Wintergarden is a three-person show of Providence-based visual artists. In the midst of post-solstice frosted grey days, the works exhibited in Wintergarden explore how color, expressed through a variety of material processes, can offer a flame of pleasure. Gleaning energy from the studio in place of the sun, these works express a particular seasonal caretaking and optimism akin to Victorian wintergardens and glasshouses—intended to nourish plants for medicine and gratification during dormant cycles.
Judd Schiffman’s large wall mural scenes are constructed from individually glazed ceramic pieces, fixed to the wall in a rhythmic sequence. The characters are animals or creatures, the boundaries they live within are rocks or feathers or other abstract shapes. Within their frames, the stories suggest something archetypal: lessons to learn, or experiences memorialized. Through a collaborative process with his wife Athena and daughter Frances, the artist composes narratives reflecting the inner life of the contemporary family, exploring rites of passage, and grappling with the complexities of being a father. Schiffman’s work investigates themes of masculinity, discovery of self, sexuality, and family, and all the nuanced guilt, confusion, and elation that exist in tandem.
SCHIFFMAN (b. 1982) is a Providence, Rhode Island-based artist working primarily in ceramics. He has lectured at Harvard University Ceramics and Brown University, and participated in residencies at the Zentrum Fur Keramiks in Berlin, Germany and Arch Contemporary in Tiverton, Rhode Island. Schiffman received his MFA from the University of Colorado in 2015, and his BA from Prescott College in 2007. Schiffman’s work has been exhibited in New York City, Los Angeles, CA, Portland, OR, Boulder, CO, Beacon, NY, Providence, RI, Fall River, MA, and Berlin, Germany. In 2016, he received an emerging artists award from the National Council for the Education of Ceramic Arts. Schiffman is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Ceramics at Providence College.
In Heather Leigh McPherson’s vibrant low-relief works, cast epoxy acts as both a painting support and container for the textiles and drawings embedded within. It selectively renders drawings transparent, emphasizing the shallow depth of a single piece of paper and turning recto and verso into one body. McPherson’s work visually vibrates and flows, capturing the motion of a liquid in the form of a solid and exploring materials’ capacities to act and be acted upon. From more referential bits and pieces—religious imagery, cartoon facial expressions, hands reaching—these works unfold to visualize flickering experiences of wisdom and stupidity that spring from the eyes, the mind, and the body.
McPHERSON (b. 1984) makes painting, sculpture, and animation. Recent solo exhibitions include Tip of The Nose at GRIN Providence, High Bottom at Actual Size Los Angeles, 30 Special Colors at Greenlease Gallery in Kansas City and Anytime Concept at Vox Populi in Philadelphia; she was also included in the 2016 deCordova New England Biennial. McPherson has been on the full-time faculty of Providence College since 2009, where she teaches courses on painting, studio research, and contemporary art history. McPherson holds a bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis and a master’s from Rhode Island School of Design.
Scott Alario’s recent experiments include multi-panel photographic vignettes. The photographs are printed on canvas and floated in handmade frames. The frames’ design and construction draws inspiration from kids’ divided dinner plates, creating intentional boundaries between related images. The emphasis on the materiality of the images as objects, as well as the pictures’ container, revisits a theme in Alario’s work with his immediate family: a desire to control an experience versus the messiness of a lived one. Something equally age-old shows up in the content of the imagery: the infinite versus the finite, shown visually in the photographs as nods to the cosmic.
show dates: Jan 11 - Feb 14 2020 159 Sutton St. Providence, RI sutton.gallery