countercurrent
The duo show, countercurrent, paired new work from painter Lydia M Kinney and a dance performance and video work by Zoe Elizabeth created for the exhibition, showing fresh and slightly raw experimentation from two artists with strong foundations in their mediums.
Lydia M Kinney shared paintings from the last two years which experiment with physical textile layering and weaving under paint layers and consider the painting as object, image or both. Reworking paintings that could be complete, she adds new overlays and folds in a process focused more on attempts than results. Zoe Elizabeth created a dance performance and video in response to the space and around exploring and reconciling different parts of herself. Thematically, both works explore the concept of the dialectic, or trying to find meaning in two opposite ideas or forces.
The process and manifestation of Kinney and Elizabeth's work was also evocative of the German word Aufhebung which means, simultaneously, to abolish, to preserve, and to raise up—each of their work contained versions that had been reworked. In Kinney's paintings, she created paintings on board and with cut paper first, then revived them in a new way. For Zoe, each performance contained the same components, but across her three performances, the inflection and nuance changed with the time of day, audience, and her own feelings.
Lydia M Kinney is a painter working in structured and layered abstraction. Based in Greenfield, Massachusetts, with her husband and cat, Lydia exhibits work throughout New England. Lydia is an honored BFA graduate of Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
Lydia favors art that articulates a relationship to self, to body, space, and form. Abstraction gives her means to illustrate the often figurative sensations of loss (future tense), alienation (physical), and doubt. The work is environmental and ornamental, with adorned views into fields of color.
Zoe Elizabeth is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores the intersections of dance and energy healing. She began her training as a dancer in ballet and contemporary forms, eventually finding her way to hip hop and contact improvisation. After discovering street dance and contact improvisation, her practice has since oriented towards deep physical listening, attentiveness in relationship, and presence through dance improvisation.
Zoe was also trained in reiki levels one and two. She has experience with direct energy work, but is also currently researching the intersections of energy healing and dance as potent ways to process stored trauma, connect with self and community. She has found that the balance between the quiet internal work of reiki with expressive and physically demanding work of dance opens pathways towards individual and collective healing.
Zoe is committed to community organization, dance performance, and healing practices that illicit joy and deepen resonance.
Assemblage
Our inaugural exhibition, curated by Rachel TonThat, brought together the work of six North Shore and wider Massachusetts artists with diverse artistic backgrounds. Combining experimental film, sculptural installation, and outsider art, this first exhibition begins to query the possibilities of contemporary art outside of the center and to explore the capacity of assemblage, and assembly through artistic community, in creating critical and collaborative local frameworks.
Amalya Megerman creates performance, installation, video, and sculpture using Jewish diasporic protective objects and rituals, organic material, familial objects and history, and recurring themes of body, family, hypervigilance, and security. Her work is often a way to understand and refigure her relationship with intergenerational trauma. She has an upcoming residency at The Studios at Mass MoCa, her first curatorial project at ShowUp in Boston opening June 25, a performance and workshop at Glasshouse Project on June 27, and group exhibitions at Lux Center for the Arts and Cecilia Coker Bell Gallery. She has previously received a Byrdcliffe Arts Colony residency with a Pollock-Krasner Fellowship, the ChaNorth Young Artist Fellowship Award, and graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 2016 with the Herbert L. Lucas Award in Sculpture. Since 2023, she has been a member of Zero Space Collective.
Darren Alexander Cole is a moving image sound artist focused on site-specific works that mix emergent tools with historical ones through extended reality(XR) interactions. These alternate spaces are portals to spatial sound experiences that include fragments of his handmade films. Through the lens of storytelling Alexander seeks to center community, identity, and sustainability.
Dianne Jenkins is a wise old person in Swampscott, MA who has been making playful and serious art all her life. She creates work in both 2 and 3 dimensions, using thrifted, found and traditional materials celebrating the wonder of the ordinary. She studied at Pratt institute, the Boston Museum school and Charles River Studio. Her work can be seen each spring at Storefront Art Projects and on Instagram @diannejenkins123.
James Cennamo was an editorial cartoonist for newspapers on Nantucket Island, where he lived in the 1980s and 1990s. His editorial cartoons earned awards from The National Newspaper Association, and The New England Press association. In the late 1990s he produced a jazz radio show on WBUR, and also did stand up comedy. James is a musician with Govinda Sky and the author of River of Consciousness; a graphic memoir.
Linda Ruel Flynn is a life-long multidisciplinary artist working in paint, textiles, paper, teaching and exhibitions. She studied painting at Syracuse University and her work has been shown at Fitchburg Art Museum, Springfield Art Museums, Fiber Art Center, and other regional exhibitions, and has curated at Fiber Art Center. She works at her studio in Orange, MA.
Monica Hamilton is an artist from New England. As a photographer, she is interested in the tension caused by the difference between the truth of the photograph and the thing itself. Often, she’s known for collecting more shells than fit in her pocket. She holds an M.F.A. in Studio Art from the University of Connecticut and a B.S. in Studio Art from Skidmore College, has participated in residencies at Vermont Studio Center, the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, and The Sable Project, and is the recipient of the Zachs Award. She currently works and teaches at Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts.