thick, hazy, cleer, blew
Shona Macdonald at Real Art Ways

Real Art Ways presents After Progress, a solo exhibition by Adam Viens 

Viens is a mixed-media artist whose work delves into concepts of time, perception, memory, and philosophy. As a physical representation of intellectual and emotional processes, Viens’ work presents a combination of frantic, improvisational technique and slow, interpretive contemplation.  The result is admittedly abstract however, frequently edging in and out of vague spatial representation. 

After Progress is predicated on personal interpretation, explains Viens, “The work is not didactic, it is not a declaration. It is an invitation…Being an artist becomes a lens in which we see all of life and yet,  who we are in the wider world requires different ways of thinking; different ways of being.  These works explore some of those component parts within the variety of experiences and why there tends to be a disconnect between what we feel our lives should be and how we actually live them.  Numerous visual languages are used to create tension.   The works include both natural processes (the raw chemistry and elemental properties of the medium) as well as mark- making used in trade work, scrawling  done by the human hand, and large sweeping gestures.  This alludes to the conflict between thinking and feeling.”  

After Progress is curated by Peter Albano.

About the Artist

Viens is a mixed media artist from Connecticut.  Born in December, 1989, in Rockville, CT, Adam was raised one of five siblings to a single mother and grew up playing in the woods on their property amongst the refuse of what used to be an unofficial town dump.  Adam was initially self taught but did attend Manchester Community College in his early twenties where he fine tuned his skills and understanding with the help of the fantastic faculty at the time.  No fancy programs or degrees.  Adam continues pursuing a career as an artist in his converted barn studio in Middletown, CT.  In 2019 he started a contracting company, EarthSake Initiatives that specializes in design-driven, eco- renovations and in 2023 started a sister company, EarthSake Studios that utilizes reclaimed materials from job sites to make unique, bespoke furniture.  While still participating in exhibitions throughout New England, Viens art and furniture can be found at Monger’s Market in Bridgeport, CT.

 

 

Real Art Ways presents Megafauna (these desperate earthly forms), a solo exhibition by Real Art Awardee Ezra Moth. 

My work teeters on the edge of speculation and functionality, between science fiction and practicality, and it always deals with the intersection of ecology and queer liberation. It is not medium specific and has been presented in the form of sculptures, speculative agriculture interventions, and performance artworks. Largely, I hope to present thoughtful and radical alternatives to the climate catastrophe, centering nonbinary and nonhuman perspectives in these future visualizations.  

My materials are often living organisms: plants, algae, fungi, and bacteria. Part mad scientist and part drag persona, my art practice ricochets from sublime hopefulness to postapocalyptic despair, between humor and profundity. I often begin with a specific problem: unsustainable industrial agriculture practices, pharmaceutical companies’ monopolization of access to hormones, or water pollution – and from there, my storytelling, sculptures, and installations offer hypothetical and fantastical solutions.

I work in a community biology lab, hybridizing fennel plants for use in hormone replacement therapy. Alongside its strong estrogenic properties, fennel is also a host plant for native swallowtail caterpillars. These tall herbaceous bodies and their metamorphosizing residents had me imagining a future where gender is not regulated by policy or monopolized by pharmaceutical companies. Could I grow a garden of hormones in my backyard, and with those gardens, could my trans friends harvest and synthesize their own gender?

Megafauna (these desperate earthly forms) presents the process of that research: concentrated phytoestrogen extracted from the mutant plants created in my laboratory. Refrigerated and surrounded by traces of the scientific process, these vials of liquid are connected via a metaphorical umbilicus to a vast bioplastic form that inhabits the gallery space. This thing is neither vessel nor human nor animal. It is a specter that faces toward the present violence against trans bodies. A monstrous amalgamation of this fear: a symbiotic sludge of gelatine and seaweed and fennel and flesh.

About the Artist

Ezra Moth is an interdisciplinary artist whose work engages with ecology, queer identity, and the Anthropocene. Immersed in fantasy and dystopian futures, their installations contrive narratives through the lens of eco-feminism. Having studied sustainable agriculture and sculpture at UCONN, and performance art at Goldsmiths, University of London, their work spans both scientific curiosities and dreamlike utopias. Their installations and performances have been presented internationally in exhibitions and residencies such the Thessaloniki Queer Arts Festival in Greece, Ortegay Y Gasset projects in Gowanus, RIXC center for new media culture in Latvia, Joya Arte + Ecologia in Spain, and the Queens Botanical Garden. They are currently based between Tolland, CT and Brooklyn, NY. 

 

 

Real Art Ways presents thick, hazy, cleer, blew, a solo exhibition by Shona Macdonald. 

thick, hazy, cleer, blew explores the effects of weather as ephemeral, mundane records of our daily lives. In addition to weather and forecasts, these three bodies of work explore the atmosphere and atmospheric perspective.

‘The Vapors so Whiten’ series pulls imagery out of layers of dusty pigment applied to toned paper. Small in scale, these works depict either cars driving in and out of visibility on roads with no beginning or end.  With no points of reference, it is often uncertain in which direction the vehicles are heading. In the ‘Car, Eyes’ series, floating cars bob amidst unidentified bodies of water; adrift, they are rendered useless. The third series, ‘Blow In’ suggests images of laundry, flags, and leaves, all being buffeted by the effects of wind. 

Macdonald engages with qualities of atmosphere through slow and muted approaches. The laborious, hand-made nature of her work leads to a more embodied experience of what the weather means and how it affects us physically and imaginatively while the indecipherable atmosphere she conjures from multiple layers of pencil marks coupled with hazy imagery leads, ultimately, to a kind of disorienting opacity.

About the Artist

Shona Macdonald was born in Scotland and currently lives in Western Massachusetts. Selected solo exhibitions include McDonough Museum of Art, (2023), Zillman Art Museum, (2020-21), Brattleboro Art Center and Museum (2018), Roswell Art Museum, (2011), Tarble Arts Center (2015), Gridspace, (2014) Engine Room, Wellington, New Zealand, (2010), Proof Gallery, Boston, MA (2009), Reeves Contemporary, NY, NY (2008), Den Contemporary, LA, CA, (2007) and Galerie Refugium, Berlin, Germany, (2002.)  Two person exhibitions include the Ballina Art Center, Ireland (2022), Dayton Art Center (2018,) and Linden Sculpture Garden (2012.)  She has shown in over 100 group exhibitions across the United States, UK, Australia, and Canada.  Reviews of her work include Art in America, Art News, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, Sacramento Bee, and Boston Globe.  She has been an invited Visiting Artist at over fifty institutions, including The University of Wyoming (2023), Georgia State University (2007), the University of Alberta, and the University of Calgary, Canada, (both 2002). Shona Macdonald is a 2009 recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation award.  Selected artist residencies include UCross, Ragdale, VCCA, Roswell, Kimmel Harding Nelson, and internationally, at Can Serrat, Spain,  Ballinglen and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, both Ireland.