Exhibitions 2011: EXQUISITE

Work by Sarah Bliss, Allison Paschke and Sand T January 28 - March 10, 2011

EXQUISITE is an exhibition that celebrates the delight in seeing and investigating. The three artists, each in their own way, explore light, transparency, layering, bubbles, and color, and materials such as plastic and epoxy resin. They challenge us to find a different kind of beauty, one often inherent in generally available commercial products. 

The work brings about a new awareness of the reading of space and narrative structures. Although each artist’s work lies within the realm of traditional painting and sculpture, the work is first and foremost constructed objects that call attention to their process of creation. 

The artists give us clues as to further investigations, asking us to project our own sensibility into the play of surface and light, and hints at a possible larger context, whether related to our dependence on oil (Sarah Bliss), hidden or secret story telling (Allison Paschke), or the commercial vocabularies that makes us take delight in candy wrappers, even before we put the candy in our mouth (Sand T). Themes intertwine: death, nostalgia, and the languages of commercials, blend with modes of seeing, with delight and quiet ecstasy.

Sarah Bliss lives and has her studio in the western part of Massachusetts. She received her MA. M.Th. in 1994 from Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has been exhibiting actively for approximately six years. She writes about her work: “I seek to understand that which cannot be seen or known by mind or eye: the passage of time, the energetic qualities of spaces and places, the emotional and spiritual foundations of lived experience. I use my work to both research and document my own process of coming-to-know, and then to extend the understandings gained to others.”

The Providence, Rhode Island artist, Allison Paschke, holds an MFA (1999) in ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She writes about her work: “My pieces are developed intuitively, balancing desires and impulses. The results create tensions between opposing concepts.” And: “The impulse toward delicacy and fragility can lead toward a sense of our own mortality. The attraction to the ephemeral quality of light also emphasizes the passage of time.”

Sand T’s earliest studies in art and philosophy took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She received her MFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1997. She lives and has a studio in Boston. She writes about her work: “An oversimplifying approach to art-making is the inspiration behind my work. I describe my work as non-objective reductive art that deals with the elements of repetition, geometric abstraction and minimalism.” And: “The reductive aesthetic in my work is an overlapping of decidedly contrary visual elements:  fluidity vs. structural, opacity vs. transparency, and formalistic vs. introspective.”