Opening Reception:
Thursday, November 15, 5-7pm
Simmons University presents Where We Live, a three-person show, of photographs, video and paintings by Milo Fay, Eliza Gagnon and Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz from November 13-December 13 at the Trustman Art Gallery, located on the fourth floor, Main College Building, 300 the Fenway in Boston. A reception from 5-7 p.m. will be held on Thursday, November 15. Closed: November 21-23. The exhibit and reception are free and open to the public.
Where do we live? We dwell in space, time and in memory. We picture ourselves in places that we yearningly dream of, or perhaps, from which we have escaped, or crave to return. Artists Milo Fay, Eliza Gagnon and Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz meditate on our physical and psychic dwellings in their divergent approaches to the idea of “home.”
Milo Fay creates photographs using a large format camera and prints on silk. She also delights us with the use of vintage tintypes. As a child, she played with her grandmother’s circa 1890 dollhouse. Photographing the house, dolls and furniture as an artist engendered memory and emotion, not all of which were comfortable. Her tiny tableaux with their diminutive human surrogates raise questions about relationships, the veil of memory and the fact that home may not always conform to the cultural ideal.
Eliza Gagnon’s video work on place and our attachment to it is wryly funny. She suffers the fate of many an urban dweller: rehabbed out of her home. She has to find and re-think herself into a place that feels safe and her own. Gagnon’s narrative is a private one, but her sharing of it both uplifts and worries us.
Painter Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz evokes through her dystopic works the anxiety of our current culture. Is the future a progression forward or are we leaving behind our best times? Her homes-abandoned, or concealed behind the graffitied walls and gates of the rich, imply that for many, the American dream is out of reach or has slipped away. Her masterful attention to detail draws us into her reflections.
These artists create alternate narratives of what it means to have a home, both as a tangible place to live and a repository for our memories. Home can be safe, or scary, or a commentary about the economic inequality inherent in our society.
The Trustman Art Gallery Lunchtime Lecture Series continues on November 28 at noon in the Gallery with Associate Professor Gregory Feldman of the Simmons University Psychology Department. In his talk, “Mindfulness in Everyday Life,” Feldman will present his research conducted on the psychological benefits of responding mindfully to upsetting thoughts and emotions.
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.