UPFRONT GALLERY
On the Side of the Road: mixed media paintings by Sarah Powers

Reception: Friday, June 20; 6-9pm
June 6-July 25; every Friday noon to 2 and by appt.

A close look at the small details that make up the landscape around us as we careen around in our cars. Birds perched on power lines and familiar road signs are some of the images that inspired Powers. The work in this exhibition is mixed media, with collage, pouring mediums, and silkscreen, as well as layers of paint and drawings.

The places in the world that I like best, where I feel the most satisfied, are places that are the most minimal—the sparsest of places. I grew up where the land is flat and the landscape is industrial or agricultural. Because the trees are bare and the ground is white most of the year, the palate is limited to grey, brown, blue and white. Today, in the midst of my busy life in a very leafy city, I try to recreate this simplicity.

Sarah Powers is an artist based in Raleigh, North Carolina whose mixed media work focuses on industrial and rural landscapes and landscape details. Her work has been featured in galleries across the U.S. including Rhode Island’s risd l works, The Sarah Doyle Gallery at Brown University and Glance Gallery, Vision Gallery and Artspace in North Carolina. Powers is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design.

FRONT PROJECT SPACE (formerly the Fort Grunt space)
Reconstitution: Sculptures by Jeff Bell and Peter Goff
June 6-July 18

Closing Reception: Friday, July 18; 6-9pm

Additional Hours: Saturday June 21 & 28, Saturday July 12; 9am-1pm
Fridays, June 20, 27 & July 11 & 18; 6-9pm
Weds July 2; 5-8pm

Peter Goff: This series of sculpture is the result of my interest in place and material ingenuity. Most of the materials (with the exception of glue and wax) were collected from my neighborhood streets and sidewalks in Greensboro, NC and put together with very simple tools and methods. A mutual curiosity between pedestrians, drivers and myself arises when I am out collecting. While I search for material remnants people approach and conversation ensues. Questions of purpose and income often arise, people genuinely want to know what I am doing and why. Conceptually I explore the role of context in the making and display of work. I am concerned with ownership of actions that serve to either better or burden a society.

Jeff Bell: In my work I focus on gathering preexisting objects, disassembling them and then creating sculptures from those elements. The materials I work with come from everyday things, and my references are to other commonplace objects and to popular culture. My goal for each sculpture is to bring together elements from different backgrounds to create a new object that lives in the precarious area between the known and unknown. They allude to a variety of sources and concepts but never too literally.