March 1 – 28, 2019
Kathryn Schultz Gallery
25 Lowell Street, Cambridge MA
Featuring artwork by Katie Lane, Keith MacLelland, Stephanie Todhunter, and Amantha Tsaros
Click here to download the press release
About | In Darker Joys four CAA artists invite you into their creative playground to revel in your base human instincts: a tangible expression of excess, a fearless exploration of medium and subject and an eagerness to surprise the viewer in ways both bold and subtle.
We encourage you to gorge on those sweets and embrace the guilt and pleasure: lazy weekends, late night bacchanalia, tv binge watching, fast food, rollercoaster riding. Nothing is too frivolous, wicked or absurd.
Come up into our clubhouse! Push the red button! Grab the last cookie! All the fun with none of the consequences.
Come on, join us. EVERYONE is doing it.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Katie Lane | Influenced by New England architecture, culture, colors and texture; Lane creates dimensional paintings that elaborate on our everyday interior environments and sidewalk experiences. The work is recognized, visually, as a colorful and urban marriage of both painting and sculpture. Lane’s process is based primarily in the combination of industrial and traditional painting material. Her abandonment of conventional painting method and strong sense of collage build a visual meant for a quirky and abstractly recognizable experience for her viewer.
Stephanie Todhunter | Stephanie Todhunter started working on the latchkey kids in 2014. The backbone of the series is an ongoing succession of plaster encased vintage dolls, each re-colored and re-named. The plaster encased girls (reminiscent of Han Solo encased in carbonite) begin as vintage Dawn dolls from the 1970s. These dolls were only made for a brief amount of time and generally only remembered by the GenX generation. Dawn dolls are smaller than Barbies and, although they have exaggerated waspish waists and perky breasts, are “tweenish” in age. They were small, generic, easy to carry and easy to lose.
Once the dolls have been plastered and inked, they develop distinct and often unsettling features and personalities. Stephanie takes a photographic portrait of each girl to capture and highlight these quirks. These portraits are used in larger pieces to tell stories about the lost girls. Common themes are isolation, stranger danger, missing children, parental neglect, and lord-of-the-flies-like adventure in small town suburbia. And it is interesting to contrast these themes with those found in contemporary parenting: constant stimulation of the internet, helicopter parenting, snowflake children, online bullying- all of which are creating a new form of isolation among kids.
Keith MacLelland | Constructing his work from discarded ephemera: cereal boxes, flooring remnants, and leftover gift wrap, MacLelland’s Boston and Cape Cod based mixed media studio practice is eco-conscious. His palette is dominated by saturated colors that echo the brightly painted buoys that bob atop the ebb and flow of ocean waves,
Amantha Tsaros | Amantha Tsaros’ paintings are a reaction to the current culture of extreme bullying and persistent vitriol. Tsaros aims to trample darkness with love, joy, and optimism. Each painting is a celebration, a mixture of colors and shapes that express happiness or resilience. Her palette is reminiscent of a favorite childhood candy store stocked with candy buttons, sweet and sour hearts, candied almonds and licorice. The bold colors of jelly beans and the bright lollipop-greens and oranges express a lighthearted, hopeful challenge to the dark blacks and grays.
DATES
Reception | Thursday, March 7, 7-9pm
Workshop | Thursday, March 21, 7-8:30pm
- About the workshop | Spend the afternoon decorating a large triple layer “cake” with acrylic paint and glitter using traditional cake decorating tools. Katie Lane will demonstrate her mad mixed media skills (she uses cake decorating equipment in her daily practice, along with glitter and fluorescent paints). Guests will participate in the decorating process and will be encouraged to release their inhibitions and let their inner children out. The resulting community created artwork will remain on display for the remainder of the show. We will also have real cupcakes, colorful treats and big bowls of candy for visitors to indulge upon. This event will be a fun and hedonistic escape from our daily stressful lives.
Click here to RSVP!