Pell Lucy :: In Praise of Form

PELL LUC Y : : IN PR AISE OF FORM

PELL LUCY is a variation of the word pellucid, a term that implies clarity, viewing, light, transparency, seeing through to something else.

The word “pell” comes from skin or a manuscript on parchment. In other words, an artifact.

And “Lucy” is a variation of the name Lucien, which means light.

IN PR AISE OF FORM Piano Craft Gallery April 1 – April 24, 2022

P E L L LU C Y : : I N P R A I S E O F F O R M

“ Pell Lucy’s pivotal belief is that form, like the body, possesses an intelligence of its own – one far more

Over the last several decades, formalism in the

which we have become estranged. And for

visual arts has largely been considered a critical

these artists it is form – sensually embodied,

embarrassment, one more relic of a bygone era

discursively silent form – that most powerfully

felled by misbegotten ideals. Indeed, since

conducts us in this direction. It is the language

the rise of postmodernism in the latter half of

of the sensual, after all, that we share with other

the last century, art has become ever more

creatures – or, in the Native American locution,

discursive, prioritizing issues and ideas over

with All Our Relations.

the forms in which they are instantiated, often relegating the latter to the status of incidental.

But with the larger cultural search for more ecologically aware ways of being, many artists are returning to form, not in the name of a new

capacious than conscious,

art world ism but as a means of reclaiming our

discursive thought.”

continuity with nature.

— Taney Roniger

Departing from the rigid binaries of the formalism of old, Pell Lucy’s pivotal belief is that form, like the body, possesses an intelligence of its own – one far more capacious than conscious, discursive thought. No longer opposed to content but a kind of content of its own, form is here honored as our originary language.

Pell Lucy is a collective of just such artists.

Addressing itself directly to the body, form

Established in 2019 under the leadership of

accesses the deeper regions of our bodymind

Deborah Barlow, the group coalesced around a

that house our biological inheritance, both as

set of shared values, all rooted in the emerging

animals born of the earth and as matter born of

ecological ethos. Rejecting the preoccupation

the cosmos. And because it embodies the same

with the self that has been our modern

forces that animate all matter – its rhythms and

Western inheritance, Pell Lucy’s orientation

patterns, its tensions and vibrations – form

is decidedly outward: away from the human

acts on these deeper levels as an agent of

subject formerly at the center of the world

re-membering: bringing back into union that

and toward the larger world beyond us from

which has been wrest apart. Through attentive

embrace of form as an agent of re-membering,

we can re-awaken to ourselves as creatures and

the group embodies a plea for unification on

thus recover a felt participation in the vitality

every level. For in reminding us of our shared

of the world.

inheritance with all of earth and cosmos,

Following from the move away from human centrism is Pell Lucy’s embrace of unknowing, of mystery. In a culture that prizes certainty and mastery, much recent art has become intent on delivering messages (and with increasing

sensual form necessarily awakens us to our commonality with our fellow humans.

Returning us to our carnal senses and then drawing us outward, form can thus be a source of great renewal and reconnection.

stringency, those of a political nature). But

While its sights are set firmly on the larger

for Pell Lucy, ambiguity is art’s strongest suit;

world, Pell Lucy’s ultimate challenge is to art

serving as a kind of gateway to wonder, not-

itself. Will it continue to hold human reason as

knowing can be a potent means by which

its highest value and thus remain mired in a

those willing to make the self-surrender can

moribund worldview? Or, infused with the spirit

profoundly experience a re-enchantment of

of a wisening culture, will it welcome back into

the world. Offering sensually alluring objects

its fold all that reason has cast out and thus

that defy comprehension, these artists draw the

help lead the way to a more integrated future?

viewer into a wilderness of otherness – but one

For these artists at least, the answer is as clear as

that, while alien to the thinking mind, resonates

the name of their group suggests.

deeply with the knowing body.

Although it eschews explicit messages or any didactic agenda, Pell Lucy’s vision is nonetheless deeply political. Indeed, with its radical

– Taney Roniger

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engagement with form, these artists believe,

PELL LUCY Tracey Adams Deborah Barlow Kay Canavino Mi-Jin Chun Silva DeMarchi Scout Dunbar Tina Feingold Karen Fitzgerald Laura Gurton Lynette Haggard Joseph Hayes Berri Kramer Carole Kunstadt Joanne Lefrak Eve Leonard Sandra Lerner Denise D. Manseau Diane McGregor Elizabeth Mead Tracey Maroni Kellin Nelson Paula Overbay Laura Ann Perry Gerri Rachins Tim Rice Taney Roniger Julie Shapiro Sarah Slavick Rhonda Smith Priya Vadhyar Debra Weisberg

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Tracey Adams I live on California’s central coast, close to the Pacific Ocean. Water links me to the forms and formlessness of the natural world. The tangled weave of seaweed, tree limbs, and the vines outside my window are a metaphor for the matter and molecules that all lives share. Nature’s patterns and variations – growing, decaying, and sometimes perfectly still – are beautifully ambiguous, a reminder that the transition from a gentle wave at low tide to a violent riptide are of a piece.

