Elements: Line, Color, Form, Nave Gallery, 'til July 25th

Art is always in motion. Meanings change week-to-week, day-to-day, even moment-to-moment. They are replaced and molded to fit audience’s wants and needs. Famed screenwriting guru Robert McKee wrote in his manifesto Story, “Stories don’t always mean what their writers think they mean.” The same rings true for artists and their art. But I don’t know if that’s more of a problem or less of one because I’m still not sure who’s more concerned with meaning, artists or writers.

From July 8th to the 25th the exhibition Elements: Color, Line, Form is showing at the Nave Gallery in the Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church in West Somerville. It features work by local artists Ron Brunelle, Kathleen Finlay and Alisa Dworsky, each showing work concerned with one of the three titular elements.

Ron Brunelle’s acrylic paintings are deep with several layers of glaze. They are colorful combinations of oranges, reds, and yellows with complementary blues and greens sinking in. It seems that he used some unorthodox methods like spray-painting the aforementioned glaze.

Alisa Dworsky created excellent, yet simple graphite drawings of helix loops, twisting and turning, whole walls of these bending loops.

I had a chance to talk with the third artist, Kathleen Finlay, who created plaster sculptures showing sheetrock and little cloth houses. I asked her what the meaning was trying to convey with these sculptures and she said she really wasn’t trying to make a statement. She explained how artists are always searching for inspiration, wanting insight. She asked me to apply my own meaning. She wants her work to have “layers of meaning,” nothing fixed.

However, if she had to apply a subtext to work, which seem to be precarious cloth houses on a cliff noting man’s vulnerability. The building of these soft houses is how we try to comfort ourselves.

She uses material left over from other projects as perhaps a statement about man’s ability to sustain through these tough odds against us. We are small, but she believes in us.

Then we talked about art and the Internet for bit. She seemed pleased that a young person such as I was interested in so much. Glad to make you proud, Kathleen.

Three artists.

Three mediums.

Three basic elements: line, color, and form.


Check it out.