The 2007 DeCordova Annual Exhibition

Joyce and Edward Linde Gallery, James and Audrey Foster Gallery, Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Media Space, Grand Staircase, Window Gallery, Arcade Gallery, and Fourth Floor Hallway

May 5 – Aug 12, 2007
(opening reception, Thursday, May 10 from 6 - 9 pm)

This year The 2007 DeCordova Annual Exhibition will transform the Museum’s galleries: frilly layered curtains overtake the Window Gallery, surreal graphic figures explode off the walls, and potatoes blast into space. Imaginary worlds of fictional creatures and toy-like landscape photos provide the narrative. Artists also explore scientific issues such as global warming, the natural world, and kinetic and humorous sculpture.

DeCordova’s curators have selected ten artists—who work in a variety of media including drawing, photography, installation, sculpture, and printmaking—for The 2007 DeCordova Annual Exhibition: Robert Taplin (Connecticut); Elke Morris (Maine); Sandra Allen, Ria Brodell, Samantha Fields, Anne Lilly, Nathalie Miebach, Jeff “Jeffu” Warmouth (Massachusetts); Jungil Hong (Rhode Island); and Sarah Amos (Vermont).

Originally titled the Artists/Visions series, the DeCordova Annual has showcased the works of emerging, mid-career, and established artists since 1989. This exhibition highlights the work of a limited number of contemporary artists from the six New England states and emphasizes the quality and variety of works rather than any single or overarching theme. Each year the DeCordova Annual seeks to feature some of the best, most innovative and gifted artists working in the region.

The DeCordova Annual is the backbone of the Museum’s exhibition program, solidly reflecting our mission. The series also reinforces DeCordova’s commitment to regional artists, and its leadership position in celebrating contemporary art in New England .

The exhibition is organized by Director of Curatorial Affairs Rachel Rosenfield Lafo, Curator Nick Capasso, and Koch Curatorial Fellow Lisa Sutcliffe. The 2007 DeCordova Annual Exhibition has been funded by the Deb orah A. Hawkins Charitable Trust.

For 2007, the following ten artists from five New England states will be featured:

Sandra Allen (Massachusetts) drawings—Allen’s drawings of trees are so skillfully rendered that they at first appear to be photographs, particularly when seen at a distance or in reproduction. But once one approaches them, the marks of the pencil are easily seen, and the evidence of the artist’s virtuosic hand is clear. For the DeCordova Annual, Allen created the thirty-seven foot tall, scroll-like drawing specifically for the forty foot wall at the bottom of Museum’s Grand Staircase.

Sarah Amos (Vermont) prints—Amos’s large and technically-complex prints are landscapes of place, imagination, memory, and culture, where layers of marks, patterns, and colors overlap to form visually elaborate images. While each print is unique, thematic threads run throughout the work, tied together by a repeated vocabulary of forms. A master printer and native Australian who has lived in Vermont since the early 1990s, Amos is inspired by the art and geography of Australia as well as that of many other cultures.

Ria Brodell (Massachusetts) drawings and sculpture—Brodell observes and records her world of imagined creatures in narrative drawings and brings them to life in accompanying sculptures. The Distant Lands, Brodell’s name for her fantasy world, is a place where worms and bunnies combine to create long fuzzy Wormbunnies, and guinea pigs mix with dinosaurs to make scaly Guineasaurs.

Samantha Fields (Massachusetts) installation—Fields’s work is focused on domestic objects, spaces, and architectures. Her installations created for DeCordova’s Window Gallery are puzzles of place. In Curtain Mother the Museum’s sixteen-by-sixteen foot facade window is dressed up with layer upon layer of fabric, which turns institutional architecture into something domestic, and oddly terrifying. In Wallpapered Space II, vinyl siding, wallpaper patterns, and afghan blankets come together to confuse both outdoors and indoors, and insulation methods used for our bodies and our homes.

Jungil Hong (Rhode Island) screen-prints— Trying to decode Hong’s complex screen-prints is like attempting to remember and record a fleeting dream. Floating memories of figures and settings merge and morph to create a surreal pastiche where birds and men swim through vibrantly colorful space. Figures such as the bird/human hybrid, and excessively patterned collage, inspired by the surrealist movement and its artist Max Ernst, become psychedelic fairytales that pulsate with energy.