The dynamic ocean and the life forms it supports are mysterious. I walk along the shoreline and am transformed. Our watery planet and our fluid-filled bodies are part and parcel of the cosmos from which all lives arise and to which we will return in endlessly recursive cycles.

Cascade, 1 of 7 panels Collage and encaustic on dibond, 13 x 10 inches

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Deborah Barlow Sometimes poets should have the last word.

Security Tomorrow will have an island. Before night I always find it. Then on to the next island.

These places hidden in the day separate and come forward if you beckon.

But you have to know they are there before they exist. Some time there will be a tomorrow without any island.

So far, I haven’t let that happen, but after I’m gone others may become faithless and careless.

Before them will tumble the wide unbroken sea, and without any hope they will stare at the horizon.

So to you, Friend, I confide my secret: to be a discoverer you hold close whatever you find, and after a while you decide what it is.

Kasetti 2 Mixed media on canvas, 60 x 60 inches

Then, secure in where you have been, you turn to the open sea and let go.

– William Stafford

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Mi-Jin Chun Subject: Form of Coexistence of Reality and Moment (After a Quiet Time) I would like to discover the form of coexistence of the real and the moment that occurs in the continuously flowing time and the artificial space that crosses the time.

The material time and space that occurred in the past gradually fades, but the emotions and meanings felt at that time still remain, and they are engraved in the impression more intensely than I felt at first.

The thin, transparent, and subtle emotional

After a Quiet Time Mixed media on paper, 22 x 30 inches

memories surrounding me are overlapping and interlocking with the accumulation of time, creating a more solid form.

The expressive elements of my work appear with controlled spontaneous colours and organic structural spatial elements that reproduce form and its memories.

It maximizes with moments of reality and unpredictable novelty.

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Scout Dunbar We speak through form when words fall short and our tongues can’t find their shape.

Form is an elusive language, molded by its practitioner and their distinct sense of knowing what needs to be said and how it should sound.

Form can be found suspended in the space between two meandering lines. It is where the chalky dust of pigment converges with thick, heavy ink. Kicked up like desert earth, form is found as paper fibers soften into felt, blushing with the colors of a Sonoran sun.

Mesa Birds II Mixed Media on panel, 12 x 12 inches

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Tina Feingold The essence and intent of painting is discovered by drawing attention to its form.

A painting is the conscious and unconscious accumulation of decisions arrived at through the considered use of color, light, shapes, and space. The desired effect is to create mystery and awe, both for myself and for the viewer.

Rapture Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches

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Karen Fitzgerald “Form possesses an intelligence of its own – one far more capacious than conscious, discursive thought. No longer opposed to content but a kind of content of its own, form is our originary language.”

Our originary language sloshes between matter and spirit. We sense this intertwining behind the more-than what our eyes see.

What that other dimension is has been the subject of many explorations in various languages.

The other dimension is rarely visible. Finding a way to translate it into visual language has been an essential commitment in my painting practice. My latest work is a tribute to the restless shifting of light and energy. Other dimensions are visible through the imaginings we are called to. My work embodies that aspect which carries us to the delineation, and

Fog Light (Remembering Gay) Mica, Venetian plaster, 12k gold on yupo mounted on panel, 20-inch diameter

unification, between matter and spirit.

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Laura Gurton We possess an inherent affinity with the forms that are part of the natural world.

I believe that connections to the beginning of our existence pull us towards shapes of eggs, and cellular shapes that exist within us and around us, all part of our existence and deep rooted memories. I surround myself with ovals and circles. I choose life as my guide and praise form for contradicting the horrors of this historic time of climate change, pandemic, and confusion in politics.

Unknown Species no.308 Oil and alkyd on linen, 60 x 36 inches

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Stay Here Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 50 inches

Lynette Haggard For almost thirty years I have lived on a river.

Each day I renew connections to the natural world, its rhythms and patterns, systems and mysteries. Being both a witness to and a participant in the ecosystem in this way has deeply fortified my artistic practice. Form is both created and nourished by nature. I am grateful to have access to this experience and value how it manifests itself in my work.

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Joseph Hayes The subject of a painting does not pre-exist, nor is it a recollection of past experience, something recalled or imagined. It is a discovery made through an intimate sometimes brutal relationship with the medium.

Sensation and feeling made visible through light, dark, space, form, and the formless.

