Perception Part 1

Perceived: Look Closely. Observe. Look Again.

September 10 – October 17, 2024

Opening reception and gallery talk:
Ways of Seeing with the participating artists
Thursday September 12, 5:00 pm followed by a reception at 5:30pm

All our knowledge hast its origins in our perceptions … In nature there is no effect without a cause … Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments … Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass. Leonardo DaVinci

One of the roles of artists and scientists is to observe and describe the world.

What are the limits of our ability to see? How do we change that?

What do we learn by being deeply engaged, by looking as if for the first time?

And looking again, and again.

The artists in this exhibition are engaged with making an artwork as it progresses, observing/looking in real time, over time. The artwork itself makes these demands of the maker: How do we see? How do we not see? How do we remember what we see? This process of inquiry for both scientists and artists attempt to answer these questions as part of their respective practice. 

Participating Artists:

Meg Alexander 
https://www.megalexander.com/works-on-paper/false-azure/1

Alexander creates images and objects that are inspired by natural forms and systems. Her drawing projects are rooted in close looking at the objects, fields, and surface patterns that are her subjects. Whether working from direct observation (rocks, plants) or from imagination (as with her Hill/Hole series), Alexander’s interest in investigating how we perceive the world around us is evident. Her work is characterized by a methodical, almost scientific, process. She tends to work on a body of work over months or years, using drafts, sketches, studies, and variations as a means of pin-pointing what’s driving her curiosity. This focused, labor- and time-intensive process gives her work its emotional yet timeless character.

Alexander is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She has received awards from the Massachusetts Cultural

Council and was awarded an SMFA/Tufts University Alumni/ae Traveling Fellowship. Alexander exhibits regularly in Boston and New England; her work is included in many private and corporate collections throughout the world. She lives and works in Concord, MA and is represented by Ellen Miller Gallery, Boston, MA.

Amy Sudarsky
https://www.amysudarsky.com/hands

Sudarsky says “I love painting portraits and hands.  When I talk with a “new person,” I observe their hand gestures and facial expressions. Eventually, I discover patterns in their non-verbal communication.  These patterns, unique to each individual, become the true subjects of my paintings.”

Amy Sudarsky has been a figurative painter and college art professor for more than 40 years. Her work has been exhibited in New York, San Francisco and Boston galleries. She currently paints in her studio in Manchester, MA. Amy began teaching in 1978 after receiving her MFA in Painting at Cornell University. After 4 years at Washington University School of Fine Arts, she left St. Louis to teach at The Art Institute of Boston and later at Boston University School of Visual Arts, and Lesley University College of Art and Design.

Stephen Mishol 
https://www.stephenmishol.com/work

Stephen Mishol’s drawings and paintings are studio fictions that examine the city’s ability to transform, divide and reconfigure the landscape. Built from collections of information from different environs and not documents of a specific place, the work depicts a compressed, constantly shifting urban landscape’s timeline, where the potential of growth and failure are synchronized. With an emphasis on how one moves through the landscape and how the passage of time impacts one’s perception, the drawings are equations of division and accumulation, continually in the process of defining themselves.

Stephen Mishol is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Design at UMass Lowell. He received his BFA and MFA from Mass College of Art. As an undergraduate, he was also a recipient of a Yale-Norfolk Fellowship. In 1986 he was awarded a Fulbright and lived and worked in Warsaw, Poland. In 2006, he received an Artist Resource Trust Grant.  Mishol’s work has also been recognized by the Mass Cultural Council four times. His work is included in the permanent collections of the deCordova Museum, Boston Public Library, Fidelity Investments, as well as many private collections. Mishol has also been a recipient of a National Science Foundation Grant (NSF) as co-PI for the Cool Science project, a climate science learning endeavor that is part of the NSF’s Advancing Informal STEM Learning program. Mishol is also a co-founder of the Arts Research Collaborative in Lowell, Mass.

Related links

Seeing Through Drawing
https://www.metmuseum.org/events/programs/met-creates/visitors-disabilities/seeing-through-drawing/seeing-through-drawing?&eid=A002_%7bDE47B0EE-DFF1-44C3-9FE5-7718B79749EF%7d_20221027171750

David Brooks: How to Save a Sad, Lonely, Angry and Mean Society
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/25/opinion/art-culture-politics.html

Drawing: Seeing and Observation
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/drawing-seeing-and-observation-9781789940374/

John Berger: Ways of Seeing
https://www.ways-of-seeing.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7wi8jd7aC4