Carol Keller: Erratics in the Wood
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Untitled, 2009 mixed media on wood panels 70" x 90" Courtesy of the Artist and Nielsen Gallery, Boston, MA |
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November 14, 2010 - February 6, 2011
Curated by Nina Nielsen and John Baker
Opening Reception Saturday, November 13, 6pm - 8pm
Gallery Talk Sunday, January 9, 3pm
Known primarily as a sculptor, Carol Keller has also been using collage as her drawing process since 2000. These 11 mixed media collages on wood panels represent her most recent work in this format.
About the Exhibit
Having moved from urban Boston to a rural community in the Berkshires, sculptor Carol Keller often finds herself in the woods. Frequent walks down narrow footpaths near her studio have led the artist past abandoned fields into deep forest where she has often been surprised by huge rocks seeming to rise out of nowhere. “The sight of them consistently lifts my mood,” she remarks. “They appear without warning, and seem both tentative and immoveable.”
Called “erratics” by geologists, these enormous boulders litter the New England landscape. Derived from the Latin “to wander,” the word “erratic” can also signify the unpredictable. However, scientists use the term to describe prehistoric rubble dropped from glacial ice flows, foreign material removed and deposited far from original locations. On the “hushed and private existence” of abandoned colonial roads, Keller has found inspiration for a new body of work.
Keller’s recent drawings and collage are not preparations for sculpture. Instead, they are intrinsic conversations with material. She finds pleasure in “working the elements…cutting out, or discovering shapes, in putting them up against each other.” This satisfaction is “opposed to painting or drawing directly on the paper,” and probably grows out of Keller’s history of making objects. But as a sculptor, she is interested in seeing where this new work will take her. “I don’t make these claims for my drawings,” she says. Like the massive, odd shaped rocks she’s discovered during long walks, these mixed media collages strike her “as anomalies of sorts…cropping up in this studio in the woods.”
From the Artist: Erratics “maintain a more discreet identity than many other things in the woods – things that decay, are consumed by fungi or animals, become buried under leaves and fallen trees. They stand clear and separate, almost glowing with independence (although they occasionally sport spectacular mantles of moss.) They present themselves as something a little out of step or norm, yet also offer up something that enhances one’s experience of the norm.”
About the Artist
Born in 1952, artist Carol Keller received her BA from Manchester College, North Manchester, Indiana and her MFA in sculpture from Boston University’s School of Fine Arts (now College of Fine Arts) in 1980. Keller has exhibited widely, with numerous solo exhibitions at Nielsen Gallery where she is represented. Other solo exhibitions include shows at Nesto Gallery, Milton Academy, Milton, MA (1974); Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (1992); Miami University, Oxford, OH (1997); College of William and Mary, Williamsberg, VA (1999); Montserrrat College of Art, Beverly, MA (2003); Mt. Ida College, Newton, MA (2004); and Amherst College, Amherst, MA (2004).
Group exhibitions include the Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA (1992); the Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, MA (1996); the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA (1998); the Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC (2001); the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, MA (2003); Wooster Art Center, NYC (2005); Trustman Art Gallery, Simmons College, Boston, MA (2006); and Denise Bibro Fine Art, NYC (2010).
Selected awards and honors include a St. Botolph Club Foundation Grant (1985); an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award (1986); a Berkshire Taconic Foundation Artist’s Resource Trust Grant (1998); a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1999); and a Bogliasco Foundation Residency Grant (2000). Keller taught at Boston University from 1989-2002 before accepting a teaching position at Amherst College, where she is now a Professor of Art.
A resident of the Fort Point Channel area of urban Boston for many years, the artist now lives and works in the small rural community of Shutesbury, MA.
About the Curators
Curators John Baker and Nina Nielsen are former owners and directors of Nielsen Gallery, one of Boston’s most prestigious commercial galleries founded in 1963. Recognized as a premier showcase for contemporary artists whose personal visions resist easy categorization, Nielsen Gallery was located in the historic Back Bay district of Boston at 179 Newbury Street at the time of its closing in June, 2009. Over the course of their 46 year career, Baker and Nielsen were recognized for outstanding curatorial abilities, most notably by the International Association of Art Critics (AICA).
In 2009, the AICA awarded their show Jay DeFeo: Applaud the Black Fact second place for "Best Show in a Commercial Gallery, Nationally." In 2005, the AICA awarded The Privilege of Solitude: Alfred Jensen and Forrest Bess first place for "Best Show in a Commercial Gallery, Nationally." Other major exhibitions at Nielsen Gallery included "Jackson Pollock: Forty Four Psychoanalytic Drawings, 1939-41; and The Self-Reliant Spirit, featuring a comparison of four contemporary artists with Albert Pinkam Ryder, Ralph Albert Blakelock, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley. Nielsen Gallery was also recognized for notable survey exhibitions of work by such artists Albert York, Martin Ramirez, Gregory Gillespie and numerous others.
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