Constantly considered yet in an improvisational manner, intervening between the pre-conscious and the conscious to create the will.

As a collective we work toward a meaning and truth that is inherent in our actions but does not propose a resolution. We use an ineffable dialogue and individual resolutions of an image made in real time. These private epiphanies, once resolved, create a collective subconscious through the intelligence and universality of form.

Mirror between the Red Room Oil paint, graphite, gilding wax, pastel, charcoal, raw pigment on wooden panel, 60 x 60 cm

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Carole Kunstadt A precursor to the manifestation of form is the existence of energy.

The universe itself is a closed system, so the total amount of energy in existence has always been the same. The forms that energy takes, however, are constantly changing.

Mark making – gestural graphite responses determine, embrace and define the fluid, the immediate and the illusory.

Connecting to passion, renewal and transformation, common to all organisms, presents an infinite choreography. The markings are visually recording the alluring, intangible and

Markings No. 64 Graphite, colored pencil on double layered archival drafting film, 27 x 36 inches

vital forces into a layered palimpsest.

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Silver Web Silver and glass, 24 x 36 inches

Joanne Lefrak Taking inspiration from spiderwebs in ancient monasteries in Nepal to landforms and complex systems, art can portray the world beyond physical sight. We can experience unexplainable magic from patterns and visual forms created by listening to the wisdom of nature.

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Denise D. Manseau The unseen forces of wind, vibration and sound are revealed as palpable sensations as they interact with water and light.

Orderly and chaotic formations are made visible as one effects the other.

My encounters with physical and ephemeral phenomena trigger memories of other known structures and systems. I believe this intuitive awareness embodies the vitality and mysteries of the universe. A thought reflected in Marcus Aurelius’ call to turn inward and “meditate often on the interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of all things in the universe.”

I attend to my ‘re-memberings’ to give form to the intangible t­ hrough the act of making.

The work is set in motion as an intentional act and transformed through experimenta-

Zephyrus Graphite and oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches

tion and invention, as an artifact –­ one that is unexpected and often revelatory.

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Diane McGregor My interest in using typography as an element in this new body of work has nothing to do with precise communication. Instead, I use typography to render an inward form.

Fragments of text carry a more intuitive message to the viewer; the singular beauty of the font is expressed as pure form. Text also creates an underlying compositional grid which anchors the organic, atmospheric, and mysterious nature of my painting practice.

Letterforms are situated as semiotic signposts of human consciousness in the landscape.

I don’t want the words or the forms to “make sense.” It’s the poetic and evocative aspect of language, words, and letterforms that interests me. There is an alchemical presence to these fragments of language – not literal, explained, or necessarily intelligible. I am not seeking reason. I want revelation.

Emissary Oil, wax, toner transfers on panel, 20 x 16 inches

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Untitled Williamsburg G2 03 Archival pigment print, 18 x 26 inches

Elizabeth Mead Underlying geometries are crucial to the existence of a believable form. We must be convinced of a form’s internal life so that the external may work in tandem to hold the inner and outer in the solitary moment when the two make one.

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Kellin Nelson Geometry creates another dimension in the visual language of an image. Geometric forms can feel familiar and rational, but they are also part of a symbolic language that possesses mystery and even a sense of the sacred.

Tapping into the space between the known and the unknown allows a work to communicate in its full range to both the thinking mind and the knowing body.

Vian 1 Acrylic ink, pigment-based ink, and gold embroidery thread on watercolor paper, 12.5-inches diameter

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Sailing Away Acrylic on panel, 22 x 22 inches

Paula Overbay A dot is a complete entity unto itself like a raindrop or a molecule. But it needs hundreds of its fellows to make anything that can be described as form, especially form brought into order in a way that we can praise as sufficiently resolved. Dots as metaphor are a whirlwind of activity that swerve and meander, disintegrate and coalesce, dispute and join, transferring energy as they go.

Like us, only briefly balanced.

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Laura Ann Perry I take inspiration from the complexity of form and wild energy found in nature, combining the abstract essence of a remembered landscape with mark making to reveal the particulars of an imagined terrain. Layers of marks create form; texture, pattern, density, and rhythm, all woven together to suggest the mystery of a specific, transitory moment.

There is beauty inherent in a mark or brush stroke – in its movement, contour, energy – just as there is meaning in its absence.

Marks merge together, constructing space, place, and form.

Some Inner Indication Graphite on Yupo paper adhered to cradled panel, 9 x 12 inches

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Gerri Rachins The manifestation of form is illusive, but ontologically necessary to prove that we exist. The passage of time confirms that our existence is transitory. However, the law of physics known as the conservation of energy may comfort us. It states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but only converted from one form to another.

This universal law may imply a similar relationship between the artist and artwork, as the energy of the artist is converted to form during the creation of the work.

