New Exhibit: Fluid Terrain

Fluid Terrain is a nature-inspired exhibition about movement, material and process. It’s about texture, surface, layers and color.

Using paint and paper as pigment, artists Laura Fayer, Amy Genser and Suzan Shutan create abstract works that move on and off the page.

It features works by three woman artists whose inspiration virtually flows from nature. Although their artwork is abstract, suggestions of land, sky, and seascapes are inevitable. Laura Fayer, Amy Genser, and Suzan Shutan use paper and paint to present interpretations of the natural world. The exhibit opens on Thursday, January 31 with a reception from 6-8 pm and runs through March 13.

New York City based Laura Fayer asserts, “nature is her creative point of departure.” With degrees from Harvard and Hunter, she credits some of her artistic approach to her childhood spent in Japan. It was there that she was exposed to “wabi-sabi”, a “tradition defined by impermanence, imperfection, visual economy, and intimacy”. This has become a significant influence on her artistic vision. She begins her artistic process with rough sketches that she gradually builds by layering paint in “pools of color” topped by sheets of rice paper. She spreads paint on canvas developing a texture that reflects motion, growth and changeable light patterns like those evident on Earth’s surface. Enhancing large areas she employs collaged printed marks using hand-made print- making tools she designed from her impressions of ordinary objects. The resulting canvases suggest an ethereal vision subject to natural forces like wind, water and sun- light. Poetic titles reflect Fayer’s understanding of ambiguity.

In Hartford, Amy Genser uses paint and paper to explore her fascination with organic processes and natural forms. After graduating from Washington University in St. Louis, she enrolled at RISD where a class in paper-making determined an essential component of her artistic expression, the rolled, layered module of mulberry paper. After applying a surface layer of paint, she creates colorful, textural images by adhering small, spirals of coiled paper “using them almost as pigment” to design patterns that suggest visions that appear in the natural world. Viewers may perceive marine biospheres, satellite images, cellular structures, or organic processes in her works. Amy understands that our environment offers visual stimulation, and she presents her interpretation of nature’s formations, irregularities and patterns in a colorfully dimensional format. As Genser observed, “Views of our landscape can be compelling” becoming “quilt-like when viewed from above.”

Paper intended for different purposes activates Suzan Shutan’s imagination when she creates sculptural installations. Her work “straddles the world of two and three dimensions” and is “driven by materials that are manufactured and handmade which she “repurposes and transforms”. A New Haven native, she earned degrees from the California Institute of Fine Arts and Rutgers University, and she has worked and taught in Europe and the U.S.A, currently focusing on sculpture at Housatonic Community College. In “Fluid Terrain” she employs black tar paper shaped into forms inspired by the natural world, while at the same time reminding viewers of man’s carbon footprint on the environment. Light plays on the surfaces of her landscapes, distorting reality, and challenging our perception of the way image and meaning fuse. As Shutan wrote, ”Ultimately my work is about joining together a variety of elements that advocate transformation.”

“Fluid Terrain”, curated by Debra Fram and Barbara Richards, offers visitors an opportunity to regard our earthly surroundings through diverse lenses.

Events:
Thursday, January 31, 6 – 8 pm: Opening Reception
Sunday, February 2, 2 pm: Artist Talk with Laura Fayer and Amy Genser
Friday, February 22, 6 – 7:15 pm: Art Lounge followed by Friends Friday Film in the Cole Auditorium at 7:30 pm
Sunday, February 24, 2 pm: Artist talk with Suzan Shutan

For more information visit: flinngallery.com/fluidterrain

The Flinn Gallery is sponsored by the Friends of the Greenwich Library, and is located on the second floor of the library, 101 West Putnam Avenue. Gallery hours are Monday- Saturday 10-5, Thursday 10-8, Sunday 1-5.