From Saturday, November 16 through Sunday, December 22, 2019, True North Gallery presents Winter Solstice, a group exhibition featuring the work of Juliana Boyd, Leslie Doherty, Diana Sudyka, Delbert Charging-Crow, and more.
For the past ten years, Hamilton resident Juliana Boyd has been exploring the limits of painting with wool. After a decade of creating hundreds of textural paintings of animals, flowers, mushrooms, and more, she has clearly mastered her medium. Boyd uses a technique known as needle felting in which she employs a barbed needle to apply and compress unspun wool onto a background fabric. She layers varying amounts of different colors of wool similar to how a painter layers washes of color. The end result is a rich, dimensional realism achieved through the blending of colors and the sculptural quality of the raised wool.
Snowshoe Hare by Juliana Boyd
Boyd usually creates her paintings on carefully chosen textile backgrounds, including repurposed antique seed sacks. But for True North’s Winter Solsticeshow, Boyd did something new. She created a series of snowshoe hares that present themselves from the surfaces of vintage snowshoes. The hares—encircled by the bent ash frame of the traditional snowshoes—leap, sit, and stretch across the rawhide webbing. Some are in their winter coats of white, whereas others are wearing the dusky shades of warmer seasons, but all seem perfectly at home on their snowshoes. Boyd’s hares, like her other animals, make you want to reach out and touch them. You know they aren’t real, but they have a compelling life of their own, as well as a sense of a larger story.
Untitled by Cameron Byron Roberts
Also included in the Winter Solstice show are small original works in oil, cold wax, and acrylic by Hamilton artist Cameron Byron Roberts. An architect and contemporary painter, Roberts finds inspiration in the landscapes and waterscapes of the Great Marsh and Essex River. His minimalist paintings focus on light and color, and depart from strict representation to invite viewers to connect with their own experiences of nature.
The stained glass sculptures of Newburyport artist Leslie Doherty are another highlight of the Winter Solsticeshow. Doherty has been creating art with glass for over thirty years. Working out of her Plum Island studio, she produces sculptures, panels, and architectural installations. For the True North show, Doherty created a new series of feather sculptures that combine traditional stained glass techniques with a sculptural glass method. First, she cuts the individual glass components of the sculpture, and then she curves them by using a “slumping” technique—a kiln-forming process that uses heat and gravity to shape glass. She then re-cuts the curved glass before foiling and soldering them together to create the final form. The result is an elegant arched glass feather that looks as if it just fell from the sky.
Feathers by Leslie Doherty
Doherty also created a series of multi-pointed Moravian stars for True North’s show. The Moravian star—a traditional and iconic symbol of the winter solstice season—represents the light at the heart of the winter holidays. Using clear and textured glass, Doherty created twelve-pointed stars that range in size from small enough to fit in your hand to large enough to serve as a holiday centerpiece or year-round sculpture.
In addition to the work by these local artists, True North’s Winter Solstice show also features work by Diana Sudyka, Catherine Hyde, Sarah Becktel, Delbert Charging-Crow, Tabbatha Henry, Richard Fisher, and others, as well as gifts, jewelry, holiday items, and more.
True North Gallery, located at 25 Woodbury Street in Hamilton, is open Wednesday through Sunday 10AM to 4PM. For additional information call (978) 468-1962 or email gallerydirector@truenorthgallery.net.