Elementality: Ruth Kirchmeier, Lainey Fink Scott, Micah Thanhauser, Wil Sideman
July 1st - July 22, 2018
Opening Reception: Sunday, July 1, 2018, 6:00-8:00pm
Sargent Gallery, 832 State Road, Aquinnah, MA, 02535
Summer hours: Thursday-Sunday 11-6pm & we welcome appointments 508-645-2776
Wil Sideman, Piscatoribus Sacrum 10x10x18 inches, blown glass, flameworked handle, steel and wood
Sargent Gallery is pleased to announce Elementality, a group show with new artists Wil Sideman and Micah Thanhauser, and new work from Lainey Fink Scott and Ruth Kirchmeier, all four artists are local Martha's Vineyard residents. The show will open on July 1, at 832 State Road, Aquinnah, and will remain on view through July 22, 2018. An opening reception will be held this Sunday, July 1, from 6:00pm until 8:00pm. Elementality features wood cut prints by Ruth Kirchmeier, ceramics by Lainey Fink Scott, glass sculpture from Wil Sideman, and pottery from Micah Thanhauser.
Elementality brings together four artists united through the commonality of their practices being contingent upon the elements in one way or another. Ruth Kirchmeier has been creating her iconic and dynamic woodcuts for over 40 years. Ruth's ability to create movement, often depicting flowing bodies of water from wood blocks, is one of the most sublime aspects of her work. Her technique of layering multiple colors, sometimes 10 different inks in one work, demonstrates the artist's devotion to her craft as well as her fluency with the medium. Lainey Fink Scott's background in design underscores the sleekness of her functional and sculptural pottery works. It is the inter-relationship between the earthly materiality and firing process that makes the elements integral to Lainey's work, combined with her keen sense of design which make her works a true delight to behold. Wil Sideman makes glass sculptures, with a focus on recreating vessels that functionally float on or hold water. The weight and transparency that the glass medium imposes on the banal, originally buoyant, opaque objects - buckets, buoys, and bailer - asks the viewer to reconsider their relationship to these ocean objects and their functionality. Micah Thanhauser's pottery is made from native clays, and fired for three days in a wood burning kiln. Micah's works are minimally glazed, celebrating the beauty of the raw clay, and letting the unpredictable movement of the flames and ash create the unique surfaces.
From the book of essays, Elemental Ecocriticism, Thinking with Earth, Air, Water, and Fire 2015, by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Lowell Duckert:
Timothy Morton- Elementality - "One way to think of elements, after Immanuel Kant, is to think them as fusions of subject and object. Fire is fiery; water is wet; earth is earthiness; space is spacious; and so on. An element is a –ness, a quality. It envelops. One finds oneself within it, always already. It is intimate yet strange at the same time. There manifests, as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen puts it in this volume, “a vortex of shared precariousness and unchosen proximities.” Even though it does not have a here or a there, a subject or an object, an element has a specific vibrancy."
Sargent Gallery
832 State Road, Aquinnah, MA 02535
Martha's Vineyard
508-645-2776
Lainey Fink Scott
Micah Thanhauser, large vase, native clay, wheel thrown, wood fired
Ruth Kirchmeier, Claire's Sunflowers, woodcut