WHACK! is up

The Beasts are living large in a Beacon Hill shop window.

I'm too exhausted for words but will share some fun images. It's uncanny how perfect this empty storefront is for us – a former hair salon with intimate spaces, track lighting and architectural details. It's been a whirlwind experience with a significant learning curve. That said, we're pinching ourselves at how smoothly it is coming together. More tomorrow....

Feeling very surreal right now.

Adria sizing up one of our signs.

A Pop-Up Exhibition with new work by Adria Arch and Jodi Colella

September 25-27, 2015

Friday and Saturday 3-9 pm

Sunday 2-7 pm

Reception Friday 6-9 pm

Art Talk Sunday 3 pm

Reserve your place for the art talk here.

Pop-Up Exhibition of New Work

I am so invigorated by this new experience. Adria Arch invited me to participate in one of her new projects – Pop-Up exhibits in a vacant storefronts.

Together we are creating a place to bring our new art out of the studio and into the public eye. The show's title refers to the intensity of color and texture on view and the immediacy and urgency of a three day show.

We've been busy planning and working with copywriters and photographers and soon we'll be installing. What an opportunity to organize yourself to spread the word about what we are up to!

After extensive research and several site visits, we settled on a former haircutting salon in Beacon Hill. It's a funky little space with walls large enough for Adria's expansive paintings and the perfect intimacy for my sculptures.

I/Me, reconstructed stuffed leopards, mixed fibers, brass, feathers, 36 x 29.5 x 15.5 in.

Here's a preview. These new sculptures are in response to my travels, to China and most recently Peru, and the common threads of humanity that weave in and out of history. Here is an excerpt from an essay written by art critic Shawn Hall:

"...Recalling fetish or totem items from some unknown past, these odd, decorated creatures have both a weighty, tactile solidity and a sense of wounded fragility... Colella seems to bring a hint of their ancient mysteries back to life, resonating with the cultural and psychological plights of the modern world."

Against Nature, reconstructed stuffed turtle, mixed fibers, 11 x 16 x 23 in.

Adria's dynamic paintings, inspired by a residency in India, are an exuberant powerhouse of spontaneous energy and movement. When situated together, our two collections present an unexpected relationship across a terrain of diverse media and subject matter. Here's a description taken from our press release:

Adria Arch's new paintings start with a splash. Working in an intuitive, gestural tradition, she brings in the element of chance at the beginning. The liquid spill, a pooling pour of paint, is the first mark that determines a causative sequence of subsequent marks. For works that are concerned with feeling and surprise and bursts of energy, Arch lets the abstract contour, and the initial color, of that first exuberant gesture determine the spaces she builds across her large-scale surfaces.

Next Nest, acrylic on panel, 48 x 48 in.

WHACK! A Pop-Up Exhibition of art by Adria Arch and Jodi Colella

Dates: Friday through Sunday, September 25 to 27
Place:  49 River Street, Beacon Hill, Boston MA
Reception:  Friday, September 25, 6-9 pn
Artist Talk:  Sunday, September 27, 3 pm
                     Sign up now for the Artist Talk. Our storefront is intimate and space is limited.
Hours: 3-9 pm Friday and Saturday, 2-7 pm on Sunday, and by appointment

Mystery WHACK! token gift to our first fifty visitors.



Follow us by checking in here and with Adria as we make our way through this event!

EXPOSED in Stowe VT

This summer has been a whirlwind of activity with a new job as the Director of Education and Programs at Concord Art Association and several exhibition commitments that were promised in what seems like a millennium ago. So my time has been dedicated to the doing of it and not so much about the talking about it... Until today!

July 12 was the opening of Exposed an outdoor sculpture exhibition at the Helen Day Art Center in Stowe Vermont. The curators Samantha Cataldo, DJ Hellerman, and Amy Rahn selected a very interesting show with everything from 30 foot tall inflatables (Limppunklovejunk, Claire Ashley) to an inlaid braided rug out of ceramic tiles (Fictitious Force, Beka Goedde) and poetry revealed in a sequence of lawn signs along the recreation path (Meandering, Adria Arch).

I really am honored to be a part of this program this year with so many high quality entries. My installation RELIQUARY has evolved to include all my forgeries (Three assemblages: Stash I and II, Reliquary and 14 bronze balls of fiber). They're installed on a wide, low-hung branch that hangs over the width of the sidewalk on Main Street. 

These bronze sculptures are a trick in perception. Treated and painted to appear as if molded and cast in heavy bronze, they are in fact bundles of actual objects and very lightweight.   Their placement on a substantial but extended branch elicits a combined sense of curiosity and anxiety for those standing underneath. Curious how the branch is holding and anxious that the bronze may fall on top of them.

Bronzed sculptures installed in trees. Multiple assemblages tucked inside or wrapped around limbs, and attached to trunks. Each bundle contains items from the home - utensils, clothing, pillows, toiletries, toys, televisions and other artifacts of domestic life. Installing in a tree is symbolic of nests and shelters in nature.  Painted to appear as if cast in bronze to stand for a distinctive place and time and reinforce the notion that nothing is as it seems – much like the representations of material culture.

A special thanks to the Helen Day Art Center for organizing this very special show, especially the curator Rachel Moore and gallery manager Katharine Longfellow.