Mary E. Black Gallery

Opening Reception: March 23, 6pm

Fencelines is an immersive artwork combining the blacksmithing of Ruben Irons, ceramics by Fenn Martin and gestural drawing by Raina McDonald. These Antigonish based artists share their collaborative exploration of the rural landscape, ownership, permissions and borders. Given the current global climate of fear and separation, this fence and gate with imagery reflecting on rural outmigration and the collapse of small farms, is an elegy and challenge to re-imagine rural life in Nova Scotia.

Exuvia is an exhibition of funerary jars, sometimes referred to as reliquaries or urns. At the end of its time developing undergound, the cicada digs to the surface to move from one life stage to the next.  In this process of change the cicada leaves behind a shell, called the exuvia, and it flies away. At some level the finished jar is a likeness of who it is that will transition, important not for what it holds but for what has stepped out and flown away leaving an essential hint of what lives on.

Rachel Morouney, crenellated fan pattern, carved and glazed ceramic, 2014. photo credit: images courtesy of the artist

Naturally Dyed & Handwoven, each moon piece is bisected horizontally between sky and ground or water, and collectively they ask questions about location, space, scale, concreteness, control. As we speed up in all our interactions, the slow, incremental woven, dyed progress of these pieces seems satisfying and rich, and possessing of serenity.

Frances Dorsey, Black Moon, handwoven and naturally dyed fibres,2015. photo credit: image courtesy of the artist

Frances Dorsey and Rachel Morouney, Black Moon and Crenellated Fan,handwoven and naturally dyed fibres, carved and glazed ceramic, 2015. photo credit: images courtesy of the artists