Untitled design (9)

FROM GUEST JUROR, ERIC SHINER
President, Powerhouse Arts

The world around us is changing in unprecedented ways:  the climate is warming at an alarming rate; geopolitics pushes and pulls at borders and national identities; shorelines erode and garbage heaps grow.  The transformation of our lived environment is jarring, just as the devastation wrought on nature is troubling.

For this exhibition, I selected works that address the tenuous relationship between human and animal, culture and nature.  For many of these artists, the concept of transformation appears in the form of rotting fruit, blackened oyster shells or a haunted camping tent, seemingly depicting the collapse of nature.  Whereas in other works, beautiful blooms, colorful recyclables and fibers, or heraldic images of flora and fauna point to a hope that the future is bright and that nature might emerge victorious.

I hope that all of the work in the exhibition makes the viewer think about their own place in the world and what they are each doing to save us from further annihilation and negative change.  I wish that viewers find beauty in decay and inspiration in darkness, just as they might smile and imagine a better tomorrow when faced with the more optimistic work in the show.  For me, transformation and change are always good things:  they make us grow, force us to adapt, and hopefully make us stronger as a result.

Thank you to all of the amazing artists who submitted works to this exhibition, and to the New Bedford Art Museum for inviting me to be the juror for this show.

ABOUT TRANSFORMATIONS

Artists were invited to create original artworks exploring the theme of metamorphosis.

See the full collection at the Art Museum.

K. Yamashita Photo

FIRST PLACE WINNER
Kumi Yamashita

"Unfolding Cosmos I recreated the folding patterns of 25 classic origami shapes - animals, flowers, objects, etc, and then integrate them into a seamless whole. The result is a terrain of lines where boundaries blur and one existence connects with another."

Unfolding Cosmos, 2024
30" x 30" x .25"

H. Cantrell Photo

SECOND PLACE WINNER
Helen Cantrell

"I work in woodcut and other printmaking forms, as well as paint. For the past several years, animals and their permutations have been a major focus. They are their own mysterious creatures, but we humans inevitably use them as stand-ins for ourselves, so first transformation. Then the lines in "Wolf Family" weave into each other to blend and re-use back, legs, tails, other parts in a dance of changing forms. The "Fisher Wolf" pieces are about the ospreys and wolves and fish in my forest/ocean home on Long Island Sound and how they may change into one another, like a fairy tale only without humans."

Fisher Wolf Black, 2023
38" x 38"

Michael Velliquette

Artist Statement
Artist Statement

Michael Velliquette is an artist who makes intricately constructed paper-based sculpture. He makes use of a modest material to open a view into imagined worlds. In using an innately delicate everyday material, Michael Velliquette’s paper sculptures convey strength, intent, and durability in which temporality and perpetuity coexist. Cut exclusively and assembled by hand, Velliquette’s works can take hundreds of hours to complete. Through a meticulous and intuitive process of measuring, cutting, and assembling pieces of colored paper into complex structures and abstract systems, a simple material is imbued with the power to transfix.
Serpent (BW/BW). 24 inches x 24 inches. Mixed media paper construction.

Michael Velliquette
Hypnotic Serpent 1, 2020
24" x 24" x 2.5"

Alexandra Chiou

Artist Statement
Artist Statement

My layered works on paper celebrate the life and legacy of my late father and my healing journey after his passing. In these works, I give physical form to abstract concepts and feelings such as hope, love, resilience, and wonder, which defined his wonderful life and the time I spent with my father. My pieces are about coming to terms with this change and finding peace and healing in memories of home, love, and family.
A. Chiou Photo

Alexandra Chiou
The Path of Gold You Laid for Me, 2021
40.5" x  40.5" x 1"

Ali Osborn

Artist Statement
Artist Statement

My artwork defamiliarizes found objects. I take things out of circulation and into the studio where I record them using drawing or printmaking. Each piece is at once a sample of a specimen and a reorientation of that specimen. Through this process, I am searching for the state of wonder that precedes comprehension, when something is new, nameless, and abstract.
A. Osborn Photo

Ali Osborn
Wedge, 2020
13.5" x 22"

Andrew Brehm

Artist Statement
Artist Statement

Andrew Brehm is a sculptor who incorporates video, design objects, and performance into his work. Brehm often leverages craft techniques to make objects that belong more to the world of domestic furniture than that of artwork. His exhibitions are eerily humorous and surreal while addressing themes such as his childhood, manufacturing, and magic. These works are kinetic fiber sculptures made from waste paper and objects Brehm finds near his studio. These common materials have been transformed to make the viewer feel like a wizard interacting with mystical architecture and equipment of the trade.
A. Brehm Photo

Andrew Brehm
Red Roe, 2023
2' x 3' x 3'

Janine Seelen

Artist Statement
Artist Statement

Early mornings and evening twilight intrigue me. Colors start to bloom or fade. Time does not matter. Motives are finding me. I do not search. I choose the familiar but unexpected: A table tennis covered with snow, a collapsed tennis net, empty seats in front of a closed movie curtain. A floating tent in a park. A brise. I stop.