Anne Lilly (Massachusetts) sculpture—Lilly’s participatory kinetic sculptures create complex and compelling spatial and formal relationships from straightforward materials and simple systems. Through precise engineering, the artist transforms inert and lifeless industrial materials into objects that move with a grace and seeming intention more organic than mechanical. Steel rods become fronds, legs, tentacles, and branches, brought to life by the touch of Museum visitors.

Nathalie Miebach (Massachusetts) sculpture—Miebach’s unusual artwork contemplates the issues of climate change, environmental statistics, sculpture, and baskets. In her work, art and science are literally interwoven into complex sculptures that are three-dimensional interpretations of scientific data. Miebach’s giant warped baskets pierced by wooden dowels and balls are visual metaphors for the scientific measurements and observations that the artist has accumulated from different sources.

Elke Morris (Maine) photographs—Morris photographs working class neighborhoods in Lewiston , ME , and alters the results in Photoshop to create an artificial sense of place. At first glance, the pictures appear to display tiny toy neighborhoods, or model towns, an effect achieved by blurring certain areas of the photograph and choice of subject matter. For example, by highlighting a dilapidated clothes-line, Morris draws attention to the detritus of daily life in neighborhoods that have been left behind by the technological revolution.

Robert Taplin (Connecticut ) sculpture—Size is a major is sue in Taplin’s artworks, he has rendered the human figure at both colossal and intimate scales. In his Punch series, the everyman-gone-wrong and his antics are presented much smaller than life, at the familiar scale of figurines. Typically little figures on tables are sentimental characters engaged in charming/cloying activities but not Punch – he’s busy urinating, fornicating, and getting himself arrested.

Jeff “Jeffu” Warmouth (Massachusetts) installation—Jeffu is an art-world trickster and comedian who runs riot with visual and verbal puns in an astounding array of media. His latest extravaganza, SPUDNIK, is based entirely on a stupid pun. With video, dioramas, sculpture, and photographs, Jeffu simultaneously pokes fun at the political history of the space program, American cuisine, consumer culture, and – of course – the pomposity of museum displays.

The 2007 DeCordova Annual Exhibition Programs

Gallery Talks: Meet the Artists
Third Floor Lobby
Selected Saturdays at 3 pm
Free with Campus admission

The act of creating artwork can be just as exciting as looking at the final product. Meet New England and regional artists to discuss their work on view in The 2007 DeCordova Annual Exhibition.

May 5: Nathalie Miebach
May 12: Samantha Fields
May 19: Sandra Allen
June 2: Sarah Amos
June 16: Jeff “Jeffu” Warmouth
June 23: Elke Morris
June 30: Ria Brodell
July 14: Anne Lilly

Eye Wonder Family Program
Museum Galleries
Selected Sundays, drop-in from 1 – 3 pm
Free with Campus admission

Come to DeCordova with friends and family to discover an ever-changing world of art! Eye Wonder focuses on “seeing” and “doing” in art museums and combines careful looking with creative art projects centered on DeCordova’s changing exhibitions. Eye Wonder celebrates the uniqueness of contemporary artists and their processes with family-friendly guided tours and hands-on art activities. This drop-in program is perfect for families with children ages 6 and up. The upcoming programs will be centered The 2007 DeCordova Annual Exhibition. The following artists will host:
May 20: Samantha Fields
June 24: Anne Lilly
July 22: Jeff “Jeffu” Warmouth
August 12: Ria Brodell

DeCordova Museum’s 2007 Annual Artists Share with Students
Selected Tuesdays, May 1, 8, 15, and 29 from 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Museum’s Galleries

During the month of May, the Museum School will offer a four-part artists’ series on sculpture. DeCordova Annual Sculptors Ria Brodell, Anne Lilly, Robert Taplin, and Jeff “Jeffu” Warmouth will share their inspiration, techniques, and personal perspectives. This special opportunity encourages students to get up close and personal with artists, ask questions, and learn about the issues that inform their work. Each artist is truly unique, in terms of their work and personality! This series is sure to please students interested in learning more about the sculptor’s work from the source! $85 for Members; $95 for Non-Members; limit 20. Register by calling 781/259-0505.