Jill Slosburg-Ackerman

"Blueprints"

and

Taylor Davis

"Stations"

October 22 - November 20

Opening Reception: Friday, October 22, 8 - 10 PM

Jill Slosburg-Ackerman: Blueprints

Jill Slosburg-Ackerman, drawing and object, 1999 (L) and "Hourglass" (R) 1999

Jill Slosburg-Ackerman has created a series of new work for the installation, "Blueprints", which builds on her earlier hybrid works that represented dualities and contradictions. As in earlier work, exhibited at Judy Ann Goldman Fine Art and the Museum of Fine Arts "Traveling Scholars 1998", these new works are either subtractive (carved), additive (composite sculptures) or two dimensional, framed drawings. Intuitive and thoughtful, the organic, sculptural surfaces feel excavated, gently carved to expose structural patterns and the analogous cycles in the history of the wood. These structures are illuminated further in drawings or composite sculptures (formed using the material removed from the related work) placed on the opposite side of the long free-standing wall creating an "installation pair". It is the relationship between the paired works in this installation that is a departure for the artist. These "dualities", which in earlier work were smoothly connected or adjacent to one another, are isolated - not even visible at the same time except from a profile view at the end of the wall. The distance in time and subtle connection of the pairs calls upon the viewer's memory to take an active role in reconnecting two and three dimensional representations.

Taylor Davis, Installation at Monserrat College of Art, 1997

Taylor Davis: Stations

Taylor Davis,"Untitled" (L) and "Station"(R), 1999

The gallery floorplan echoes the minimal architectural "Stations" of Taylor Davis, who with this exhibit frees her trademark plywood constructions of their usual relationship to the floor and their own physical properties; flexibility, strength and balance. The clean, minimal forms and thoughtful organization of space remain in this new work, but the emphasis has shifted up from the floor to become a relationship directly to the viewer/participant encountering each "Station". As with Davis' installations at Massachusetts College of Art, The Mills Gallery and Montserrat College of Art the artist finds formal and expressive power in simple geometric shapes. Each "Station" is an elegant and refined division of space(s). The wood surfaces keep their identity as raw materials, emphasizing the psychological function of the form not the luxury of the finish. The standards that Davis has developed in her "contractor language" of 48 inch widths (or in this case-heights) effectively give the structure a scale that engages a person (or clearly two people) at a height that invites one to comfortably lean on and stand close to each work--like standing at a bar or counter. The height simultaneously restrains and/or protects the viewer/participant, like a low fence or wall, from what is on the other side. Davis' beautifully reductive editorial skills result in a directness in these subtly varying spartan forms which concentrates attention on the spatial and visceral responses to the division between "inside" and "outside" -- the essentials of architecture itself.

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