COLLECTIONS > Exhibits > Lucinda Bliss: INDIGO

February 25 - May 20, 2023
Artist Talk: Saturday, February 25 at 2 pm
Reception: Saturday, February 25 at 2:30 pm

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From the Artist: An examination of the colonial era is necessarily an examination of our relationship to the land. Since art and literature are the storytelling vehicles through which we narrate our history, it’s important to note that the histories that have shaped American identity privilege some and disappear others. Partial and false narratives continue to permeate the ways we conceptualize landscape and national identity. The collage, drawing, and installation work in Indigo sets out to distort this imagery and poke holes in problematic, seemingly benign narratives. Materials for the collage work were sourced from vintage Currier & Ives calendars, early Farmington property maps and tax documents that reveal the artist’s own genealogy as deeply linked to colonial settlers in the area. The work also pulls text from previously unknown letters held in the Stanley Whitman House archive, the study of which planted the seed for the work in this exhibit. The site-specific installation, Frame [not yet included in images below] stands as an intervention in and conversation with the preserved colonial house (c.1720). The work uses cloth, rope, and beads on wooden armatures to invoke ships, ocean voyages, and constructions from the early colonies.

INDIGO: An Exploration of Genealogy & Place

Click on each photograph to see the complete image and information.

Columbus: Reversal

Traces of Columbus

Manifest: Cows

Horse Power Heaven

Focal Point: Reversal

Ice Cloud

Ice Cloud: Traces

Narrative Roots

Voyage

Locomotion

Submerged

Stories We Become 1

Stories We Become 2

Slipping Into the Forest

Writing Places

River's Edge 1

River's Edge 2

Bounty

Placeless 1

Placeless 2

Placeless 3

Placeless 4

Placeless 5

About the Artist

Lucinda Bliss is an American artist and teacher, born in 1965 in Hartford, CT. Her painting, collage, and installation work has been shown at Lamont Gallery at Phillips Exeter Academy, The Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Aucocisco Gallery, Rose Contemporary, Common Street Arts, Landmark College, University of New England, Bates College Museum of Art, The University of Arizona, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Slippery Rock University, Dinnerware Gallery, Miranda Fine Arts, and the Boston Center for the Arts, among others. Bliss currently serves as Associate Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

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