Exhibition Catalog Essay by Amy Rahn

Souvenirs Exhibit at the West Branch Gallery

on view through November 1, 2009.

NEW WORK OPENS AT WEST BRANCH GALLERY IN STOWE, VERMONT, SEPTEMBER 12, 2009

Ellore, 2009, oil/ink on canvas, 12 x 12"

SOUVENIRS

Souvenirs is a celebration of places lived, places traveled and places of the heart and imagination. In this colorful patchwork the artist puts together seemingly random and isolated artifacts…a multiplicity of squares that invite the viewer to discern patterns and possibilities, finding new meaning and perhaps the hidden wholeness within.

One may find many of these earlier images familiar from the artist’s paintings and drawings; water, woodland, flowers, plants, river stones and maps. What is new is the introduction of her travels and the uniform format of small squares; a playful survey of artistic experience.

To view more of the paintings on exhibit click on WEST BRANCH GALLERY to the right or type this address into your browser:
http://www.westbranchgallery.com/westbranchgallery/Painting/Pages/janet_fredericks.html

New works created at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts

After traveling in Nepal for the month of March, I accepted a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for the month of April.  It is a haven for visual artists, writers, poets and composers who need a quiet, supportive retreat among other artist who also want to concentrate on their creative work.  I had been looking forward to a month of uninterrupted time to develop new work...to pull together some of my images and see what developed.  The archtypal image of "city" as an angle of repose became a strong impulse in my drawing reawakening my interest for many years in how the angle of repose is present in piles....of firewood, earth, old tires, anything piled up from above.  An angle of repose is that angle at which a material (that is piled) can support itself.  Having come from Kathmandu, the great city in mountainous Nepal, with its sprawl-consuming rice fields and its dust and smog, I needed to work with these still vivid images.  The result was about 20 sketches and drawings exploring the idea of city as angle of repose.  Of course, the drawings are more than mere impressions of Kathmandu...they seem to speak to the unwieldy nature of human civilization as it builds itself upon other civilizations, striving upwards, suppressing what lies beneath...or islands...

The idea of circumambulation also enters these drawing...the reverent walking around sacred places, temples, the land where I live...