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the magical thinking we attach to our things
1.An Object's Promise_shishko.moseley.jpg

On view May 12, 2022 – June 14, 2022

Featuring works by Adrienne Shishko & Suzanne Moseley
Co-curated by Adrienne Shishko & Casey Curry

OBJECT AS

artifact

1.An Object's Promise_shishko.moseley.jpg

An Object’s Promise is a playful and poignant maximalist intervention that raises consciousness about our possessions and intentions. On view from May 12 through June 14, the exhibition includes works ranging from screen prints crafted from cherished artifacts to totems of amassed impulse buys. Through these process-driven artworks, artists Adrienne Shishko and Suzanne Moseley explore how we use objects to express our identity, connect to the past, and imagine our future – to both beautiful and detrimental effect. An Object’s Promise represents the culmination of a year-long collaboration between the two artists that started as a mutual interest in the power of objects and evolved into an exploration of the spectrum between respecting and revering objects that hold great meaning and disregarding and wasting objects that we see as disposable.

Adrienne Shishko is a process-driven, mixed media artist based in Boston, MA. She is known for her fiber sculptures that explore issues of over-consumption and the environmental impact of fast fashion. Her work has been exhibited throughout New England at venues including Beacon Gallery, the Quin House, the Providence Art Club, Mosesian Center for the Arts, Cambridge Art Association among others, as well as numerous private and corporate collections. 

 

For An Object’s Promise, Shishko leans into her interest in how our attachment to and desire for objects can have detrimental effects both on our psyche and our world. Her totems, for instance, are created using reclaimed fabrics, asking viewers to consider what happens after we buy clothing  we don’t need. And yet, as whimsical characters who reclaim and transform trash, they illustrate the subject playfully, embodying not punishment or shame but a solution. This idea of creating a world with more room for hope than despair runs through Shishko’s work in the show.

(Left) Adrienne Shishko, totem triptych 2 (2019), 78x44x39”, reclaimed fiber, wood, metal; (Center) Suzanne Moseley, Echoes of You, 22x22”, woodblock/screen print monotype; (Right) Adrienne Shishko, the weight of our choices (2022), dimensions vary, plastic strapping and plastic deer mesh.
(Left) Suzanne Moseley, Well Worn (detail) (2022), 34”x17”, woven screen print; (Center) Adrienne Shishko, the energy of my tribe (2021), approximately 65"round, reclaimed fabric and mesh deer fencing; (Right) Suzanne Moseley, Amaze (2022), 23”x19”, mixed media.

Suzanne Moseley uses photographic processes and experimental printmaking and cyanotype techniques to capture the layers of the human spirit and explore how our relationships are reflected in treasured objects, daily rituals and patinated surfaces. There is a resilient energy to her work, both pictorial and process driven, that reflects the artist’s eternal optimism. Moseley is currently represented by Leftbank Gallery in Wellfleet, MA and is affiliated with Boston Printmakers, Shepherd & Maudsleigh Studio, Concord Art and MGNE (Monotype Guild of New England). Her work has been widely exhibited in New England and will be on display this summer with the Boston Sculpture Gallery at Falmouth Hospital’s Highfield Hall in collaboration with Liz Shepherd and in the fall at Portugal’s 5th Global Print Douro show.

 

Moseley’s work in An Object’s Promise centers on a series of screen print monotypes she created in celebration of her late husband. The layers for these prints were created through an intimate process of documenting personal artifacts and meaningful objects from their shared life, then abstracting and superimposing those images on top of each other with various printmaking methods. The results are densely layered prints representing the vibrant, fragmented memory of their time together. The woven works are an evolution of Moseley’s work spawned by her collaboration with Shishko. In these pieces,  Moseley repurposed her art, and later clothing, utilizing the same deer and bird netting  materials used by Shishko in her practice.   

About the Collaboration  Long time friends, Shishko and Moseley met periodically before the pandemic to create art together as a way of looking at their individual practices through a different lens. Both shared a process-driven approach and an orientation towards vibrant, energetic work, so mingling their techniques was exciting.  During these improvisational art sessions, they each initiated work from shared materials, then switched midway through to continue working into the other’s piece. Shishko’s masses of discarded clothing, acquired from acquaintances, soon became a counterpoint to stacks of unresolved screenprints and cyanotypes contributed from Moseley’s studio. Cutting both bodies of material into strips and weaving through and around other found objects, the two identified an interesting tension between Shishko’s focus on our hollow throw-away culture and Moseley’s attention to the hallowed nature of treasured objects.  A new collaboration was born. 


This dynamic is embodied most fully in their large installation, The Two-Headed Dragoness. This monumental assemblage represents the tension of opposing forces people attach to objects: objects that look forward, imagining the future versus objects that conjure the past, memorializing a treasured time, place or person.  The Dragoness is made from a range of work created by each of the artists before and during their collaborative process.  As they amassed this new body of work they realized that when combined and manipulated, the art as a whole became far more potent than the sum of its individual parts. Through the process, their understanding of the broader concepts and implications of their work was deepened and expanded.

(Left) Suzanne Moseley, Vibrant Memories LG2, layered woodblock-screen print, 12x12 on birch panel; (Center) Adrienne Shishko, strategies of containment, repurposed produce bags and thread, dimensions vary; (Right) Adrienne Shishko & Suzanne Moseley, detail of The Two-Headed Dragoness, mixed media, approx 48"x20'

VISIT

The gallery is open every Wednesday - Friday, 12-4pm and Saturday and Sunday from 12-6pm and by appointment. The gallery will also be open and the artists will be on site to talk about the work one hour before each of the special  events. All events are free and open to the public, but we request that you RSVP in advance through Eventbrite. 

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