The photos on my mobile phone mark each aspect of change in its shape. Some of them are marginal. A dance. Strings attach the tent to the ground. I can feel the tension with each wind stroke. In my studio I transform my interpretation with oil stick on paper – leaving out the strings.

My art mirrors my personal transformation and how we change aspects of who we are, what we do and the life we lead. It is a journey – ‚I am transforming‘ – and a destination – ‚I am transformed‘. It is my intention to make the viewer engage in his/her personal transformation as a statement of positive intent.
J. Seelen Photo

Janine Seelen
28.11.2022, 11:18:46, 2023
44cm x 61cm x 1cm

Lyu Kroll

Artist Statement
Artist Statement

My work focuses on nature, environment and sustainability. This collection explores topophilia — our cognitive ties to a place and the ensuing bonds between our environment and our sense of belonging. Commercial cardboard boxes are repurposed as canvases for my compositions; each work contrasts human figures in unnaturally blue skin tones with depictions of flora or fauna. These interplays serve as metaphors for our inseparable connection to the environment. Incorporating original text and print from the boxes adds depth and intertwines remnants of their previous life with a new narrative. By infusing realism and capturing emotion, I yearn to inspire and foster a deeper connection to our environment.

In a world of excess and overconsumption, these pieces demonstrate the transformative potential of art. I encourage the audience to reconsider the value placed on seemingly unusable objects and their relationship with the environment.
L. Kroll Photo

Lyu Kroll
Iris, 2022
12" x 8.5"

Matthew Lambert

Artist Statement
Artist Statement

My relationship with my identity is complex. I was adopted from South Korea and raised in New Hampshire. As a teenager, my identity began to split apart. Because of my Korean physical persona and my mental and emotional upbringing coming from primarily white suburbia, I began to question my race and and sense of belonging. Due to this disconnect, I felt distant from all that made me Korean, and felt too Asian to fit in to my homogeneous community. This confusion surrounding my identity and the idea of home can be seen through my work; “Fracturing Identity”, as it shows the transformation from Korean landscape to my own body. Themes of transformation can be seen throughout my work.

My work "Birth Parents" show my own transformed conception of them, pictured through their silhouettes built from my own genetic fragments. The transformative journey of my own self acceptance is seen through my two painting, “The Reclamation of My Own Eye” and “Untitled Self Portrait”.
M. Lambert Photo

Matthew Lambert
Birth Parents, 2023
9" x 10"

Lisa Maione

Artist Statement
Artist Statement

Through her work, Lisa brings attention to the formations and externalizations of voice and language through photography, drawing and collage practices. She builds images to that emphasize the residue of memory through assembling and structuring relationships between objects. Her creative practice is interested in how to use and enact “design methods” outside of commercial exchange as a primary context.

Displacing design-like methods into vulnerable states outside of capital and inside emotional visual vortexes. Aberrations and distortions emerge and are made palpable as affective, productive output.
L. Maione Photo

Lisa Maione
Figures (Homage to Leo), 2023
30" x 22" x 1"

Kristin Meyers

Artist Statement
Artist Statement

In my work I engage in Ritual practice to explore the human condition. Ritual is combustible, by that I mean Ritual Practice engages in a combination of actions that combust to transform energies. Within its practice ritual creates a realm in which time is completely modified. Rituals explore universal life truths distilling a myriad of experience into a beautifully choreographed dance. Our collective connections are evident within these explosive celebrations of universal truths.
K. Meyers Photo

Kristin Meyers
Metamorphosis, 2023
114" x 42"

Irwin Freeman

Artist Statement
Artist Statement

Paper serves initially as sculptural medium, then as substrate for fresco. The buon affresco method provides an aesthetic of excavation. These are reclamations of nonmajority lives, the paper sourced from the recycling bin: mailers for HIV medications, for afro products, for accoutrements of 21st caste. The change is from expendable to valued.
I. Freeman Photo

Irwin Freeman
Paper Pair, 2023
12" x 12" x 9"