cardon, Lisa Kellner, Loretta Park and Emilie Stark-Menneg discussing their work in the exhibition Materiality | The Matter of Matter. Stay after the talk for further conversation and refreshments.
Stephanie Cardon (Cushing, ME + Roslindale, MA) combines and contrasts materials and colors in her work that commonly belong to the realm of construction and infrastructure; concrete, wire or debris-netting mix with stereotypically feminine materials, such as chiffon. Each work is an exercise in building power and resilience through the repetition of fundamentally practical and humble gestures such as sewing, pouring concrete, or crocheting nets. Through the repetition of line, volume, shape and action, these pieces speak to the acquisition of techniques and skills. In their color and scale, they are efforts in loudness or amplification—attitudes the artist finds uncomfortable but necessary in times of urgency.
In her ethereal paintings on silk and site-specific installations, Lisa Kellner (Deer Isle, ME) attempts to capture the intangible, lyrical quality of space. She is interested in how space is inhabited and what occurs when place is infused with history and memory. Her work in silk organza combines random patterns found in nature with the human inclination for order and symmetry. By merging these disparate components, her challenge, she says, “is to distill experiential space to its very essence, and discover the unspoken place.” Always, her intention is to expand the language of painting and how each work is experienced.
Loretta Park (Brunswick, ME + Jamaica Plain, MA) is constantly questioning when a piece is finished. She views her work as temporal, each piece in a constant state of flux. Combining a wide variety of craft techniques such as sewing, braiding, crocheting, weaving, woodworking, and painting, she creates works that are impractical and function-less, making abstract shapes that are non-representational but reference the real world. Although the forms in her work do not depict any specific ideas or items, her work is embedded with a sense of figure, especially the hand of a maker. Woven fabrics, twisted plastic lacing, and painted surfaces all suggest that they were touched and altered by her hands.
Emilie Stark-Menneg’s paintings, sculptures, videos and performances are about energy and transformation, about the divine, goofy and ineffable crashing together in a kind of tropical dance party gone haywire. Stark-Menneg (Brunswick, ME) is constantly experimenting with mediums, watching them run, ooze and misbehave. Dealing with unpredictable materials is akin to dealing with slippery or undetermined subjects and narratives; she is always fascinated by how paintings evolve.
Exhibition sponsor: 250 Main Hotel | Media Sponsor: Maine Public