A Tenuous Equilibrium

March 3 - April 23, 2017

Exhibition Opening: Friday, March 3, 6 - 10 pm

Artist Talk - Dena Haden: March 4, 2 pm

Artist Talk - Samantha Mitchell: April 8, 2pm

A Tenuous Equilibrium highlights two artists whose work mediates fleeting and transitory encounters with the landscape with keen awareness of their own intimate footprint of being. Dena Haden and Samantha Mitchell present sculptures, paintings and drawings acutely tuned toward finding balances between productive and destructive qualities of nature. Their experiences and perceptions are visually negotiated with shifting qualities of vast lands, passing time, and phenomenal energies. Through process and material they reveal records of organic rhythms, chronicle growth and decay, preserve private histories of place, and cultivate reverence for the sublime.

Dena Haden is a visual artist that lives and works out of her studio in Berkley, Massachusetts. She was born and raised in Cape Cod, MA and earned her BFA in Painting from UMass Dartmouth in 2004 and her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2008. Dena has instructed painting and design courses for several years at nonprofit organizations and private institutions. She is the co-founder of Groundwork Creative Space in New Bedford, MA and is the director of the Boston Critique Group, an artist collaborative in the Greater Boston area. Her artwork has been included in exhibitions nationally and internationally and is part of numerous private collections and public installations.

Samantha Mitchell was born in 1986 in New York City and graduated from Oberlin College in 2008. She lived and worked in Illinois, Utah, California, and Oregon before enrolling in the MFA program of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, graduating in 2012. Mitchell is primarily a drawer and printmaker who investigates the relationship between order and chaos through different processes of mark-making. Aside from her work in the studio, Mitchell works as managing editor of Title Magazine, and as Arts and Exhibitions Coordinator at the Center for Creative Works, a studio for with adults with developmental disabilities.

Curated by Emily Elliott & Jillian Schley

For more images of this show (and others), click below