Untitled 0208 from the series In-Between Flashe paint, graphite on Coventry Rag paper, 55 x 40 inches

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Taney Roniger As biological organisms, we are exquisitely attuned to the conditions of our environment.

Patterns of light and shadow, the shape of our surrounding spaces — even the arrangement of objects within these spaces: all have a powerful effect on our physical state and our consciousness. While we are generally unaware that the world is speaking to us in this way, visual art gives us a means of becoming more aware. For art is first and foremost a language of form, one whose discursively silent signals register in the nervous system of the viewer. By attending closely to how form acts on our bodies, we can awaken to our forgotten communion with the animate world that gave rise to us.

Never the Same River (#21) Charcoal on watercolor paper, 66 x 44 inches

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Julie Shapiro What can form be? What information does it contain? My work speaks to the search for form, evolving through process.

Deliberate moves, encouraged accidents and acknowledged incidents are all essential.

I build form through the combining of re-active hand-direct responses with established markings that come from parts of earlier works or marks made through handmade stencils. My work offers form in variously articulated and completed states, asking the viewer to follow the accumulations of drawing, mark and color. The work is strongly influenced by the geography that surrounds me; the experiences and perceptual relationships are an essential source.

Mashing of control and accident encourages the re-examination and self-critique that is ongoing in my working method.

Back to Front Oil on panel, 20 x 16 inches

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Sarah Slavick As we face the possibility of extinction of life on earth, I mourn our loss. We often fail to understand, value, or even notice the wondrous, vast, slow, interconnected, primordial natural world around us. In producing oxygen, trees above ground are critical for human survival.

In Elegy to the Underground 4 and other works of this series, I am particularly drawn to what happens below the ground to the unseen fungal or mycorrhizal networks. Through sharing resources and working together in complex, infinite pathways and alliances, trees reach enormity as a vast communal organism. This work explores the underground life of trees in an elegiac series that conveys both grief and hope for what is threatened and for what might survive through possible strategies that trees offer- for all species on the planet.

Elegy to the Underground 4 Oil on canvas, 72 x 48 inches

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Rhonda Smith Seeing the first tiny, seasonable unfurling of the tightly wrapped package of a bud signifies everything thrilling about potential energy. Certain forms rendered by the human hand carry this potency of the latent.

All kinds of possibility lie within; the outside is an indication. This palpable energy is what resonates with the observer who has an appreciation of receiving.

When I am working on a piece, my initial idea dissolves over time and my hands receive the various strands of a vision; better to not interfere. I still don’t quite believe that is possible, the receiving as opposed to my conceiving. The archetypal? Some deep recognition of the thingness of things?

I don’t know. I do know that my “important ideas” often lead me astray. Eye to hand, heaven to hand; skip the mind.

Aberrations Acrylic, branch, cement, clay, cord, foam, glue, papier mache, rock, silk, wire, 74 H x 36 W x 18 D inches

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Priya Vadhyar Perhaps the most profound consequence of focusing on form in its own right has been the realization that there is a continuum between the I and all that lies outside that I. It is one thing to speak of this theoretically and quite another to experience it; to know deeply, even when that knowledge and its source are not easy to define. I have found that this knowledge comes, via recognition, when a quiet descends on the ego. In this state, all the nameable parts of the self slip away. One is more an orb of energy or, as Virginia Woolf calls it, a “wedge of darkness.”

In this state, one is unconfined, and one sees in form the echoes of one’s life force — the absolute foundation of everything.

Ebb and Flow Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 inches

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Debra Weisberg My paper works frequently break out of the confines of the rectangle. I continually seek the “right” formal balance between the jagged edges of the contour and the frenzied central energy. The meaning occurs through the search for that final form, the felt sense of harmony vs. tension. Sometimes it’s like throwing a stone in a pond, the ripples moving and oscillating, the energy hits the shoreline and stops. The struggle and the joy are that I determine the contours of the “shoreline”, the final form of the piece.

There is constant re-adjustment, adding, subtracting, tweaks and occasionally radical cuts. I believe this process gives the artwork its authenticity, spark, and most parallels nature’s continual reshaping of our landscape. The show’s title reaffirms the central importance of form in structuring meaning

Conundrum Black and white paper tape on paper, 78 x 81 inches

and visual richness.

Instagram: @pelllucyartists Archive: slowmuse.com/tag/pell-lucy/

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Published on the occasion of Pell Lucy Artists exhibition hosted by the Piano Craft Gallery.

793 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02118 Copyright ©2022 Pell Lucy. All rights reserved.

Design: Denise D. Manseau Cover Photo: Deborah Barlow Typography: Myriad Pro Printed: March 2022 Printed in the United States of America

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