March 2015: Arielle Adkin & Anne Goodrich

Arielle Adkin has created a series of paintings/drawings she has entitled “Peony Violence.” It is a body of work about the convergence between nature’s graceful softness and nature’s violent destruction. These peonies are about the romance of a bouquet given while the heart bleeds. A firework exploding as petals fall. Arielle explains, “Traditionally, I am an oil painter. However, I produced this series in colored pencils and gouache, both light materials, in order to emphasize the delicate quality of these flowers. My work explores Nature’s ability to evolve in a modern man-made world, with an emphasis on creating a beautiful and palatable aesthetic.”

Anne Goodrich’s title for her ceramic show is ”Leav”. To quote Anne, “Many times I’ve found that peace in my life comes from letting go. The act of letting go enables me to reserve energy for new kinds of enjoyment, fulfillment or growth says Anne. This is concept is true for the tree as well, letting go of leaves enables the tree to store energy, survive the winter and apply that energy toward new growth when spring comes. The color blue dominates this body of work as blue is, for me, the color of leaving. A leaf brings nourishment to a tree, but when it ceases to be useful the tree simply lets it go. I think a lot about how simple the tree makes it look, this process of letting go.” She cuts slabs of clay into leaf shapes and then manipulated them into sculptural abstractions. By twisting and stretching the clay in the patterns of leaf veins the forms became the weathered, dried out, spent leaves of fall rather than spring. ” Organic forms inspire her work, but leaves specifically inspire this body of work.