The Silas-Kenyon Gallery
at
The SCHOOLHOUSE CENTER
Presents

JENNY HUMPHREYS
DIDIER CORALLO
MARYALICE JOHNSTON

Recent Work

From Friday, March 1 through April 1, 2002 the Silas-Kenyon Gallery is pleased to present recent work by JENNY HUMPHREYS, DIDIER CORALLO, and MARYALICE JOHNSTON. There will be a reception for the artists on Friday, March 1 from 6 – 9 p.m.

Jenny Humphreys was a recent fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center and has been a resident of Provincetown since 1993. Her work uses a variety of media ranging from needlework to food, to performance and photography to express her particular perspective on being a woman and an artist. She is currently at work on a cookbook project and is knitting a huge American flag.

For this exhibition she will present a piece made during a recent residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts at Sweetbriar College for women, in Sweetbriar, VA. Humphreys became inspired when she learned that the college had previously been a plantation. Further research revealed that Indiana Fletcher, who was the last heir to the plantation, stipulated in her will the founding of Sweetbrair College as an institution for the education of white girls.

The piece, entitled “Indie’s Legacy” represents Indiana’s inheritance in 1861 of 70 slaves. Each slave is represented by a small burlap bag embroidered with his or her name, monetary value, and filled with a quart of feed corn (one day’s slave ration in most of the South at that time). These bags are connected by threads braided with the artist’s hair, which lead to an embroidered dress installed on the gallery wall. Humphreys used her own hair, cutting it off piece by piece as the work progressed, as a way of acknowledging the legacy of slave ownership in her own Virginia ancestors.

Didier Corallo came to Provincetown in 1994 as a Visual Arts Fellow to the Fine Arts Work Center. His work is a hybrid of painting and sculpture that, through the use of conventional mediums on a reflective ground, compresses luminous ambient forms into a concrete state floating in an illusional depthless space.

Maryalice Johnston received an M.F.A. from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, in 1982. She was a Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center for two consecutive years, 1985-86 and 1986-87. In 1997 Maryalice returned to live and work in Provincetown. Currently she is the Visual Arts Program Coordinator at the Fine Arts Work Center. She is involved in the C-Scape Mapping Project and is an active member of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. Her upcoming shows this spring include Leaf Installation at the Wellfleet Library; By Daylight, By Lamplight - a progressive installation of new work by the C-Scape Mapping Project at The Schoolhouse Center; New Work a solo show at the Koussevitzky Art Gallery, Berkshire Community College; and 1985-86 FAWC Former Fellows, a show curated by Jim Peters at the Hudson D. Walker Gallery.

My pieces begin with the collection and gathering of common, found and discarded objects. I am most excited when I can collect a large number of objects that are similar in nature. As a group they present infinite possibilities in my mind. The sameness yet individuality of each piece makes them visible and invisible at the same time.

I continue with methodical processes such as sewing, crocheting, knitting, tying knots, and dipping objects in beeswax. The repetition of my handiwork combined with the repetition of the object in the sculpture imbues each piece with a quiet rhythm and meditative quality. The beeswax transforms each individual piece of the sculpture into a fixed state, with a shiny, seductive coating that is transparent and tactile.

The grid echoes the repetitive processes I use to create my sculptures. I am interested in the simple, mathematical order of the grid. It is a variable field on which I can play with the objects. Suspended with wire or thread from a grid charted directly onto the gallery wall or gallery ceiling, they appear fragile and tenuous. In their collective nature they are strong, thoughtful and often playful statements about lost histories and the finite nature of life.
~Maryalice Johnston

Humphreys and Corallo are the recent recipients of the Driskel Studio Residency Award, a Narrowland Arts program which provides a studio environment where creative artists and young creative artists may pursue their work free from distraction, with the support of peers, the council of inspired mentors, and access to relevant equipment.

 

The Schoolhouse Center is located at 494 Commercial Street in Provincetown’s historic East End Gallery District. Hours for this exhibition are Thursday through Sunday from Noon, and always by appointment. For more information or an interview with the artists please contact Michael Carroll at 508.487.4800 X 105 or mcarroll@schoolhousecenter.com .