Six Artists in Above Us Only Sky
Atrium Gallery of Boston's Moakley Courthouse
By: Erica H. Adams - May 27, 2022
Six Boston-based artists in Above Us Only Sky speak about the infinite and euphoria in dark times. Romantic hopeful dream-like paintings elevate while embracing the light and lightness via stellar cascades; avian night-flight and starlike bouquets; a luminous energy field; the legacy of passion; meditation and a flow state; community and seeking new worlds.
Twenty paintings and large-scale watercolors in Above Us Only Sky are by Erica H. Adams, James Baker, Walter Crump, Tamara Krendel, C.J. Lori and Joanne Tarlin.
Meet the artists at the public reception, Thursday June 2, 2022 from 4 – 6 pm in the 2nd floor Atrium gallery of Moakley Courthouse, in Boston, a block from the Institute of Contemporary Art.
Above Us Only Sky is curated by Erica H. Adams, presented by Array Contemporary an artist’s collective and on view through June 29, 2022, Monday through Friday (8 am – 6 pm) in the Atrium Gallery of Moakley Courthouse in Boston a block from Institute of Contemporary Art.
View on ARTSY link: https://www.artsy.net/show/array-contemporary-above-usonlysky?sort=partner_show_position
About the artists and works in Above Us Only Sky:
Erica H. Adams known for her postmodern photography invested in narratives, during the pandemic revisited the utopian Modernist language of abstraction. Her abstract watercolors “made in response to the pandemic, quarantine and social upheaval” are a visual music and meditation towards healing.
James Baker’s painted monotypes seek ‘transcendence from primal states’ through ‘symbols shared by many times and cultures’ and ‘confront how we seek love and life while distracted by loss and death’.
Walter Crump known for his pin-hole photography, presents abstract mixed media oil paintings: he describes painting as ‘more than a surface, it’s a journey without a destination that exists outside time but gives up its secrets over time’. Crump compares his layered oil paintings to an archeological site whose “excavated history are records of prosperity as well as, times of uncertainty”.
Tamara Krendel’s large-scale, immersive watercolors of birds Krendel observed in nature preserves ‘evolved into nocturnes since March 2020’. Through Krendel’s process of the direct act of seeing, ‘color and light become transcendent’ and, she says ‘transforms how we see and feel’. Her deeply personal imagery becomes ‘universal’ and ‘reveals that we’re more similar than we are separate’.
C.J. Lori is known for her neo-Surrealist paintings of uprooted trees in flight that she says are “a homage to Magritte’s floating men in bowler hats, part ecological statement and part allegory of loss, liberation and the yearning for escape”.
Joanne Tarlin says ‘Our collective loss’ is her recent focus. Tarlin’s “constructed abstract landscapes document the natural phenomena and manmade things” where she resides on mid-Coast Maine “simultaneously above and below the waterline, apart and together, as is society”. Like the Romantics, she hopes to convey a sense of awe for the world that is beautiful, threatening and uncontrollable