Simmons University presents “Collaborating Independence: Dana Salvo and Dawn Southworth,” April 26 to May 28 at the Simmons University Trustman Art Gallery, fourth floor, Main College Building, 300 The Fenway. There will be a reception from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. on May 11. The event is free and open to the public. This, the final exhibition in the 2003/04 Trustman Art Gallery’s couples series, features two of the regions most distinguished artists.
Dawn Southworth and Dana Salvo have been married for twenty-two years, and have two daughters, Simone and Jahna. As a family and as artists, their lives have been a total collaboration. Salvo has described how their extensive travel as a family has been the key to providing them with otherwise unattainable access to homes and relationships with other families. Each family member is a contributor, a collaborator, on these journeys. There are even objects or detritus in Southworth’s work that were treasures scavenged by her children on these trips.
This exhibit celebrates their collaboration and spans almost their entire career as artists living together.
Salvo is a nationally recognized photographer whose work is represented in numerous collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Fogg Art Museum, the Addison Gallery of American Art and MOMA. He is the recipient of many awards and grants, including two from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and two Fulbright Scholar awards.
Salvo’s trips with his family to Mexico, Vietnam, and India, as well as his work in this country are part of his creative quest to document the unique cultural, spiritual and social properties of other cultures by primarily focusing on domestic interiors. His book Home Altars of Mexico and his film, The Day, The Night and The Dead are widely recognized achievements derived from his Mexican experience.
Southworth is equally recognized for her mixed media works and installations. She has been awarded artist fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council in painting and drawing and a NEA/NEFA Fellowship in sculpture. She also is represented in museums, and public and private collections including the Addison Gallery of American Art, the DeCordova Museum, and the Boston Public Library. Southworth, a passionate collector, has the extraordinary ability to combine a vast range of materials and processes. Her use of found objects, drawing, sewing, pyrography, and construction are unified in emotionally charged imagery laden with metaphor and symbol grounded in a strong conceptual base.
Southworth and Salvo’s solo and group exhibits are too extensive to enumerate.
This Trustman exhibit provides the first opportunity to see how the creative work of these exceptional artists has evolved.
Trustman Art Gallery hours are 10 AM – 4:30 PM, Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, 10 AM – 7 PM on Wednesday and Thursday. The gallery is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible. For more information, contact Kyle Mendelsohn at (617) 521-2268 or find us on Instagram.