MCLA Gallery 51: Debi Pendell
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts' Gallery 51 presents a
solo exhibition featuring the work of painter Debi Pendell.
An
opening reception will be held Thursday, July 30, from 6 to 8 p.m. in
the Main Street gallery. The event is free and open to the public.
Pendell moved to North Adams five years ago from New Haven, CT, and is currently a resident of the Eclipse Mill Artist Lofts.
Her
works are investigations of semiotics, language, and meaning based in
the format of landscape painting. Her hazy natural landscapes are
layered with a dusting of disembodied alphabet characters in a variety
of fonts and scripts.
Concentrating
on abstract elements of recognizable shapes and characters in
combination with materials and processes, Pendell plays with symbols of
both visual art and language and how people "read" them and make
meaning from them.
"I've
been playing with the combination of acrylics, collage and mixed media
for about 15 years and several series of works have unfolded," she
says. "The series focused on in this exhibition, the Landscape/Letters Series,
began quite unexpectedly in 2005. An art school in New York asked me to
teach a class in 'winter landscape-based abstraction.' Up until this
time, I had never worked in landscape."
She went into the studio to toy around with the idea.
"Methods
and materials from my other series-collage, text, image transfers,
drawing, painting, and an acrylic faux encaustic process- joined with
the abstract landscape imagery and the results simply 'spoke' to me,"
says Pendell. "When I exhibited them it quickly became apparent that
other people also 'read' them and 'heard' them. My exploration of these
communications continues to delight and surprise me."
She
earned a bachelor's degree from Central Connecticut State University
and a master of arts in liberal studies from Wesleyan University in
Middletown, CT.
Pendell's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her show at Gallery 51 runs through August 23.
The
opening July 30 is part of DownStreet Art Thursday, an evening of
exhibition openings and performances celebrating the arts in North
Adams.
DownStreet Art is a program of MCLA's Berkshire Cultural Resource Center.
MCLA
Gallery 51, at 51 Main Street in North Adams, is open every day from 10
a.m. to 6 p.m. For more information, call 413-664-8718.
