From 5–7pm, the public is invited to attend a reception featuring in the North Room, “Curious Things Fashioned from Leather and Foraged Objects,” by Donlin Foreman and Jaya Lord of Horse Hill Studio, and in the South Room, “Little Worlds: Dollhouses, Dioramas, and Shadow Boxes,” including works by Soosen Dunholter, Jane El Simpson, Rosemary Mack, Susan Lunt, and Rachel Thorne Germond Performance Collage.
Utility, identity and craft are the underpinnings of the work of Horse Hill Studio. Out of leather and found objects, Foreman and Lord fashion things hands and eyes can hold. Most of what they love to make are vessels. These hold aspects of our lives: talismans that hold our prayers, handles that our hands hold, broaches and small boxes made from walnuts that hold keepsakes. There are bowls and trays and satchels, door boards for keys, and slate and leather wall hangs that hold our attention and imagination.
Soosen Dunholter is a Peterborough based printmaker and mixed-media artist whose work explores color, pattern, texture, and visual storytelling. Drawing from painting, printmaking, collage, and found materials, she creates sophisticated yet whimsical works that invite curiosity, contemplation, and a sense of discovery.
Winner of 2019 Ewing Arts excellence in the arts award, Jane Simpson's work incorporates diverse mediums, including mixed media and visual storytelling. She has a deep passion for history and preservation, often creating new art by stitching, sewing, and using recycled materials, vintage cards, and artifacts.
Assemblage art ushered in Rosemary Mack’s second childhood. Her studio is a playhouse filled with dolls, toys, board games and endless oddball bits and pieces that she collects but also sometimes just appear in her life when she needs them! Shadow boxes, dioramas and goofy 3-D cartoons let her explore personal issues as well as take an off-kilter look at the world. Growing up on fairy tales, mis-guided advice and proverbs has provided endless inspiration. Contemporary life has as well. Gender issues are frequent topics and among the most popular.
A painter and multimedia artist, Susan Lunt’s work frequently features ‘not quite right’ spaces that reflect emotional and cultural losses from the old millennium to the new. Her room boxes and dioramas offer a counterpoint to these themes, presenting in visual form the wry storytelling tradition of her Northern New Hampshire family. “I’ve arrived at a place in my art where it is okay to have two voices, a humorous one and a haunted one,” she explains.
Rachel Thorne Germond is a performer, dancer, teacher, choreographer, and visual artist. Shadow Box is a collaboration between her and video artist Charles Woodman. The title refers to Victorian "shadow boxes" in which light and shadow are dramatically juxtaposed within enclosed glass-front display cases of thematic groupings of objects of personal significance. Using the silhouettes of moving dancers, the interior and exterior are collaged with images and then layered in increasingly complex ways to create a meditation on external and internal spaces and relationships. These silhouettes create ever-changing patterns of movement that break apart and reform, evoking concerns of human will, control, isolation, and even doom. Shadow Box will be viewable on a large screen at the DubHub only during the opening reception on Friday, November 13. For the rest of the run of the exhibit, a link will be provided to view the film via Vimeo.
The exhibit runs Friday, November 13 - Sunday, November 29 and is available for viewing during DubHub open hours and by appointment.