“Still Life Lives!” at the Fitchburg Art Museum features a site-specific installation by professor Randal Thurston. Inspired by the imagery of Baroque period cabinets of curiosity, Randal’s hand-cut paper silhouettes are elaborate room-filling works. Randal was recently interviewed about the exhibition on the public radio program “Inquiry.” Listen to the full interview with Mark Lynch on WICN.
“This Fall, the Fitchburg Art Museum presents Still Life Lives!, a group exhibition that celebrates the vitality of the still life tradition and its themes of beauty, bounty, darkness, fragility, and fleeting moments. Still Life Lives! features paintings from FAM’s permanent collection – gorgeous florals and fruits by Nell Blaine, Marc Chagall, Henri Fantin-Latour, William Harnett, Walt Kuhn, Georgia O’Keefe, and Marguerite Zorach, to name a few – surrounded by striking examples of the genre by contemporary artists active in the New England visual arts community.
The still life tradition – made popular by skillful seventeenth-century Dutch painters – certainly is alive and well in twenty-first-century New England. While the specific symbols of knowledge, commerce, trade, wealth, and mortality associated with those still life masters may have changed, the desire to portray such themes has not. Still Life Lives! begins a conversation about the myriad ways artists continue to respond to, and redefine, the legacy of still life today. Curated by new FAM Associate Curator Mary M. Tinti, this exhibition features the following contemporary artists: Thomas Birtwistle, Michael Bühler-Rose, Caleb Charland, John Chervinsky, Emily Eveleth, Aaron Fink, David Furman, Matthew Gamber, Cynthia Greig, Judy Haberl, Elisa H. Hamilton, Jon Imber, Catherine Kehoe, Mary Kocol, Elizabeth Kostojohn , Pat Lasch, Laura Letinsky, Catherine McCarthy, Mary O’Malley, Olivia Parker, Scott Prior, Shelley Reed, Justin Richel, Janet Rickus, Evelyn Rydz, Victor Schrager, Tara Sellios, Randal Thurston,
Kathleen Volp, Deb Todd Wheeler, and Kimberly Witham.”
Still Life Lives!
Fitchburg Art Museum
September 22nd, 2013 – January 12th, 2014
Opening reception: Sunday, September 22nd, 1 – 3 p.m.
Meet the Artists: Sunday, November 3rd, 1 – 2 p.m.