Remember those tempting candy boxes filled with an assortment of assorted treats, or the embroidered heirloom that your great grandmother stitched... or a carefully assembled shadow box of collected treasures?
Following in the footsteps of Tenderspace, Concord/Boston-based artist and curator Kathleen O’Hara of Drive-by Projects and OH Projects, and Concord/Brooklyn-based multimedia artist and curator Meaghan Elyse are collaborating to bring innovative art to West Concord through the window of SAMPLER.
Kathleen J. O’Hara is a contemporary visual artist, independent curator, and co-director of Drive-by Projects in Watertown, Massachusetts. As a multi-media artist, she creates installations that originate on the wall and gradually extend into the exhibition space, consistently engaging with history through explorations of time and memory.
O’Hara has exhibited widely, including at Arrival Art (North Adams, MA), Jameson Thompson Gallery, (Boston MA), Concord Art (Concord, MA), Suffolk University Gallery (Boston, MA), Clay Studio (Philadelphia, PA), Dryden Gallery (Providence, RI), Carole Calo Gallery at Stonehill College (Stoughton, MA), One Mile Gallery (Kingston, NY), Dorrance H. Hamilton Gallery at Salve Regina University (Newport, RI), Van der Noot Gallery at Lesley University (Cambridge, MA), and Cohen Gallery at Brown University (Providence, RI).
Her work appears in The Boston Globe, ArtScope, The Concord Bridge and New American Painting, and resides in numerous private collections, including Fidelity Investments and Wellington Management. She holds an MFA from the University of Washington (Seattle), a BS from Skidmore College, and studied at Colgate University. O’Hara co-directs Drive-by Projects and is represented by bk projects (Brookline, MA).
Statement
As a multi-media artist, I construct installations that begin on the wall and move gradually into the exhibition space. During the past few years, I have begun to introduce clay and textiles into my methodology. All my work speaks to history as I explore the concepts of time and memory, as well as my interest in the uncanny or unheimlich as defined by Sigmund Freud. My imagery is often based on historically researched objects, persons, art forms, and crafts.Recently, I have begun a series including ceramics, watercolors, and textile works that honor women pioneers in the arts, humanities and sciences.“O’Hara’s work asks us to look below the surface to the psychological or parallel universe lurking behind the veil. These unseen forces are conceptually knit between object and mind, real or perceived, both creating the anxiety of the unknown, the familiar beast of our times.” - Kate James, Director, Concord Art, Concord, MAKathleen O’Hara
Meaghan Elyse is an interdisciplinary artist working with design, biophilic sculpture, painting and performance. Her work explores the boundaries of our bodies, of home, of our surrounding ecologies, and the porousness of these edges. Along with collaborators, she is interested in creating spaces for interaction, for rest, for dreaming, for mourning, for healing.
(b. 1992, London, UK) She is based in New York and Massachusetts. She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University where she was a recipient of the Leroy Neiman Fellowship.
Statement
I create paintings, architectural sculptures, masks and sounds, exploring themes of magic and connection to the non- and more-than human world—particularly birds. My work is deeply intuitive and collaborative. As I ask questions about where my body ends and the world begins, I understand myself as part of a vast web of beings, often through a character I call the Birdwoman.
The architectures and sculptures I create—nests, domes, and scaffolds—feel alive and porous, connected and entangled with their surroundings. In this time of ecological and spiritual loss, I hope my artwork and designs can offer a space for reimagining, dreaming of new perspectives and alternative ways of living, echoing Cherríe Moraga’s words: “of other planets I am dreaming, of other ways of seeing this life.”