Burnett Gallery Virtual Exhibit

May 1 – 31, 2023

Geometric Abstraction by May Emery  |  Crowbird by Sally Campbell Pirie

May Emery
Geometric Abstraction

ARTIST STATEMENT
Geometric Abstraction is a series of color study explorations painted from 2010 to 2017. My earliest influencer Josef Albers in his book, Interaction of Color, comments that, "color is relative and changes in relationship to colors around it." Initially using the cross in the square symbol and a limited palette of two color choices plus black and white, I began an investigation of color, repetition, and pattern building. The behavior of the color choices expanded my understanding of visual perception as I modified and developed the variables.

ARTIST BIO
May Emery is exhibiting oil paintings from her 2010-2017 Geometric Abstraction Color Studies series. She studied the foundation of design with Bauhaus trained teacher Albert Alcalay at Harvard University's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. After raising her children, May went back to school and received her B.F.A. in 1996 from Tufts University and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts. While at SMFA, she studied art history with Professor Susan Denker and worked in the painting studio of Miroslav Antic. After graduating, she went on to work with Graham Nickson at The New York Studio School.

In 2006, May received a grant from the University of Massachusetts to join the Silvio O. Conte Center for Polymer Research reconnecting art and science through materials research. The learned methodologies of materials experimentation are applied in her painting and printmaking. May shows and sells her work in Boston and western Massachusetts. Contact: maystudioarts@gmail.com

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Sally Campbell Pirie - Artist Photo

Sally Campbell Pirie
Crowbird

Sally Campbell Pirie is a visual artist and university professor. As an anthropologist of childhood and work, Dr. Pirie's work in Crowbird is part of a larger project about women and children encountering intimate partner violence amidst the other terrors of the COVID-era, the drama of destruction and repair, and most of all the redemptive circuitry of love.

The songbirds, crows, and cowbirds that make up the majority of the images in Crowbird are metaphors for how the most vulnerable might outlast and outsmart those who would violate and exploit them. The images in Crowbird are created as old fashioned pen and ink drawings, and are then scanned, enlarged and run as full color giclee prints. These prints are then torn into small pieces and painstakingly reassembled. If you look closely you can see the seams.

Sally has published and exhibited extensively under a former surname. You can learn more about all her straight and crooked work at www.sallycampbellgalman.com.

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See also: gallery archive