The Simmons University Trustman Art Gallery presents “Mixing It Up,” sculptural assemblages by Boston artists Jessica Straus and Ellen Wetmore, October 2 – November 3, 2006 at the Simmons University Trustman Art Gallery, fourth floor, Main College Building, 300 The Fenway, in Boston.
Both artists will attend the reception for the exhibit on Thursday, October 12 from 5-7 p.m. Also in attendance will be the exhibition curator and newly appointed director of the Trustman Art Gallery, Barbara O’Brien. Admission to the gallery is free and open to the public.
The original function of hand-held domestic tools is set into comic and mysterious relief by the sculptural transformations of Jessica Straus in the new series “Widgets.” Finding her inspiration in the Dada impulse, Straus refines the connections between the wall-installed objects with a saturated palette of blackened blues, reds and yellows. A playful vocabulary of small hand-carved, marble-like forms and hand-hewn small spikes are both integral components of these “Widgets,” creating a rhythmic, high-energy pattern of dots and dashes across the gallery installation.
Ellen Wetmore also finds inspiration in the “found” form, but she is inspired by the Surrealists as she investigates the meeting place of the organic and the figurative. Wetmore casts in polyurethane; the organic forms of ripe fruit are combined with the natural ripeness of the female breast in her “Boob Ball” series. These glowing forms are arranged in dishes and on small platters as if to further meld the distinction between the presentation of the body and the display of food. Also on view will be Wetmore’s “Bell Peppers and Other Inedibles,” in which industrial fixtures such as faucets are combined with the cast carrot form, taking on a decidedly figurative, but this time male, iconography.
Straus has been the recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Individual Support Grant and the Somerville Arts Council Grant, while Wetmore’s impressive exhibition record includes a recent one-person show at the Boston Sculptors Gallery.
Straus earned her M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and her B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute. She is represented by Clark Gallery in Lincoln, Mass. Wetmore earned her M.F.A. from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University, as well as a B.A. in philosophy and a B.F.A. in sculpture from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
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.