Room 83 Spring in Watertown is pleased to present Line/Place/Time/Trace, paintings by Katherine Porter and wirework by Ellen Wieske, with an opening reception on May 8.
Poetry – in paint and in wire. Porter and Wieske distill essence from the everyday, from lives lived and things cherished. In paintings and wire reliefs, agile amalgamations of form and content unify – the geometric and figurative, the abstract and narrative, the natural and archetypal. Timelessness. Harmony.
These energetic and emotive armatures of pigment and metal, express a holistic kinetic everything and all, everywhere and someplace – line/place/time/trace.
Katherine Porter’s paintings are a kind of personal history painting. They preserve particular time and place in a fluent code of circles, spirals, symbols and swathes of luminescent color. An inveterate traveler and homesteader,
Porter’s oeuvre is the root cellar of her life’s work. Her passion is put up in paint – in juxtaposed passages that zig and zag, articulating her deep affection and understanding of the human experience.
Ellen Wieske’s work encapsulates line, space, movement and the element of time or shifting light. Her materials have been found at the hardware store, feed and farm supply, gardening center, and the lumber or ship yard. Through observation of the everyday world (and the materials found there) she reveals the ordinary to be extraordinary.
Katherine Porter has shown twice in the Whitney Biennial and has had solo exhibitions at the Knoedler Gallery in London, the Nina Nielsen Gallery in Boston, and the Andre Emmerich and Salander-O’Reilly Galleries in New York. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Tel Aviv Museum in Jerusalem.
Ellen Wieske teaches workshops and exhibits internationally. She currently works at and maintains Dowstudio/Gallery with potter Carole Ann Fer, in Deer Isle, Maine, and is the Assistant Director at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts since 2003. She was awarded a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship in 2013.
The exhibition runs May 8-June 25, and a reception will be held Sunday, May 8 from 3-5 p.m.
Gallery hours: Thursdays 3-7 p.m., Saturdays 1-4 p.m., and always by appointment room83spring@gmail.com